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Playing With Yourself: Fifth Dawn Combo

Even before we had any preview cards, Wizards had been hinting that Fifth Dawn was a combo set. Some people are happy and some people are sad, because they like to get a chance to play their own deck rather than just watch me fiddle with mine for twenty minutes before I kill them. However, I feel justified in playing a”selfish” deck: it’s not like in a sudden flash of brilliance you gain both the deckbuilding expertise and the skill required to play combo. It takes tons of practice, and there are difficult decisions to be made at every step of the way.

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The Contract Question

Before I was selected to be on the Five Color Ruling Council, I was very vocal about what is arguably the most contentious issue in Five Color. However, after being placed on the Council, I decided to no longer be vocal. My opinion was known by most already, why belabor it? Since it is such a divisive issue, why talk about it? At the time, I believed that nothing would ever happen, so why work for change? Therefore, this is the first time in over two years that I have made my voice on this issue public.

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Yawgmoth’s Whimsy #102: Combo Mania

A lot of people have published articles about the next great combo. They all run something like this: “Play these cards do this and win. Turn 5! No, 4! 3! It’s great! / It wrecks the format! / It shows I’m amazing!” These people have no clue. You don’t build combo decks to goldfish. You build combo decks to play in tournaments. That means you have to build a deck that can survive an active opponent, not a goldfish.

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Ask Ken, 06/10/2004

Today’s guest columnist Iain Telfer tackles the age-old question of why there aren’t more female Magic players.

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Egg Beaters and the New Face of Reanimation

So everyone is trying desperately to break Krark-Clan Ironworks, but nothing truly amazing has come about yet. Zvi’s version, although swift and consistent, is easily disrupted by a number of tournament staple maindeck and sideboard cards. It’s my sense that the best applications of Ironworks won’t be found for a while, still. I too, like the rest of the world, am working on a broken KCI backbone deck, but I’m also messing with the sickness which I am about to unveil: Egg Beaters.

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Extreme Magic: A Casual Format Where Broken Things Happen

It seems in just about every single Oscar Tan article – and quite frequently in other Type 1 articles – the phrase”This is Type I, broken things happen” plays like a theme song you cringe to after hearing a gazillion times. About two to three months ago, after reading the latest iteration of this phrase and grinding my teeth in irritation, it occurred to me: why should Type 1 have the monopoly on that phrase?

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From Right Field: The Official Bad Player’s Fifth Dawn Review

You could get a fast, cheap column out of doing nothing but cataloging the bad predictions from previous set review. I was even going to do that, but Ted said”No way, Josephine.” Because of the time off for my wedding and honeymoon, he wanted me to do some”real writing” not just”copying and pasting” and”quoting other writers” like”you’re doing right now.” So, I promised I’d do something. Without further ado, then, I present… something.

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Poker, Pros, Problems? Insight from Type One

Ferrett’s recent article about Poker’s effect on the Pro Tour, and its likely future effects, immediately inspired me to think about what insights might be gleaned from the way the Type One community works. The reason I thought of Type One is that it’s a format which is growing, but without pros, without much in the way of DCI support, and in fact without very many large tournaments in general.

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Magic Puzzles in Play

Editor’s Note: More and more people have been sending”puzzle columns” to my Inbox lately. Since I think logically working through some actual play situations can be an effective teaching tool as well as being fun or entertaining, I decided to run Jeff’s column here. The question is whether you, the reader, are interested in more of these sorts of articles. Please read through the article and then make your opinions known in the forums, and I’ll go about determining if we will be running more of these.

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Ask Ken, 06/08/2004

How do you handle a Sealed deck splash when you have no Myr, Talismans, or color helpers to simplify the problem?

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