Wow, I can’t tell you the last time I wrote an actual”Mixed kNuts” column. You know, the kind with the Kitchen Sink, and the Cheesecake, and the randomness generally associated with, uh, me? Since it’s Christmas, I’m gifting myself (and verbing too) the time to write something fun, and since it’s not particularly fair to post some other writer on Christmas (nobody reads Christmas Day, silly), I’ll proudly fill the void.
Jingle Bells
Mike Aten Smells
Geordie Laid an Egg
Nick Eisel Lost To Ken Krouner
And Somebody Qualified For Kobe
We attempted to find Christmas cheer in Tim’s article, but we are not miracle workers.
Ben Rubin shows his Blue Collar, Romeo returns from the dead, and Type I Week causes a raucous ruckus, all in the lastest edition of The StarCityGames.com Digest.
Metagame/hate decks are something I never recommend for the reason that they aren’t very powerful – and even if they are, they usually don’t even approach the power level of the targeted decks. Despite effective hosers, the lack of inherent power is most visible in match-ups outside the scope of its hate. Another risk is that you may not even play the deck you are supposed to be hosing. The second reason is that in degenerate formats, more powerful decks have the best chance of just being more broken and faster than another incredibly powerful deck.
I want to talk about how Ken Krouner isn’t right when he says Green is the best color in Mirrodin draft.
One of the things posted recently in response to an Eisel article on Red pick orders was that when you argue with someone, you’re saying they’re”stupid and wrong.” I feel Ken is wrong in his observations – but I don’t feel Ken is the least bit stupid. The man is known for being somewhat unorthodox and at times even a little ahead of the curve; neither of which are attributes I personally find offensive in writing. That being said, I do disagree. And I do bite my thumb at him.
In essence, this deck does what Baron Harkonnen did back in 1997. It tries to devote itself to just making sure that the opponent does not win. When you play Chronoscepter, your basic plan is this:
If you are looking for a completely rogue creation to play both before and after the Bannings, don’t miss this article!
Of course, we headed right back down the yellow-brick road to my old stomping grounds in Louisiana. Yep, we headed to the Swamps. Looking down bayou way gave us access to creatures that allowed us to sacrifice that stolen critter. We had Carrion Feeder, Nantuko Husk, Fallen Angel, and Phyrexian Plaguelord. (Thank you, 8th Edition!) The great thing about those last two was that, while they’re rares, they’re rares that are cheap. Not cheap like a truck stop floozy. I mean, inexpensive to purchase.
Is it just me, or has the Type One community seemed particularly irate these past few weeks? Some advocates of Type One have been whining more than my four-year-old sister when she wants cheese. What is all of the hullabaloo about, anyway? Mark Rosewater reprinting an article with a few extra blurbs? This article, however, is not really geared towards people who have their minds made up, so don’t confuse them with the facts. Instead, it is focused on the average person whose head is spinning from all of the Type One Speak. I will try to speak English to you, and in doing so, will probably annoy an entire chunk of the Type One community.
In the spirit of the holidays, and the whimsy title, I am going to do a Christmas theme deck. It will be Red, Green and White, and all the cards represent Christmas themes or characters. That’s easy. Making it playable is harder, but I’ll do that, too.
After months of planning, Star City Events and Dream Wizards proudly present… Grand Prix Washington, D.C.! Mark your calendars, assemble your team, and prepare for one AMAZING weekend of Magic!
Last month, Will Rieffer provided us a Twelve-Land Charbelcher (TLC) build featuring Lightning Rift, Grid Monitor, Sulfuric Vortex, and the usual suspects. I had already been playing my version of TLC for about three weeks prior to his article, which didn’t have many of the cards present in his build. After some testing, I came to the conclusion that if you’re going to run TLC, you should be using every possible card to further the end of activating Goblin Charbelcher and killing your opponent. Cards like Grid Monitor, Hammer of Bogardan, and Shrapnel Blast, while all useful in their own right, do not further this end. Also, Will’s build didn’t have any redundancy built in to recover Goblin Charbelcher in case it was destroyed or countered, but this was less of a problem due to the random smattering of other damage sources in the deck.
I have won three local Standard tournaments with this build of TLC and have placed in the top 4 one other time. I originally just wanted to have fun playing the deck, but it ended up far more competitive than I anticipated.
Thinking about Equipment tends to make me all nostalgic with regard to the medieval era. The time where donning a sword and six hundred pounds of plate mail was the cool thing to do. The artwork on the Equipment cards themselves only pushes this statement to the next level, as they actually look like medieval weaponry.
This new card type has had a huge impact on the Limited format and since no one else has stepped up to the plate to address the issue, I’m more than happy to offer my thoughts.
Before anything else, you have to give him credit. I criticized – too violently, some said – Mark Rosewater’s column because it was just a cut-and-paste of an old column and was certainly unflattering, sounded patronizing in a number of areas, asked for Type I articles on topics that had already been debated to death on Star City and TheManaDrain, and focused on what they wouldn’t do without saying much about what they would.
Forget all that.
There’s an old political joke/philosophical question that puts two notorious world leaders in one room together along with you, the reader. Just for the sake of argument, we’ll say it’s the year 1999 and the two men are Osama Bin Laden and Saddam Hussein. You have a gun and one bullet. Who do you shoot? Answers always vary. Some shoot Osama. Some shoot Saddam. Angst-laden teenagers and whiny poets both break the format and shoot themselves. So what does the Magic player do?
“Let ’em stew a while,” he says.”If they line up correctly, I’m pretty sure I can get ’em both.”
And that’s what card advantage is, without all the hullabaloo. It’s the fine art of killing two men with one bullet.
A lot can be said about White in Eighth Edition because it really is a diverse color. It has bombs, it has filler, it has attack-minded creatures, it has defense-minded creatures, it has good evasion creatures, and it has good ground-based creatures. Like Red, it also has good rares and rubbish rares in roughly equal measure. Here are some things to bear in mind when drafting White.
