I have gotten to see Mike many times, and I can say without hesitation that he is one of the kindest, nicest, and most pleasant people in Magic. Note that I didn’t just limit this to the Pro Community (which at times can be cliquish and downright off-putting), but to all of Magic. He wears a smile, a pleasant demeanor and a cheery spirit as if they were clothing. Let me tell you a couple of stories about Mike.
So, I am reading and reviewing the Magic sites on a lazy Monday afternoon. I have completed my work for the day, finished an article for Scrye, set up a few meetings for Tuesday, judicially sanctioned one of my residents, interviewed a job candidate, and everything was looking rosy. Until it happened.
I’m still playing a deck pulled in two directions, but somehow it feels nicer to have put my own stamp on the thing having changed a few cards. Let’s see what happens…
Yeah, you may have heard of some of those guys. Two veterans from Your Move Games. Then there’s Billy Postlethwait, who almost became the national champion. I didn’t recognize Mitchell Tamblyn’s name, but when Ted Knutson sat down behind me with his laptop, taking notes on Mitchell’s drafting, I knew that he had to be a pretty hot Limited player too. Needless to say, having only drafted this format twice, this was not the draft pod I was hoping for.
So, to kick things off for the block metagame articles, I am going to start with Affinity. Yes, Affinity. The deck that is getting shot out of the sky… the former king of the hill. For those of you who just can’t get enough, look to the light — there is a way. It is not mission impossible… it’s Affinity Impossible.
Artificer’s Intuition
Hey, it’s Blue, it mimics Survival of the Fittest, and Ben Bleiweiss pointed it out early on as a sleeper. Hot or not?
Look at all the different writers on this site. They all share one passion — a love of the game of Magic: The Gathering. I too share that passion. If you read between the lines in the outline of my life, I can filter the Magic out from between the cracks — but that would not do my life justice to this point.
As have mentioned, the Nuts and Bolts deck is getting pulled in at least two directions. On one hand, it wants to be a weenie beatdown deck with small creatures packing equipment and Qumulox as cleanup. On the other hand, it wants to be a tricky control deck with one-mana”cog” cards like Aether Spellbomb to go along with Salvaging Station, Auriok Salvagers, Trinket Mage, and Leonin Squire. Look at the two rares, Auriok Windwalker and Salvaging Station, and you’ll see another signal of its two competing directions.
Do you have a preferred method for shuffling? Is there a commonly accepted method that the pros use?
I started writing this at Nationals, where I came one match short of grinding in – but I lost that match, and the whole format (Type 2 w/ Skullclamp) is dead anyway, so I’ll skip the tourney report. Instead, I’ll talk about netdecking and the performance of netdecks. I’ll throw in some Magic the Puzzling stuff, and finish with an overview of the MD5 metagame so far.
I think this time Chris may have finally gone off the deep end, but as usual with this sort of thing, it’s kind of fun to watch. Tune in as Chris rants about the Block metagame as well as some artifacts with names related to your head.
One of the things I’ve been thinking about in preparation of this experiment is how truly bad preconstructed decks are compared to other Constructed decks. Don’t get me wrong – I actually enjoy the precons a lot. I get a full set of them at every release, playing them with my wife once a month or so. That’s sort of the point, though. I play them against other preconstructed decks; I would never play a preconstructed deck at, say, Friday Night Magic. Why? Why does Wizards make the decks so anemic
How did Jay fare in his first six matches playing the Nuts and Bolts precon deck? Tune in and find out!
Today on a very special Ask Ken, I give you the Top 15 things I learned at Pro Tour: Seattle.
