Paul concludes his enlightening report on his strong finish at Grand Prix: New Jersey. He shares the details of his two Day 2 drafts, with pick choices and deck archetypes dissected and discussed. Looking for the edge in your next draft pod? Maybe Paul has the answer…
With Mr Hoaen off galavanting around the world, top-eighting Grand Prix tournaments left and right, the brave Mr Aten steps into the “Drafting With X” breach until the grumpy Canadian’s return. Tim will be presenting a draft a day, sharing picks one through forty-five, and adding his own brand of lyrical commentary at the end of each article. For a more in-depth critique of his process, be sure to visit the forums!
Blisterguy reaches his fortieth column concerning all things Magic Online! Today he sets the scene for the coming World Championship in Paris, mining the Premier Event data in order to extract some nuggets of metagame-shaping goodness. Will his predictions come true? Read on to find out!
For Evan’s seventeeth foray into the realm of Video Magic, he looks at the Vintage format. This is a fine article for those dipping their toes into such broken waters for the first time, and it’ll also serve as an excellent primer for those who are higher up on the Vintage totem-pole…
Hello and welcome back to the daily series that explores all things deck. Yesterday I selected a random card from the history of Magic and discovered, to my surprise, that it was Living Airship. That’s an amazingly bland card, and it triggered the same section of my heart that has a fondness for Scarwood Bandits.
Eli Came. Eli Saw. Eli Conquered. His Budget White Weenie took home all the marbles against Bennie’s patented NiceDraft Dredge deck. Indeed, the battering was so severe that Bennie still walks with a limp. Want the gory details? Read on!
Poor Bennie. Not only did I make him wait and wait for his turn on Battle Royale; not only did he turn up with his pet strategy to find himself facing the Anti-Bennie Deck; not only did he lose rather quickly, going down in three games straight… but I’m also making him write all about it! Sorry Bennie! Better luck next time.
Craig “The Professor” Jones has been beavering away at Constructed testing this past month… and as a member of his testing team for Worlds, I can safely say that we’re doing our best to break the formats. The metaphorical night is young, and today Prof presents us with one of the “nearly-decks” that has occupied our testing time. Fun, powerful food for thought… and just maybe, with a little tweaking, it can go all the way…
There are many ways to gain an advantage in any given format. The power of the cards in Limited, for example, coupled with the knowledge of how to exploit card synergies. Deck advantage in any given matchup is an example that is paramount in Constructed formats, especially traditional Standard. Josh is here to theorize on the trump card in the current “bloated” Extended environment – the use and abuse of the sideboard.
With Mr Hoaen off galavanting around the world, top-eighting Grand Prix tournaments left and right, the brave Mr Aten steps into the “Drafting With X” breach until the grumpy Canadian’s return. Tim will be presenting a draft a day, sharing picks one through forty-five, and adding his own brand of lyrical commentary at the end of each article. For a more in-depth critique of his process, be sure to visit the forums!
Chris takes his first monthly Magic budget and spends it on some tasty Black cards. With a passing resmeblence to Craig Jones’s Pact Huk deck above, has Chris’s deck got the makings of a true contender? Read on to find out!
This week on A Deck a Day, our hero decides that old-fashioned sensibilities will dictate his work. Using old scrying methods such as polyhedral dice, our hero will mine the past for the future. In the old days, our hero wrote such treatises on random factors that were scrying through the dice of old. Today our hero continues that tradition, choosing to focus on the random determination of every expansion set that was classically legal in Classic, before the great Portal opened and the skies darkened with the taint of foul sorceries and evil creatures.
For my second installment of Prismatic Lens, we’re going to take a look at Blue, and a deck that I cooked up for the Prismatic format using entirely Blue cards. Predictably, this is a fairly strong deck, even barring the fact that my current budget does not allow for silliness like Absorb and Undermine.
I am typing this at sixty-five miles as I zoom through the winding mountains of Pennsylvania, headed back home to Ohio after a weekend spent with my family. (No worries, my wife’s driving.) But I’m thinking of a card pool that I could not break, and wondering what lessons I can derive from it…
Early in the season, it seemed the pros all knew one thing… that Blue and Red were the colors to be! Of course, differing results cast doubt over that assertion, but Nick is back to lay down the law! Today’s article is a comprehensive guide to the archetype, with common pick orders, uncommons and rares of note, and a strong sample decklist. U/R is Nick’s weapon of choice… can it work for you?
