we have been building three decks along through this series in order to give you an idea of how the steps work: By now, we should have a healthy decklist, with only twenty to forty spaces left for non-mana cards. How do we fill in the gaps and prepare for the next stage of creating a mana base?
If you look hard enough, you can find almost any Magic spell replicated in the form of a 187 creature. These creatures are generally pretty good in duels, but are often even better in multiplayer. A good spell that leaves a chump blocker is almost always superior to a good spell on its own, so let me list the best ones for you and give you an overview.
Want the scoop on Extended? StarCity’s got the inside track! First of all, read Rob Dougherty’s article on how he developed the Reanimator deck that got him second place at Pro Tour Houston – why he abandoned the Zombie Infestation plan, what cards he tried in it that didn’t work, why he wanted the transformational sideboard, and how Dave Humpherys’ gave him the two cards that pushed it over the top.
“The Deck” players everywhere are looking at Polluted Delta and Flooded Strand and scratching their heads. It’s not a question of whether or not to use the fetchlands, but how… And years’ worth of mana-tuning intuition is suddenly out the window.
Kurt Hahn had this to say about Tim:”The man is a money-drafter, so he knows what he’s talking about, and tells you. The only person on StarCity worth reading is a skinny kid from Ohio, but listen to him and your drafts can’t help but improve.” And hell, you wanna know the basics of money drafting? Tim’s gone toe-to-toe with guys like Baby Huey, PTR, Ed Fear, Ken Hsuing, Mike Turian, Alex Borteh, Chris Benafel, and Bob Maher… And occasionally comes out in the black. So listen to the man, willya?
I want to tell you about two multiplayer decks that work well: One’s mono-black, and one’s G/W/R. The mono-black deck won nearly every one of the half-dozen or so games I played it in, which is pretty good for a multiplayer deck – especially once people started gunning for it.
This week, I thought it would be cool to do a sort of”looking over my shoulder” perspective during one of my drafts. I wrote down the relevant cards in each pack, and discuss my thought process as I create a solid draft deck.
Being the lazy person that I am, and since I was playing the exact same deck that Cash won States with, I just handed in a copy of his decklist, which I had printed out from StarCity the night before.
My apologies to all people whose names I forgot, but all I have to work with here is my scoresheet. I didn’t take notes since I was only writing a report if I won – and I didn’t plan on winning after the outcome of the first match.
What are the core cards of the new decks? Which decks didn’t place in the Top 8, but did surprisingly well anyway? Where does the new Extended fall on the metagame clock? Lots of questions, lots of answers.
Since I switched to StarCity (Our Motto: No Matter What Your Rating Is, You’re Better Than at Least One of Our Writers), I have seen a huge increase in my e-mail. I’m pretty sure that it’s mostly due to spam-bots, since these e-mails typically offer genital herbal enhancement (“Be the envy of all your friends!”), dating services (“Meet desperate, usually-single women in your area!”), and easy money (“Yo, Chris, it’s your cousin Vito again. Call me on the safe phone”). Still, I’d better answer ’em.
1800 Or Bust, nothing – Jim’s on a quest to bash the Bath Invitational this time, and his mission is to break the Peasant Magic metagame wide open. Can you help him in his quest as he goes after it with the same zeal that he hits Standard with?
Legends, on the whole, make no sense. Okay, for a second here, just picture Kamahl, Fist of Krosa killing Kamahl, Pit Fighter. All right – shouldn’t this open up some sort of space time paradox wormhole which immediately blows Fist of Krosa boy up and sprays some sort of meaty goo around the room?
Pick orders are a thing of fluctuation – they are not a Bible of absolute truth that you live by, but rather a page in your mind’s notebook that you can refer back to during a draft. The more pages full of knowledge in your notebook, the better you’re gonna do on the test – or in this case, the draft. That said, these are the top 5 commons for each color in overall value… And if there is no specific need to accommodate some aspect of your deck that is lacking, this is the order that you should pick them in.
Let me focus on what Onslaught brought to the Extended party. Was it champagne and caviar, or Night Train and pork rinds? Which cards got the most play, and in what decks?
I saw an article on Mask decks last week, and I wanted to talk about it – strategies for dealing with Mask, a discussion on whether Mask is a combo deck, and alternate mana bases and color configurations for it.
