Hello everybody, and welcome to another Issues article. Today sees Evan rant long and hard about the quietness of August, the shoddiness of the Magic Online Version 3 Beta, the ridiculousness of the cult of Magic celebrity, and the awesomeness of Kenji Tsumura. Enjoy!
Sean is taking a brief vacation from writing Magical Hack. We’ve got a few interesting submissions lined up for the next few weeks: a few old faces you’ll be glad to see stop in and say hello, and a few new faces you’ll be meeting for the first time. Today is one such new face – Ryan Paprocki. He takes a look at both Standard and Block Constructed, and raises a few questions about their various metagames.
The Time Spiral Block Constructed metagame is constantly evolving. Early in the season, it seemed that White/Green Tarmogoyf would conquer all — it certainly relegated Mono-Red to the “Where Are They Now” pile. However, the control decks reacted to the beatdown threat and ascended to the top of then heap once more. So why did the beatdown die? Adrian examines the necessity of reach in an Aggro deck, and offers some solutions to those determined to swing for the win.
Today’s Deep Analysis sees Richard “U/B Control” Feldman continues in his rich vein of form as he tackles one of the more intriguing matchups in Time Spiral Block Constructed: U/B Teachings versus Adrian Sullivan’s Baron Harkonnen deck. With aggressive decks slowly fading into the metagame background, Control on Control is the one match you need to crack in order to capture the blue envelope. Let Richard show you how!
Today’s From Right Field sees Chris return to familiar ground: he updates his Staple Rare list to include both Coldsnap and Tenth Edition. As both sets have a huge number of possible Constructed powerhouses, and both sets will be around for many moths to come, should you be saving for those Sunscours and hoarding for those Haakons? Let Chris lead the way!
Kevin presents the deck he believes is the best choice for the upcoming Legacy championships. He’s been tuning a combo-control deck for over five months, and he’s finally ready to share the results…
I normally keep a box of bad rares… er…. “low value” rares by my computer. I already took them out of the box so I could use it for something else. Now I have this stack of rares ready to be sent off to be sold or given away. Since I am about to take this stack down and divide up the pieces, I thought I should get one last chance to pull out a few rares and give them a little sunlight. Today may be my very last bad rare article.
Stephen Menendian, the Voice of Vintage, continues his championing of GroAtog as the premier deck in Vintage. However, there’s always another option in such a broken format. The Vintage Flash deck, obviously faster and more resilient that its now-deceased Legacy counterpart, is another Tier 1 deck with game and pedigree. Stephen analyzes the matchup from both sides of the table, and deconstructs the strategies needed for success no matter what your deck.
With both U.S. and UK Nationals now in the books, the Standard metagame is beginning to take shape. One of the major players in this evolving meta is Gabe Walls and Gerry Thompson’s U/G/W Blink deck. Today’s Peebles Primer sees BPM take us through the history of the deck, and he also lays down some matchup specific sideboarding plans for other decks in the field.
This is the story of my personal performance at last weekend’s UK National Championship. In particular, it looks at the highs, and lows, of my Limited game, and sees me in part soaring with the eagles, and in part snouting with the truffle pigs. In short, it is the tale of two drafts…
Everyone does a “Lessons From…” piece on a tournament, especially when they don’t do all that well, and the tendency is for these to be quite sparse in the way of actual lessons. I aim to avoid that pitfall, but nothing I’m going to say will be succinct. I haven’t written the article yet, but I’m imagining that it’ll be quite long, quite drifting, and altogether broad in its scope.
I’ve been playing Magic for nearly 14 years now, and I’ve always dreamed of going to Nationals. Since I haven’t ever qualified, I could really justify the expense of flying to Florida or California just to hang out, since what are the odds of actually qualifying through the Grinders? This year though, Nationals was in Baltimore, a short three-hour drive from Richmond, Virginia, so I knew I had to go…
Last weekend, Craig “The Professor” Jones pulled himself out of his Magical doldrums to win the Great British National Championship. While this is clearly the wrong choice of Craigs to win this event (bitter much?), it’s nice to see Prof back on course and returning to the top where he belongs. Today’s From The Lab sees Craig take us through the tournament from his perspective, and gives us an insight into the future of Red Deck Wins.
John Friggin Rizzo, the innovator behind the popular Extended Friggorid deck, returns with an article packed with his usual wit and wisdom. Today he shares some intriguing Standard and Block Constructed technology, and suggests that all theory articles may be pointless. Do you agree? And has Rizzo broke the format once more? Read on to find out!
For now, I’ll be taking a break from the Time Spiral Block format to take a look at Vintage. The last time I mentioned Vintage was when I was writing about how broken Flash was, and why you should be playing it right now if you weren’t already. Waterbury has come and gone, and more or less bolstered my suspicions that Flash is the deck to beat (along with GAT).
