Let’s talk turkey. Set reviews are one of those evil necessities we writers have to do. We do it not because we want to, but because we have no life and have a fascination with mechanically scrutinizing to-be-printed 5′ x 3′ pieces of cardboard. Or simply because you readers love them. Admit it, you know you do.
This is it, folks. The final installment for this monster review of what could be Magic’s best set yet. Today the legendary michaelj covers the Lands, Cycles (including the very powerful Hunted creatures), and the mechanics of Ravnica, detailing everything you need to know about Ravnica for Constructed. If you missed out on the earlier installments we’ve linked them all below for easy accessability.
One thing we gamers often do is berate each other’s intelligence – it makes us feel good to be smart compared to our surroundings and we calmly expect others to try to do the same to us. If you have spent a lot of time in geek only-surroundings, you need to be aware that girls will often be offended if you roll your eyes or talk down at them when they don’t understand something. Gamer lingo is of course strictly forbidden in these conversations, as it is intended exclusively for gamer to gamer communication. It may very well come from the bottom of your heart, but don’t go telling a girl she’s “getting big.”
The title probably did not make it quite clear but this article is in fact a tournament report of the 9th Edition prerelease held in Russia recently. For those of you who were unaware, Wizards of the Coast recently printed Magic cards in Russian for the first time. To commemorate the event, Wizards of the Coast Europe, led by level 5 judge Gis Hoogjendsiisklmnopk, invited 16 of the best players in the world to compete in a special event to be held in Moscow versus 16 of the best Eastern Europe has to offer. The actual Magic events have already been covered on official sites, but the parts with belly dancers, drunken Masashi Oisos, and the Bluffmaster deserve some time as well. The combination of people, scenery and experiences really made this one of the best trips I’ve ever been on.
The obvious starting point is to take White Weenie and throw a few other cards in it, benefitting from the good mana making two-drop Elephants possible. Rather than question immediately why we’re looking at the Selesnya Guild instead of the Boros Legion, we’ll presume that good beats may yet prove to be worthwhile enough to make this a viable consideration. Fat beats burn sometimes after all, and so the G/W deck might beat the W/R deck, for all we know.
There are two sorts of multicolored cards in Ravnica. Yesterday we looked at the “traditional” two-color cards, where R&D forces us to choose both Red and White, both Black and Green. Today’s Guild mana is the opposite: though the cards are multicolored, both Green and White for a Selesnya card, let’s say, you can pick either color of mana to pay the cost. Guild mana is a completely new thing to Magic, but the question is: Are any of the new cards any good?
This series is going to be a slight departure from my usual card valuations articles (though I will still do some of those in the coming weeks) in that I am going to give you guys an inside look at the drafts I do, mistakes I make, and especially the important insights and conclusions I come to about the new Limited environment. What I’m going for here is a deeper approach to helping my readers understand the format and how I go about evaluating cards and archetypes through actual draft experience.
One of my favorite decks of yore was the Wildfire deck; at a time when Urza Block made bunches of powerful cards, it was one of the dominant decks. From Covetous Dragon to Thran Dynamo, that deck was a lot of fun to play, and even more fun to master. But now that both Wildfire and Hunted Dragon will be Standard-legal in a few weeks, can we recreate that land-destroyin’ charm with a weaker card pool?
StarCityGames.com is proud to have one of the hottest deckbuilders around and best Magic writers in history give you the lowdown on every card in Ravnica. There’s Gold in them thar hills! A bounty of beautiful Gold cards this pretty hasn’t been seen since the days of IPA, but which ones will make the cut in Constructed decks? Mike Flores knows…
The inspiration for this article came long before Ravnica’s spoiling, back when happy visions of Erayo, Soratami Ascendant and Dark Confidant were dancing like sugar plums in my head. O, to be young again! Is there a way to meld the chocolatey taste of Erayo with the sweet peanut butter of the Dimir Guild?
Over the next couple of weeks, I’m going to be discussing deck skeletons that I’m assigning you to work on for States. Pick one that looks like something you can enjoy running with, and massage it. While I’ve done some preliminary testing on these, none are by any means “done.” The idea behind each is solid, but there are problems that I want us – and by “us” I mean “you” – to solve.
In today’s installment of Geeks and Girls, you are going to learn how to select a suitable object of affection. Before we get there, though, let’s look at how girls work. Any girl will have a set of qualities that might look something like this…
Nearly 5000 words of ooey-gooey Limited goodness. This one contains thoughts and observations on every guild and reports from Martin’s experience playing the new set.
StarCityGames.com is proud to have one of the hottest deckbuilders around and best Magic writers in history give you the lowdown on every card in Ravnica. Today michaelj finishes the normal colored part of the review with the one he says is the clear winner in Ravnica: Green. We all know Birds of Paradise are great, but what other Green goodies does Ravnica have in store?
Welcome to Guild Week in the 2005 Championship Deck Challenge! This week each of our contributors has designed at least one deck built partially around one of the new Ravnica guilds in order to figure out if the new gold cards can be broken or if they are only suitable for Limited play. Today Craig Stevenson starts things off with the versatile-yet-slightly-confused Selesnya Guild. Can Watchwolf and his burly pals master the art of beatdown? Will Convoke see play for States? The answer to these questions and more are only a click away.
