To practice building for this weekend, Mike and I dove into a card pool and built three decks separately from each other. We were both stunned by the depth of the card pool and found it extraordinarily difficult to make cuts within a color. Our solutions were very different, and I think we both understood the approach the other player was taking. I have put all of the cards in alphabetical order by color regardless of set – what would your team do with these cards?
The potential for card advantage exists in all sorts of places when you’re playing Echo Tracer – either by returning an enchanted creature or saving a creature (even itself!) after damage is on the stack. The problem with this card advantage plan, at least in White/Blue, is that you don’t care about being up on cards. As long as you have evasion creatures beating down on your opponent, they could have a hundred cards in their hand, for all you care.
The biggest vote against Seaswift is that there are so many other cards that perform similar functions: Ascending Aven, Mistform Dreamer, Keeneye Aven, Gustcloak Harrier, Dive Bomber, Aven Redeemer, Wingbeat Warrior – and those are just the commons. Whereas Echo Tracer is the only common bounce you will find.
I wasn’t the world’s biggest fan of straight Onslaught drafts. With one color brutally handicapped in all but a single archetype, and another pair of colors unplayable together since they couldn’t handle Visara or Sparksmith, you were looking at a lopsided, bland format. But Legions helps to reverse all that.
Let’s face it: R/G in its current incarnation is a menace, and it will be everywhere at Regionals. IT. MUST. BE. STOPPED!
Actually, that was just me being overdramatic, but the idea has merit. Exactly what do you have to do in order to stop R/G?
How do pros do this all the time? How can they play the same deck over and over and over and over and over without wanting to just pick up a shovel and go ape-friggin’-s**t on the guy sitting across from them? “Tossing a Wonder into the graveyard for your Mongrel, huh? I don’t think so. Why not? Because, if you’ll look to your right, you’ll see that I just set your entire graveyard on fire, you piece of flying wurm dung! BWAH-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA!”
How do U/R decks win? Sometimes the cards just go on autopilot, moreso than with any other color combination. When the cards come your way, you’ll find yourself stealing wins with a second-turn Sparksmith or fourth-turn Mistform Wall with Lavamancer’s Skill. Let me give you some advice to go by – it might help you improve your game with regards to this color combo.
I’m going to try something different; I’m going to try to go through my deck construction process in steps, as it occurs. Usually, I come up with an idea, then refine it while showering or driving or whatever. This time, I want to try noting the ideas and steps when they occur… And my main idea is killing with Pestilence.
Okay, I promise this will be a short grouse this time. That promise may or may not turn out to be a filthy lie, depending upon how worked up I get…
I realize that asking players to prepare for two similar things is very unfair. In school, I am sure none of you are forced to take, say, two related classes at the same time. Calculus and Chemistry? Probability and Statistics? That would be crazy! Give me a break.
Poor poor Masters players…
There is a simple principle that applies to Magic – and so many people ignore or forget this principle that I find it astounding. Remembering and following this principle will improve your Limited game a good deal – so what is it?
In our local Sunday tournaments over the past five weeks, I’ve been on a bit of a tear, making it to the finals all five times to split the big money prize. One of the decks that I played during this successful stint was a B/G Oversold Cemetery deck that dropped an accelerated Braids, Cabal Minion to get a quick lock on the opponent. The deck also sported more synergy than any deck I had played in months, and I quickly became enamored with it. How could I make the deck better? How could I shore up its weaknesses? What were its bad matchups?
Pugg Fuggly bombed out in the first round of an online draft… But he listed the possible picks and the cards he actually chose, allowing us to trace the path of his three-pack loss. My job is to appraise what he did masterfully, what was all right, and what he could have done better.
This deck is a mid-to-early late game beatdown deck. The strategy of this deck is to survive the first few turns, laying down a few creature-improving enchantments and playing the angels. Pumped, non-tapping angels combined with the nifty effects of Exalted and Blinding Angels will let you attack with less fear of retribution. What are the strengths of this deck? And will it work?
Wizards pointed Type I players to Illusionary Mask when they introduced Morph trigger creatures. Building a deck around Mask, though, requires a bit of work, and you need to Mask out a really good creature to make all that worth it. So far, the standard is set by Phyrexian Dreadnought, and it’s a very tough one.
