In this whopper of a tournament report, Gadiel thoroughly recaps his Grand Prix: Salt Lake City T8 journey, answers some key strategy questions and speaks on a series of hotbutton issues that are sure to have people talking!
Rich Hoaen steps forward with a timely dissection of the new 9th Edition Limited format that just went live on Magic Online and is the addiction of choice for draft junkies awaiting the release of Ravnica.
At long last, Wizards is supporting multiplayer games with official multiplayer rules and sanctioned multiplayer tournaments. The first Two-Headed Giant tourneys are already in the books, and more will follow. So let’s look at the format, and decks to break it.
It’s good stuff.
More Draft and Standard action from StarCityGames.com’s baldest writer. In today’s installment Dave battles a poker hero, drafts an abysmal deck, and wraps up the weekend with a few words of sage advice.
Is it Friday already? It looks like my time with you is almost up, and so much I didn’t get to talk about! I could probably go one for another entire week or two about everything that Gencon had to offer, but I suppose all good things must come to an end eventually. Before I wrap up, though, let me drop a couple more game recommendations on you, especially for the multiplayer/casual aficionados.
Want sleeves? We’ve got a great deal on right now for KMC brand deck protectors!
Also in Ben’s Corner: More of Ravnica revealed, and a list of some pretty major cards being added to inventory – including sets of Arabian Nights, Portal 3 Kingdoms, and a ton of higher demand foils!
Check out Ben’s Corner each week for the latest news from the card side of StarCityGames.com.
“Look over the past ten years of Pro Tours, and you will see mono green in the final 8 significantly less than any other mono color. Mono Green will be a very distant fifth.”
– Jamie Wakefield
“Let’s look at the history of Green decks on the Pro Tour in order to show the viability, and even the dominance, of straight Green over the past five years.”
– Mike Flores, who also adds a quick section on which decks win and lose from the September bannings.
B/G/u Gifts Ungiven is the best deck in Kamigawa Block. What? You already knew this? I’m not going to write about why the Gifts deck is the best deck by far in this block format, as the results of every Grand Prix held in this format will tell you the same. What a lot of people don’t know is how to play the deck correctly. If you look at the PTQ results, you’ll see that there are a lot less Gifts control decks in the Top 8s than there are at Grand Prix, and we all know that the best players in the game don’t usually play PTQs. Why should you care about how to play the best block deck around? Because there’s a very strong chance that a version of this deck will also be a Standard powerhouse when Ravnica arrives.
The creator of the Rats deck discusses the new Standard format, including a brief mention of a 4-slot Canadian PTQ for Worlds where Rat decks utterly smashed the field.
When last we heard from him, Dave Meddish had just qualified for U.S. Nationals, which unfortunately coincided with his honeymoon, so there was no way he was going to attend. Right? Wrong. Today’s story tells the tale of how Dave ended up at Nationals, what he played there, and how he fared on Day 1.
One of the games I was most excited to see at Gencon – one of the few I actually knew I’d be looking for in advance – was none other than Your Move Games’ Battleground Fantasy Warfare, a game that co-creator Chad Ellis had talked about during his Daily stint a few weeks prior. Chad’s series had dealt mostly with the story behind the game’s creation, and I was anxious to see the end product. What I ultimately found was an abrupt lesson in the differences between Magic and minis, which left me thinking about how some of those differences could be bridged, and what they meant to me as a gamer.
The two biggest threats to Gifts Ungiven decks in Vintage are Control Slaver and Stax. Today Steve breaks down both of those matchups as well as dissecting some important changes in Gifts decklists that will let players better compete in a metagame that is prepared for them.
Encouragement about the format, Oscar Tan the Revolutionary, the differences between Vintage and Legacy, a Legacy metagame overview, and even a spec decklist to try and push the envelope of creativity. The latest njx piece has a little something for everybody.
As Magic has grown in popularity and dominance in the CCG field, other card games have started comparing themselves to it, which is only to be expected – it’s the big dog, the most mainstream of the genre, and other games should be using it as the measuring stick. Even so, it was still just the king of a kingdom labeled by the public as Dorkland. More recently, though, the surge in poker popularity (especially among our demographic) has given Magic its own publicly-embraced half-brother to latch onto when a player tries to “justify” what he thinks of as a shameful hobby. It’s not like chess anymore; it’s like poker! Like it or not, we’re leaning on poker now; I just never thought poker would lean back.
It took him a while, but Flores finally figured out the best deck in Kamigawa Block Constructed and it’s not just another Gifts Ungiven rehash. What deck is it and how did he win a PTQ with it this weekend? Check inside to find out.
