Ben opens up the reader mailbag, where he answers your pressing questions! Thrill along with Ben as he responds to the burning issues such as this one from Christopher Feliciano, who writes “You are a stupid *** fat bald **** who knows nothing about magic and needs to go kill himself and get it over with! Your articles on starcitygames are pointless and suck! – A better player than you.”
Join Tim today, as the man many Magic Pros have called”the best writer in the business”, completes his tale of victory and defeat at the 2004 Worlds. Also, be sure not to miss his new”Barnecdotes” section, in what might just be the funniest Tim Aten report ever!
This week I decided to do one last MD5 Walkthrough since the format will still be up and running on Magic Online for quite some time. This time I used a different approach to the draft though, since some people have been claiming that I’m “handpicking” drafts that are too powerful or something. For this draft, I decided that it’d be more of a “Live” draft, since I’m just sitting down on MTGO, covering the draft, and then writing about it.
First, I’ll make the obligatory comments on Draft and Limited. The set looks like it’s more aimed at these formats. It has a lot of creatures with combat related abilities, lots of combat tricks, and the new Legends rule* makes Legends a lot more playable. This is not too surprising – we came off a block built around combo and Constructed play (although the Affinity mechanic proved excessive), so a more Limited-focused block was predictable. This isn’t Masques block II, however: Masques was all about horrible creatures with big price tags. CoK has some amazing 5/5s for bargain prices. In fact, let’s take a look under the hood and see exactly what Champions offers, shall we?
As Ben Bleiweiss mentioned in his recent article on Champions of Kamigawa and Vintage, Oath of Druids has been granted a very fun new toy in Champions of Kamigawa – Forbidden Orchard. After reading Mr. Bleiweiss’s article, my testing group and I decided that it was no longer a good idea to keep our pet project underground. Thus, here in all its glory, is an Oath of Druids deck for Vintage, designed to destroy the opponent in one attack. The build I have provided is for budget players, but this deck is easily adaptable for powered users as well.
I don’t remember who said it, but someone claimed that a multiplayer group with varying levels of players will invariably find itself being held down by the poor players or being dominated by the good players. A rift will be created and the group will suffer. I’m here to put that theory to rest.
The weeks leading up to the announcement I had been playing a lot of Drain Slaver/Crucible Slaver. With help from Mattieu Durand of Franceland and the rest of Meandeck, I was tuning a list and practicing with it for the weeks leading up to Waterbury. I won like, one match. So I gave up on it and played DeathLong. The rest is history… almost.
Gifts Ungiven
It’s not quite Intuition, and it’s not quite Fact or Fiction. You can’t use it as a tutor for unrestricted cards like with Intuition, and your opponent chooses what you get, unlike FoF. There are still some no-win sets with this. Think Yawgmoth’s Will, Recoup, Black Lotus, and Lion’s Eye Diamond. There might also be some crazy combo kill with this as well. I’m not going to give up on it just yet.
Despite the fact that I fully planned to hate Champions, the gameplay was surprisingly palatable. It had a unique feel – that happy feel of equipment ported from Mirrodin, the ridiculous bomb critters of Onslaught but without the generic morph-o-rama dope mana curve, and a reliance on weird burn and enchantments that was uniquely its own. There was no auto-save if you built a crappy mana base, as there had been in Mirrodin’s colorless approach and Onslaught’s 2/2 for three.
I had a bunch of very tense and close races – that feeling that good deckbuilding skills really mattered, which I haven’t had in any set since Invasion.
What’s more awesome than awesome sauce? It’s Ben’s look at Champions of Kamigawa in Vintage! Last time around, Ben invoked the ire of the entire Vintage community with his less-than-respectful look at the Type 1 community and Fifth Dawn. Will this be another flamefest, or will the Vintage community heed Ben’s words and rally around his Vintage metagame instincts? Look inside, then post your thoughts in the forums!
Ben has repeatedly taken Wizards of the Coast R&D to task for their failure to boost the power level of White, easily the worst color in Magic. White’s the worst color in Vintage, the worst color in Extended, the worst color in Onslaught Block, the worst color in Mirrodin Block, and arguably the worst color in Standard. How bad was White this past year? It was so bad that Ben devotes an entire column bemoaning the fate of his favorite color.
During the Extended season of winter and spring 1999, Jamie Wakefield made a rather interesting observation. The dominant decks of the time was of course High Tide, but there were other decks of comparatively brief lifespan that also won very quickly; all of which were capable of a fourth turn kill. The thing is, during this extremely fast and high-powered format, even the mono-Red beatdown decks were getting into the act. Jamie’s observation? The burn decks were playing like combo decks. They had fast kills too, but they had to draw a certain way in order to get them.
Now, my butlers tell me the prerelease is this weekend, so I’ll be gearing my card analyses with that goal in mind. Not only will I provide you feedback on all the preview cards from the last week, I will also be discussing the strengths of the various colors that the spoiler has shown this far, and I have devised a prerelease Choose Your Own Adventure story to help round out your weekend. If you are looking to get a leg up on your Champions prerelease experience, you’ve come to the right place.
So after last week’s fake-out, Tater-Hatin’ Tim Aten is back this week to tell you why Japanese players are tough opponents, how nice guys finish (at least against him) and to fill you in on almost all of the happenings at the 2004 Magic World Championships. Hop on board, kids – it’s going to be a wild ride.
Many of you know Ben as one of the columnists of the site, but he’s also the General Manager of StarCityGames.com. One of his job duties is to set all of the buy and sell prices on the website. This means that he’s in the thick of determining the values and trends of Magic cards 24/7. Join him as he takes a look at the best cards you can trade for at the Champions of Kamigawa pre-release this weekend!
