This article is largely written for players who have a decent grip on the basics on Magic strategy and/or are fairly accomplished players. I’m guessing even a lot of awful players with a sound grip on logic can make some use of a few of the guidelines listed below, but if you are a complete novice or a true master of the game, you may not find it very useful. You have been warned.
In the cut-throat arena of Kamigawa Block, what is the informed Weapon of Choice? Never fear! I have examined the metagame and mined all available data and will provide you everything you need to know to win at Block Constructed, regardless of race, creed, gender, or basic intelligence.
More than a few cunning plays and alterations are devised whenever a new set rears its head. Here the author submits for your approval and digestion a few noteworthy strategies and approaches to foil them. These are all relatively new gameplay situations granted to us from Ninth Edition or Saviors of Kamigawa that may crop up and ruin your Standard netdeck. Be wary of “bad players” randomly busting out “bad” cards to ruin your day.
Yes, it is I, the good doctor, back once again to grace the fair, forthright and dolphin-friendly pages of StarCityGames.com.
So I recently went looking for one last Kamigawa Block deck to cheapen up. Obviously, Gifts Ungiven wasn’t going to be it. Way too many rares. I’d already looked at cheap Black Hand. I’d built and played a G/R Aggro deck (“And the Horse You Rode in On”), a mono-Red Burn-centric deck, and several cheap White decks. I even worked on Hondens. I was out of ideas. I turned to the wonderful StartCityGames.com KBC PTQ deck database for decks that might use The Romeo Treatment.
This week in Ben’s Corner: Wizards reveals their plans for new dual lands in Ravnica, Legacy heats up at the Gen Con World Championships and the StarCityGames.com buylist is updated to include even more sets. Read on!
By the time of the Pro Tour, I’d gotten back into reading articles enough to have a fairly high understanding of what was going on in the Limited format we were testing for, and further exceptions had to be made: “I quit Magic, except for forty-card decks”. We made Day Two of the Pro Tour, in at 4-2 where the year before we were out at 1-3 and played on to 3-3, then lost during the draft. And lost hard. Probably because I was on a different page than the rest of the universe for a while, and thought the seating order and flow of packs was reversed, meaning I was trying to force entirely the wrong archetype from my seat, having practiced with one thing and then played another entirely.
The new Legacy format is upon us in the form of the World Championships at Gen Con and two Grand Prix towards the end of this year. Many people have questions about this fledgling format. If you’re one of those people, Ben’s written a complete guide explaining this history and rules of the Legacy format!
Teaming with Seth and Kevin reminded me why I played Magic, because of my friends and the experiences we shared. Going to qualifiers with two other players and having our fates in the tournament intertwined was a remarkable experience.
I am trying to build an online collection from scratch. I have tried online traders, sellers, trading bots, leagues and drafts. You could even buy packs and bust them. Some of these ideas work. Some don’t. Let’s review.
Today StarCityGames.com brings yet another new and deserving Featured Writer to the starving, huddled masses looking for tech and a good story. Nathan Xaxson straddles the line between hard-core gamer and theorist and guy who likes to sling spells while hanging with friends at the kitchen table. We think his articles will be appreciated by pretty much everyone and encourage you to try him on for size.
Shortly after landing this job, I began my reign of terror as a writer, pushing the envelope to write a weekly strategy column while occasionally slinging mud, getting people to start to read the Neutral Ground website for columns, tournament reports, and other information as the newborn site grew into a popular website.
When we left off yesterday, I was fifteen, stupid, and had just enough money to be a danger to myself. Money doesn’t make you smart though, so I stopped buying packs after my first trade-rape experience…
In general, these days blocks tend to be focused on such different themes that they aren’t really very compatible with each other. Using Onslaught for an example, there were no Cycling cards and very few Goblins in Odyssey and Mirrodin, the two sets that were legal when Onslaught was and thus nearly every card in those decks came from either Onslaught block or from the basic set. In Type One however, blocks never rotate out. This gives deckbuilders the ability to plumb older sets for cards which can work along with a block mechanic. Some blocks have been more successful than others because of this effect.
To a lot of you, I’m probably an unknown quantity; I’m a writer who’s recently appeared “on the scene” here on StarCityGames.com on the Premium side, seemingly out of nowhere if you didn’t already know the story. For those of you who don’t know me or my personal back story, that seems like the place to start.
