I want to caution y’all not to be too concerned with issues of tempo in Sealed Deck. This extends far beyond the fact that drawing first is better in this format the overwhelming majority of the time. In Draft, mana curve is one of the first things I look at. In Sealed, though, it’s just not all that important…
It’s time to prop the eyelids open, as the Rich Hagon Limited Marathon enters its final phase of tortuous manabases, ridiculous synergy, and some eye-watering math information, for those of you who like that sort of thing.
The majority of the time you spend playing Magic is occupied by thought. Tom, in his first strategy article for StarCityGames.com, shows us three ways to think faster inside the game, and explains why doing that will make you play better and win more often.
This week I was planning on working on an aggro compliment to go along with the control side of my Faeries articles. However, I ended up side-tracked due to unforeseen personal matters, and I’ll have to take care of that next week. Instead, today I’ll be covering a small section of Vintage topics inspired by Ben Bleiweiss last week.
It’s my birthday! That’s right folks, I’m a year older, and a year crankier. In celebration of another chunk of my finite existence disappearing down the Great Cosmic Toilet, I’ve decided to spend today frolicking in the sunshine. Thus, my article today is a little short. Never fear… normal service will be resumed next week. And this week, there’s a PTQ cardpool to examine and evaluate. My PTQ deck was a disgrace… can you help me rebuild it?
Christopher Coppola describes the development process of Threshold during the last few months, both due to format changes and strong new cards. He also reports on his finals split from Day 2 of the Mana Leak Open III, and introduces the new Black Threshold deck.
Should someone be admired simply because they’re good at something? To me, the answer’s pretty simple, because I’ve seen “Raging Bull†– a movie widely considered one of the better films ever made. And the question of what Raging Bull is about leads to something that’s a little different than the usual “Joes versus Pros” debate that’s been going about for a while.
This week’s Ben and Chris double bill sees Chris sharing his exploits at the recent StarCityGames.com Vintage Weekend in Chicago, and Ben doing what Ben does best: making inflammatory comments about the nature of the Eternal community. Intrigued? Then read on!
Harnessing the forces of randomness to your benefit is at best a difficult task. When you could find yourself thrown anywhere on the map, as we often are in Sealed Deck, having a well-developed set of skills to find your way to where you want to be can serve you quite well. A good grasp of the guidelines of the format will take you farther than an innate, static ranking of card strengths. All too often you’ll hear a story about a player who opened Card X and chose to warp their card pool to fit it…
Hello everybody, and welcome to another edition of the Magic Show. This week we’re finally ridding ourselves of the Invitational, including my thoughts on the event along with Menendian’s, and an exclusive interview with Devin Low that occurred during Pro Tour Valencia. Let’s go!
If you’re like me, you’ve gone through various stages in your Magic career. You likely started out as a random scrub, impressed by the power of a Dragon Whelp but willing to trade it for some Jumps. Gradually you fine-tuned the rules and became more competitive, until either all the local players left or you were happy where you were. In time, you also likely discovered that you had an affinity for a particular color or play style. In my case, the style was the mid-range U/G deck. Over the years since Fallen Empires, I found I had built far too many of these decks, and all those Walls of Blossoms and Ertai, Wizard Adepts were starting to run together. So I set myself a simple-sounding project…
[Editor’s Note: Mark Young is ALSO having a week off… he too will be back next Thursday!]
Talen Lee, never one to use one word where four thousand will do, escapes from his handler and returns to the keyboard long enough to try and come up with something interesting to say, touching on a handful of topics along the way. Oh, and there’s yet more talk about Evan Erwin. Oo, Drama.
[Editor’s Note – Chris Romeo is having a week off… he’ll be back next Thursday!]
I’ve done it. You’ve done it. We’ve all done it. Yes, today’s Kitchen Table article takes a trip up from the Casual slot to the Strategy roster, as it touches on that most controversial of Limited strategies, the Rare Draft. Abe, a self-confessed Rare Drafter, takes us through the strategies behind his success, and shows us how we can win even if we’re giving up the first few picks each pack…
Last week I was reading various articles on Lorwyn Limited in order to bone up for my first foray into LOR draft at FNM, so of course I checked out Nick Eisel’s Limited Lessons columns on this here site here. In his first article on Lorwyn (Approaching Lorwyn) there was a paragraph he wrote that really got under my skin…
Last weekend I went from the newest format to the oldest, and back again. Both went pretty well. The old stuff: I judged the StarCityGames.com Vintage event in Chicago. The new stuff: drafting Lorwyn online. I’ve got some comments, some observations and some anecdotes. Enjoy – I did.
