This week I’ll be talking about life as a game designer/publisher. Today and tomorrow I’m going to talk about game design. Instead of talking about design philosophy or some other subject best left to people like Mark Rosewater, I’m going to talk about the business side of game design. What do you want, I’m a Harvard MBA!
The story of how one of the funniest men in Magic started 0-2 and clawed his way all the way back to his third Pro Tour Top 8 appearance. This article is an absolute treat to all readers, whether you are a long-time Walamies fan or just discovering the Finnish master for the first time.
Bearl! I know it’s been a Bearl since I Bearled at you, but I’ve been pretty Bearl. I just got my Bearl and have been doing non-Bearl things in my spare Bearl. But since there was a Bearl in MN this previous weekend, I had to Bearl. It went pretty Bearl, and here’s the Bearl. Bearl!
Ahem. That’s what happens when you spend a week in Minnesota.
It’s kind of odd, but the best use of Godo that I’ve seen since the start of writing this series had the namesake legend hidden in the sideboard. I’m speaking, of course, of the “Godo Gifts” deck piloted by Katsuhiro Mori to a first-place finish at Grand Prix: Niigata.
It’s Friday! Another awesome Flores article. How surprising! This time it’s on maximizing your plays and options when you are the beatdown or the control. In other words, it’s yet another Mike Flores article that will go a long way toward making you a much better Magic player, whether you are a newbie or just made the Top 8 at a Pro Tour.
The King of Fatties is off to Montreal, Quebec to PTQ with his friends. Did he manage to qualify this time, or is it yet another chapter in the Wakefield string of brilliant disasters? Whatever it is, you know the article will be amusing and enlightening, so come along for the ride!
On Tuesday or Wednesday last week, I realized that I had a problem. I had started my Godo-related Daily, and I had some decks from earlier this month, but those decks were in serious danger of being made obsolete by the results of Grand Prix: Minneapolis. Godo is a pretty powerful card, but he has a lot of trouble defeating infinite Kagemaro. Like a lot of Western deckbuilders these days, I needed the Japanese to step in and give me some inspiration. Two separate decklists bearing Godo made the Top 8 of Grand Prix: Niigata last weekend, and I thought that both were not only competitive, but get a ton of fun out of running Godo.
Just how good do you have to be to qualify at a PTQ? How many horrendous mistakes can you make and still break into the Top 8? Do you have to know the format inside out?
According to my recent PTQ endeavor, the answers are: not very, a ludicrous amount, and barely at all. This is the story of Bad Player Rust at his best, or worst, battling down to the wire for that PTQ slot, and playing Kamigawa block for the first time.
In addition to covering the topics mentioned in the title, Zvi also gives you an overview of draft archetypes in 9th Edition Limited, valuable information if you plan to play in this weekend’s 9th Edition Release events.
Last week I took Tsuyoshi Fujita’s deck to a PTQ with practically no preparation, and posted a lackluster 3-2-1 finish. The main thing I took away from the tournament was a newfound respect for Manriki-Gusari in the war for Jitte advantage. Simply put, it is almost impossible for slow decks without Manriki-Gusari to obtain Jitte advantage over fast decks that have it. This caused me to abandon Fujita’s deck and the deck I ended up playing this time around was a bit goofy, but turned out to be highly effective.
The one, the only, the Zvi Mowshowitz produces what may be his last set review ever before he disappears behind the ivory walls at Wizard of the Coast. Want to know what the master thinks about 9th Edition cards in both Limited and Constructed? We’ve got it all here, and only on StarCityGames.com.
Me, I’m an honest guy. Last time I regaled you with stories about winning a Pro Tour. Sadly, you don’t always win. That’s why this time I’m here to tell you about losing matches. Lots of them. Seven. In the same tournament, actually. That’s right, folks, this one is all about my miserable spiraling downfall from first to eightieth in just one Pro Tour.
There has been a long-running myth, which finally went away with the release of Mirrodin block, that R&D doesn’t design cards for Type 1 and that there are only one or two cards per set which will see any play. Then, there are cards like Mind’s Desire where R&D never even considered Type 1 during design but which end up being among the most powerful, environment-defining cards in the format. Designing for Vintage is a really tricky issue to work with, but that will be the focus for this series and the first place to start is perhaps the most misunderstood concept in Vintage: Proper Mana.
Last time, our Godo deck still had problems with the White weenies. I claimed that a White-based legend deck might simply be a better solution, and I was thinking of this saucy little number from Pro Tour Philadelphia. It has a White Weenie-style creature base, but runs all legends and thus can use Honor-Worn Shaku (a.k.a., the Paddle) to power up a stronger midgame than your typical weenie deck.
Last time, we saw that adding Godo to the GWU Control framework didn’t go too badly – if I had kept better hands here and there, I might have made Top 8 of the tournament I played it in – but I wasn’t satisfied. The deck had problems, and since that tournament the format has shifted in ways that only exacerbate those problems. Let’s see if we can fix some of those today, shall we?
