I’m going to skip out on the tournament report this week, because the tournament was…well, a disaster. I had bad
draws, played some of the worst Magic I’ve played in years, and thoroughly deserved to go home early. That’s fine by
me, because I’ve been looking for a break in the action for awhile now to talk about a few things.
The Kamigawa Block Constructed PTQs are in progress. We have several weeks worth of PTQ results, plus the results of two Grand Prix, and the format is shaking out. I’ve noticed that the decks seem – at least to me – to be really heavy in chaser rares. That could be a real effect, or could be because I am trying to get the cards online. Time for some research – Are this year’s Block Constructed decks more expensive to build than in years past?
Aside from Gifts Ungiven, the best deck in Vintage right now is clearly the very tricky Stax archetype and it has been for some time. Today Steve completely exposes the origins of Stax, the strategy behind the deck, and gives you all the keys you will need to win your next Vintage event, whether it be a local weekend tournament or the Vintage World Championships at GenCon.
Mark thinks he’s finally ready to tackle the tricky concept of velocity and begin to apply it practically to Magic situations, but he’s curious to hear your thoughts on this intriguing matter of Magic theory.
I spend a large chunk of my articles trying to make people in Vintage better players. This sort of teaching process has been a real learning experience for me. First off, I’d like to say it’s a very rewarding experience to help people get better. Second, it’s way harder than everyone told me it would be. I can see why some forum posters write long elaborate posts, but never write articles. You have to be way more coherent to do it. Oh, I was going to tell you another tip to get better right? Into the fray we go!
The faster you can play, the more matches you will win. Of course, you have to counterbalance that with the fact that playing too quickly will cause you to make bad decisions, costing you more than you gain by playing fast. There are a lot of good reasons to play fast, some of which are not well known, but none of them will save you if you’re making a lot of mistakes. The good news is that speed can be learned, both in general and for a particular deck or format. I consciously developed my ability to play at a hyper-fast pace and rather than weaken my play it made it better. First, I’m going to offer some motivation.
For people like me, who would have a gambling problem if they ever actually gambled and who are true Johnnies at heart, self-control isn’t easy to come by. The Danger of Cool Things isn’t limited to play situations in Constructed, but can already occur during the draft or deck construction portions of a Limited tournament. It is very useful to be aware of potential traps and this awareness is what I hope to contribute to with this article.
Have you ever found yourself getting bored with Magic? I know I do on a nearly regular basis. I used to be able to renew my interest by building Revenge of 1997, my wacky five color, Vintage-legal, control deck which is a blast to play, but that eventually stopped doing the trick. Revenge was only a temporary solution. It was a fun deck that only had serious opponents. I needed something new. I needed something extreme. I knew that White Castle was going to be too hard to find, so I went for something four times as extreme as Vintage: Type 4
Hi and welcome to the Daily with Josh Silvestri. It’s great to see you all here today. For Monday, I’d like to speak on one of my favorite Constructed formats, Vintage. For those of you who are curious about the oldest of formats, there is a lot to both love and hate about it. I’d like to devote today to briefly covering the ups and the downs of this place where “broken things happen.”
Ruud has struggled through four countries and approximately one billion rewrites to bring you the story of his favorite deck in Standard that deserves one more spin around the block before 9th Edition evokes drastic changes on the archetype.
Ben’s Corner returns after a long hiatus with the latest news from StarCityGames.com! Find out what’s been added to the site recently, which prices have been dropped on cards,
other news about Magic: The Gathering products we sell!
Also inside: Which cards are red hot right now? Which Kamigawa cards are our best sellers? What is the latest information about Ravnica: City of Guilds? All of this, and more, is just one click away!
Have you ever ended up with an unintentional draw or a loss when you felt like if only your opponent would have played faster, you would have had a chance to win? That’s the topic that Zvi tackles today, first tackling the legality of slow play, then giving you signs that will tell you whether your opponent is deliberately wasting time, and last providing advice for what you can do to prevent this. If you ever have played or plan to play tournament Magic, then this article is a must read.
Adam Prosak is a name that strikes terror into the hearts of West Coast Magic and Vs players alike. And yet, as you’ll see in his triumphant return to StarCityGames.com, the owner of the “ihatepants” account on Magic Online is as much buffoon as master, even when he’s winning PTQs.
One of the masters of Magic article writing reviews the Hall of Fame voting process and has some scathing words for those who did not vote for Jon Finkel. Additionally, Mr. Vienneau has some kind things to say about his greatest enemies in this reflection on the Hall, its voters, and what the entire thing means to him.
Once we’d decided that Battleground was too good a product not to move forward, we knew that there were a lot of challenges facing us. Most of them had to do with the game itself. We needed to develop three launch armies that would play very differently from each other. We had to make sure that our point-cost system was balanced such that no unit was “too good” or “crappy”. We had to resolve dozens of issues that come up whenever you try to represent constant movement of individuals (albeit individuals in units) in a turn-based system in which the shape of a unit is fixed. One of the biggest challenges, however, had nothing to do with game play. We had to get the art right.
