When I sling spells, I feel tethered to the flow. The cards slide from my library to my hand and into play. And, if truth be known, usually to my graveyard soon after. It pulls me in, this silly game of monsters and mana and magic and myth.
Why, then, do I have such trouble on Magic Online?
This week, the voting for the 2006 Magic Invitational turns to the denizens of North America. Who do you choose?
February 25th was the Seattle qualifier for Prague. That Saturday was a perfect day for a Pro Tour Qualifier, because on the 24th, I had a birthday. See? Sure, Friday is a fine day for a party, but then you have that icky hangover at the big tournament the next day. However, delaying the festivities by 24 hours let’s us play the PTQ clear of mind and body, then get everyone in the tournament down to the bar for some drinky drink fun.
Since I started writing for this here site here, about my attempts to make it to the big show, I have to face a lot of self-doubt and soul-searching. I started writing about how I was doing in Pro Tour Qualifiers, and I went into these PTQs with an expectation of making Top 8 almost every time, and then eventually winning one. This current season? Let me tell you how I’m doing…
You gain nothing from beating Johnny New Guy and his tribal Nephilim Deck. You learn nothing. You learn that oh wow, eight Wraths, Knell, Kokusho, and Mortifies are some good against aggro decks. My god, what kind of idiot are you? You needed to test the Nephilim Tribal Matchup?
No, you didn’t.
Hello again, friends old and new. Our daily dosage of deck has almost passed, but before it is gone completely, we have one last entry. This week, we’ve looked at a bad rare deck, an online friendly Culling Sun deck, an old school fish deck, and even a lost precon. What’s missing from this list?
My usual gig is to do a lot of math and come up a few weeks later with an enormous statistical work about the Pro Tour, but it seems my schtick has been outsourced to some very clever computer programmers who can make a metal box filled with trained monkeys do all the Excel manipulations for me instead. Well, not to be completely outdone by this article, I’ve run a few numbers myself to attempt to figure out what the most successful deck was arbitrarily, rather than by sheer win percentage.
Today’s Flores Friday article deals with the noble art of Templating. What, specifically, is the difference between a great deck designer improving on an existing deck, and a buffoon taking a perfectly good deck and making it worse? Through detailed examination of superior builds, Mike shows us how to strengthen our decks in tiny increments. This is a fantastic read for anyone who is serious about improving their deckbuilding prowess.
Can Nick transform his Magic Online success into a PTQ victory? The answer to that question… plus tips, tricks, and tech from one of the most feared Limited players in the game… is just one click away!
Abe takes us through a minefield of precon goodness, highlighting the best – and worst – these ready-made decks have to offer. A fine foray into oft-unexplored territory.
As a companion piece to today’s “Kitchen Table” article, Abe does some digging… and unearths the fabled Missing Guidpact Precon!
Eli, our Man in Japan, brings us a Sealed cardpool with some of the tastiest cards in the game. It’s not all roses, however… the build proves tricky. Just how can we harness the raw power of these bombs? Plus, a new view on the validity of the Invitational.
Grudgingly, I have to admit that there won’t be a great deal about Magic Online this week. You’d think that there would be literally nothing about it, seeing as I have spent the last week here in Hawaii, but keeping me away from the Internet is, frankly, a hopeless cause.
How the hell do you keep yourself busy during a fallow period of time? I figured I had a month to take up a challenge. A decent, rough, and generally pain-in-the-rear kinda challenge. A challenge befitting the kind of man who molests brick walls with his forehead.
Craig is back, with one of his trickiest cardpools yet! With spells and creatures weak in all colors, the correct build technique is a hard one to master… do you agree with Craig’s choices? He piloted this very pool at a Pro Tour Qualifier… how would you fare with the same cards?
