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.
Thinking about the coffee is taking my mind off my son, who seems to be coming down with the flu. He was up and down all night coughing and crying. Consequently, so was I. His mother insisted I go play this morning. I’m probably not in the best frame of mind for Magic, but I have been looking forward to this tournament. For the umpteenth time I check my cell phone to make sure it is on in case she calls.
That’s when the squirrel jumps out from nowhere.
Its red carpet may not be very glamorous, but here at the Type Two (Tolarian) Academy Awards, the mechanics are certainly divas this year. Brash and beautifully broken, they’re ready to strut their stuff and do their best to please you, the Type Two player. Hey, was that Madness that just walked by? Er… I, your red carpet rover, am here to announce this year’s nominees for Most Broken Mechanic.
Has there been a more apt moniker for a deck than Red Deck Wins? It’s like the flavor text for Goblin Offensive – a perfect fit. All it does is lay a few creatures, lock down your land for a turn or two and beat you about the head and shoulders until dead. In the Extended environment before Pro Tour: New Orleans, this is what passed for”blazing speed.” Then came New Orleans, and suddenly, a deck capable of a turn 4 kill was”too slow.”
Thankfully, the format came to its senses as 21% of the Day 2 participants in Anaheim were running some form of the deck…
To paraphrase George Santayana, those who do not learn from the past are condemned to repeat it.
If so, let’s hope Mark Rosewater didn’t get a life sentence.
Mirrodin R/G is the rich, popular, athletic kid in school. It has everything anyone could ever want and more. Giant, high-quality monsters? Check. A preposterous amount of artifact removal? Check. A smattering of creature removal? Check. The best rare and common in the set? Check.
So why would anyone want to play anything other than R/G?
David Price once said”there are no wrong threats, only wrong answers.” That’s true in duels, but not always true in multiplayer. If you don’t believe me, try casting a quick Sneak Attack in a big game. Unless you have a great hand and mana free, that is the wrong threat, because everyone at the table will be coming straight for you.
In multiplayer games, slow but steady is often better than attracting attention. Build up a solid position, deploy your forces, and then strike with your secret weapon. Of course, your opponents will be trying to deploy their secret weapons as well. You may get lucky, get yours off first and win the game. But if you don’t, you need an answer to their secret weapons…
I was looking forward to Extended Season, perhaps breaking out some old favorite from last year, or a build that did well at Worlds. New Orleans changed all that. I’m going to enjoy this Holiday treat that ends January 1st and I hope you will too. People have complained loudly about the format, and now they have their wish. Take advantage of the opportunity to play with some disgusting decks in a competitive environment before the bannings take effect.
Today’s feature demonstrates an updated but still skeletal version of Suicide Black, to illustrate how the”modern” deck plays. The only truly modern development incorporated at this point is the obvious substitution of Chalice of the Void for Null Rod, so we don’t take in the changes all at once, and to better appreciate the latest post-Mirrodin tech.
