If there is one mistake that rookie deckbuilders make on a regular basis, it’s trying to include as many cards on the restricted list as possible in their decks. This might not be a bad idea if cards were placed there solely because they were so overwhelmingly powerful that every deck should play them…. But the problem is that decks were built around these cards. Your deck isn’t that deck.
While some people may have the brightest yard decorations in the neighborhood (requiring the police to stop by and make them shut down every night at 10 p.m. or risk a fine) and others make 132 dozen cookies, I get to write about a Magic deck that is inspired by Christmas carols and Christmas folklore. Yep – my annual Magic deck based on Christmas carols. And I always make sure that it’s Standard-legal. Merry Christmas!
Home for the holidays? Looking to discuss Magic? Check out the StarCityGames.com Forums! Here’s a few examples of the what’s currently being discussed…
1. Ever wished you had a direct pipeline into the mind of a Pro player? Join Your Move Games founder, Rob Dougherty, as he works with the StarCityGames.com forums community in order to design a competitive Extended deck!
2. Deconstruct”The Rock” – Most of the cards within the Rock are a given… 4 Yavimaya Elder, 4 Pernicious Deed, 4 Duress, etc… but it’s those last couple of cards that can make the difference between winning or losing. Spike Feeder vs. Ravenous Baloth… who makes the cut in YOUR version?
Register… and share YOUR thoughts with the community!
2002 was possibly the most eventful year in recent Type I history, and everything that people expected to happen in 2001 instead happened in 2002. How did it change the Vintage scene… And, of course, The Deck?
Spitting Gourna
What am I supposed to write here? Okay, five mana, 3/4, blocks flying creatures! It’s like creativity has me inspired me so far as to poop in my mouth! Remember that if you can’t pay GG, you can play G through the morph cost to flip it over! And you can surprise your opponent’s fliers by morphing it during combat!
Morph creatures… surprising people? That’s never happened before! I swear! It wasn’t the theme of the whole freaking set, now was it?
Writing about a tournament where you win or nearly win is easy. Each game is a triumphant record of card choices, each match a tribute to your playing and deck building skill. Writing about a tourney where you come twelfth of sixteen is a hell of a lot more difficult. I’ll give it a go, though, as I know some of you out there want to know how three rounds of Standard, three rounds of Peasant Magic and a knockout 5-Color magic tournament works out.
A word of caution: Playing this deck will require the use of very large numbers of counters, both for your creatures and for all tapped permanents. People will hate it, unless you provide something like peanut M&M’s. Or quarters. People really like quarters.
I have, lately, been watching some of the internet conversations that have been going on – and came up with a few new ideas. The following topics, in my opinion, are of a highly urgent nature, and not surrounded with enough speculation.
Several teams tried breaking the card, but none could build a consistent enough deck to go along with the artifact. Other players asked, on the day of Pro Tour Houston,”isn’t that card banned?” (It isn’t.) So why, at a time when Astroglide decks were burning up States, did not one cycling-centered deck appear at Houston?
Word-O-Meter: 1300/11900 words (11% complete)
Nick Eisel fails to recognize the dual nature of the Elf and Green in general when he says that”Elvish Warrior is hosed by two morph creatures,” and thus disputes my entire theory of tempo in Onslaught Limited… And Nick is not alone. News flash: Green is the control color in this set.
A week or so back, Jon Mattison posted a Phantoms deck to one of the my email lists. I had been looking for a deck to play myself for a casual play session, since I had promised not to use anything with an infinite combo or anything too game-controlling…. And Phantoms looked interesting enough to spend some time thinking about.
In last week’s article, I gave you guys a untested deck I designed and asked you to playtest it, using the feedback option to let me know what you have learned in StarCity’s forums. As of the time this article was written, such feedback was only starting – but I realized that I’m thinking of a process that’s more involved than most people’s concepts of playtesting. I decided that for this week’s article, I would share my ideas on playtesting so you can get crackin’!
This has been some time in coming, hasn’t it? Many thought that I wouldn’t get this done – but here it is, in all its glory. Be prepared for a long, long ride into the journey that is Pro Tour Houston, the new Extended, Ben Bleiweiss, and a bunch of cards with white mana in their casting cost… And we’ll be looking at who finished what, and where, before I start in on Monday.
Last week, Oscar looked at twenty of the best Vintage decks to see whether he could afford to cut Vampiric Tutor; this week, turning towards Cunning Wish targets, he looks at all of the viable instants that can be fetched with Cunning Wish in an attempt to build his sideboard.
PT level decks are NASCAR-caliber stockcars, custom-built from the ground up and tuned to a perfect pitch. Casual decks are more akin to normal, civilian transportation – but even a ’73 Nova can benefit from a tune-up and a pair of fuzzy dice. In that spirit, here are ten things that will help every deck you build.
