Today’s Flores Friday follows hot on the heels of Michaelj Monday’s “The Breakdown of Theory” article. Mike fleshes out his fresh and exciting Phases of Magic concept, looking back at various dominant strategies in an attempt to contextualize their success. What exactly where these meta-warping behemoths doing right? And can we recreate their success on the battlefield today?
With Day 2 of Worlds concentrating on the Legacy format, it was a chance for the pro community to flex their Eternal muscles. While Tiago Chan was out of contention for Top 8 glory by the time Legacy rolled around, his deck decision process and testing is worthy of our attention. Today he talks us through his Legacy preparation before moving onto the tournament proper. Enjoy!
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!
Hello everybody and welcome to another edition of the Magic Show. This week I wrap up my Worlds experience by talking to players about Lorwyn draft, favorite first picks, show you the most exciting match in a long time, and go in-depth into the wild world of Dragonstorm.
With the Extended PTQ season right around the corner, the time is nigh to look into figuring out what you want to do in the format and how it plays out. First appearances can be deceiving, after all, and if you start with “just” decks like the Enduring Ideal deck or a turbo-Dredge strategy then you will generally fail to see the bigger picture. I certainly did – after all, the first thought I had when I saw the popularity and success of the Enduring Ideal deck was “I’ll just play a beatdown deck that doesn’t normally have countermagic and toss in Remands, they’ll never see it coming!”
The deck that most casual players will gravitate towards, and in my experience stick with the longest, is the Medium Aggro deck. In part this is because so many cool linear mechanics like Tribal come out, largely spread across the full casting cost range (yes, it goes beyond 4). It’s fun enough to play in a slower format like Limited, where there’s almost no way to avoid playing it, and is relatively forgiving.
For the final article in Zvi’s “My Worlds†Tournament Report, Zvi walks us through each of his Legacy matches in turn, sharing the highs and the lows with his usual charm and skill. With an overall record of 11-5, the Hall of Famer has officially re-caught the Magic bug, and we hope to see many more articles in the future!
Extended is coming, and all eyes turn to the older cards. In today’s Deep Analysis, Richard debates the nature of power in the format, and defines what he believes are the twenty most powerful decks. If you’re looking to distil the metagame before your next PTQ, let Richard lead the way!
That’s right folks, it’s the end of another year… and that means it’s time for awards! Today, we have Kyle Sanchez handing out his own personal plaudits and brickbats, for those professional mages that have either excelled or underwhelmed in 2007. Good-natured ribbing is, of course, the order of the day, and Kyle pulls it off with his usual aplomb. Enjoy!
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!
Santa was right to hire Elves – those guys are vicious on the battlefield! Dave explores the budget options in building a competitive Elf tribal deck, and takes a short look at Elf decks (and holidays) past.
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…
