The Planeswalker's Stronghold

So Fall has come around, and along with the cool weather is the annual rotation. So Zendikar has rotated out of, wait what do you call it, oh yeah Standard. The good news is, this has next to no impact on me at all. I've slowly come to the realization that Standard just holds no interest for me, so I've written it off completely. I've been toying with the ideas of waiting until after the Standard rotation of a set before even really worrying about picking up any new rares or mythics for my casual deck. This should allow me to miss out on all the Standard price inflation, and pick up some much better values on the cards. Secondly, I should have a much better idea of what cards I really want, and cut back on things that end up in the bulk sell bin before they are even used. When I go back over my notes from Zendikar block, I find that my initial lists are much larger then what I really want now. So what is there on my acquire list for the rotated block? Great question, glad...

So after a strikingly unimpressive, and bordering on humiliating showing at FNM a few weeks ago, I tuned my deck up again, and decided to make another run at it. Special props to my little Mage for cracking a Batterskull and a Mental Misstep from a a pack during packwars. Hooray for $30 packs! I made some last minute tweaks to the manabase which I hadn't talked about yet, so let me start with a full list. 19 Plains 2 Mox Opal 4 Signal Pests 4 Ornnithopter 4 Memnite 4 Steel Overseer 4 Porcelain Legionaire 3 Stoneforge Mystic 2 Etched Champion Hex Parasite Darksteel Juggernaut Triskelion Wurmcoil Engine Myr Battlsphere Vault Skirge 4 Tempered Steel Sword of Vengence Sword of Body and Mind Sword of Feast and Famine Batterskull This build did so much better. It had less explosive potential, but far higher consistency. The multiple Tempered Steels were crushing when backing multiple affected creatures. The combination of Stoneforge, and Batterskull was nothing sho...

I tried folks, I really tried. I found myself with no plans for a friday night, and a desire not to sit at home. So I decided to play constructed FNM. After a bit of research, and a quick glance through my meager Standard collection, I found that I could put something together drawing on the affinity concepts, and throw in a blade package for a certain leg up. The synergy between certain low cost artifact creatures, Signal Pest, and Steel Overseer is simply too strong to be denied. Toss in some singleton cards I wanted to test out like Tempered Steel, and a variety of high end threats, and I felt like I had a deck worth plopping down 5 bucks and trying to make a run at it. Turns out I was on the right track, but still falling short. The deck was capable of some explosive starts, often having 3+ power on the aggro available to swing on turn2. I was very often able to put my opponent on their back foot right out of the gate, but lacked the ability to finish out the game, no matter ho...

I can't believe it took as long as it did, but it was well worth the work. After nearly 4 months of sorting, I now find myself a little over 40,000 Magic cards lighter. This bulk of excess cards has become a $200 store credit with CFB, a finished Legacy Merfolk deck, a fourth Goyf, 4 blue Onslaught fetches, several restricted Vintage cards, most of the cards I wanted from the current Scars block to date, and a handful of casual cards. Most importantly, all this bulk of under utilized cards is gone, and the room it took up is now empty. Not only can I actually find what I'm looking for far easier, even when a card has been misplaced. I also have discovered that the two bookcases in my office, are now empty, their sole purpose in life having been to house my massive Magic collection. They have found a better home else where. Before the Purge It was really amazing, not to mention startling, to discover just how much good stuff I had that I really and truly didn't even kno...

Most everyone understands that when it comes to eternal formats the original Dual Lands are about the best investment you can make. Which ones you get first, and how many repeaters you want really is a function of what decks you want to play. I really feel that you can't go wrong with having at least one copy of each. The Ravnica Shocklands play an acceptable role as cheap substitutes, while you are filling in your collection of originals. At some point in your collecting days, you will need to turn your attention to the power of fetchlands, and here is why. Lets say you luck up and find a Bayou on the street, so you decide to begin turning your Legacy Mono Black Control list into Eva Green. That Bayou is a great start, but is only going to show up in your opening hand about 12% of the time. Not Bad, but not very consistent to say the least, so you want more. Naturally you decide to bust your hump on you paper route and in no time you have saved up the $50 needed to get a Bayou a...

The last few months have brought about a lot of changes for the Magic Community, both on the personal, local, and global level. Wizards continues to make, what I can only describe as poor decisions regarding it's player community. Restricting TO affiliations, decreasing professional level events, dogmatic enforcement of the Reserved List, elimination of the Player Rewards program, universally hated changes to the B/R list, and an ever increasing barrage of narrow products, seem to do little but add to player frustrations. I hear from an wide swath of players, who truly wish the simple things could be simple. If Wizards is going to continually fight TO efforts to promote their product, and build their community, then honestly why bother? This is forcing me to reevaluate many of my own community driven efforts. It has become clear to me that my status as "simply" a TO is not effective, and not really desired by Wizards. I feel that I must either forgo being a TO, or expan...

At the beginning of the year, I drew what I felt at the time was a bold new line in the sand, setting a $0 budget for my Magic activities for the year. I am very proud to say that so far so good. Not only have I not spent a dime on my Magic collection this year, but I am still projected to be at zero for the end of the year. Now that doesn't mean I have not been able to expand my Magic collection, grow my deck options, and have a lot of fun in the doing. In addition to a play set of all the released un/commons this year, I've managed to collect a number of meaningful cards for my collection. 3 Arid Mesa +1 foil 4 other enemy fetches one of each of the M11 titan 16 other rare/mythic cards for my casual deck 7 foils for my casual deck 4 signed rare/mythics for my casual decl 2 signed foils for my casual deck 1 each of the aligned fetchlands +a second Wooded Foothills 2 Taiga 3 Plateau Savannah Underground Sea 2 other Dual-lands, but I can't remember which ones...

Now that the latest set, Worldwake is 100% known, it's time to give the cards a once over. Today, I'm going to be looking at the commons of the set, to see if here is anything worthy of note. Halimar Excavator will be a powerhouse in limited, and will make Allies the most sought after deck at the draft table. Limited is really the only place that mill is viable, so players won't want to miss the opportunity to live the dream of the first alternate win condition. Skitter Lizard has exactly what every one drop creatures want; the option to be relevant in the late game. This little tongue flicker can get big, and it's hasty, so it will be beating face almost as soon as it hits the table. This looks to be a cycle, with a creature in every color. So far the red one looks to be the only one relevant, but others may still prove themselves. Dispel will have an impact in Pauper, but I don't expect it to make any waves any where else. It's simply to narrow for most ...

Early in the history of the Gathering, there was a great divide, between the haves and the have not. Those with the resources and inclination to build large collections, with vast resources of powerful rare cards, and those who didn't. In order to address this issue, and attempt to preserve the game for those who couldn't or wouldn't go all in, a number of house rules developed, limiting deck design or resources. The concept was to set limits on the quantity or types of cards allowed to be played in a given event. Now you have to remember this was long before the creation of the DCI, or any structured formats that we think of today, even before the 1.0, 1.5, and 2.0 formats, which were the earliest widespread formats. One of the earliest attempts to adddress this issue, was Peasant Magic, developed by Robert Baranowski. You can find perhaps the earliest web entries regarding Peasant as a format here . It was born out of frustration of not being able to build competitive l...

Pauper is a format which has gained a lot of popularity in recent years due to MTGO, and the costs associated with playing in the online community. The concept of Pauper is pretty simple in that you don't need expensive chase cards to make a good deck. Rather then depending on some arbitrary monetary value, which would be subject to shifts over time, the format simplifies the issue. The more rare a card is, the more expensive it is expected to be, so this format is restricted to commons only. This format restriction can be applied to any of the main-stream formats; Standard, Extended, Legacy, or Vintage. Standard and Extended  are very well represented online, since the digital and paper card pools are identical, but the eternal formats tend to differ. Online the Legacy, and Vitage formats are combined in Classic, while in Paper it is simply called Pauper: Eternal. The key difference in Classic and P:E is that not all cards have been printed into the digital card pool, so the pap...

Ever since the switch from Theme decks to intro packs, I've rattled on about how inferior of a product this really is. This week Aaron Forsythe gave us a peek at what is to come in 2010. One of these changes is pushing the Intro pack contents from a 41 card preconstructed deck to 60 cards, will still include the booster pack, and will only rise $1 on MSRP. This certainly increases the value of the intro packs, since the deck is playable and potentially customizable with no further investment. This assumes though that the base deck inside is reasonably playable out of the box, and a lot of what we have seen in Intro packs so far has been real crap. Certainly not all, but a lot. Wizards always wants to have an intro pack to highlight every theme and interaction in the set. This often means 4-5 individual products 4 times a year. That's 16-20 mediocre decks every year. Folks that's a lot of mediocre! I think the best thing Wizards could do for Intro packs is to simply make ...

So I have been able to do a bit of testing since my last revision , but no actual events. I've really been underwhelmed with both Knight of the Reliquary, and Ranger of Eos. I think these may have real value in Standard/Extended version of the deck, but for Legacy I just feel like they are dead cards in my hand, only really being cast when I'm desperate. For this reason, I'm going to cut it, but it brings up the same old problem, of what to use to fill the spot? I've beat this horse to death, and just haven't been able to find a good answer for this.  I've spent some time this week, going over my notes from past deck development efforts, in preparation for Extended conversion discussion. I think I may have found just the thing, a card M.Nash and I help bring to the spot light during the Timespiral period, in a little deck I called Gobladon. I'm going to fill that slot with Greater Gargadon. What you're cutting a 3 drop for being to slow, and replacin...

2009 has been one of the most incredible years for budget players ever. M10, and Zendikar were two sets which had higher then average values, so buying and opening packs really made sense. The entire year also brought about several uncommons, with unexpected value, and created several trade opportunities which were not to be missed. Path to Exile, Hellspark Elemental, Vampire Nighthawk, Valakut- the Molten Pinnacle, and Ant Queen were all given out as promo cards this year, and still maintain excellent value, despite the extra quantities in circulation. Each of these is in key decks right now, and should see at least casual play for years to come. This was a tough year for commons. The introduction of Mythics, and the resulting extra packs that were opened, have virtually brought the death of the chase common. There simply is too many packs opened for any given common to have much maintain much in the way of extra value. Despite all this, there were a few stand outs in the common...

One of the primary reason I choose Zoo as my entry point into Legacy, is the fact that it is an ever present deck in every format, and converts easily back and forth. I've recently been giving some thought to Standard, and seeing what it would take to make this deck viable for Standard. I found a very interesting deck list , which puts me nearly there. The fetchland selection really don't make much sense here, unless you are simply that afraid of Pithing Needle? I think Arid Mesa makes a lot more sense then most in the list. From this revised list I would need only the following; Knight of the Reliquary Ranger of Eos x2 Honestly $20 for three cards is a lot, but getting back into Standard is a worth wild goal, and I expect I'd be able to pick these up in trade, so no cash outlay would be required. This deck would be viable in Standard for roughly another 10 months, so I should be able to get some good use out of it. These cards also convert nicely into Extended, alth...

So I had to call a couple of audibles on Sunday morning just prior to the first SciFi Genre Sanctioned Legacy Event. I ended up with the following list, and sideboard. The most recent changes (from my prior development) are in italics . Creatures: Kavu Predator x4 Kird Ape x4 Knight of the Reliquary x2 Qasali Pridemage x4 Wild Nacatl x4 Tarmogoyf x4 Ranger of Eos Spells: Invigorate x3 Lightning Bolt x4 Sensei's Divining Top x2 Swords to Plowshares x3 Punishing Fire x3 Umezawa's Jitte Land: Arid Mesa x3 Horizon Canopy Ghost Quarter Grove of the Burnwillows x4 Plateau Sacred Foundry Savannah Stomping Ground Temple Garden Terramorphic Expanse Tiaga Windswept Heath Wooded Foothills Forest, Mountain, Plains 1 each. Sideboard: Gaea's Blessing Relic of Progenitus x2 Tormod's Crypt x2 Red Elemental Blast x2 Firespout x3 Vexing Shusher x4 Choke The event went really well, and we were able to sanction the very first time with 11 playe...

My recent Building my Legacy articles have brought about several out of market questions, focused on why I would suddenly be building a Legacy deck, when I have not even made the jump to Extended. I sometimes forget that this blog isn't just read by local, and that some of you have no idea what is going on in the background. Today's article is an attempt to fill in some of that background . It is primarily a composite of several threads from the SciFiGenre .com forums, regarding the emergence of Legacy in our local community. Most of this content is not my own, but is repeated here for educational purposes. Most of what has been ported over is from Jeff aka "Crispy" ( fdiv _bug on SciFi ) and Mike ( darturus on SciFi ). Budget Discussions For a long time, I thought I'd never get into Legacy - it's too expensive, there's too many older cards, it's a format full of turn-1 kills with no interaction between players, blah blah blah. But then I discovere...

Since last we spoke, I have had a pretty remarkable run of trades. I've been able to pick up a full set of Groves (I actually had one! Who knew?), a Windswept Heath, had an Invigorate donated to the cause. (Good looking out Crispy), a Ghost Quarter, and picked up two Arid Mesa from JD. Not only did this allow me to reduce the size of my shopping list, but the unexpected Mesas allowed me to drop the Horizon Canopy and Reflecting Pool from my deck. These were both suboptimal cards for me, primarily because they don't have basic land types. The last few weeks of testing have really driven home to me just how critical domain components are to my deck. The Arid Mesas has driven my domain concentration from 55% to 64%. Since roughly 1/4 of my deck cares about domain qualities, this should translate into a few more wins, and greater deck consistency. While I'm on the subject of my land base, I really have to say that the land destruction sub-theme has been very underwhelming to th...