“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.
After a very disappointing 1-2 finish at the first Gen Con PTQ with his deck of choice, Richard completely changes decks with surprising results. What deck did he choose and did he manage to take home a blue envelope? The answers to these questions and more are inside.
Thomas Rosholm teamed with Anton Jonsson and Johan Sadegphour (both of Pro Tour Top 8 fame) at Pro Tour: Atlanta and wrote an aborted tournament report about the experience. The editors originally rejected it because obviously it’s a bit late for PT: Atlanta reports, but once they read it, it had to be published. It’s difficult to argue against genius. Don’t believe us that a report can be so well-written and entertaining that it deserves to be published months after the fact? Read it yourself and find out.
One of the incredible things about Magic is how much is packed into each card. Almost any other game that includes interactions between cards can be thought of as a derivative of Magic. The only games that beat it to the punch were the 52-card-deck games, and only trick games like Spades, Bridge or Hearts could really be said to have cards “interact;” the rest are just straight up comparisons of value, like in poker or War. Nowadays, Magic covers so much ground that even the trick games can be done with Magic cards, as occurred to me when looking at Avatar Games Enterprises’ Mysticards game.
After starting off the event 6-1, how did Cak end up out of the money? Details are inside.
Greetings to you all! As I prepare to take the Daily helm, I have just returned from the multi-day gaming binge known as Gen
Con. For those not lucky enough to attend, gigantic conventions of this nature are an experience all their own, and I recommend
trying it at least once. Today I’ll discuss some of the cool stuff I saw at the World’s Largest Gaming Convention.
Romeo gets by with a little help from his friends today, recruiting both good players and good writers to investigate the wares 9th Edition brings to the table, as well as saying a fond farewell to some old favorites from 8th Edition that recently departed.
