Nick Eisel has now played – and won – a fair number of TTP Drafts (Time Spiral / Time Spiral / Planar Chaos). Of course, he’s picked up a few tricks along the way. Today’s Limited Lessons sees Mr Eisel share his thoughts on the ever-popular Green/Red archetype, plus some new ideas on the up-and-coming Green/Blue color pairing. Is this traditionally tempo-reliant pairing really the new aggro weapon of choice?
Stephen Menendian, the Voice of Vintage, takes a brief break from Magic’s broken format in order to dabble in a little Legacy action. So, does he pick up the Goblin deck and smash face? Of course not. Stephen’s a Vintage player – he rolls with the combo. This article examines the strength of the Tendrils of Agony based combo deck Iggy Pop. For more Legacy content, tune in later this week…
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!
The Ferrett attended the prerelease, and opened a card pool that was freakishly abnormal. In fact, it was so utterly lopsided that he
could have gone mono-colored in Sealed. But was he insane enough to take this statistical aberration and go all the way with it… Or did he chicken out? All that, plus a request for help from you, the faithful StarCityGames.com readers!
Last week I Dredged through Planar Chaos; this week, I unleash the dog decks of Dredge that have been pinging around my brain these last few weeks. A quick caveat – these decks are untested and presented here merely as starting points, a way to get the deckbuilding juices flowing. In the coming weeks I will be attempting to get enough Planar Chaos stuff to start testing these ideas, and with any luck make it out to an FNM or two for trial by fire.
This week in Magic Puzzles, we examine the Timeshifted cards of Planar Chaos. Are they better than the originals, or just bad imitations? Find out below…
Having tired of the Standard metagame after Worlds, and having lost faith in the DragonTron deck that took him to a commendable 12th place finish, Paul began casting around for something new to play. After tinkering with a Mono-Blue Morph deck dubbed “The Answer,” he soon moved on to fresh pastures. Today, he shares his discovery of a patriotic deck that harnesses the powerful Martyr of Sands…
The Extended metagame rumbles on, and many of us are looking for that elusive edge for our next PTQ tournament. As usual, Mike Flores may have the answers we seek. Today’s Flores Friday examines a fascinating tactic available to us, a tactic that could inform our deck-choices come Tournament Day. Is an exploration of linear card design the key to building a format-warping deck? Mike constantly redefines the metagame… maybe this view of Magic deck-building and design could see us do the same.
Craig “The Professor” Jones takes time out from his twisted experiments to bring us the low-down on Planar Chaos Limited. Not content with a mere one or two Prerelease tournaments, Prof decided to go balls to the wall and submit to a straight 24 hours of Magic! There are thrills! There are spills! There’s also a dose of Planar Chaos card advice, and a bushel or two of quality fun – strategy and humor in perfect harmony.
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!
With the change to a weekly column with a few floating columns, it seems the five-part set review on StarCityGames.com has finally gone the way of “My Fires.” Instead of one series in five parts, naming each and every single card, I’m going to supply one article breaking down the potential I see across a variety of formats, some of which I may arguably be unqualified to speak upon. That said, let’s get this done in reverse-order fashion, starting with the format in which I have the least experience (Vintage) and crawling back up to Standard, where things make sense to me again.
Hello everybody, this week is our Special Edition Prerelease show where I go unscripted and roam amongst the mouth-breathers to bring you what happened at my Planar Chaos prerelease.
In today’s edition of The Real Deal, Ben examines the choices R&D made in choosing the Planeshifted cards in Planar Chaos. Within their own internal logic did these choices make sense? Ben weighs in with his opinion.
Also: Having trouble figuring out which new products StarCityGames.com is carrying? Ben wants to know how to let you know when new products become available on site!
In an additional article for the weekend, JMS takes us through the development of his own pet Mono-Black creation, Black Knights. Utilizing the powerful Haakon, Stromgald Scourge, and a plethora of Black beatdown monsters, does the deck have what it takes to impact the coming Planar Chaos metagame? And what does it gain from the new set, aside from a four-mana board-sweeping sorcery? JMS reveals all…
After going 25-0 with a budget build of the Cloudpost/Vesuva deck, Ben began working on the deck for competitive play. After a month of testing and hundreds of playtest matches, he’s come up with a deck that he feels is a winner. Unfortunately, he has no time to attend PTQs. Will you be the one to pilot his deck to a Pro Tour slot?
