Another diverse, interesting month is behind us, and hopefully a good sign for the summer. If you want to see the most up-to-date information on the Type I metagame before heading into the summer convention season (which officially starts at Origins this weekend), this is the place.
Every so often I hit on a deck idea that several people actually like. The most dramatic example was a mono-Green controllish deck meant to generate lots and lots of mana to play overcosted bombs. I called the deck Wood or sometimes Fattie Wood, and won a few local tourneys with the thing. My whole group of friends played it at Regionals, as did a guy named Jason Spears who went 7-2. Today I’m going to examine what a current rendition of the deck might look like.
Last time, I threatened to do something this week that would outline one method for you to reach the elusive Next Level. For the vast bulk of you out there who plug away at tournaments, whether they are local Type II events, Trials, PTQs, or whatever else… this one is for you.
Here are the answers to the play scenarios I posed last week, along with some background stuff. If you haven’t read the original article yet, I’ve included the original scenarios along with the answers to make for easier reading. I’m also going to include anything I thought was amusing from people that emailed me responses and / or anything funny from the forums.
As I started working through the Red portion of my Fifth Dawn menu, I realized there weren’t a lot of cards on the list. Then I worked through Green and Blue with the same result. So here’s a triple-dose of menu, combining all three colors.
Combos abound thanks to Fifth Dawn. Who cares? Skullclamp’s been banned. Who cares? As far as I can tell from what people have been e-mailing me, all anyone cares about is details from my honeymoon. You know what? You’re sick. Truly.
As the matchup analyses show, the deck probably isn’t ready for Tier 1 yet (probably not Tier 4 either), yet in my testing, it did significantly better than I had expected. True, I hadn’t expected much, but the deck’s dainty, little four-card combo was surprisingly easy to assemble and had the advantage of attaining victory with the help of numberless quantities of Bears.
I have a running list of ideas I’d like to make into interesting articles, article series, or even a weekly column. The”Magic blog,” unsurprisingly, was on this list, and so is another idea I’m planning to try out when Fifth Dawn reaches Magic Online…
Below I will outline ten gameplay situations; some of them really happened (fact) and the others I just made up (fiction). You’re supposed to guess which is which. There may or may not be subtle clues to help you with your guesses, so pay careful attention! Furthermore, those that have read my articles in the past will have a definite advantage.
This was originally 15,000 words, was based on the MTGNews spoiler and was submitted way back before the prerelease, but that was the straw that broke Knut’s back. He put up some of my other articles first, then got so sick of set reviews he begged a rewrite. A shorter rewrite. Much shorter. So I combined and rewrote it, and cut anything already said by others. I’m also looking at the set from a multiplayer / casual standpoint, and I’m skipping anything that is not new and interesting for that format. That keeps it short.
I think the first question a deck trying to summon Kaldra is going to face is how many pieces of Legendary Equipment it wants to use.
We went through the creatures last week, and now move to the artifacts. These are the most interesting permanents of the Mirrodin block, and we’ll tend to the”Does this card do something no past card ever did?” rule now.
There are sixty-five artifacts in Fifth Dawn and only twenty cards of each color, so it’s hardly fair to do all of the artifacts in one menu installment. Here are my faves through roughly the first half, letters A through I.
It is about time for me to get back into the thick of another metagame – I held off this article until after the bannings because I had a hunch the Block Constructed environment was going to chance drastically. A single card got banned and now a whole slew of decks became potentially viable. The PTQ season is coming up soon, and there are a lot of hopeful people looking to qualify. The tricky part is that this is essentially a brand new metagame with the banning and the introduction of Fifth Dawn.
