Wayfarer’s Bauble
This card is excellent. It’s a non-Green mana fixer, it’s a much-needed Myr replacement, and it’s perfect for giving that extra counter to your Sunburst cards. Additionally, it’s a one-mana artifact, which means it is enhanced by certain tutor or graveyard-retrieval effects. If you see one of these later than third pick, consider yourself a lucky man. Or woman. Or Ziegler.
The original Visara is still great in multiplayer. In many games, the creature count gets high enough to cut the casting cost. The fact that the Avatar is not a Legend is also useful — I have had three out at once. The Avatar is a good, solid control element — which is the type of game I usually play. In Constructed duels, Visara is almost always better, but in multiplayer, Avatar of Woe rules.
What a time to come back into the game! Star City Games here in Roanoke, VA has started a series of Sunday tournaments, with each week featuring a different format. This past Sunday was my first opportunity to play in a tournament in a long time, but fortunately I was able to participate despite my lack of Darksteel cards. Last Sunday was Ben Bleiweiss’ Deck Challenge, and it was an absolute blast!
Today’s Ask Ken is written by a quality Pro who is not named Lebedowicz, Fabiano, Wagener, or Budde. He is called Herberheezy, and we think you’ll like him.
Before I get started, there’s one important issue to address: Skullclamp. Assume for all the reviews below that Skullclamp is banned on June 1st, 2004 for Standard play. If this is not the case, then discard all opinions below and put Krark-Clan Ironworks, Engineered Explosives, and Steelshaper’s Gift as the playable cards in the set. Heh.
The Magic Invitational is most often described as Magic’s All-Star game, and this year would prove to be no different. Fifteen of Magic’s best players, and Berkowitz, gathered in Los Angeles to fight for the right to design their own card. The E3 Convention proved to be the best back drop for this event, because I never had such a good time at a tournament before.
Screaming Fury
You want screaming fury? How’s this:
Why Are Red’s Commons So Awful?!? Raaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaarg!
Every once in a while I get an idea for an article that I assume is going to get me yelled at. Not by my editor, who doesn’t even yell at me when I make fun of him. I mean by my readers. I think I’ve curbed my arrogance a great deal and I’ve tried to be more friendly, but still, there are always those articles drifting in the back of my head. This is one of those articles. This article is on drafting MD5. MmmDeeFive. Say it outloud with me. Mmm Dee Fiiive!
Metalworker/Trix
If any deck was the big winner in the Fifth Dawn sweepstakes, it was this deck. There are so many cards in Fifth Dawn that have the potential to push this deck over the top that it would be hard to see how this deck couldn’t dominate, were there an Extended season right now. Likely candidates include Staff of Domination, Pentad Prism, Clock of Omens, Krark-Clan Ironworks, Trinket Mage, Artificer’s Intuition, and Roar of Reclamation.
How do you adjust when you are drafting behind a person who will not stay in the colors they are signaling?
In today’s installment of The Magic University, I’m going to take a look at card quality, a concept that is inherently understood by most Magic players, but one that is rarely examined in detail. I’m also going to take a look at a couple of the cards from Fifth Dawn that made Ben Bleiweiss say,”I think we may have the new Urza’s Block on our hands.”
There are some inalienable truths in our world. You have to do laundry. Some day, you will die. White/Blue is the best color combination when an entire block is released. No, it’s true. In every block since Mirage Block, the best deck after all three sets are released is W/U.
Type One – vast wasteland of Magic cards, where over ten years worth of clutter dot the landscape in pockets of Haves and Have Nots. For every Ancestral Recall, there are three Carnival of Souls. Wait, Carnival of Souls is being played in competitive Type One decks now. I meant for every Ancestral Recall, there are three Food Chains. Wait…. Screw it – for every good card in Type One, there’s an equally good card out there just waiting to be broken in the right deck. With the complex interactions between so many different cards there, you’d think there’d be many more viable decks out there than what the current crop of Type One players have come up with so far.
The day before I left Manila, I was surprised to see that Kevin Cron’s daily thread posited that “The Deck” was drifting towards the Exalted Angel-centered aggro-control deck Eon Blue Apocalypse, or EBA. In fact, his message ended, “How many more changes before we start calling it Aggro Control?”
It took awhile to get your Memnarch and a Seedborn Muse out at the same time – but fortunately, your opponents were wasting their removal on all the wrong targets, and now you’re in the clear. They are helpless. You have counterspells in hand to prevent any Fog effects. It’s difficult to prevent the maniacal cackling gurgling up from the back of your throat, since the game is yours…
…Or it would be. If this were normal Magic.
