I love Team Limited. In my opinion, it’s the best format in the game – and I don’t feel that way just because my team has won a Pro Tour and Grand Prix in the format (though I’m sure that has swayed my opinion a bit). Today, I’m going to give you the absolute basics on what to look for in players (Hint: The strongers players you can find might not be the best idea), how to prepare, and how to prepare for the big day.
After nearly two months of solid testing and experience with this deck, I feel it is unquestionably one of the Tier 1 decks of the current field, if not the outright best deck of the field. With reasonable to good matchups against almost everything out there and a very real fighting chance in most of its bad matchups, Wake has what is almost surely the best set of matchups in today’s Standard. In the right hands, it wields awesome power and can completely dismantle many of the decks out there… And so let me show you how to play this powerhouse.
You will have heard a lot talk about the metagame if you follow Constructed strategy articles – especially lately in the context of Regionals. In fact, the metagame is one of the favorite topics of discussion for Magic theorists, tournament players, and people who want to sound like they are in the know… But what exactly is it? Not many people can actually give a satisfactory definition of the word, and will just mutter something about tier 1 decks and leave it at that. Instead, why not read this helpful introduction?
As good as the preview art was, I really did not see any card that really struck me as artistically outstanding. Almost all the art seemed at least competent, if not good or even above average, but nothing I saw knocked my socks off. Still, I might as well show you the cards I played with, right?
One of the funniest stories from the prerelease was the plight of my fellow Sarnia player Jean-Marc Babin, who, after a strong showing at the Saturday event, stumbled through a disastrous Sunday prerelease that saw him get pounded twice early on and in back-to-back games. After the offending round, he simply walked up to me shaking his head and showing me his scoresheet. The numbers reflected the steady march of his own life total towards zero. The commentary was chilling and succinct:
“Game 1 – Forgotten Ancient turn 4.”
“Game 2 – Forgotten Ancient turn 4.”
This is an account of Day 1 of the two-day extravaganza that was the Pittsburgh Scourge Prerelease – and for those of you who didn’t get to one, a look at a few of the new cards in real play. For those of you who did get to a Prerelease, this may offer some insights about cards you didn’t see (there were plenty I didn’t) or just another perspective. Plus, you get to see the other half of Jeremy’s deck!
Three Team CMU members headed down to the prerelease this weekend to kick some butt and take some names… And the three of them all submitted fine reports and reviews to make a very special day at StarCityGames.com. Paul uses his prerelease experience to tell you what cards are better than he thought, why you don’t need to worry about the loss of life from Zombie Cutthroat, and a little-known step in combat that just might be more relevant now thanks to Wing Shards.
We experienced a pure motherlode of Type I tech thanks to Legions and its creatures, so I’m sure you could hardly keep your pants on while awaiting Scourge. But seriously, there’s one card in Scourge that I think is so good that it might have the potential to make it into”The Deck”… And today, I’m going to test it out to see how it works.
Please Note: The following prerelease report contains a bit of drama. It will contain a controversial decision that I made which reduced my chances of finishing with a box, plus a description of what may or may not have been a play error that caused a match loss. I ask your advice and help in the forums.
My favorite part of Magic is still the creativity that it takes to build new decks. But something has happened recently: Winning is becoming more important to me. I don’t know what exactly happened to make me feel this way, but whatever it is, I want to win now. And playing your own decks isn’t the way to do this.
The environment for this year’s Regionals and Nationals events has likely been the single most diverse Standard season the game has ever seen. In such a spread-out field it was difficult to cover all your bases, but the one thing we all seemed to be able to agree on was that the Tier 1 was pretty clearly composed of three decks: R/G, U/G, and ‘Tog. That, ladies and gentlemen, has come to an abrupt end. Both Wake and MBC have risen to dramatically shake up the old guard, and I’ll show you why Wake has joined the top tier by giving you a guided inside tour of what may be the single best deck in Standard today.
Even in multiplayer, Stifle will save your butt. The most promising use I can think of is to counter one of your own activated or triggered abilities. Notably, consider that this ability counters upkeeps and cumulative upkeeps, as well as 187 abilities, morph abilities (obviously), cycling abilities (either the card draw or any triggered abilities, but not both). It will save you from Pernicious Deed, Powder Keg, Strip Mine, creature-based abilities such as Willbender and many others. Most notably, casting this in response to putting Phage the Untouchable into play other than from your hand would, as it currently reads, counters the”you lose the game” clause. Moreover, this can counter the”return to play” trigger on cards like Astral Slide. Can you seriously ask for more?
I’m talking about Dan Bock. He was the guy who played an all-land deck at a previous Pro Tour in Japan. Now, normally I don’t beg decklists from people who play all-land decks in major tournaments… But this was a special case. Dan qualified playing Full English Breakfast at the last Extended PTQ where Survival of the Fittest was legal. Since that time, he has recreated FEB several times – in Extended without Survival, in 5-Color, and in T1. Now he has built it in Highlander format, and it’s now kicking serious butt with Phage.
The title of this article does not make any sense until you get to the portion of the article that’s not even really part of the article. So please bear with me. This week, we’ll be exploring Onslaught red and green cards whose values fluctuate depending on your deck: How many Goblins do you need before you can play Airdrop Condor or Reckless One? How many elves do you need before you can play Wirewood Pride, Voice of the Woods, or Heedless One?
The two key components of the archetype are mana and explosive effects. This is very important to keep in mind during the draft, because some of the picks are not immediately identifiable. The basic premise behind the deck is to ramp mana quickly and cast large splashable or in-color threats. The deck has an extremely powerful late game, considering that you take Invokers higher and splash a lot of giant creatures – so if you get all of the tools, it is simply too powerful for regular two-color decks.
