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Fun With Old Cards #13 The Wonders Of The Bazaar

When Bazaar of Wonders comes into play, it removes all graveyards from the game, and it counters any future spell having the same name as a card in play or in the graveyard. This has always been a pretty powerful card if you can break its symmetry, as it can single-handedly shut down up to three-quarters of the spells in many opponent’s decks and is particularly brutal against combo-style decks. With the invention of Flashback, Morph, and the Wish cycle from Judgement, I take it upon myself to inform you that this card is now officially”Bah-roken”!

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You CAN Play Type I #112: The Control Player’s Bible, Part XXXVI: Head to Head: Classic Suicide Black

Since the printing of Hymn to Tourach (and its eerie wolf-head art), Discard has been Black’s most prominent mechanic. The reactive Blue counterspells can be used in both control and aggro-control deck structures, and the same goes for proactive Black Discard. You have to distinguish Black aggro-control, for example, from more control-oriented strategies such as Pox and Nether Void. In the same way, you distinguish the feel of Tempest-Urza’s Saga-era Type II Suicide Black decks from what you called Type II Mono Black Control.

I’d like to begin my demonstration of Black-based aggro-control, however, with the original”old school” Suicide builds, the kind that was played against”The Deck” and mono Blue back when Fact or Fiction was still unrestricted. These decks featured the simple skeleton of beatdown, discard, and mana denial, and today’s more complicated blends are best understood with the classic foundations.

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Sullivan Library: Oops! I Win!

He’s back! One-time Dojo columnist and original rogue deckmaster Adrian Sullivan makes his triumphant return to StarCityGames.com and the Magic writing community. For those of you who’ve never read Adrian before, you can always count on him to provide honest opinions that often cut against the grain of conventional wisdom. In his inaugural column, Adrian tells you how he ended up with a rogue Red deck for Wisconsin States, discusses his play mistakes, and gives advice to those of you looking to take his deck for a spin.

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Mirrodin Draft Archetypes: R/B

Drafting R/B, as always, is a gamble. You can end up with some of the best decks possible in the format, with a good creature base and plenty of varied removal, or the cards might not be there and the pile in front of you contains multiple Necrogen Spellbombs and other filler. More commonly, an improperly-drafted R/B deck will end up with plenty of removal and no creatures – or, less frequently, plenty of bad creatures and little or no removal. Maintaining a balance between drafting removal first and making sure that you have enough threats can be very tricky.

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Does The Clock Really Kill On Turn 3? Why, Yes It Does!

Nice to meet you; I’m Yann Hamon. I have had recent successes on the Pro Tour circuit, playing at Grand Prix: London, Grand Prix: Lyon and Pro Tour: New Orleans, finishing second, first, and third, which is not too bad. Consequently, my composite rating is actually over 2150, and I’m ranked second in the world. Also, I was the second half of the Labarre concession controversy.

I’m going to tell you this story and other interesting ones (at least I hope so) in my report. The report may also contain useful information for your Extended PTQ season – at least until Wizards finally decides to ban some cards and change the format.

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Building Your First Five, Volume Eight: Streamlining An Average Deck

A short while ago, a gentleman posted his Five-Color deck online in the Five-Color Forums. This gentleman, who went by the screen name of Arbiter, posted his deck in the hopes that someone would give him suggestions, ideas, and comments…. But he didn’t have a lot of flashy rares to work with. And that was an interesting challenge: How do you make a solid Five-Color deck when you don’t have an unlimited card pool to work with?

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The Schizophrenic Archetype: U/w and W/u In Mirrodin Draft, And Why You Should Know The Difference

Drafting Mirrodin requires careful consideration to build the best deck. Though you should usually take the best card in your first pick in pack one, decisions get quite interesting from there. For example, there are two archetypes within the Blue and White color combination – both of them attempt to do the same thing, and yet they behave very differently. What are these two decks, and where do their strategies for the win diverge?

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The Aether Spellbomb Dilemma: Spellbomb!

Each week Ken and I discuss our pick orders with one another before we write these articles. For Blue, our lists diverged by a good deal. Once again, we only included on-color artifacts and Blue cards in the list, and the two biggest disagreements we had were Aether Spellbomb versus Regress and Annul versus Wizard Replica.

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The Aether Spellbomb Dilemma: Regress!

It would seem to many of you that I like a challenge. Almost without fail, my card valuations go against conventional wisdom. I assure you I do not take on these cards as a chore. I don’t do it because I lost the coin flip. I don’t do it to make a scene. I do it because I am of the firm belief that I am right. Usually, I am.

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The Comprehensive 8th Edition Draft Review: Black

Welcome to the first of a series of six articles on 8th Edition drafting. Very little has been written on this topic, even though it is being drafted a hell of a lot on Magic Online right now. Kai Budde wrote a primer for 8th Edition Draft on Sideboard a couple of months ago, but I don’t recall ever seeing a comprehensive guide to draft picks in 8th Edition, so I have taken it upon myself to write one. This article will evaluate every card in the set from a draft perspective as well as giving some general info on each color. We’ll start with Black.

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My Opinion on the State of States

You know, year after year I would march to the tune that States should mean more. A few months after the euphoria had died down from winning States in 1999, it hit home that winning really didn’t mean anything. There were few pros playing, so I wasn’t truly the best player in the State that day. I didn’t get an invite or byes to some higher-level premier event. I had a plaque and a bag and a modicum of satisfaction that I was no longer considered a complete scrub by the more competitive players out there, but that was it. I mean, you still have to play fairly decent Magic to win one of these things, so do something to make it matter.

This year, I changed my mind.

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“Best Champs Report”… and the Winner Is…???

Due to our receiving WAY more Champs reports than expected, it’s taken us some time to get caught up. But now that we finally have, we’re proud to announce the grand prize winner of our”Best Champs Report” contest! Without any further ado, StarCityGames.com would like to congratulate John Upton for his report, “Help Name My Janky Second-Place Deck!”. Within a few short weeks, John has won a Pro Tour Qualifier, placed second at his State Championship and written two excellent tournament reports… one of which just won our contest. Talk about being”on a roll”…

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Learn How To Sideboard, Dammit!

For the love of all things holy, ladies and gentlemen of the Magic community – if you want to get better at this game, you have to realize one important thing, and that is that somewhere in the area of 60% of all games of Magic are played with sideboards in… And it’s where most of you lose your games. So listen to me carefully: I have some rules for you to follow. They’re numbered. All you need to do is follow instructions. Trust the Tait.

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The JSS Money Machine Is Dead – Long Live The Pro Tour! (New Orleans Report, *60th Place*)

When I got my email from Wizards telling me that I had qualified for Pro Tour: New Orleans on rating, I had a decision to make. If I tried my hand at the Pro Tour, I’d be throwing away two more years of Free Money Championships – most people call them the JSS champs, but I prefer Free Money. I won’t lie; playing eight rounds against kids and getting $1,000 to show for it is nice, but it was getting pretty boring. Since many of my friends were also qualified, I chose to go to New Orleans and play for the glory.

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You CAN Play Type I #111: Maximizing Mirrodin Part VI – Blue, Black, and Red Creatures

You have to admit that War Elemental is one of the spoiler entries that immediately catches your eye. You’re tempted to do some mental weighing. You can just attack with your first-turn creature or fire off an extra Lightning Bolt like a cumbersome Chain Lightning, then every other burn spell in your hand deals at least twice its damage. Normally, its triple-Red, three-mana cost would be enough to merit it just a passing comment, but things have changed with Chalice of the Void… So is War Elemental better and does it raise the value of the three-slot in Type I?

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