Randy Buehler hates me.
Why do you hate me, Randy Buehler? What have I ever done to you? I invite you to draft out of my big draft box at every event, and you shun me. All I did was write one little stinky Magic article that you disapproved of, and suddenly I’m treated like a leper in a mosh pit.
To start from the beginning, Card Advantage was an idea born out of the fact that Magic: the Gathering is at heart a resource battle, and that the initial resources are cards. Thus it was from here that it seemed easy to take the first step toward the foundation of the theory: whoever had the most resources (or then specifically the most cards), would or should win. With this general starting idea, we have something that is both simple and useful. However, as we later found out, this was not always completely correct in the way things were defined.
I was really going to title this article “This is Type 1. Playing Fair Sucks,” but I thought that this one was catchier. Anyway, this week, I’ll be going over one of everyone’s favorite buzzwords in Type 1,”collateral damage,” and give you the inside scoop on Oscar”Cinnamon Buns” Tan.
I’m here to give you deck for the end of season PTQ’s, if you’ll let me. It’s a good one. I’ve played it in two PTQs, I T8’d one, and went 4-2 drop in the other, after keeping a sketchy hand in Game 3 of Round 6. If I’d kept my thinking cap on and taken the mulligan that the hand in question so rightfully deserved, I would have been playing for T8 once again.
The deck is cheap and easy to build – you’ll have no problem getting it together. It has many good match-ups, tends to crush rogue strategies, and has a chance against any opposing monster simply because of the possibility of an”I win” draw.
In September I drove to Akron, Ohio and played in a Beta Mox tournament, which I won handily with Long. Then, November 2nd I flew to Kansas City, Missouri to play in a Power Blue tournament. First place was Ancestral Recall, Time Walk, and Timetwister, while Second place was a Mox Sapphire. I was going to wait to present this report after December 1st, if the DCI decided not to Restrict Lion’s Eye Diamond because I was going to do another article series updating the deck and going into more detail on how to play it.
That’s kind of moot now though, so you get two tournament reports instead and more thoughts on 2003 and Long.dec.
Suicide Black has a basic premise: Play undercosted spells with drawbacks and disrupt your opponent, while you crush them with a stack of cardboard. The style of play is shoot first, ask questions later. It doesn’t matter that you are killing yourself in the process — because out of all twenty points of life that you and your opponent have, only the last one counts.
I have made Top 8 twice with this deck in fairly large unsanctioned tournies (eighty people). The first time, I thought I was just lucky. The second time, I figured that maybe this deck has something going for it.
While we need to turn the corner to see what’s up ahead, a look back will keep things in perspective and help crystallize the lessons we’ve learned along the way, and tie up some loose ends. Type One has gone, in one year, from being a dead format to being a playtested and supported format. Starting with Aaron Forsythe’s article at the beginning of the year in which he asked the Type One community what should be unrestricted, the DCI has been listening.
Besides the creature features that you might expect from the format (Rock, RDW, U/G), there is one control deck that seems to have scared all the other control decks away. Scepter Tog is a very powerful deck, combining the ability that Tog had to gain control of the game very quickly with a Psychatog, and the powerful Isochron Scepter engine. Some people might think that the Scepter deck might be better without the Togs, but I would argue the other way around.
I was reading this guy’s article from Tuesday, and the first thing that came to my mind while reading it was the same phrase once uttered by Mr. Simon Phoenix in a San Angeles phone booth. I won’t repeat it here, but if you’re conversant with the universe where all restaurants are Taco Bell and Schwarzenegger is president (as opposed to governor), I’m sure you probably know exactly what I said on that cold Canadian morning when, with the sun just cresting over the frost-ringed horizon, I clicked on”Use Your Head: What’s So Horribly Wrong With The Web”.
Rick, what the hell is your boggle?
StarCityGames.com would like to welcome our newest Featured Writer to the family. We now present longtime Pro, Masters winner, and Grand Prix: Anaheim champion Ben Rubin!
There has been a little bit of discussion of Extended and Grand Prix Anaheim in relation to my”Dump Truck” deck. Tim Aten, for example, seems to grasp its strengths pretty well, while a lot of the suggestions I’ve heard from other people demonstrate a much shallower acquaintance with it. One of the more interesting questions posed is”will this deck, unhindered by the recent bannings, still be a contender?”
I was so ready to regale you with tales of incredible victories with my latest deck. The problem is that I’d have to lie.
You see, this week, I tried to create a (mostly) Blue deck. I’m bad at that. I’m also bad at playing Blue decks. I feel very exposed. I get nervous sitting back and waiting. I’m always afraid that my opponent is going to overwhelm me with threats, which they often do. So, I counter everything I see early. Then, when the big threats hit, I have nothing left.
You’d think that, if I know this, I could do something about it…
My preparation for the Grand Prix involved convincing my fellow Arizonans to actually go the GP, begging them to play respectable decks, and least importantly, fine-tuning my old deck. Besides fixing the blatant metagame errors (four Masticore/ zero Mindslaver main) I made at the Pro Tour, I also gave my deck the ability to go off with Stroke of Genius and Metalworker. With three Strokes, three Gilded Lotus, and three Cunning Wish, I could simply win by tapping Metalworker to fuel a large Stroke of Genius, (hopefully) drawing a Voltaic Key, using it to untap the Metalworker and play a Gilded Lotus, giving me the Blue mana to continue playing Stroke of Genius and Voltaic Keys, until I had enough mana to Stroke an opponent out.
Last month there was some discussion of designing cards for Type 1, or whether it was even possible to do so. Last week, I took ten major T1 tournaments and analyzed them for what they told us about the metagame, and this time I decided to take the same Top 8s and see how sets in the past have managed to sneak their cards into Vintage.
After somehow managing to get myself placed on the surgical table, a nurse walks over with a huge syringe filled with some white liquid and pops it into my IV while smiling at me. I clearly ask what”that” was, and she looked at me as though she couldn’t hear me and said,”what?” I asked again and this time I made it about a quarter of the way through the sentence when I blacked out. Twenty something days later, I woke up…
[Editor’s Note: I had never cried when reading a Magic article before, but then again, I had never heard a tale like Richie Proffitt’s.]
I keep running across people online and web articles bemoaning the current state of Type 2 as being”stagnant” and”boring.” Supposedly U/W Control, Affinity, and Goblins have the format in a stranglehold, that there are no other decks worth playing.
Really? I have a fistful of decks that say otherwise.
