When I saw a fifty – fifty! – page article cross my desk, I knew that once again Geordie Tait had come through in spades. And if you want the most utterly-exhausting guide to drafting an archetype people once thought dead, Geordie will provide. Tomorrow, he’ll be discussing the Onslaught picks – but if you want to know how and when to go U/R, he tells you in intensely loving detail that reads like a”Dummies” book.
What do Gerard Fabiano, Ed Fear, and most of the Magic-playing community at large have in common? By and large, they have terrible mulliganning habits. I don’t do a lot of things in this game perfectly, but one thing I feel I am awesome at is the Paris Mulligan – so let me show you three guidelines on when to throw back and when to keep, and give you solid examples from both Limited and Constructed games.
Sure, you know Mark Rosewater designs cards… But you only know that because he does all the PR stuff. Meanwhile, behind the scenes, Michael Elliott was the man responsible for shadow, cycling, slivers, licids, growing enchantments, the Rancor bouncing enchantments, echo, rebels and mercenaries, spellshapers, the oaths, fading, the avatars, gating, the en-Kors, the Laccoliths, the Flowstones, madness, the incarnations, amplify, and more…
So we sat him down for a good long interview to ask him why it looks like Wizards is predesigning our decks for us, how he would redesign Magic if he could do it from the ground up, his rivalry with MaRo, and what the most unpublishable mechanic he ever created was!
After years of avoiding it, John’s created a nifty little Oath of Druids-based deck that looks like it might clean house in his multiplayer group. The question: Should he play something so powerful?
Not long after our game was born,
When aggressive decks were looked upon with scorn,
The great Dave P sang of Goblin Might,
And you’ve got to admit – The Price was Right.
But the Day of the Goblins has long since gone,
The slow train of ‘progress’ keeps rumbling on…
Then it pulled to the station of Onslaught Block,
And I’m pleased to report that the Goblins rock.
I’ve been following the procession of articles on how to abuse Mind’s Desire in the current Extended format just in time for Worlds, and the question that keeps coming to mind is: How can people honestly expect to play silly tricks with Snap and Cloud of Faeries and expect the resulting deck to be good?
Full information on all Upper Deck (Yu-Gi-Oh!) events hosted by Star City Events!
The week before GenCon, I had actually played in a Type 1 run by IAmFishMan from TheManaDrain.com. I had gone into it having not played for a month or so beforehand, hoping to have some fun with my Goblin Trenches Keeper. Long story short? I won the tournament and a new Beta Mox Emerald. I was feeling pretty invincible at that point and decided that if I won the World Championships, I would declare dominance over Type 1. Well, as it turns out, I won, but I’m still refusing to declare dominance lest I be viewed as a jackass.
The Ferrett – and quite a number of people – called the World Championships this past weekend a comedy of errors. And the next time StarCityGame covers a big Type I tournament, I’ll make sure to have a bottle of 80-proof brandy beside me before I read. A big bottle.
The deck is solid. I won’t make any wild claims like”it can go at least 50-50 against every deck in the field,” but with the exception of its one nightmare matchup (Zombie Bidding), its chances against any given deck usually fall somewhere between decent and good. If you’re like me and you’d rather go rogue than play what everyone else is expecting – and if there aren’t too many Bidding players in your expected metagame – you could do a lot worse than black-white control for your next Onslaught Block tournament.
This week’s installment is extremely special and personal, and something quite a few readers have made suggestions on. Last week marked the 100th column I’ve submitted to Star City in the last two years (not counting the Deck Parfait analysis that came before I was made a Featured Writer, and the Mark Rosewater spoof right before his Type I column). Instead of celebrating by spoofing the website, I decided to give in and talk a bit about myself and who the heck I am beyond the websites, forums, e-mails and mIRC channels the vast majority of readers encounter me in…. So meet Oscar Tan!
It is clear that Monoblack decks are here to stay in Onslaught Block Limited. The combination of fast aggressive creatures and large amounts of life drain from Shepherd of Rot, Gempalm Polluter, and Vengeful Dead create a very scary combination to play against. Throw this in with the fact that the Black deck can easily splash most bomb rares since it is only one color to begin with and you have one of the top two archetypes in the block to contend with.
Zombies aren’t forgiving towards the unprepared. I can only hope that you’re ready for them.
Since Chaos Magic is the greatest Magic format ever, I easily got eight people ready to rock and roll with a huge game of Chaos that lasted about three hours. (In the end, I managed to get a Masticore and eighty-two mana, kill a player, force two more to concede, and then die to decking, letting me come in second place.) Afterwards, several players were clambering for another Chaos game – but the more experienced players reminded them that there was no way we could play one in the forty minutes left before the store closed. However, the great interest in playing multiplayer showed by many of the Casual Magic regulars got me thinking: Is there a way to make Casual Magic a Chaos format?
The Final Product that Carl played was the result of no less than six active members of the Paragons (with more adding occasional input) debating, testing, and arguing about various elements of Hulk. But how did we develop it, why was it a solid metagame call, and what is the importance of the Paragons?
I feel I am an expert in this field, as I have made all these types of errors several times. I’d like to think that all type of errors fall into these categories, as inspired by Donald Norman’s The Design of Everyday Things… So let me detail them and show you how to avoid them.
