I love Team Limited. In my opinion, it’s the best format in the game – and I don’t feel that way just because my team has won a Pro Tour and Grand Prix in the format (though I’m sure that has swayed my opinion a bit). Today, I’m going to give you the absolute basics on what to look for in players (Hint: The strongers players you can find might not be the best idea), how to prepare, and how to prepare for the big day.
So what are my opinions of the set, from what I saw (which, based on five rounds, wasn’t much)? I’m not sure. It’s keeping with the Timmy-ness we’ve come to expect from OnBC. But unless Mirrodin keeps with the trend of overpriced creature removal, underpowered hand denial, and neutered counterspells, I don’t know how good most of these cards will be in the full Standard environment.
Any”full spoiler appraisal” information you read anywhere about Scourge Limited will be purely speculative for a few weeks – and while it may help you generate a few ideas about the cards, it will be inconclusive and in some cases quite misleading. And no matter how much you complain, OOL is going to be the format on Magic Online for over a month still, so this is still quite relevant – so let me finish up my Legions review and discuss what notably wrong choices I made in earlier articles.
My original desire to write came from the joy I felt in reading other people’s articles, but I’d never had a meaningful discussion with other people about their writing. All I knew was the BS that roiled about in my head until it became sentences on the screen; what other people went through was a mystery. So I asked the four best writers in the business what they did, and I compiled a Hall of Fame for the best Magic writers everm complete with today’s best writers who haven’t quite made it yet and the writers who’d make it if they wrote more often.
One of the funniest stories from the prerelease was the plight of my fellow Sarnia player Jean-Marc Babin, who, after a strong showing at the Saturday event, stumbled through a disastrous Sunday prerelease that saw him get pounded twice early on and in back-to-back games. After the offending round, he simply walked up to me shaking his head and showing me his scoresheet. The numbers reflected the steady march of his own life total towards zero. The commentary was chilling and succinct:
“Game 1 – Forgotten Ancient turn 4.”
“Game 2 – Forgotten Ancient turn 4.”
As good as the preview art was, I really did not see any card that really struck me as artistically outstanding. Almost all the art seemed at least competent, if not good or even above average, but nothing I saw knocked my socks off. Still, I might as well show you the cards I played with, right?
You will have heard a lot talk about the metagame if you follow Constructed strategy articles – especially lately in the context of Regionals. In fact, the metagame is one of the favorite topics of discussion for Magic theorists, tournament players, and people who want to sound like they are in the know… But what exactly is it? Not many people can actually give a satisfactory definition of the word, and will just mutter something about tier 1 decks and leave it at that. Instead, why not read this helpful introduction?
Three Team CMU members headed down to the prerelease this weekend to kick some butt and take some names… And the three of them all submitted fine reports and reviews to make a very special day at StarCityGames.com. Paul uses his prerelease experience to tell you what cards are better than he thought, why you don’t need to worry about the loss of life from Zombie Cutthroat, and a little-known step in combat that just might be more relevant now thanks to Wing Shards.
This is an account of Day 1 of the two-day extravaganza that was the Pittsburgh Scourge Prerelease – and for those of you who didn’t get to one, a look at a few of the new cards in real play. For those of you who did get to a Prerelease, this may offer some insights about cards you didn’t see (there were plenty I didn’t) or just another perspective. Plus, you get to see the other half of Jeremy’s deck!
We experienced a pure motherlode of Type I tech thanks to Legions and its creatures, so I’m sure you could hardly keep your pants on while awaiting Scourge. But seriously, there’s one card in Scourge that I think is so good that it might have the potential to make it into”The Deck”… And today, I’m going to test it out to see how it works.
Even in multiplayer, Stifle will save your butt. The most promising use I can think of is to counter one of your own activated or triggered abilities. Notably, consider that this ability counters upkeeps and cumulative upkeeps, as well as 187 abilities, morph abilities (obviously), cycling abilities (either the card draw or any triggered abilities, but not both). It will save you from Pernicious Deed, Powder Keg, Strip Mine, creature-based abilities such as Willbender and many others. Most notably, casting this in response to putting Phage the Untouchable into play other than from your hand would, as it currently reads, counters the”you lose the game” clause. Moreover, this can counter the”return to play” trigger on cards like Astral Slide. Can you seriously ask for more?
The environment for this year’s Regionals and Nationals events has likely been the single most diverse Standard season the game has ever seen. In such a spread-out field it was difficult to cover all your bases, but the one thing we all seemed to be able to agree on was that the Tier 1 was pretty clearly composed of three decks: R/G, U/G, and ‘Tog. That, ladies and gentlemen, has come to an abrupt end. Both Wake and MBC have risen to dramatically shake up the old guard, and I’ll show you why Wake has joined the top tier by giving you a guided inside tour of what may be the single best deck in Standard today.
My favorite part of Magic is still the creativity that it takes to build new decks. But something has happened recently: Winning is becoming more important to me. I don’t know what exactly happened to make me feel this way, but whatever it is, I want to win now. And playing your own decks isn’t the way to do this.
Please Note: The following prerelease report contains a bit of drama. It will contain a controversial decision that I made which reduced my chances of finishing with a box, plus a description of what may or may not have been a play error that caused a match loss. I ask your advice and help in the forums.
The title of this article does not make any sense until you get to the portion of the article that’s not even really part of the article. So please bear with me. This week, we’ll be exploring Onslaught red and green cards whose values fluctuate depending on your deck: How many Goblins do you need before you can play Airdrop Condor or Reckless One? How many elves do you need before you can play Wirewood Pride, Voice of the Woods, or Heedless One?
