How’d Noah’s Los Angeles go? Well, he scrubbed out of the Pro Tour, nearly got DQ’d, did some Pro Tour Feature Match coverage, watched Zvi Mowshowitz pick up babes, ate at Fogo De Chao, was assaulted by zombies in downtown LA, and got to ride rollercoasters. If you are a fan of the lost art of tournament reports, you cannot miss this one.
From a purely strategic point of view, there are a good many reasons to play Desire at your next Extended tournament. The first (and probably best) reason is because the deck is just hard to play against unless your opponent has dedicated a large amount of time to it — which, given that you’re at a PTQ, is doubtful. So let me walk you through the intricacies of the deck that got me all the way to the Top 4 at Los Angeles.
I want to be perfectly clear on one point. I am most certainly not saying that the art on these cards is awful in and of itself. Magic has come a long, long way from the days of Reverse Polarity (“Worst. Magic art. Ever.”) and Reverse Damage. Nearly every card from Tempest on and especially from Invasion on has been a true joy to look at (Cepahlids aside). However, some of the art, well, it didn’t quite work on the card.
Eternal fan favorite Geordie’s back — again! — this time packing a new deck that he thinks can clean house against Flores Blue and Combo. If you’re sick to death of Hinder and Keiga, he’s got a deck packing a card that you’ll never expect. No, really, you won’t expect it.
In the forums, someone told me that I was obsessed with Cabal Therapy in my article on Extended… But of the most-played cards at the Pro Tour, Therapy finished behind only Forest, Island, Mountain, Chrome Mox, and Bloodstained Mire. Likewise, there are a few key cards that define the Legacy format — and instead of trying to predict the decklists that will appear, I’m going to step through the most powerful cards to see how they shape the environment.
Here it is, folks: the Legacy statistics breakdown from July to October. The results are in, the votes are tallied, and there’s one deck that is the big winner by a considerable margin. From the tournament data, it’s a Tier unto itself. What is it? To find out, you’re gonna have to click the link.
Yesterday, I took a very biased look at some of the hottest of the recent Magic hotties. Today, I’m running down a list of my favorite art. I’m only going back as far as the current Extended-Legal sets go. Why? Because this is my column. Nyah.
My testing took place in a relative vacuum — with help from friends back home, but little to no access to pro testing information, I pieced together a fairly accurate picture of the metagame and I built my deck accordingly. I want to make sure that everyone who wants it — the PTQ win, the PT, the gravy train — really understands that it is possible.
A follow up on Ultra-rares and ultra-uncommons, and the suprising solid results of Chris’s Precon experimenting.
From Right Field regular Chris Romeo, on the finest artistic renderings in all of Magicdom. Warning: contains hotties
Ruud finds wealth and fame in Los Angeles, visits the Price is Right, and shares his thoughts on the best decks in Extended.
Adam finishes up a fantastic week of SCG Daily, discussing the folklore behind some of your favorite Magic creatures with a discussion of the Wild Hunt, as well as Brownies. Mmmm, brownies.
Flores identifies a pernicious type of error most likely to affect strong players, draws up some illustrative anecdotes from his Champs and Pro Tour LA matches, and sprinkles the whole thing with a generous heap of cryptic initials.
Adrian Sullivan returns, with a fantastic new deck for Standard that brought him home the trophy in Wisconsin, as well as scoring Top 4 berths for the other two players piloting it. Get the inside scoop on how to build and play the deck, as well as a bit of legal theory on the side.
