Hello everybody, and welcome to another edition of the Magic Show. You ready for a whole weekend’s worth of video compressed into just twenty minutes? But that’s not all – I have full deck tech rundowns from U.S. National Champ Paul Cheon’s “Bigger Fish”, Zac Hill and Richard Feldman’s B/G Skyshroud Poacher deck, and the Grand Prix champ Steve Sadin’s Billy Moreno-designed Flash Counterbalance deck!
On the 20th, I played in a Future Sight-legal Standard tournament… which was won by a U/B speed Dredge deck, previously unseen on the online tournament circuit but apparently popular on bulletin boards everywhere. It used Blue dredge enablers like Magus of the Bazaar and mana acceleration effects to play them turn 1. It’s currently known as “Under The Bridge,” and it’s the deck of choice today.
Fresh out of the 883-person event in Columbus, Doug Linn looks back on this weekend’s Grand Prix and sifts through the data for tech and commentary. Find out how useful the information from the GP will be and look at the apparent futility of testing Legacy. Trace the historical development of the Flash deck with insider information and see how many pros he name-checks! All this and more in what Doug promises is the last article about Flash he will write.
Hello all, and welcome to another entry in that most casual of columns, here at the Kitchen Table! I am your host of all things happy. Today I intend to explore a few more complex strategies in multiplayer. There is a solid amount of multiplayer material on the Net, from strategy to formats to theory. Today I am going to give you some advanced theory.
One of the core problems with Future Sight, going in, is that “the future” isn’t just a vague theme, it’s a stupid theme. The future is unbound, featuring possibility all over the place… and they’re going to print cards that supposedly fit from these potential futures that offer us both a view of the future mechanically, and that give us a view of the future with flavor as well?
I was not the only person who believed that the existence of Flash was good for the metagame. It set a very clear bar that all rogue decks had to be able to beat, and it weeded out many of the more random combo decks both by virtue of being “better” in the abstract and because of the necessity to try and hate it out. After Future Sight it probably gets ridiculous, but in Columbus it was simply a very good but very vulnerable combo deck that defined the metagame without unhealthily warping it.
Join Rich as he finds yet more inventive ways to lose at Magic. Featuring a dozen MTGO matchups, he muddles and befuddles his way through Time Spiral Block Constructed, sharing stuff that you either knew already, or feel really dirty about not knowing. But that’s okay, Rich is your friend, and he’s Making Mistakes So You Don’t Have To…
With the Block and Legacy Grand Prix over, the next major event coming up for you, John Q Draftsalot, is Regionals. This means slogging back into the Standard metagame. I’ve been doing a running test log in an attempt to build around the basic structure of the format. These are the basic tenets of the format I’ve followed thus far when creating or tuning my decks.
Before I get into the weirdness, I figure I’d toss out some red meat for Spike to feast upon. Last week I got a message from Thomas Leveille, the guy playing in the Virginia Beach City Champs program that was kicking ass on points about halfway through. So, how did it pan out? Thomas pinged me on AIM with this message last week…
At work, I have a mug that says “Everyone’s Entitled to my Opinion.” My coworkers know that that’s my mug. So, if Flores and Bennie Smith are arguing about Green, and Zac Hill writes more about concessions, is there any doubt I’ll jump on my soapbox? No, didn’t think so. This week I’ll opine on concessions, but I’ll add some facts to the debate.
Armed with a freshly-cut Hatching Plans Storm Combo deck, Mark takes to the eight-man queues… and comes up short. He can’t buy a win with this deck. Yet similar builds have been rocking up premier Event Top 8s without batting a metaphorical eyelid. Where’s Mark going wrong. Is it in his play, or the deck, or the simple strategies needed to succeed? Read on to find out!
Chris dives deep into his Well of Budget Decks, and surfaces holding a deck with a twist. With Time Spiral packing our binders with old-fashioned cards, it’s time to send out some deck lovin’ to the Old Guys who’ve never thrown away a Magic card. As an Old Guy who never throws away my Magic cards, I approve of this message.
This week, I’m forgoing the usual metagame breakdowns — the format is about to radically shift, after all — and I’m bringing you an interesting little Black/White Control deck for the current Online Standard. It has a brilliant matchup against Dragonstorm and a good game versus Gruul. Intrigued? Then read on…
Ahoy, puzzle fans. After the well-received paragraph puzzle from a couple weeks ago, I thought I’d present another class puzzle archetype, fitted to Magic: the 3×3. In a 3×3 puzzle you are be presented with nine words. Your job is to group the words into three sets of three, each of which are connected by another word. After you make this grouping, you once again group the three new words to get the final answer. Simple, right? Now win those RGD draft sets!
I just returned from Grand Prix: Columbus, after watching it explode past everyone’s expectations with a gigantic 883 people showing up to slap dual lands and crazy old cards down. But what format were those people really playing? Was Hulk Flash actually – *gasp* – good for Legacy? And what in heck should we ban?
