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.
Today’s guest columnist Iain Telfer tackles the age-old question of why there aren’t more female Magic players.
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.
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?
Combo #2: Voltaic Construct + Viridian Longbow
*pop pop pop pop pop*!
Just get the Construct in play and equip the Longbow to any artifact creature. If you get this up and running, it’s like having a Vanguard card in play with a big middle finger on it.
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.
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.
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.
How do you handle a Sealed deck splash when you have no Myr, Talismans, or color helpers to simplify the problem?
Today Jay chats about golem.dec for Standard and Online Extended.
Since card valuations change as new sets are released, I am going to offer a pick order for every color in every set of Mirrodin Block. I’ll start by analyzing how Mirrodin cards have changed since the set was initially released, and I will make my way through both Darksteel and Fifth Dawn until I give you a complete set of pick orders for the entire block.
