Once again it’s time to turn some seemingly impossible board positions into sure wins. A couple of the puzzles this volume focus on a specific aspect of Magic that I know a lot of people (myself included) could use some practice with: knowing your outs. Much like in poker, it is critically important for the competitive Magic player to know exactly which cards in his deck can help him to achieve victory.
While I did receive quite a bit of criticism in Seattle for my pick articles, I received just as much praise. I think this proves that my often praised, often criticized style of not exactly ordering picks is correct. However, I do think that just randomly ordering them in groups can be misleading. In this article, I will try to more accurately organize them. The pick orders still won’t be exact, but they will be a lot closer than they have been in the past.
Recently, Bleiweiss managed to unapologetically piss off the entire Type I community. He said their decks were unoriginal. He told them they were bad players. He called them whiny elitists, and he showed no remorse for his actions. What could he possibly have been thinking and what is he going to say next? If you are a Type I player (or just someone who really dislikes Ben Bleiweiss), then this is the article for you!
Before I make any other changes to the deck, I want to nudge it closer to cog-tacularity and further away from WW Equip. I fully admit that someone else doing this experiment would do the exact opposite, which is part of the fun.
This is very similar to the list Brian Kibler posted, the main difference being my decision to run Echoing Decay. The deck is pretty straightforward, its main goal being to set up a massive Death Cloud that wrecks your opponent, at the same time suspiciously always leaving you with two Swamps and a Guardian Idol. At least that’s what happened to Brian Fulop and me.
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.
