Lorwyn is here! Oh frabjous joy, Lorwyn is here! And like the rest of you, I shuttled down to my local Prerelease tourney location, just in time to catch the last flight of the day. And here’s what I learned about the cards of Lorwyn by watching and playing in a four-round flight!
Kevin Binswanger takes a look at two of the most discussed cards from Lorwyn and tests out whether they help against the most important deck in Legacy. Then he tries his hand at explaining theory in the context of Legacy.
Those of you who are actively trying to avoid spoilers can back away from your “Back” buttons. We aren’t going to talk about a single unofficially-previewed card… in anything resembling its actual form. I for one don’t feel like it is my place to make the decision to spoil or not to spoil for our good proprietor Pete Hoefling, and every time I write one of my prerelease preview articles I hear Groundskeeper Willie’s voice screaming “Hush, boy, d’ye want to get sued?”
Hello everybody, and welcome to the Magic Show. This week we’re going to talk about the upcoming Lorwyn prerelease and its follow-up block, Jelly and Doughnut. Wizards of the Coast has been saying over and over how they will be linked but not in a very obvious way. I think I, and many others, may have found this missing link.
It’s been three weeks of 150 cards from the uncommon and common sections of Magicdom. Today we count down the Top 50 cards remaining. The previous 150 were all at approximately the same level, but today’s cards are going to be in the form of a countdown, taking you all the way to number one. [Editor’s Note — 200 Articles! Nice work, Abe!]
It’s kind of eerie how Boggart Shenanigans, with the spoiled casting cost of 2R, seems to fit as perfectly for a Goblin beatdown deck as Astral Slide did for a White control deck. It’s almost like one card is a photonegative of the other. The Shenanigans turns each Goblin card (note that this includes Tarfire) into an extra point of damage without extra mana spent or loss of card advantage.
Right now, the card that has me the most torn up is Mobilization. I love that card. I was enamored of it back when it was first printed in Onslaught, and I’m no less taken by it today. It makes token Soldiers, no less. They have Vigilance. I can make as many as I can afford to pay for. What’s not to love?
Last week I mentioned strategic giants of the game Flores, Feldman, and Sullivan clashing over proper deckbuilding and how correct Flores’ 4/1 theory was. Recently Magical Hack Sean McKeown weighed in with his thoughts too. I wonder what these fine gentlemen would think about this new deck sweeping the country recently? Perhaps you’ve seen it…
Like most of the Magic world, I have been looking forward to Lorwyn. I have the spoiler. I also have written a lot of set reviews over the years — and I tend to get them wrong as often as right. I’m not going there. Instead, I’ll look at Magic Online’s old school, throwback set, and try an old school, throwback deck design to use those cards.
If you can successfully stop the fastest deck in the format from killing you while simultaneously not packing to the optimally-positioned control deck’s late game, chances are you can handle a less streamlined version of either strategy. This doesn’t necessarily mean, either, that every deck that isn’t positioned along the poles is “sub-optimal” to take to a tournament strictly speaking; it just means it’s less unilateral.
I love Magic for many things, and one of those things is camaraderie. On the weekend, even if I’m sick as a dog and can’t keep my head straight, I’ll head off for the local cardboard center and shuffle up, or at least say hi to the locals. Getting out for a stretch and making social calls is important. In my personal case, there’s no more enjoyable opportunity to use my Japanese in a practical situation than inter-match banter.
It’s the greatest trick in the book. How the hell do writers put together a set analysis when they probably haven’t even physically seen half the cards, let alone played with them? With just four days to go, Rich Hagon gives you all the tools you need to fully understand your Lorwyn spoiler. Find out the Magic behind the Magic, and let the Noetic Scales drop from your eyes. You’ll never look at a Spoiler the same way again!
After asking readers if they wanted to see Vintage or Extended, the majority came back with the latter (I blame Gush) so that’s what we’ll be discussing today. Last week I covered the main graveyard based combo decks that you can expect to play against, so this week we’ll be branching out into the aggro-control segment of the meta…
I think it was Craig “Lightning Helix” Jones who commented on all the quality burn spells in the current format. There are so many good ones that if you throw them all in a deck you can just win randomly, because all your burn gains synergy with all your other burn. This deck is very similar, because there are so many cards that produce several creatures that it makes all of your opponents’ spells less efficient.
The whole Masters thing is still leading me down the primrose path of strange memories of old cards I used to play with. Unfortunately, this nostalgia seems to keep getting in my eyes.
