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In Context: Green-Red in Mirrodin

Since Onslaught, we have learning something about drafting synergistic decks with the advent of tribal. This is what makes us take a bad elf over a good card. Pros have been making draft decisions based on synergies for years. The best drafters in the world go into a draft saying,”Maybe X card is the best card in the pack, but is it the best card for my deck?”

Mirrodin takes this concept to a whole new level. We have to be extra alert to synergistic cards because sometimes they are disguised as cards of another color. For instance, many people would say Wizard Replica is a fairly Blue card due to its activation cost, even thought it is an artifact. I would argue to say that Wizard Replica is better in a Red-Green deck than it is in a Blue deck! Just to have the very rare ability of flying in a Red-Green deck can have a monumental impact of how well-rounded the deck is. While you might think that Tel-Jilad Archers is the only guy in the line-up that can halt a Skyhunter Patrol, I say what about the Wizard Replica?

A Quick Note On Deck Building, And In Particular, Sideboards.

Okay. So the tournament is coming up, you’ve pretty much finalized your decklist, and like the good child you are, you’ve also finalized your sideboard. Now. Imagine you find a mystical bottle behind the couch. A juice bottle, if you would. This juice bottle is old, dusty, and err, old. You rub it out of pure frustration in the hope that genie will come out and cure said frustrations. Sure enough, a genie. Whoduh thunk it?

A Year-End Look At Type 1

Back in November, Knut suggested to find the ten most important issues to Type 1 players and to base an article on this. I thought of ten questions on my own which I polled members of The Mana Drain on. Helping me to interpret the data is Steve”Smmennycakes” (he loves it when you call him that) Menendian and providing color commentary is Vintage World Champ Carl Winter.

Restless: They Ran My Underpants Up A Flagpole

This is one of the decks that I have started off testing for the upcoming Extended season. It showed promise last year with some appearances in Grand Prix, and John Eardley won a PTQ with it in Columbus, Ohio. I have been testing this deck pretty much exclusively, looking for something that has a good match-up against the Rock, Tog, Red Deck Wins, and Dump Truck. The deck I speak of is Tradewind Opposition.

You CAN Play Type I #120: Back to Basics, Part X – The Backyard Brawl and Your Ten-Second Answers

Last week, I said T.H.E.F.U.C.C. gives you faster results than Chasey Lain, and invited readers to send the most mind-boggling problems so we can see how far the formula goes.

My thanks to all you demanding readers, you tried your damnedest.

You CAN Play Type I #120: Back to Basics, Part X – The Backyard Brawl and Your Ten-Second Answers Part II

More reader responses to the most ludicrous Card Advantage situations possible.

Editor Swimming in a Sea of Submissions

Due to the holidays equating to shorter weeks around here, I’m running a bit behind getting articles edited and put up on the site. When you combine the holidays with a bounty of New Year’s submissions and certain people consistently turning in thirty-plus page articles *ahem*Tan*ahem*, you can see how this might happen.

Sullivan Library – Building Singleton Psychatog

While there are an abundance of potential builds to Psychatog, they all share some common traits that make them succeed. One is inevitability… if the game gets to keep going, Psychatog will win. In the old format, it would try to counter the key spells to slow the game down. Then, card drawing would take over, with the odd counterspell here or there to keep the game from getting out of control. Finally, at some point, Dr. Teeth would smack himself onto the table and win in a single brutal turn. Psychatog is so powerful, in fact, it becomes very hard to build a counter-control deck that doesn’t win with him, because he is such an efficient finisher. All Tog decks have the Tog, which allows for inevitable wins. . They all have countermagic.
And they all draw spells, digging around in their deck.

It’s that digging into the deck that makes specializing your Tog builds so reasonable.

Splashdown: Playing more than Two Colors in Mirrodin Draft

In the past, playing four or five colors in a forty card deck usually meant that you had a base color of Green so that you could find the mana of your splash colors. Invasion block and Urza’s block stand out in my mind specifically, since this strategy was not only viable, but also one of the defining archetypes of the format.

The times have changed, however, and here we are smack dab in the middle of triple Mirrodin Limited. While the above statement remains true, as Green’s common list contains Journey of Discovery, a new race of dorks has arrived to give every color the opportunity to splash: The Myr.

From Right Field: Look Back in Anger

For me, 2003 was probably the best year of my life so far. In May, I met my future wife. If I don’t scare her off, I’ll be married to her in 2004. If nothing else happened in all of 2003, that alone would have made it the best year ever.

Of course, this isn’t a web site for romance. If you’ve looked at our pictures, you’ll know why. No, this site is about Magic: The Gathering. So, let’s take a look back at 2003, MTG style. First, I want to revisit some predictions I made in my New Year’s Day column on this very site.

The StarCityGames.com Digest for the Week Ending 01/02/2004

Whipped out white weenies, battles of big brains, and alliterative editors (not really), all in the first StarCityGames.com digest of 2004!

Cutting Through the Hype With a Butter Knife

Articles – many articles – are written every time a set comes out, but does anyone ever go back and call people up about their trading articles, hot picks, and so on? Hell if I remember – I don’t recall last week very well. I don’t think they do, though. Not often. Hot picks come out and then no one ever makes a comment about them months later, to see how they panned out. What I’m going to find out is,”Where are they now?”

Number-Crunching Type 1 for 2003

In the wake of a very crowd-pleasing Banned and Restricted announcement on December 1st (DCI: Seriously, Type 1 players adored it) and much ado about the future of Vintage caused by the wrecking-ball of a combo deck, Burning Desire, I decided to look at the tournament data for late 2003 and break down the results. The one criteria for B&R changes that everyone openly accepts is tournament distortion/dominance, so really, the way to approach the community’s most controversial issue in the least controversial way is obvious.

If you want to know which decks and cards really dominated in Type I, you must read this article.

Yawgmoth’s Whimsy #85: The Problems with Emperor

Recently, I have been playing a lot of Emperor during casual magic nights. Some of the games are great, but some are just a pain — because of a fundamental weakness of the Emperor format. Too many decks we play are exploiting that weakness. I’ll tell you how to build killer Emperor deck to do your own exploitation, but I’ll also talk about how to make the format more reasonable. I’ll also throw in some solid-but-still-fun Emperor decks for your playing enjoyment.

All You Need Is Love – Why Hate Drafting Is Bad, mmmkay?

Booster draft is about sending good signals. If you start hate drafting in booster draft, you will wind up confusing the person next to you and they could take a card in your color. This can be rough for you as they will generally be passing to you in a future pack. Matters aren’t as clear in Booster Draft as they are in Rochester, so make sure you keep your head on. Things move faster, and there is more room for misinterpretation. One early hate-draft could dismantle your entire plan.

Unlike in Rochester, there is an exception here…

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About Ken Krouner: T8 Pro Tour: Barcelona. 63rd PTNY (Academy). 0-7 at some Japanese PT. Killed Randy Beuhler with his own creature in the first Multiplayer Invitational. Roughly ten money (T32 or T16) GP money finishes. Took a couple of years off to work in Germany — came back, won a prerelease and then found out it was actually a PTQ.