Most combo decks don’t do well in multiplayer for two reasons. Firstly, they get you bashed around next game, unless it’s a small group, and you can survive one player to get the combo out again. Related to that is that it’s hard to get the combo off multiple times. Donate-Illusions of Grandeur is kinda tough to do the second time. Pray to God that you can pull it off a third.
“I figured since most of the legal cards are from far before I started playing, I should stand on the shoulders of giants this time around.”
“So what giants did you stand on the shoulders of?”
“The French.”
“Bold choice, man.”
The testing results are in… And lo and behold, changes need to be made! What problems did you note with StarCity Beats – and hopefully corrected in StarCity Beats 2.0?
This past weekend, the StarCityGames.com crew busted their butts to bring you New Orleans live, as it happened! The best match coverage around awaits! Click here to view all of the coverage… or just check out the top 64 decklists!
I received a number of drafts that needed analyzing. Unfortunately, I can only do one at a time if I wanna do ’em right, so we might as well start with one of the more interesting ones I received… A draft where someone got lured away by powerful cards that left him relying on luck to salvage his mana base.
The match had been perfect for StarCityGames coverage; Laura Mills, former writer for StarCity, was up against Elliot Fertik – a sporadic writer for StarCity. Two internet writers, from rival sites, going head to head in Round 2? How could you miss it? Includes a tremendous error, done twice in a row!
Eight damage smashed across the table to crush Jeff. Still on the fifth turn, Rofellos and Cradle poured a waterfall of mana into Ostrovich’s pool, summoning another Hermit, a Ravenous Baloth, a Call of the Herd, a Slate of Ancestry, and… Oh hell. It was over.
Baby Huey looked over at EDT, energy sparking from his eyes. After all, he and EDT both sat on the same side of the Feature Match table, facing off against Kastle and Dougherty.”Come on, EDT, we gotta take these Your Movers down!”
EDT smiled wearily.”I intend to,” he replied quietly.
After decks that were predominantly Red featured so strongly in the last Grand Prix Top 8 at Reims, you would expect Red to make a strong return engagement in New Orleans – especially as the folks with three byes stepped into the fray. So where did Sligh go to?
The card in question this time is Screeching Buzzard. My dilemma with this card, which I discovered while doing a Rochester Draft at CMU: Rachel took a Buzzard over a Severed Legion, and it was unanimously decided that this was a mistake. A little later, I stopped to think. Was this such a bad pick? I brought up the idea to Crosby that perhaps this was not such an error.
When I asked a fellow player recently,”Do you mind if I play you with a totally broken deck that’s illegal in all formats?” he was intrigued and said no. When he saw that it wasn’t High Tide or Replenish, he was even more interested – and I got to show him the joy of complete and utter insanity.
That seems to be the issue at this point, doesn’t it? How do casual groups, which tend by nature to be fluid and harder to define, decide how to be rigid and strict? How does a diverse group decide on a simple, solid guideline? The answer’s pretty simple: They can’t. And you can’t save everyone from bad deckbuilding.
TnT crushes The Deck. And all I had was five lands, a Brainstorm, and a Mana Drain, a very weak hand; my opponent had a God hand for a deck that should crush me. What did he do wrong? Also, for the first time ever on StarCity, the complete and unedited INVINCIBLE COUNTER-TROLL!
Let’s discuss the dearly departed and the new arrivals of Magic, and see what happened. What were the issues that pushed your hot buttons in 2002?
Odyssey Block was great. It was the block that made me realize that the folks at Wizards R&D are extremely creative people. They may never run out of ideas. As a matter of fact, it kind of reminds me of Urza’s block. Urza’s block was SO full of good stuff that we STILL can’t find the bottom of it.
