In case you were previously unaware of it, there are rules to building successful Red decks. With a new Standard season nearly upon us, the esteemed Mr. Paskins has taken it upon himself to enlighten the ignorant and bring joy to fiery mages and goblin cohorts everywhere.
Jeff Cunningham is a simple man. When not slinging spells with the best players in the world and tutoring young Canadians in the Ways of the Mage, Jeff herds yaks and water buffalo on his ranch in the Great White North. In spite of these humble roots, Cunningham is one of the finest Magic writers alive and today he makes his debut on StarCityGames.com, delivering tales and spinning yarns designed to bring a smile to your face and a tear to your eye.
On Saturday DreamWizards was having a Grand Prix Trial for the Legacy-format GP: Philadelphia. I didn’t really have a deck and I didn’t have any available cards to borrow; fortunately, there was a Standard side event to be held at the same time. I figured lots of local players would be in the same boat as I and that the Standard event would be almost as big as the GPT. I was wrong, but more on that later. First, let’s get to the decklist, which is a completely original creation on my own part…
Uh oh, someone let Jamie get ahold of a spoiler and he has a *ahem* few opinions about the new cards.
For Thursday’s deck, I decided to look at my recent article on Fifty Multiplayer Combos from Saviors for inspiration. I came across three combos close together using Freed from the Real. It seemed like I already had the backbone for a Red/Blue deck using Freed from the Real to abuse a few creatures. However, rounding out those deck ideas was a bit more difficult. Here’s what I ended up with:
I’m not going to try to convince you to stop playing with a list of cards that seem to come up regularly in multiplayer games that I’ve played and end up beating me. While Chris Hyde claimed that “decent human beings™ don’t play with these cards,” we all know that most of the people we play Magic with – including ourselves – are not decent human beings™, at least according to Chris’s definition! These people are not going to become decent human beings™ just because someone tells us that the cards we use wreck their fun. So what can we actually do to stop their nefarious schemes?
Just as Ravnica Beta e-mails are showing up in Magic Online inboxes, Nick gets nostalgic takes the world of Kamigawa for one last spin around the block before she retires to second-tier status.
Today tricky Richard Feldman teaches your children to make huge amounts of profit by starting a numbers game at their local high school. Er, wait. Check that. This article is actually all about teaching you to build better Constructed decks. When do you want 2 copies of a card? When do you want 4? At what point should you be slapping one-ofs in your Friday Night Magic deck? Richard explores these questions and comes up with some rather insightful answers.
A brief history of comparable Wizards asymmetrical card game releases and how Magic is once again breaking the established conventions. (Yes, he’s talking about Ravnica here.)
Hello again! This is the Wednesday installment of our Week o’ Decks. Each day sees me bringing a separate deck for your enjoyment. I was wondering about various deck ideas, when I decided top find a card from a nice, old set and build a deck around it.
The results of the Legacy Championships and the Grand Prix trials demonstrate that the Legacy environment is dominated by two distinct archetypes – aggro and control. Landstill decks were very successful prior to September 1st 2004, and they continue to be so even with Mana Drain out of the format. The accessibility and simplicity of Goblins make it the more popular deck at the moment, although the two decks are about even when matched up with each other. These two archetypes are going to continue to develop in unknown ways in the coming months. Although Legacy Stax has been talked about for months now, its absence in the metagame has never been more noticeable. A new archetype is needed that will diversify the format’s upper tier.
The tale of one small, Spanish speaking kid (and his friends) attending the last Kamigawa Block Constructed Grand Prix ever.
Keith returns from a sojourn around the nation to cover topics ranging from Chrome Mox vs. Kodama’s Reach in Tooth and Nail and why White Weenie is terrible, before delivering an updated anti-Aggro build of Mono-Blue Control to play at your local FNM.
Welcome back to our daily Deck-a-thon. Yesterday we looked at using an old Ice Age rare to flesh out a modern day concept. Today we look at a completely different type of deck.
I have built decks for a number of multiplayer formats online. I usually play Two-Headed Giant, since the games are not overly long and because I don’t have any of the board sweepers or other cards to do well at bigger free for all games. Besides, Two-Head is fun. But how can you build a competitive deck when you don’t have a big online collection?
