As I’ve said before, I love Mirage Block. In terms of flavor and game play, nothing beats the African-themed sets. Mirage introduced two keywords to Magic, Flanking and Phasing, the latter of which is known as the most confusing mechanic in the game. Just like anything else though, once you understand the mechanic, there has to be a way to break it. Right?
If you’re anything like me, you find lands boring. At best, they’re there to cast your Craw Giants, and at worst, they sit around mocking you, singing, “If you wanted to pay the cumulative upkeep on Yavimaya Ants, maybe, you shouldn’t have put them in 4-Color Hippo Survivor Madness!” But in the Old Days, things were different. Back then, lands were hyper-cool, and all the women looked like characters from a Tom Tykwer film.
When a fifteen-year-old is carried by his older teammates on Day 1 of a Grand Prix as he stinks up the joint, most of us would consider that par for the course. Except when that fifteen-year-old happens to have a Pro Tour Top 8 to his name and is a member of the gravy train. In his victorious tournament report, Gadiel explains why U/G is horrible in Team Sealed, riffs on friends and opponents alike, and even competes for the title of “Biggest Magic Jerk” against Michael Clair, only on StarCityGames.com!
As I promised last week, today we will go over the two most popular “combo” decks in the format – Desire and Aluren – and see what their place is in this metagame. Now I know some people consider Life a combo deck, but I don’t. I mean, gaining infinite life is kind of lame, wouldn’t you say? Now casting a ton of free spells, that’s more like it!
Champions Team Sealed isn’t quite as much fun as draft, but it is certainly skill-testing. Chris Manning, Bruce Cowley and I have played in a couple of PTQs and Day 1 of GP: Chicago (sadly, our lack of byes meant we were one of the 6-2 teams that didn’t make day 2). So far, none of our card pools have been extraordinary (most have frankly been on the poopy side), but sometimes that just means you learn the most about how a format works. Here are some of the key lessons I’ve learned about Champions Team Sealed.
Gd_Smrtn: So, are you working on any new decks?
Dr_Romeo: I keep wanting to do something with Phyrexian Plaguelord. He’s such a house, he’s been reprinted in Eighth Edition, and no one uses him.
Gd_Smrtn: What do you need to work on that?
Dr_Romeo: I don’t have any Plaguelords.
Gd_Smrtn: I’ll give you what you need, but you have to promise to write about the deck.
Dr_Romeo: Consider it done.
In the previous article of this column, we looked at some of the outstanding cards from Alliances. Well, my friend, there are many more. There are more outstanding Alliances cards than there are worms of the earth, and by golly, we’re going to look at each and every one of them.
I will read most articles about Magic on the internet. From strategy for formats which I shall never play to theory I don’t understand, I find them all fascinating. But my favorite kind of article, by far, is the tournament report. I understand from my editor that tournament reports aren’t the most popular kind of article, but whether you are a Pro Tour wannabe or a casual player interested in good stories about the game we all enjoy, a well-written report has got to be at least as much worth a read as yet another of those boring strategy articles about Red Deck Wins or a discussion about Magic ethics.
I’ve had bad drafts. Bad drafts are close personal friends of mine. Nick Eisel, that was no bad draft. It might have been close to a bad draft, and it would probably have been a train wreck if someone less experienced were running the show. But Eisel turned his draft around and ended up with a deck that he could turn into some tickets. How did he do it, and how can you do it too? Let’s take a look at what happens … When Bad Drafts Attack!
While Team Meandeck gets a lot of the press for building innovative new Type One decks (mostly because nearly their whole team writes for StarCityGames.com), other teams around the world have been quietly innovating on their own and putting up impressive results. Carsten Kotter and his CAB teammates are one such group, and Mr. Kotter is here to give you the complete skinny on a successful Vintage deck built around Gifts Ungiven. He even includes a note signed by “Epstein’s Mother” to enchance his hipster street cred.
Adam has built a lot of great and goofy decks in his first week on SCG Daily, but the likes of R/B SparkGoat may never, ever be topped.
Extended Season is coming. Soon. Extended season always plays out about the same – the Pro Tour defines the early metagame, a new deck smashes the format, then hated-out decks resurface as the hate disappears. Old archetypes are rediscovered: the Life deck, for example, was played at GP: Las Vegas years ago. The past is relevant – it will define what you will play at the qualifiers. For this series, I will review each Extended season, one article at a time. I will look at the evolution of the metagame and highlight some of the defining decks. Then, since it is me, I’ll also discuss a few interesting decks that floated around
In what may be the most influential article of the Extended season thus far, Chad teaches you the crucial skills necessary to own your Extended PTQs and provides a heaping helping of sideboard and maindeck tech for anyone hoping to make earn a slot in Philadelphia. This is a must-read article for any serious Magic player.
Ken uses his team’s Day 2 appearance at Grand Prix: Chicago as a platform to take a look at the Team Limited format and figure out what parts of the common wisdom are true, and which bits are myth. For exmaple: If you are trying to win a Team PTQ, your energies are much better spent practicing Team Sealed than they are Team Rochester. Always controversial, often insightful, KK brought his A Game with this one.
I love Rampage, but sometimes, pseudo-Rampage is even better. The trouble with plain, workaday Rampage is that it always grants creatures toughness as well as power, and as my Uncle Toby Shandy likes to say, “The only thing better than toughness is power, and the only thing better than power is Rabid Elephant.” Once Rampage was retired as a mechanic, Rampage-like effects flourished. Cards like Spined Sliver, Rabid Wolverines, and Gang of Elk improved upon Rampage by including, essentially, Bushido-when-attacking to the mix. If you want to make the most of the idea, try something like this…
