We at StarCityGames.com are proud to introduce the newest member of the Feature Writer team: Shuhei Nakamura, finalist of Pro Tour Columbus and Top Eight competitor at Worlds 2005! While his future articles are to be Premium, we thought we’d kick off with a free taster. Today, Shuhei tells us what it means to be Japanese, and what it means to play Magic.
Blisterguy takes us through this week’s developments on Magic Online, and gives us a comprehensive rundown of the fluctuating online singles market.
The good Doctor tackles Boros, makes merry with MagicTheGathering.com’s Legend vote, and has some advice for a member of the Magic community currently under the legal spotlight…
You want to build your own decks, if you’re a casual player. You check out my articles, and instead of copying out one of the decklists I mention, you look at it, and see the principle that makes it work, then go and do something using the same idea. That’s how casual players work; we don’t want to suck at the game, we want to do our own thing. So here’s how I go about building decks.
The perfect man for Valentine’s Day, Mr Romeo brings us his definition of staple rares, giving us a run-down, by set and color, of the golden nuggets any tournament wannabe cannot be without. This one will spark a lively debate, of that there’s no doubt.
In Ravnica Sealed, you’ll often wind up with a conundrum: you can play twenty-three killer cards, where every card is worth having in the deck, but you have to go four colors. Or you can go with three colors and throw a few marginal cards in to bring it up to twenty-three, lowering the number of late-game elbow drops but also minimizing your manascrew. And so comes the question: consistency or power? With that in mind, The Ferrett looks at the decks that went undefeated on Day One to try to draw some conclusions about the format.
Sam Gomersall, Rich Hoaen, and Anton Jonsson are all eligible for your votes in the latest round of Invitational voting at MagicTheGathering.com. Choose your Fanatic, and vote!
The good doctor returns, bringing the low-down on the three guilds from Ravnica, and his own particular take on the MagicTheGathering.com Legend “You Decide” vote.
I sent Craig an email, asking what I should write about. He responded that I should look at the competitiveness of eight-man Extended single elimination events on Magic Online, and also examine online Standard. I will — but first I have to stop wasting all my online time playing a trio of silly — but totally fun — decks.
Mr Michael Flores has picked up the popular vote for the Resident Genius category, and as such he is invited to attend the Magic Invitational Tournament 2006. Congratulations, Mike!
Ah, the last day of a Daily. It feels like Shahrazad at the end of the 1001 Nights, this whole “finishing up” thing, except that instead of being a hot Arabian princess in a palace I am a scruffy college student kicking aside beer cans in a seventy-year-old apartment, and instead of wooing a king in the royal bedchamber I spend most of my time with fat nasty Magic Players sweating it up in a small room trying my hardest not to cry myself to sleep every night.
We have officially passed through the first week of Ravnica/Guildpact Sealed Deck and Draft for the Pro Tour Qualifier format, and the Grand Prix in Richmond has a lot of useful information to mine. Sean leaps in like Jack Bauer, brandishing a gun and yelling “there’s no time!”
It might seem like the height of idiocy to do a “better than you think!” for a set that has been out all of two weeks. Being an individual who is rarely averse to high-risk low-payoff stunts, I’m going to try it out. Bear in mind that some of these things might be really obvious to those of you who have played the set more, but seeing as how the current Limited format is still in its infancy, I figure there’s at least some value to what I am fixing to say. Onward!
It’s that time of year. The birds are singing, Magic is in the air, and guilds once again roam the earth. That’s right, it’s set review time! Like my review of Ravnica, this article won’t tell you how to pick Drafts or Draft picks or whatever it is you people do. It won’t help you out at the next Grand Prix. It’s never even heard of Block Constructed. No, we’re going to explore something else entirely. We’re going to talk about flavor, fun, and a curious obsession with bats.
I tried to pretend in last week’s article that everything was all okay, but I just felt wrong doing so. Therefore, I feel honor bound to let you know what my issue is, and how it will affect my writing as a result. I don’t even know if you’ll agree with me, or just think I’m crazy, but its my honest reaction, so I figure it should be stated for the record, especially because I haven’t read anybody else with a similar reaction, and I’d honestly like to find out if I am alone on this one.
