Ken looks at eight archetypical hands from StarCityGames readers, and decides what’s mulligan-worthy and what’s not? When should you roll with what you got and when should you send it packing? Ken shows you how, and why!
Okay, I’m sure that Brandon Moore means well – and that I’m sure that in his mind, he really thinks that his 101 Top Multiplayer cards work well. And you know what? They do! But to call these the best of the best is very misleading – and so let me go through his choices, card-by-card, to show you what I think are the best of the best for multiplayer…
Practice makes perfect, so they say. But how to practice… There’s the rub. Is it enough to simply play and play, and play? Or is there more to it, a Holy Grail of knowledge from which we need to drink to truly maximize our potential growth? Is there a measurable gain to be made from plowing through twenty-five games pre-board, twenty-five games post?”Well, I’ve played fifty games, and my Magic Skill-o-meter has notched up another 1.21 gigawatts of talent!” Craig asks what the perfect practice sessions are like, and begs for your vote in the Invitational!
An article so big, it broke the database! John continues his tirade with the final (and top) twenty-five.
Becker goes off on his usual mixture of strategy, issues, and flat-out tirades, discussing Wolfgang Eder’s mistakes at Worlds, why good decks don’t have two-ofs in them, the ethics of concessions, a surprise discussion of Mike Flores’ hidden talents – and, of course, the mandatory Jay-bashing!
This article has three parts: It begins with a discussion of the reason some players find playing rogue decks a moral imperative. The second part looks at the advantages and disadvantages of playing a rogue deck, while the third section looks at the steps necessary to build and tune a rogue deck.
When a card like Savannah Lions – an icon from times past! – is bought back from the wilderness, I always wonder: Is it any good these days? If Mogg Fanatic came back, would we play it (of course – it’s a goblin)? If Serra Angel came back, would we play her? Oh, hang on. She is back… And she doesn’t see much airtime. So is White Weenie any good right now? I took my new White Weenie deck through three iterations, constantly trying to find a way to beat Wake…
My card advantage articles had to assume that only card advantage was important, so you could do the bean counting without getting too confused. However, it’s painfully obvious that card advantage isn’t always the most important thing:
For example, Force of Will trades two cards for an opponent’s spell, yet it’s one of the best blue cards ever printed. So why is Force of Will good? The answer lies in the frequently-misunderstood concept of Tempo.
In between the 2003 Bluegrass Battle and the Origins tourneys exists the unrestriction of Berserk, the explosion of Gro-A-Tog onto the Type One metagame, and the subsequent announcement restricting Gush. This article is going to look at the archetype as it evolved and existed in its variant forms interwoven through three Origins tournament reports. Additionally, for those who aren’t into tournament reports, in the concluding sections of this article, I have some important meanderings on the decision to restrict Gush.
Conventional wisdom says that while forcing a certain deck may work out some of the time, the numbers say that the important cards for the deck will not show up frequently enough to reliably force it. This is simply not so with Goblins in Onslaught draft because of the huge number of cards that the deck can key off of. Cards that aren’t even playable in other decks become powerhouses, simply because they belong to the Goblin tribe. So despite the protests of a couple close friends who have made a good bit of profit off of the Goblins draft strategy on Magic Online, I’m here to share it with you today.
Most people have some idea of what signalling is, but nearly everyone thinks they are bad at it. But on the plus side, it’s one of those areas that you can claim to be bad and still sound good. By acknowledging you are bad at signalling, you are basically saying,”Okay, I suck – but at least I suck at something very cool and mysterious, while the rest of you are busy sucking at ordinary things.” But how do we signal? I looked at four drafts I did, and asked people what colors they had actually wanted me to play, and what the people I had signalled actually did play, all in order to see how it’s done.
Ted gives his usual dose of”strategic excuses to post pictures of scantily-clad women,” discussing Onslaught Block and the futility of his attempts to win at it, and dissecting a recent Roanoke PTQ to see what the field looks like these days.
Due to circumstances beyond our control, Star City Events is unable to host a Mirrodin Prerelease in our usual city… Richmond, VA. But why let a little thing like that stop us? On September 20th, join Sheldon Menery and the rest of the Star City Events team… when, for the first time EVER, we proudly host the Mirrodin Prerelease in beautiful Virginia Beach, VA! Mark your calendars!
NEW! Full information on the Virginia Beach Mirrodin Prerelease is now posted!
Our take on B/W Control has shown the most promise. I find it hard to believe it’s nowhere to be seen among the top-tier Onslaught Block decks. It has all the tools to handle the current Tier I decks – Zombie Bidding, Goblins, MWC, Slide – but I haven’t seen a build that can beat those decks. That doesn’t mean I don’t think such a build exists. In my opinion, the right mix of cards hasn’t been found yet – the archetype is solid. So let’s take a look!
The flavor texts of Ice Age are given new substance in the novel The Eternal Ice. However, unlike The Dark’s novelization, the flavor texts from Ice Age serve in a much more environmental capacity than in a storytelling one. For example, Disa, the Restless has a large role to play in the flavor texts of Ice Age, but no place in the novel – and no real impact on the goings-on of the time period. Alternately, Jaya Ballard has many enjoyable quotes from this set and plays a large role in the story, but the two facets of her existence are not interrelated. Therefore, as usual, The Real Story Behind Ice Age will give further insight into the storyline behind the flavor texts….
