Our second challenger for the Battle Royale crown is our man in Japan, Eli Kaplan. As a teacher, it is safe to say that Eli is probably ready to impart some “old school” wisdom into the Battle framework… What will he do with his twenty-five bucks?
As Rich Hoaen abdicated the Battle Royale crown, we have two new contenders today! The first? Bennie Smith. Can you guess what he’s bringing to the table? Let’s face it, everyone knew it would be a dredge deck… but is it enough to go all the way?
Blisterguy takes on the Extended scene (sadly without corresponding Magic Online Premier Events), and presents a couple of lists for our perusal. He also shares the current marketplace prices for Time Spiral cards, for those looking to improve their electronic collections.
If time has shown me one thing, it’s that I can identify a crap deck with relative ease, because I’m often stupid enough to put them together to see if they play. I’ve tried the Ratcatcher Deck, I’ve tried the Bombshell deck, and I even tried the Brooding Swallow. They’re not that good, but they are cheap.
After Chris’s revelation that From Right Field will be “abandoning” its budget roots for future articles, the forums made their thoughts abundantly clear. Chris responds to the detractors… so where does it leave us?
While I was scrambling for a deck, several of my testing partners were making a big fuss about Glare being good again. As I had seen the Glare list before and liked it, I figured it had some merit and I had enough cards to at least try it, so I worked with their list that already had Spectral Force/Scryb Ranger and tested it against the gauntlet to very positive results.
Limited expert Nick Eisel turns his eye to the Standard metagame, bringing us a tasty Life from the Loam / Stormbind deck that has definite power and potential. While Standard is currently packed with a number of strong strategies, and all manner of decks can mix it up on the top tables, there is no denying that Time Sprial brings a plethora of untapped power to the format. Want the edge in your next Standard tournament? Then read on…
You will knock over liquor stores and leave cars full of empty cardboard boxes on bridges and in tunnels. You will jump the turnstile in the subway and run past security at the check-in counter. You will throw red paint on granite lions and draw your fingers through wet cement, noticed but never, ever, caught. You will steal the glasses off the nose of the local librarian and pour water in the sixth grade teacher’s potato chips. You will do anything — anything — that you possibly can, make every noise and exaggerate every motion, to distract the authority figures from what is really going on. You need time, and to get that time, you need them not to kill you. All war is deception, even this one. You will be a cardboard ninja and a digital assassin, distracting the enemy from anything that matters with everything that doesn’t. And when you’re done, when you’re spent to your last card, and his mana is tapped even though he’s convinced that he’s won, you’ll tap out Hellbent, point and click, and he’ll go down muttering about how lucky you were to topdeck.
Put simply, you will learn the most important lesson you possibly can in the quest for dominating a game of Magic – no lies!
States didn’t go so well for me this year; just your standard 2-2 drop filled with your standard play errors and your standard deckbuilding mistakes. Some interesting stuff did happen which caused me to re-assess my mental game, and I may write about that at a later point, but for now I bet you’d like to hear about someone doing well at States. Thank goodness for Sean Vandover.
Jeroen Remie, two-time Battle Royale champion, took a leaf from the Holy Book of Wakefield for this current round of play. Cards? 62. Lands? 26. Fat monsters, removal, and fun. Was it enough to bring down the grumpiest player on the Pro Tour? You’ll have to read the article to find out…
Richie took his honed Angel control deck and threw it squarely in the face of our champion Jeroen Remie. Would the stronger strategy and critical mass of destruction spells ruin Heroin’s day? Read on to find out!
Evan continues his excellent series of video articles with an examination of the various advantages that can be gained through a dedicated deck strategy. There’s card advantage, creature advantage, resource advantage… and if that’s not all, he shares a tricky Time Spiral Sealed pool for us all to play along at home.
Blisterguy has cashed his sixth place Nationals finish into a trip to Paris for Worlds, and he’s on the lookout for Standard and Extended tech! Unfortunately, Magic Online can’t help him this week… still, there’s always the joy of the pineapple-inducing Price Guides to keep him busy.
Ben has decided to play along with the Great Designer Search from MagicTheGathering.com. *DISCLAIMER* If you are a Wizards of the Coast employee, Ben gives you full legal permission to use any of the ideas and cards contained in this article.
While my record at Champs this year would indicate otherwise (2-3-3… yes, three draws!), I actually took away some positive vibes from the tournament. At first I was pissed – pissed at myself for not just buckling down and going with my first deck choice, and pissed at Wizards for making an environment that seemed overly stuffed with counter/Wrath decks.
