Yo, I’m Craig, and I’m a card-playing wizard,
Beating you up with my mono-white blizzard,
Throwing superior skill in your face,
Winning the gold in the Human Race,
Mono-white rapping like Vanilla Ice,
You wanna do well? Here’s my advice:
Swing with men and dish out defeat!
Play White Weenie, it’s the deck to beat!
In my last article, I built three sample Sealed decks – and I promised that I would playtest and offer any insights gleaned. I received two rebuilds of the third deck I presented… And so I went back and played ten games each against a God deck to see which builds were optimal!
Welcome to my fiftieth article for StarCityGames! I have been a Featured Writer for this site for a little over a year now, and I thought that I’d do something special for this article. I was reading through Mark Rosewater’s article on how Mirrodin is supposed to be an open-ended set when my article idea hit me – one combo for every article published. Fifty Mirrodin combos, some with really old cards!
In order to keep the abusive”Chrome Mox, Scepter, imprint Boomerang” lock in the deck, we’re going to have to play Blue. I’m fairly sure that Blue won’t be good enough on it’s own as it has no mass removal, and can’t really deal with threats apart from bouncing them. Given the spells we can use, I’m going to outline three decks: U/W, U/R, and U/B. We’ll test each build against Goblins and Mono Black Control to see whether each can handle aggro and control….
Nick Eisel says:”Even if you don’t play Vintage, reading Stephen’s articles will arouse your brain and get you involved instead of the usual zombie-like state that is achieved after reading another mundane Magic article. The format he uses to get this information into that mode of thinking is superb and I’d personally like to compliment him.” And given that Nick’s such a fan, shouldn’t you take a look at the third installment of how to play a deck that’s so fast that games only go to turn 4 once in every twenty games?
The hum of the fan is heavy in my ears, but there’s nothing stirring besides the air. The other occupants of the house are at rest, and the manner in which they arrived at that state of calm varies from person to person. Nate Heiss is comatose out on the front porch, trying to shake off a brutal drinking game session that concluded with a double-upchuck as the grand finale. Josh Rider is laid out on the floor in Mike’s room with his eyes rolled back into his head. It would take nitroglycerin suppositories to move him from that spot. Jeremy Darling is now flat on his face on the small couch, a stark contrast to his robust activities for the last two hours – namely, sitting on the back porch trying not to succumb to alcohol poisoning. Poor guy. Two hours of good times, two hours of trying to coax your body to leave you a functioning liver. Liquor is a harsh mistress.
I opened my fair share of good cards from the set and was able to build a nice W/R artifact deck – but you have probably already guessed that it was the Leonin Skyhunter that really caught my eye. The last time I remember opening a prerelease flying bear was Gaea’s Skyfolk – another personal favorite of mine from Apocalypse. Nothing beats a 2/2 flier for two******, but maybe that’s just me. What makes the Leonin Skyhunter all the better is that it is the work of the artist Kev Walker. He has been creating fantastic Magic art for some time now, and I’ll have to admit, he’s my current favorite. With this card, he proves once again that he is at the top of his game.
It’s that time again! A new expansion, a new set of flavor texts… And a new look at how the flavor texts on the new Mirrodin cards relate to the official backstory! Listen carefully as Daniel tells you what these strange and wondrous quotes actually mean!
What I’m talking about are the intangibles of winning. These are the things that can turn a good player into a great player, or a mediocre pool of cards into a winning Sealed deck, even if it is for just the space of one tournament. They are things that you cannot judge from a player’s Limited Rating or the Pro Tour point total of their playtesting group. I have chosen the three that I have deemed the most central to my victory at the PTQ.
Mirrodin looks to alter the face of Standard more than any other incoming set. The set is chock full of artifacts. It is also chock-full of fun combos. Some of these combos are getting talk as serious Standard contenders; others are, at best, Tier Two, reserved only for casual and Limited environments. But what are the coolest fifteen?
I’ve been playing around with decks built around Isochron Scepter, which may be almost Flametongue Kavu broken – the unusual uncommon you’d trade a good rare for – or just tantalizingly almost-broken. In Standard, it has been pointed out that you have the potential for a hideously broken combo with a first-turn land, Chrome Mox, Isochron Scepter, and Boomerang. The odds of getting that five-card combo in your opening hand are about 1.7%. Not good odds… But I like the concept.
I set out to break two cards – Timesifter and Soul Foundry – with one deck. The deck worked, and worked well, mainly because of some synergistic effects. The deck could win by taking infinite turns, while removing the opponent’s libraries from the game. It could also control the board or smash face with a variety of creatures.
Well, my last column opened a can of worms about Chalice of the Void and the future of Vintage – and letters are still coming in! Let me answer your questions and concerns.
Artifacts – arguably the hardest cards to design – are plentiful in this set, and there are tons of new and innovative ones just waiting to be broken. This set, however, had so many artifacts, I’ve split them into two categories: Color-enhanced and color-independent. The latter kind is included here; the former will be in the next and final installation. Once again, I’m not going to waste my time with ho-hum or obvious cards, so here we go!
In essence, Shared Fate reads:”Switch decks with your opponent; you have no maximum hand size and cannot lose to decking.” How does this win you the game? The key to victory is having exactly zero victory conditions in your deck. That’s right – no creatures, no spells that might accidentally kill someone, nada, nothing. Call yourself a pacifist for the day. The trick is that even though your deck has no way to win, when you switch it with your opponent, that means he has no way to win!
