This past weekend, I finally, finally got a chance to fiddle around with Champions of Kamigawa. I arranged with none other than our esteemed site editor Ted Knutson to come down to Roanoke so that we could do back to back to back to back to back Champions of Kamigawa drafts until our eyes fell out of our heads. This is what I learned from what looks to be an excellent new set for Limited play.
Your birthday rolls around, and your mom and wife have no idea what to get for you. Oh, they know you like those Magical cards, but when they walk into a store they’re completely overwhelmed by the sheer number of Magic cards, packs, decks, sleeves, boxes, and plushies available. They have no idea what to buy you… And so you get socks again, not that Dragon you were really longing for.
But what if we told you there was an easy way to tell the world exactly what cards you needed?
In the first two articles for this assignment, Flores brought you Mono-Blue control, while Osyp Lebedowicz gave you The Unspeakable. Today, Jim takes you back to the old school, where men were men, Cherry Bazooka was the gum of choice, and U/W Control was the deck to play. Can this archetype be awakened from its slumber, or have Affinity and Tooth and Nail made building a good U/W deck a virtual impossibility?
As some people may have noticed in recent weeks, Vintage Magic seems to be reverting to the way it looked this time last year. The top combo deck is a Long variant. The top aggro deck is Mishra’s Workshop/Goblin Welder based, but without things like Survival of the Fittest ruining the manabase. Why has the metagame done a sort of shift backwards? The blame for this trend lies at the feet of Control Slaver, and here’s why.
Glimpse of Nature
If Cranial Extraction seems a broad, powerful card and you’re not sure where you’d put it, Glimpse of Nature seems like it was tailor-made for Food Chain Goblins. Is this a new spell that will allow champions of the little Red men to take over the metagame, or is it just more Champions fool’s gold?
On Friday, Mike Flores kicked off our Deck Challenge with his Mono-Blue control deck, but today is Osyp’s turn. Like michaelj, Osyp has made a control deck heavy on the Blue cards and light on the White, but unlike Flores, Joe Black’s deck includes… The Unspeakable? This is an Osyp article, so he must be kidding, right? There’s only one way to find out folks, as we continue to bring you the best new decks from some of the best deckbuilders on the planet – only at StarCityGames.com.
Mirrodin Block has seen more than its fair share of format distortion. What I mean by this is that there have been cards and mechanics that bend the format in such a manner that certain archetypes become staples and others become unplayable. It wasn’t bad until Darksteel came out, and with it the death of variety: two cards called Arcbound Ravager and Skullclamp changed Standard forever. The questions I want to examine today are: How will Champions distort Standard, and what impact will that have on the States metagame?
To those Pro Players who showed up to Pro Tour: Atlanta, the entire Mirage set was a mystery. There was no spoiler, and no block rules were given out ahead of time in the player packet. The only hints players had about the new abilities were from nine preview cards on a flyer that dotted the Atlanta tournament hall, which showed Sandbar Crocodile and a couple of flankers. The player meeting would be the first time the new rules and mechanics were explained to players, so it was imperative that the meeting go smoothly. What actually happened was one of the more amusing and frustrating player meetings in Pro Tour history.
Greetings Agents Flores, David-Marshall, Lebedowicz, Rider, and Ferraiolo. Welcome to our little deckbuilding challenge. This is your mission, should you choose to accept it.
Assignment #1
Build a U/W Deck. It can be control, combo, or aggro… just build the best deck that you can, test it for a week, and then write an article about that deck.
As always, if you are captured, StarCityGames.com will disavow any knowledge of you or your mission. We wish you the best of luck, now get cracking.
Why play a deck that just dies to Trinisphere and Null Rod? Why play a deck with land and consistency issues? Why play a deck that can randomly crap out on you? Why play a deck that is trying to compensate for having two cards restricted out from under it? I think I’ve got it figured out and the answer is nearly as impressive as its Long.dec cousin.
Join Ben as he recounts brief, comic tales from his Magic history. If you’ve never heard”And then I hit grandpa with a Flowstone Brick”, then this is the article for you. If that doesn’t tickle your fancy, perhaps the story of how Snapple made the entire Neutral Ground staff fat might be more appealing. Then again, maybe you like hearing about incredibly bad plays made by people on their way to the top 8 of a Pro Tour instead. Regardless of your interest, this article has something for everyone!
Once in a while it’s fun to play a rogue deck that wins. It’s also fun to take an old classic deck you’ve worked on in the past and dust it off, add a bit of new polish and shine, and see how it does. This is an article about an old favorite deck of mine called Turbo-Confinement that I’ve chosen to update for both online and real life Extended. If you are interested in something besides the usual Tog/Rock/Beatdown of the Extended metagame, have I got a treat for you!
Has Champions of Kamigawa already inspired you towards decks of fun and joy? I know that the cards are not out yet, but my fingers itch to build decks. Champions appears to be a very internally focused set, with a lot of its cards working in tandem with each other, but not as much with outside cards. This includes several races that we have not seen, plus a new emphasis on spirits.
Nick goes over some of his first impressions of the new format after a week-and-a-half of drafting it and gives you insight on some hidden gems that you may not have noticed when you played at the prerelease. If you think Devouring Greed is unplayable or Mystic Restraint is the best Blue common, then you might want to see what Nick has to say before you play this weekend…
Some deckbuilding basics this week. Some of you definitely need a refresher course. People are posting Kamigawa-based decks in the forums, including a few combo decks. Some are good. Some — well, we need to talk.
