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Crushing Vintage Without Power Nine: The Manaless Ichorid Primer

We all know the “complaints” folk have about Vintage… gripes such as “it’s a degenerate format,” or “there is a dubious level of skill required to succeed.” Perhaps the strongest moan involves the cost of the cards themselves. So what would you say to a competitive, powerful Vintage deck that uses exactly zero copies of the Power 9 cards… a deck that Stephen Menendian believes will warp the format for many months to come? Interested? Then read on…

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Breaking Down Extended – Channelling Zvi

It’s the New Year, and the Extended PTQ season is upon us! By now, the tournament-savvy amongst us should be settling into our weapon of choice… or at least be getting prepared to run with Boros Deck Wins. Today, Josh brings us an interesting way to break down the strengths and weaknesses of our pet Extended decks, a system that draws upon the teachings of the Mighty Zvi Mowshowitz. Looking for an edge over the PTQ competition? Then this is the article for you!

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Drafting With Rich – Time Spiral #18

Rich continues his excellent series of Time Spiral Draft walkthroughs, presenting each pick as it happened and highlighting each card chosen. He shares his final decklist, and gives us a brief overview of his results and processes. As usual, for more detailed draft deconstruction, come visit us in the forums!

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From Right Field: One Fish, Two Fish, Dead Fish, Blue Fish

Read Chris Romeo... every Tuesday at StarCityGames.com!
A few months ago, I opined that Lord of Atlantis should have been re-Oracled the same way that Elvish Champion, Goblin King, and Lord of the Undead had been. In other words, they gained the creature type of the creatures over whom they ruled. Lord of Atlantis was reprinted in Time Spiral’s Timeshifted subset and got all of the trapping of being a true Lord. Yeah! That was the good news. The bad news is that he gets a whopping three other Merfolk to play with in Standard…

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SCG Daily – Starting Out on Magic Online, Part 1

This week’s series is pretty much explained by the title: I recently gained access to Magic Online for the first time, and I kept track of what I did while I was just getting started, with the hope that it might be of some use to the folks out there…

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Alternate Paradigms Part 1: Down, Up Top-Down – Exploring New Decks in Extended

Today’s Flores Friday dives deep into the murky waters of the Extended metagame. Mike shares his theories of deck design and creation – perfect timing for those hoping to blow the format wide open at their next PTQ. The decks he posts here today produce interesting results when battling the Tier 1 builds of the format… but the true value of this excellent piece lies in the description of the process.

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Time Spiral Draft – Green/Red

Bastien Perez made the Top 8 of Pro Tour: Kobe with an innovative Green/Red “swarm” strategy based around suspend, storm, and Strength in Numbers. Since that fateful Sunday, little has been written about this powerful archetype – the major players have instead been scrabbling like truffle-pigs for the Blue cards. Nick attempts to redress the balance with this article, penning a comprehensive primer for those looking to first-pick an Empty the Warrens…

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Drafting With Rich – Time Spiral #17

Rich continues his excellent series of Time Spiral Draft walkthroughs, presenting each pick as it happened and highlighting each card chosen. He shares his final decklist, and gives us a brief overview of his results and processes. As usual, for more detailed draft deconstruction, come visit us in the forums!

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Magical Hack: Snakes on a Desert In… “Trial By Fire”

Read Sean McKeown... every Friday at StarCityGames.com!

Last week, I had said my goal for this week was to get into a Premier Event, and try my hand at playing my theorized City Championships season deck “Snakes on a Desert” in a Standard tournament of at least some worth or impact. Lacking in other recourses during the holiday season, it seemed that Magic Online with its ever-in-motion Standard tournament cycle was to be the plan…

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The Magic Show #24 — Thanks for the Metagame 2006, Part 2 of 3

Hello everybody and welcome to The Magic Show. I’m your host, Evan Erwin.

Today we’re going to cover the latter half of 2006, along with the first wave of “The Magic Show Best of StarCityGames.com 2006 Awards.” And I promise none of my silly articles will be involved.

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Fading Into Standard

The winner of the StarCityGames.com 1K Open tournament is one that I did not expect… and to be honest, I’d dismissed it. Fader seemed to me like it was a one-hit wonder (much like Solar Pox was, in my mind at least), winning a few State championships and falling off the face of Standard.

I was wrong.

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Worlds 2006 – How It Happened, Part 2 *T8*

Tiago’s run in Worlds was fraught with peril – not from the competition he faced, although that was stiff indeed. An altercation with an insane hotel manager left Portugal’s finest without a bed the night before his Top 8 performance… things were so grim he planned on ditching the tournament at the final hurdle. For that story, and for top-notch match reporting and draft analysis, look no further than this inspired offering from one of the best players in the game!

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2006 Vintage Year in Review, Part 2

Last time out, the inestimable Mr Menendian dealt with the ups and downs of the Vintage year from January to June. Today’s article deals with the second half of the year. Stephen breaks down the results from the major tournaments in the latter half of 2006, and shares some of the stronger decklists that appeared along the way. The future for Vintage in 2007 looks very rosy indeed…

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Drafting With Rich – Time Spiral #16

Rich continues his excellent series of Time Spiral Draft walkthroughs, presenting each pick as it happened and highlighting each card chosen. He shares his final decklist, and gives us a brief overview of his results and processes. As usual, for more detailed draft deconstruction, come visit us in the forums!

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The Kitchen Table #161: Bad Rares Revisited

Read Abe Sargent... every Thursday at StarCityGames.com! I have a stack of bad… er… low value rares sitting here, and what I’ll do is grab one, then build a deck around it. I keep doing this until I have a normal sized article — typically four to six decks.

I grabbed my stack of rares from the bookshelf and I am ready to randomly select a bad rare. Without further ado, here we go…

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