I qualified for U.S. Nationals this year from the Pro Players Club. I got my first taste of the Pro Tour a long time ago when Tim Bulger (Tbulge), Nate Siftar, and myself won a team PTQ for Pro Tour: Boston, but I’d never been to Nationals before. Let me just say that this year was an interesting experience that started out quite well.
It’s only a month now until Kamigawa Block draft fades away leaving Ravnica in its place, but the format will still be present on Magic Online for considerably longer than that. I figured today would be a perfect time to give you my final thoughts on playing or drawing in the format, and adjust some minor pick orders in the earlier sets to correspond with what Saviors has done to the format.
First turn, I played a Goblin Lackey. Second turn, Lackey came across to dump Kiki-Jiki on the table, and EOT of Brandon’s turn, I copied it. I untapped and sent in the Lackey and his clone, using one free Lackey trigger to dump a Goblin Matron on the table. The Matron digs up Mogg Fanatic from my deck and I play it for free using the clone’s trigger. I then played Intruder Alarm, cloned the Fanatic a million times, and sacrificed all of them aimed at Brandon’s dome. Ah, the sweet taste of surprise.
So I recently went looking for one last Kamigawa Block deck to cheapen up. Obviously, Gifts Ungiven wasn’t going to be it. Way too many rares. I’d already looked at cheap Black Hand. I’d built and played a G/R Aggro deck (“And the Horse You Rode in On”), a mono-Red Burn-centric deck, and several cheap White decks. I even worked on Hondens. I was out of ideas. I turned to the wonderful StartCityGames.com KBC PTQ deck database for decks that might use The Romeo Treatment.
Yes, it is I, the good doctor, back once again to grace the fair, forthright and dolphin-friendly pages of StarCityGames.com.
Today StarCityGames.com is proud to bring you a first in Magic: the Gathering history – a Japanese writer brought to an English-language website. Masashi Oiso is widely recognized as one of the best players in the game right now and today he provides you a complete sideboard and matchup guide to Gifts Ungiven, a deck he has piloted to back-to-back Grand Prix Top 8s.
The best writers. The best players. The best Magic. Only on StarCityGames.com.
By now you have probably read the previous articles I’ve done on Kuroda-style Red and formed your own opinion – good or bad – on the deck that can be swayed neither by fact nor logic, certainly not the numbers. Today I’ll give you an updated decklist, a matchup guide, and explain how we tuned the second best deck in the format to beat pretty much everything else. Well, except the best deck…
The new Legacy format is upon us in the form of the World Championships at Gen Con and two Grand Prix towards the end of this year. Many people have questions about this fledgling format. If you’re one of those people, Ben’s written a complete guide explaining this history and rules of the Legacy format!
By the time of the Pro Tour, I’d gotten back into reading articles enough to have a fairly high understanding of what was going on in the Limited format we were testing for, and further exceptions had to be made: “I quit Magic, except for forty-card decks”. We made Day Two of the Pro Tour, in at 4-2 where the year before we were out at 1-3 and played on to 3-3, then lost during the draft. And lost hard. Probably because I was on a different page than the rest of the universe for a while, and thought the seating order and flow of packs was reversed, meaning I was trying to force entirely the wrong archetype from my seat, having practiced with one thing and then played another entirely.
This week in Ben’s Corner: Wizards reveals their plans for new dual lands in Ravnica, Legacy heats up at the Gen Con World Championships and the StarCityGames.com buylist is updated to include even more sets. Read on!
He’s been gone for over a year. He walked away from the game and the writing at the height of his powers. But like the mob, just when he thought he was out, we pulled him right back in. Draft strategy, wicked jokes, hilarious rants and more snark than you can shake a stick at. That’s right kids, Geordie Tait is back in the saddle again and if this first article is any indicator, he’s better than ever.
I am trying to build an online collection from scratch. I have tried online traders, sellers, trading bots, leagues and drafts. You could even buy packs and bust them. Some of these ideas work. Some don’t. Let’s review.
Teaming with Seth and Kevin reminded me why I played Magic, because of my friends and the experiences we shared. Going to qualifiers with two other players and having our fates in the tournament intertwined was a remarkable experience.
What’s this? A Block deck you haven’t seen before that mashes Gifts Ungiven and White Weenie, while featuring game against the rest of the field? Is that even possible? Craig Stevenson thinks so and he’s got the PTQ Top 8s to prove it. Ladies and gentlemen, may we present to you The Shinkatron
The problem, of course, is that Sensei’s Divining Top
is in all of the best decks! It’s in the fake best
deck (Tooth and Nail), the second best deck
(Kuroda-style Red), and the actual best deck (UrzaTron
Blue). No matter how good the players designing these
decks, they all put the terrible Top in to make sure
they don’t tap their mana efficiently so as to gain to
much of an advantage over their fellows. As near as I
can tell, the difference between horrible Tooth and
Nail and the actually good and successful decks is the
ability to get rid of the useless Sensei’s Divining
Top so that you no longer have to look at it.
