Tony’s simple yet ingenious plan was to draft a bunch, play a bunch, then draft some more. Now this sounds fun, if a little pedantic. “Take Nagao, take Kokusho, splice Glacial Ray…”. Useful and all, but I imagine the interest would wane over the day. But what if, instead of drafting the current set, the event revolved around drafting completely dead, useless formats? Wouldn’t that be fun? You bet it would.
Hello and welcome to my own temporary daily series outlining a casual deck of some sort or another. Adam Gryphondorf has done an excellent job these past few weeks with his article series, and now I have the torch. My series will feature casual decks, not decks that I recommend taking to the next PTQ or anything. Although some casual decks have a solid history at local store tourneys and Friday Night Magic, the majority of these decks are designed for the kitchen table.
Ben Bleiweiss is one of the most knowledgeable buyers and sellers of Magic cards on the planet and is the driving force behind keeping StarCityGames.com’s prices ahead of the competition. Being the cynical Magic player that you are, you decide that you aren’t impressed by his 90% success rate when he ranked Champions of Kamigawa and want to know why you should listen to what he has to say this time. The answer? Because you can’t afford not to!
Flores: Tell me a deck I can write about that your readers will love.
Knut: Well Mike, you know how much you love U/G Threshold? The readers at StarCityGames.com are like that about White Weenie, except even more so. They have a passion for that deck that burns brighter than ten thousand suns.
Flores: Okay, but this will be Extended, not some Romeo-style Standard deck.
Knut: Even better!
After bombing out at U.S. Nats while playing a horrible Goblin deck, I promised never again to sully my hands with Goblin Warchiefs or Piledrivers, content to play with artifact lands in the only deck that can use them well. Fast forward to a week ago and Ruel’s Goblin deck caught my eye and I was able to pilot it to a mighty *ahem* 2-2 finish at a local Neutral Ground tournament. Now, with weeks of playtesting under my belt against a gauntlet that includes five of the most relevant matchups in Extended today, I’m happy to say that I’m finally able to give you reliable information on how it performs against the field.
This is the third in a series of articles that chronicle the last several Extended seasons. As always, the roots of the current Extended season can be found in the past: with the exception of Ravager Affinity, all of the Pro Tour: Columbus decks have appeared, in some form or other, in years ago. Some go back a lot farther than you might think, and there’s still tech in them thar decks!
Intrepid reporter Eli Kaplan has slowly been making a name for himself by posting solid finishes at Japanese Grand Prix. This time, paired with a motley crue of teammates, he attempts to strike gold by once again proving that the Japanese players are not the only ones who can earn money at Japanese Grand Prix.
A sad day, my friend. At this very moment, while you’re reading these very words, you’re reading the first words from the last article of the Golden Age series. Even though this daily column has gotten about as old as a piece of poorly-fashioned smørrebrød that no one at school will touch because Little Rasmus Rasmussen from Viborg might have burped on it; even though my jokes have become as stretched as those small, dark, stretchy things that you find in roast chicken; even though etc…I’ll miss it. There are so many brilliant Mirage Block cards I’ve yet to namedrop.
Noah Weil has something to say and he wants y’all to listen, yo!
With Betrayers coming out soon, I think this week is a good time to take a look back at some of the initial reviews of CoK Limited and see what we can learn from the mistakes that were made in initial evaluation of the new cards as well as how the format turned out as a whole. I do realize that this format will still be legal on MTGO for some time, but I think it’s still worth analyzing what has changed over the past few months of drafting in comparison to the initial insights on the set.
Chad tells the tale of how he hopped off the Magic gold course and right back on the Pro Tour for the second time in a row, though in this tale he gets by with a little help from his friends.
Sexy Rector. Ghoul Burst. Pattern. And most recently Rebirth. The deck has had many names, but none of them seem to stick. Sexy Rector sounds like a bad porno movie title. Phyrexian Ghoul now has to compete with Nantuko Husk. Thanks to Symbiotic Wurm, Saproling Burst isn’t even necessary anymore. The deck finished just outside the Top 32 in Columbus and has been completely under the radar in the prelude to Extended season, so it has a lot of surprise factor. Should you be playing it? Rick Rust thinks so…
It doesn’t matter where I’m heading or how lost I get along the way. I’ll always end up back in Mirage. It’s not just that I like black people on my Magic cards (though, Lord knows, there aren’t many of them outside of Mirage). There’s also the wonderful setting, an environment far-flung from that of traditional fantasy. Sometimes, though, Mirage ignores its keynote mechanics, leaves the Phasing, chimera, and griffins behind. Sometimes, it plays good, old-fashioned, hardscrabble Magic.
What do Heidi Klum, Elle Macpherson, and Two-Headed Dragon have in common? Nothing (we assume) except they all get mentioned in Chris’s article today. One he uses as the impetus for a new fun Standard deck while the other two are just there to root him on – you guess which is which.
For better or worse, I am now a part of Anthony Alongi’s infamous multiplayer group and it is my duty to host this week. My upbringing has taught me that a good hostess will always have an ample supply of food, drinks and booster packs. With a Sam’s Club right down the street, food and drinks are never an issue. A steady stream of inexpensive booster packs, on the other hand, is another matter entirely. I went upstairs to take stock of my Champions of Kamigawa booster packs only to find my ample supply had dwindled down to twelve. I tried to recall exactly where my once ample supply had disappeared to and it came to me: I think our group has been bit by the Emperor Draft bug.
