We’re one week away from the biggest Standard tournament of the year – are you ready? Flores will be participating in his tenth Regionals, and today he shares some of the key lessons that he has learned over the years while qualifying, and helping his friends qualify, for U.S. Nationals.
Alas, even editors need to take vacations every once in awhile — and you’d be surprised at how hard it is to find a reliable connection in Sandwich, Massachusetts. Thus, while I was able to edit the articles, I ran out of Internet just as I was about to choose the winners. Alas.
The winner was Tim Ward, who provided a pretty fantastic series on Slivers, ranking all the Slivers (or, um, almost all of them except for Mistform Ultimus). Tim wins this week’s $20 prize!
Next week’s challenge?
The Top Three Saviors of Kamigawa Multiplayer Cards.
You’ve had a couple of weeks to play with them — so what are the most powerful cards? Remember, we want articles, not listings, so show us your work with some suitably powerful Saviors-powered decks designed to plow the rest of the table ! (And for the record? We’ve already had someone win $20 for pointing out the Sekki, Seasons’ Guide/Pandemonium combo — you’ll have to be more creative than that.) So send your submissions into Mail us at https://sales.starcitygames.com/contactus/contactform.php?emailid=2 and you could win $20!
What’s that you say? Wakefield is playing a deck that actually wins? Now this I gotta see!
This is it, folks – the fully playtested, tweaked, and budget-conscious version of the deck Chris is taking to Regionals!
Ever since I started playing this game and learned of the Pro Tour, it’s been my lofty goal to play on that highest of stages. I’ve just wanted to qualify at least once for a Pro Tour event before I keel over (but by then, hopefully, someone will have an Animate Dead handy). I’ve come close, tantalizingly, on a few occasions. Today I’m going to talk about those occasions.
The month of June brings possibly the most eventful issues that Five-Color’s ever seen: the restriction of Contract from Below, the legalization of Portal (or most of it, anyway), the expansion from eighteen cards of each color to twenty cards, and errataing the Wishes. What do these changes potentially mean for Magic’s Biggest Format?
Chad shares his thoughts on his experience last weekend in Rochester, the hurdles still left for Vintage as a whole, how he came up with his goofy-yet-techy Goblin Resistance deck, and wraps things up with his own thoughts on the Hall of Fame ballots and nominees.
Last time, I took an early look of some Saviors cards that I thought would prove to be influential in the new format. I want to pick up where I left off and also talk about a favorite archetype of mine, while discussing some Champions and Betrayers cards to keep an eye on.
Wildebeests now come in all flavors, and I’ll look at all the tricks that can be done with them. I’ll concentrate on Standard right now, since U.S. Regionals is the next big tourney. Block has nothing worth considering, but I will do one multiplayer deck, just to show how tricky the deck can be if the format has the right cards.
Mark Rosewater argues that the modern glut of keywords is generally positive, and that while Sweep was a dud, so many other worded abilities are still valid. As a vocal critic of this practice, I felt the need to make a few counterpoints, corrections and criticisms of this new article. There are some good points that I agree with, but sometimes the facts that Rosewater presents don’t point to the conclusions he draws.
Dave Meddish isn’t necessarily one of the most popular writers on our site, but his stint on the Daily this week has been second to none in terms of fun, readable content. If you haven’t stopped in to see what Dave has to say, might I recommend today as a good time to do so? After you read about Dave’s amazing road trips, you can then catch up on the rest of his dailies this week at the bottom of the page.
Zvi explains his deck choice, his performance, his thoughts on the format, what he’d change if he had to do it again, goes over his Hall of Fame recommendations, and asks YOU to help him pick what to write about next.
One thing that seems to come up all the time when discussing draft picks or just draft in general is when you should stick to your color and when you should branch out by either choosing a second color or even switching one color for another. In my opinion, this is usually the hardest decision that you make in a draft. Seems like a good topic to write about then, no?
Oscar takes a peek at what Saviors has to offer Vintage players and finds three draw spells that might go overlooked.
Let me crank up the Wayback Machine to about eight years ago. I had just been laid off from my job as a computer game designer after putting in about a year of crunch time on a failed project (this, sadly, would become a theme of my time in the game biz, but that’s neither here nor there). Coincidentally, friend and fellow Magic player Brad Irwin, who was managing the game portion of the local Book & Game store, had also been laid off and decided now was the time to follow through with his dream of opening his own game store and was looking for partners. Was I interested?
