I think that the best Magic writers are good at doing two things well. Firstly, you have to be inventive, and create your own material. In order to be a good Magic writer, you have to create formats, variants, decks, new ways of looking at cards. Alongi gave us Spider, Rattlesnake and other ways at looking at cards, plus he created numerous variants for the multiplayer table. Rizzo gave us Friggorid, Wakefield gave us dinosaurs…
Examining one’s own thought processes during a slump is a tricky business. As I wrote in On Discipline, being able to self-examine your play is one of the hallmarks of good discipline. The problem with this is that during your worst slumps, self-examination doesn’t seem to turn up anything useful.
We’re up to part 4… and that means Legacy preparation! Going into Worlds, Hall of Famer Zvi Mowshowitz, aided admirably by Legacy Grand Prix winner Steve Sadin, looked to crack the format wide open. Zvi reveals all about his Legacy thought process going into the event, and shares the list that he proclaims as the Best Deck in Legacy bar none!
[Part 1 – Standard Preparation] – [Part 2 – Draft Preparation]
[Part 3 – Drafting With Zvi]
In this fascinating article, Vintage World Champion Stephen Menendian examines a fundamental flaw in human intelligence: the inability to make optimal strategic decisions in a worlds of dynamic complexity. We all know that Magic is a complex game. We all agree that the player who makes the fewest mistakes is the player most likely to win. But why, exactly, are those mistakes being made? Stephen reveals all…
Extended PTQ season is right around the corner, and today’s Peebles Primers takes a look at some of the decks that could be strong going in. Using a Zoo deck as a litmus test, Benjamin Peebles-Mundy puts Zac Hill’s Rock and Nail and Brian Kelly’s Mono-Blue Control decks through their paces against the five-color beatdown menace. How do they fare against the fire?
Tiago Chan, Portugal’s Level 6 Magic dynamo, takes us by the hand and leads us through the choppy waters of a triple-Lorwyn draft on Magic Online. He shares each and every pick, from one to forty-five, and supplies expert commentary on the draft and the games. For more detailed information, visit the forums!
“[Expletive]! I got another crappy Hideaway land!”
How many times have you either heard or uttered this phrase whenever a pack was opened in the time leading up to Worlds? I’m
willing to bet it was at least a fair amount; those Hideaway lands seemed to be the very opposite of hidden when you were
desperately hoping to crack open a big money Garruk Wildspeaker or Thoughtseize.
I’ve talked a lot over the last couple of weeks about focus. About how I think I’ve been able to keep my mind in the right place, and as a consequence how my results have been improving. But there haven’t been many articles written about how exactly to improve focus, what the causes and consequences are, and what may detract from your ability to maintain that focus in an in-game setting. Today I want to tackle some of those issues.
I went. I participated. I lost a total of two matches in five days. That would have been amazing, if I had been a competitor. I was a judge. Let me tell you about that. I’ll even explain how I became Lithuanian for an hour, and about the single best job a judge can have. Oh, and some people played Magic. I may mention that, too.
Yesterday, Hall of Famer Zvi Mowshowitz shared his preliminary thoughts on the triple Lorwyn draft format. Today he puts his money where his mouth is, and talks us through his two drafts from Worlds 2007. With an open and flexible view to the format, did he manage to ride the early signals to draft success? Read on to find out!
[Part 1 – Standard Preparation.] – [Part 2 – Draft Preparation.]
In a change from the advertized tribal drafting program, Nick branches out this week into a more experimental and irreverent archetype. Instead of basing your picks on tribal lines, grab the bustiest and best piece of cardboard and hang the consequences! Of course, there’s much more to it than that… let Nick show you how it’s done!
With Worlds firmly behind us, all eyes now turn to Extended. The qualifier season for Pro Tour: Hollywood is gearing up, and tournament players across the land are looking for those edges that could bring home the Blue Envelope. Adrian takes a look at the metagame and makes some suggestions, before bringing us an interesting and powerful rogue deck that could make quite a splash at your next PTQ…
Tiago Chan, Portugal’s Level 6 Magic dynamo, takes us by the hand and leads us through the choppy waters of a triple-Lorwyn draft on Magic Online. He shares each and every pick, from one to forty-five, and supplies expert commentary on the draft and the games. For more detailed information, visit the forums!
The results are in, the data has been collated, and Rich Hagon is here to tell you what it all means. In Part 1, he focuses on the Level 2s trying to reach Pro status, and the Level 3s. Some are on the way up, some are just trying to survive as a Pro, but all had goals going into Worlds. Find out who reached them and how in the company of the man who talks for England.
With the Worlds results in, we now have a brand new Standard metagame to look at featuring a legitimate combo deck. Unfortunately, it’s far smaller than the diversity we saw at Grand Prix: Krakow, to the point where MTGO has become a cesspool with everyone selling their grannies to the local glue factory just to come up with the tix for Pyromancer’s Swath and Dragonstorm. All the B/G and B/G/W players rejoiced, as not only could they copy a better version of the decks they were running, but a bunch of mediocre to even matches left the metagame because they all packed up their ball and went home in the face of “The Gassy Knoll.”
