It is said that all good things must come to an end. Fortunately, rather than following up on Craig Jones skipping off to finish his doctorate, Matt Cavotta’s conclusion to “Taste The Magic,” or Aaron Forsythe’s conclusion to his run on “Recent Developments,” the only thing ending here on Magical Hack is… my vacation.
Hello everybody, and welcome to another edition of the Magic Show. As of this week we’ve been on the ‘net a full year, and we’re going to take a few moments to see just how far the show has come. But that’s not all, of course. We will then detail a few happenings around the Magic community, including a little two mana Green creature that may end up being one of the best creatures ever printed.
In my last article, I very briefly discussed my match with Alix Hatfield at a 50-player event in Annandale, Virginia. He was the eventual tournament winner — he and three of his compatriots took Top 8 slots with A Cephalid Illusionist deck. For those of you who are unfamiliar with it, the combo revolves around the Nomads/Shaman En-Kor and Cephalid Illusionist…
Stuart Wright, one of the UK’s premier Deckbuilding minds, brings us an intriguing look into the art, and science, of high-level deckbuilding. He highlights some of the common pitfalls that deckbuilders make when polishing their elite seventy-five, and walks us through his thought processes in the creation of his 6-0 Worlds Extended deck, G/R/B Destructive Flow. If you’re interested in taking your deckbuilding skills to the next level, this is the article for you!
Pro Tour: Valencia looms large in the schedules, and Extended is the format that all the cool kids love to play. Today’s Deep Analysis begins what promises to be an exciting series — in preparation for the PT, Zac Hill and Richard Feldman promise to share their testing process to a degree never before seen. Richard begins this week with a look at the Aggro decks in the format… and, in particular, the impact on the metagame of a certain Little Lhurgoyf That Could.
I finally got out of the house on a Saturday and played actual, honest-to-goodness tournament Magic against real human beings who sat across from, beside, and diagonal to me. I wanted to commemorate this occasion with a tournament report worthy of our own Jamie Wakefield, King of the Fatties, Conqueror of Beautiful Women from Exotic Places and Exotic Women from Beautiful Places, Tournament Report Writer Extraordinaire. I will probably fail, but at least I’ll have tried.
If you’ve heard of The Art of War (the book, not the crappy Wesley Snipes movie), then I’m sure I’m not the first person to tell you that many of its lessons apply in all of life. As it went for turn-of-the-millennium Chinese war, so it goes in modern war, business, sports, romance… and, since this is a Magic strategy website, you can bet that it also applies to Magic.
I have written about hundreds of decks over the years. There are some cards I come back to again and again as a deckbuilder. I decided to pull out the best, most unusual cards that are not typically in such lists, and bring them together. This will exclude cards like Swords to Plowshares or Flametongue Kavu in favor of other cards. I also decided to focus solely on non-rares, and instead investigate other commons and uncommons.
No, you’ve not misread the title… today’s So Many Insane Plays is indeed Drafting With Stephen. However, this is no mere TPF or XXX draft. It’s Type Four, one of the most fun and powerful ways to play Magic ever created! Stephen takes us through each pick from a powerful Type Four stack, alongside the creators of the format itself, and brings us an illicit peek into the strategy behind this wild and popular game variant.
The results from the German and Japanese National Championships are in… and it appears that Black/Green Rack is the current deck to beat. It won the whole thing in Japan, placed in the final in Germany, and propelled others to multiple Top 8 berths. Benjamin Peebles-Mundy looks at the development of the deck from Regionals to Nationals success, and gives us a handy strategic guide for toppling other key players in today’s Standard metagame.
A lot of players, many forum trolls, and some judges have a lot of misconceptions about what Magic judges are, and what their job is. I want to talk about that a little — about what a judge should do, and should not do. I’ll also look at issues like burden of proof and judicial certainty – and explain why they don’t apply to judging Magic. I’ll also throw out a couple scenarios, to illustrate how these principles apply.
You’ve got Liliana Vess in the car with you, this hot, demonic babe whom you can fool around with a little bit right off the bat and have some fun. Sadly, you can’t score right away… you’ve got to give Liliana what she wants, whisper sweet nothings (target player discards a card), tell her you love her (target player discards a card), buy her dinner (target player discards a card), get her some jewelry (target player discards a card), tell her that you’ll love her ‘til the end of time (target player discards a card).
He’s been supplying excellent Feature Articles week in and week out for quite some time now… and today, he debuts his weekly column (in place of the study-bound Prof). Adrian Sullivan is one of the finest deckbuilders and theorists in the game, and this week he takes a look at the coming Standard rotation. With Lorwyn still a foreign country, what preparation can we make for the sad departure of Ravnica?
Nick takes a break from his excellent Draft Situation series in order to bring us the lowdown on the fun and powerful U/B Control archetype in Time Spiral Draft. He takes us through the more powerful commons on offer for this archetype, and brings us a couple of interesting decklists that can be used as templates for success. Lorwyn is coming, and TPF is losing its shine… so if you’re looking at drafting something as little different, this is the article for you!
Right now, the Vintage metagame is an odd anomaly when you look at it from a competitive point of view. On one hand, the best players are winning and making Top 8s at all the decent sized and major Vintage tournaments over the last few months. On the other hand, part of this is because a substantial chunk of the metagame is playing decks that don’t maximize their chances to win. I’m reasonably sure the only four decks that should be seeing play are GAT, Flash, Ichorid, and Stax.
