In January, I was working on a series of articles on the history of Extended, but I kept veering off and writing about my favorite Extended decks. To force myself back on topic in those articles, I started a separate article about my all-time favorite decks. These are my choices for my all-time favorite decks – with the caveat that the newest weirdness I am working on always qualifies, right up until I have it done and working.
If you have ever been to a tournament, you know that you play matches against people, and the results are recorded and used to determine what happens from round to round, but have you ever thought about why certain things happen one way and not another? I would not expect most people to have done this, but I have, and here are some observations that I have made. Some of you may consider some of my ideas on what to do with tiebreakers and the like radical, but I think we can find a better system than what we currently have.
In the past few articles, we’ve looked over a lot of potential growth decks, and pored over very dry statistics about pre-Saviors Standard. The summation of all of this is to hope to learn how to play post-Saviors Standard, by means of analyzing the situation at hand and learning the rules of deckbuilding that are forced by the cards in the format. The most powerful cards in the format dictate how you play it, and the strongest sets of synergy rise to the top and form the decks we play. Today we’re going to look at your options for tweaking the best decks and turning them into unstoppable killing machines.
Sam wraps up his Saviors of Kamigawa first impressions by discussing what may be the most powerful color in the block: Green.
This article has some discussion about a little bit of everything, but the fact that it is another excellent article from Richard Feldman should be more than enough to get all of you to read it.
Dave takes ya’ll back to the concrete streets, original beats with real live MCs, back to the days when getting sanctioning for your tournament required mafia connections and Wizards sanctioning meant single elimination…
Jamie has some things he wants to get off his chest this week about certain Standard artifacts, Magic R&D, and Hal Jordan.
That’s right folkses, Rats is the hawt new faunky thing that everyone wants to get a piece of. As I mentioned last week, Tim Aten got the deck from Cedric Phillips after he tore up part of the Last Chance Qualifier field at Pro Tour: Philadelphia. Aten then blazed up the Invitational with a Rats deck, and the message boards, forums and mailing lists across the internet lit up with people all saying “OMG, cool!” However, if you in turn wish to play the deck next weekend at Regionals, you’re gonna have to do better than just taking the deck from Aten and Phillips and running it out of the box like you did when you finally got Party of Five: Season 3 on DVD. That’s where I come in…
It was brought to my attention recently that I’ve been playing this silly little card game for almost ten years now. Ten years! Most marriages don’t last that long. Not to mention that I’ve entered my sixth year of writing for the illustrious Star City Games. That’s long enough to see most players/writers leave the game…and come back. Just when you think you’re out… it keeps pulling you back in!
Last week, I started to answer the question: What Will Dr. Romeo Be Playing at Regionals? Today we continue seeking an answer to that questions, pushing White Skies where no man has ever gone before… or something.
Ben Bleiweiss brings you fifteen very special combos fresh from the Saviors of Kamigawa set! Any one of these card combinations will astound and amaze even your closest of friends, so try not to bust out all fifteen at once! Once you’re done wrapping your head around these Bleiweiss specials, try your hand at Ben’s Magic trivia? Think you know your obscure Magic knowledge? Ben is willing to bet that you can’t answer even one of his ten Impossible Magic Trivia questions correctly!
Hello everyone! If you’re like me, you were happy to see the next stage of You Make The Card 3 pop up on magicthegathering.com Wednesday. If you’re also like me, you’re feeling a bit disappointed this time around. Follow me as I analyze the proposed mechanics and search for the golden needle in this fetid haystack.
For my last day, I’m going to be a bit more lighthearted. I’m going to respond to some forum comments and e-mails that the first three or four days generated, and I’ll tell some actual game-play stories. Some are funny. Some are sad. Some are brilliant. Some are head-scratchers. All are true, even if I get the details a bit munched up. In the end, there’ll be a bonus, too!
Kanoot delivers his 2005 Regionals Preview, complete with the usual snarky commentary, cheesecake, and predicted metagame percentages. As if that weren’t enough, there’s also discussion of the Hall of Fame ballot and a request for advice on who deserves the fifth slot on the list, The Kitchen Sink, Quotable Quotes, and Yawgatog highlights from the entire month of March. It’s not just an article, it’s an extravaganza!
This is a super special version of the normal Power 9 Preview article, because we have an added element to accommodate for: the presence of the SCG Shooting Stars! This may seem like one of the most daunting tournaments in a very long time thanks to that presence, but you should treat it no differently than you treat your average high profile tournament. There will still be a dense concentration of people you can beat if you play properly, and that includes the guys wearing the t-shirts. The biggest weapon you can have against these competitors is familiarity with the format, so let’s get down to brass tacks.
