Last week, we looked at a three-part rookie mistake I made during the final Swiss draft of Grand Prix: Oakland, where quite possibly my first pick (and its implications for the rest of my draft) cost me a return trip to the Pro Tour. This week, we’ll take a more in-depth look at Booster draft, focusing instead on signaling.
Since I publicly told Randy Buehler that Type I players still subscribe to the old joke about Green, designers have paid close attention to the color pie, and the popularity of each slice has changed quite a bit. Mono-Red, for example, has been reduced to the pseudo-combo Food Chain Goblins, with burn all but extinct (except Fire). Mono-Black has disappeared as well, with even its revitalized disruption unable to cope with real creatures, not to mention the hilarity of discard facing off against graveyard-intensive strategies. Somewhere in all this shifting lies the much-maligned Green…
Like I’ve said before, cards don’t rotate out in Type One in the same way that they rotate out of Standard and Extended. If you want to get rid of a deck once and for all, you’ve gotta restrict something major in order to render it unworkable. And as much as people dislike admitting this, sometimes you’ve gotta put aside a deck because another comes out that – dare I say it – is strictly superior.
As a pro, how would you prefer Wizards balance card design between casual and tournament-level power?
This is Whimsy number 100. Actually, I have published a lot more on StarCityGames.com, but some were unnumbered, and some were two-part pieces. Whatever. This is one of those arbitrary milestones — a big, round number — so I am going to do something self-indulgent. I am going to write about my one hundred favorite magic cards.
Aggro, Combo, and Control decks all function best against either bad decks or good decks that, for whatever reason, do badly in a game. That all of the top decks can also win against decks that do well is beside the point; what matters is that all three major deck archetypes are geared toward punishing bad play. In response to this, we will examine how to construct decks that perform at their peak against other decks that perform at their peak. For simplicity’s sake, this will be termed Wicker Man deck theory.
For the last month there have been only two things people want to talk about: the state of the Standard environment and the death of Rogue decks. This was all fine and dandy, since we were leading up to Regionals, and the Knut’s gotta give the people what they want to read. On the other hand, I’m sick of it. If you want a relaxing, post-Regionals cocktail of interesting decks, read on.
Ted Knutson makes the argument that because Skullclamp is nigh universal, it should be banned. Ban Skullclamp! My problem with his argument is threefold…
Is Ravager Affinity really all that and a bag of chips, or are we just not ready for that jelly?
If you read this column regularly, as the Surgeon General suggests (it promotes”intestinal and rectal health”), you know that I couldn’t make it to Regionals this year. That doesn’t mean that I can’t file a Regionals report, though.
The simplest answer to the Major Problem runs something like this: Wizards R&D goofed up when they printed Skullclamp. It should have never been unleashed upon the Magic public. Just simply ban it and everything goes back to the way it should be, right? Now, while most people are debating the last part of answer, I’ve been looking more closely at the first part. Namely, I’ve been questioning whether Skullclamp was actually a mistake.
Thus, “The Deck” is getting left behind, to the point that some distinguished voices have been using it as the straw man for trumpeting “the real metagame.” Last month, for example, JP Meyer half-sarcastically called it “the best control deck in Type 1 as long as there isn’t another control deck that is more streamlined.” More recently, Phil Stanton called it “nothing but metagame customization” compared to Hulk. Are these pundits correct, and if they are, what building blocks exist to go about rebuilding”The Deck” for today’s Type One environment?
Personally, I think that Tempo is probably the topic in which I am most interested as far as Magic theory goes, and I am always trying to apply Tempo and Tempo-related ideas to my actual play. But what is tempo? It seems to me that Tempo is kind of like pornography. Much as you would like, you can’t quite put your finger in it… but you sure know it when you see it.
On Sunday, May 16th, the Star City Game Center will be hosting Ben’s Deck Challenge in-store. What is Ben’s deck challenge? Read inside to find out!
