Want to know where Joey Bags disappeared to for the last month? How about his thoughts on the current Extended? Or maybe how he qualified for Pro Tour: Kobe with a”bad Rock deck,” and why he chose to play it? All of this and more is just a click away…
There are mistakes, and there are… other things. There are errors so horrid the word”mistake” cannot adequately convey the depths of poor judgement required evoking them. These are errors so vast they cannot be fully understood by mortals. These are sublime events. When such monstrosities are identified, one does not call them”mistakes.” There is another word reserved for these tragedies.
Blunders. These things are called blunders. This is what a blunder looks like.
In the course of the games I have pulled from testing, I’ll explain how the”Who’s the Beatdown” articles written by Flores and Mowshowitz pieces tie into this matchup, and I’ll explain how this matchup plays out, and the ways in which the both decks struggle to win. I’ll conclude with an examination of potential changes both decks may decide on, in order to improve the matchup.
Let’s say that a cheater makes the top 8 by winning a match that s/he shouldn’t have won. What if it was top four? What if it was the finals? In each case, depending on the prize structure at your place, that person has stolen from someone. Plain and simple. Stealing. That person cheated to get something s/he wouldn’t have gotten if s/he had played fair and square. It got taken away from someone who (hopefully) didn’t cheat. Heck, even if the cheater didn’t make the prize level, but knocked out someone who should have made it, they stole from that person.
The problem is that cheating is more rampant than even the most cynical of us would like to believe.
So Ben Bleiweiss thinks White is in the crapper, that it has been maligned by Wizards and given the shaft in its mechanics. According to him, White is the worst color of every format, the victim of ruthless undermining from within and generally anemic in every way. He goes about examining the claims that Randy Buehler made in a February 2003 article concerning what White would and would not be doing in the future, and concludes, based on examination of the current Standard format, that the promised”goods” have not been delivered. As I understand it, there are a number of people who agree with Mr. Bleiweiss, but I’m not one of them. Want to know why? Good, you’re in the right place.
After months of tuning, I’ve created a Mind’s Desire deck that works consistently, doesn’t fold to artifact hate, holds its own against creatures, and authors some awe-inspiring synergy that’s left more than a few onlookers mesmerized. It’s also the most fun deck I’ve ever played and uses a bunch of cards that have been deemed useless, too slow, or unplayable for the format. Oh and lest I forget – it’s competitive with most of the top decks in Standard.
Shall I continue?
I’m tired of people giving diluted, hackneyed set reviews every time there’s a new release. A lot of players try rating cards in both Limited and Constructed, but it ends up diluting their valuations. Others attempt to rate each and every card in the set. My approach is more holistic: I have no ratings at all. Instead, I’m going to talk about the cards that will see Constructed play (sorry guys, no Limited strategy here), or that have potential to see Constructed play in the not-too-distant future. I’m gonna throw out some thoughts and ideas, and I’d like to hear what you have to say about these cards!
The Buzz: If you thought Chalice of the Void changed Type I, you ain’t seen nothing yet. Chalice of the Void for zero stops your opponent from playing Moxen. Chalice for one stops most budget decks. Trinisphere literally shuts down the entire format, if you get it into play on the first turn. It’s a Nether Void for one, two or three, depending how much spells would have cost to begin with. It’s easily dropable on the first turn, thanks to Mishra’s Workshop. This is the single most important Type I card to see print in years, and it will single-handedly change the way decks must be built – plus it could finally get Mishra’s Workshop and Dark Ritual restricted (or re-restricted, as the case may be).
Now, the important things to look out for are the horrible, nasty, tricksey tricks that your opponents may spring upon thee in an attempt to send you into the X-1 bracket. First, I’ll list the combat tricks. Remember, I refuse to acknowledge the existence of rares, because you won’t see them nearly as often as you will the following commons and uncommons.
As you’ve probably read on Sideboard.com, seventeen land in Mirrodin Limited is a thing of the past. I’ve wanted to write this article for weeks, but was asked to hold off by my friends on team CMU since they wanted to keep the information secret until after PT Amsterdam. With that in mind, even though Sideboard let the information out of the bag, there are a lot of things to talk about regarding this”Spellbomb” archetype.
The format change that Onslaught block spurred was nothing compared to the next base set released; Mirrodin. Mirrodin brought us a large list of playable, and even some borderline broken cards. At first, I believed Chalice of the Void to be the stand out card of the set, being a powerful hoser against a variety of decks, while allowing you to play around it and minimize its effect on you. Many people complained that Chalice was the end of Type One as we knew it, ruining a variety of decks, and making budget aggro virtually unplayable. As it turned out, many decks really weren’t hurt that badly. Burning Academy in particular, being the most heavily affected by Chalice, found ways around it, and budget decks were unplayable anyway. Who knew?
Back at the start of the year, I wrote an article outlining the mistakes and overhyped cards in Mirrodin. That was only twenty days ago from when I write this, and it’s time to make due on my promise and write a trading preview for Darksteel, as at long last we have the completed spoiler.
Or the almost completed spoiler. The mostly completed spoiler. The”I think there might be two or three cards missing” spoiler. Regardless, this is where I put my neck out on the line and offer up the cards I think you should be looking to trade for.
“Card quality” is a mishmash of the possible interactions between all the resources in Magic – beyond just the cards and draw steps – and it’s used in so many different senses you can’t always be sure what the speaker means.”Card quality” has become a piece of Magic space-filling jargon, the way some people say”mise”,”barn”, and”f***” every other word and assume you understand whatever the hell they’re talking about.
Writing has become so important to me. I do it recreationally now. I post all the time in my Live Journal (though not often with substance). I am currently writing fiction. Writing is very therapeutic. The other thing writing rekindled for me was my love for StarCityGames.com. When I started writing for Star City. it was actually a joke. I was made fun of for writing for this site. It was the laughing stock of Internet strategy, and I was a laughing stock in the pro community for writing for them.
What a difference four years makes… Now the same type of people who once laughed at me for writing for Star City are asking me how they can become featured writers.
