What this article is concerned with is color combinations. If you play a two-color deck, you have ten choices of what two colors to play – some obviously better than others. This article is going to look at the history of Onslaught Block drafting format so far and discuss how each color combination has fared – and then I will look ahead and try to predict which combinations will be the best, and which should be avoided in OLS drafts.
I want to focus on what I feel is the most important aspect to drafting in a three-set format: This concept is called the cut-off. While it is far from a new concept, I believe that in this format it is far more important, as it is the aspect of the draft you can most control, and it will lead to more powerful decks.
Magic players are notorious for complaining about bad luck and wishing that skill was a bigger factor in determining the winner of the game. What’s that old expression?”Be careful what you wish for”? Team Rochester Draft is the most skill-intensive format Magic has to offer. That’s great news if your team is better prepared than the opposing team, and really bad news if you’re not. There are no excuses. If you want the edge (and in this format, it can be a big one), you’re going to have to work for it – and I’ll show you how.
I was working on tweaking U/G to my satisfaction for Regionals, and Brad put together this rogue-ish deck built around the Unholy Triumvirate of Cabal Archon, Rotlung Reanimator, and Withered Wretch. I chuckled at his efforts – after all, didn’t he know about Compost? Compost destroys mono-black decks. I decided to humor him by hauling out U/G against his horribly untuned deck… And got my clock cleaned. Hmm. Maybe this deck has some potential after all.
This article has been in the works with Stephen Menendian, a.k.a. Smmenen, the Paragons’ other law student, for several weeks now, but I wasn’t home mornings (evenings in the United States) because of my law internship. Then Gush got restricted – so hell, we did the games on the last day of my internship, at 2:30 a.m., and with me loaded with tequila from the mini-party with Joey, the other intern. Interesting? Definitely.
My U/G Threshold deck had all sorts of torturous ways to get cards into the ‘yard, including the card-disadvantageous Breakthrough and the non-threatening Hapless Researcher. Not coincidentally, with all of those cards taking up slots that would rather be used to put giant Wurms into play, the deck went 3-3-drop at Regionals. But now, all you have to do is have 1U open when anyone plays a spell, and bingo! Instant threshold… And a lot of freed slots that can make it similar to other U/G builds. And what’s that about a card that might break Extended Tinker?
Certainly something was broken in Growing ‘Tog, and it cannot be denied that the sheer size of its men made so many decks unplayable. If restricting Gush is your solution, though, you have to justify it due to synergy with other cards since it just isn’t that powerful on its own. (The closest analogy is Frantic Search.) The problem, however, is that you have no other alternative except for Psychatog, unless you want to ban Fastbond, which is impossible because Tolarian Academy, Memory Jar and Yawgmoth’s Bargain would have to go first… And it may well be that restricting Gush still doesn’t stop the deck.
Of course, I was prepared to play a normal match, but I got the vibe that things might be a little skewed when he dropped every land in his hand on the first turn and motioned for me to do the same. Then he attacked me with his lands. I took three. I played some guys and passed the turn. He played a Remove Enchantments and said”go.” I attacked with some creature and he played Gaseous Form to block. I complimented him on thinking outside the box.
What began with a heartwarming welcome and a fast start ended with a rude smack in the face. Such is my tale from Regionals ’03 – and it has pictures!
If there’s one thing Magic players hate, it’s landscrew. Both morph and cycling greatly decrease the luck factor involved in Limited Magic, and give drafters plenty of ways to make their deck more versatile in the late and early game respectively. Unfortunately everything cannot be completely good news in terms of set design, and as always, a certain something managed to sneak through the cracks. We’re all overly familiar with this illustrious evil – a piece of cardboard known as Sparksmith.
I envy the little kid. I wish I had that sort of balance in my hobbies. No, for me, Magic has eclipsed all others. Not so the little kid, sunburnt in the summer with red patches obscuring identical freckle fields under his eyes and skin peeling off the top of his ears, buying Fallen Empires packs at the discount price because Thrull Champion is, in his limited but noble domain, the nut high. Tomorrow he will shoot hoops.
Ambush Commander is master of the alpha strike. Instead of throwing all your creatures at your adversary in one last-ditch effort to break through, you’re throwing all your creatures and a good portion of your lands. Both times I’ve seen this in play, it happened to be instant death because its controller also had what amounted to a superpowered Timberwatch Elf; however, the Timberwatch is clearly not necessary to make this card insane. You can even send forests into the red zone if it makes sense from a mathematical perspective.
Little did I realize that I was quitting Magic just in time to miss the Limited format that was most likely to favor my style of play, since my style of play could best be defined as intuitive (or at least that’s the best polite way of describing it). Starting with two unknowns presents a lot of options, and includes the element of gambling and daring to the game… Things which follow intuitive modes of thought rather than simple rationale. And since morph combat is going to be important, I’ll give you a spreadsheet of all the morph creatures and some thoughts on intuition.
The response to the idea of a Magic Writer’s Hall of Fame has been exceptional, and while most everyone has quibbled about who was selected or how the Hall is constructed, in general the feeling for this topic from the public has been that it’s an excellent idea that deserves to happen now. After taking a great deal of advice from all parties concerned, I therefore propose that we back up a bit from the original way I had things laid out, and create the Hall properly.
Dream Halls single-handedly demonstrated how easily a”without paying its mana cost” ability can be abused, as Zvi demonstrated in the old Type II with his infamous monstrosity. Now fast forward to 2003. Dream Halls has long since been restricted, thanks to crazy Time Spirals and other brokenness. In Type I, what can you do with a Dream Halls-esque Storm card and every zero-cost mana artifact and one-mana blue manipulation spell ever printed? You can stand a damn good chance of breaking the format.
