The Planeswalker's Stronghold

Recently I have been giving a lot of thought about a very normal topic, staying competitive. The odd part about this is that rather then taking the perspective of fine tuning a deck like the edge of a sword, I have been thinking about it from the idea of keeping a deck competitive in the community sense. Just last week a person whom I am proud to call both a friend and colleague, humbled me by asking for my opinion of a deck he had created. He asked for my honest opinion, and I really took the time to explore examine this deck from the perspective of the other people at the table. The worst part was after I had critiqued his deck, I was left asking the same questions about my own casual deck. It really left me with a sense that our community is really just the sum of the impressions at each table, and their impact on what we play, who we play, and even if we continue to play. I have come to a realization that a deck can be too good. To this end there are a few topics I would like to ad...

There has been a lot of buzz lately about building decks without a lot of expensive rares which has inspire me to start this series of articles. From time to time I will publish a deck exploring a synergy of un/commons. I will target the deck list to 28 commons 8 uncommons, and 24 basic lands. This would give the deck a rough cost of $5 or less. I will also make an effort to avoid using chase un/commons that would inadvertently make the deck components harder to assemble. These decks will often be designed as mono-color for both budget, and ease of play. The basic design will be 7 pockets of commons (4 each) 3 pockets of uncommons (2 each), and a complement of basic lands. This week I am going to explore the unique synergy in Standard between Changelings who have all creature types, and slivers, who convey abilities to all other slivers in play. The basic concept is that every creature in play have the sliver creature type, and that all natural slivers would "lord" abilities ...

The voting was pretty cut and dry with the Quillspike combo coming out on top. I have to say I was a little surprised at how little interest was shown for Faeries, and Kithkin , and how much was for Merfolk and Goblins. This will be an interesting test of our card pool, and will really stretch the limits of our utility card base. This combo did not exist in any sense prior to eventide, and black is definitely one of our least supported colors in our card pool. I have reviewed our available card pool, and opted to go with a very basic build. This deck will revolve around the combo, and have a few support cards to help put the combo together, and few few tricks to help stabilize if things go badly. The basic idea is to drop Devoted Druid on turn two, followed next turn by Quillspike, and combo off for the large creature win, or rites out shortly after. This deck really has to go off with in the first 5 turns, or it really starts to flounder, the good news is that is can go off roughly ...

Magic is a game in which we see many people come and go. They leave, and often come back for a variety of reasons. This week I have the duty of wishing one of our mutual friends from the Scifi Community farewell, and good luck. Nick, or Nagi as many of you know him, is moving on from his duties as lead Magic Organizer, and Judge to explore other options as he transitions from his recent High school Graduation to College. Since Nick will be staying in the area, I hope he stops in from time to time for a visit, and if we are lucky he can join us for FNM from time to time. It was nearly 3 years ago when I stopped in for my first FNM at SciFi. On that particular night it was myself, my son (just turned 7 at that time), Zac (then organizer and Judge), and Kirk (now on sabbatical from Magic). We had a good game that night, but were unable to sanction with DCI due to a shortage of players. Over the next couple of months SciFi's Magic Community, grew to the point of being regularly sanctio...

Submitted By Cassa Hild (waterwolf on Scifigenre.com, cassa.hild@gmail.com) Hello All, and thank you for stopping by. Our little community has had many new players joining in of late. With so many new folks, it becomes even more important to remember many of the not so new tricks, that may otherwise be overlooked by folks focused on the newest set. One such item is the Champion mechanic from Lorwyn in the current block. Without further intriduction Cassa has prepared a primer on Champions for those who may no yet be familiar with the potentially powerful concept. -the_magi Some champions such as Unstoppable Ash and Changeling Titan can be a big assistance in a deck but they need to be supported. There are counter spells that can stop a player from championing a creature which will really blow that combo play you’re working on. Lets say that you have played a Gem hide sliver, this is a 1/1 creature, an opponent can use Shock to kill the Gem hide after you have tapped the land to pl...

Submitted by Jed Humphries (jedijed2187 on Scifigenre.com, jhumphries2187@yahoo.com) Most people who play multiplayer know politics is an important part of the multiplayer experience. Over the past few months, I have been using what I like to call Multiplayer Diplomatic Neutrality, which is a type of play style where just sit back let everybody kill each other. Occasionally I will disrupt the game with some board clearing spell and gain some life along the way. The key is not to overplay and get squashed (which I guess is key to most Magic games anyway). I have really only been playing since Timespiral, many of the cards I will mention will be from there forward. Let me know if there are older cards could fit into Multiplayer Diplomatic Neutrality.I have also developed a point system for those who violate “Diplomatic Neutrality” against you (and bombs to play against them). More on that Later. When building a deck around Multiplayer Diplomatic Neutrality”, you need to keep a few...

The time is close at hand when Standard will say goodbye to another block and usher in Shards of Alara to take it's place. While it is no secret that I am really looking forward to this transition, and That I think it is a much needed boost for Standard, it does present a critical time for new player, and budget minded veterans. Now is the time to pick up key un/commons from these four sets, before they begin to disappear. Thats right I said for sets; Timespiral, Planarchaos, Futuresight, and the often overlooked Coldsnap. I will start with the must have un/commons for the block. If you don't know these cards, you need to get them, and use them. They are that good, and you are missing out if you continue to not use them. These will continue to have an impact for years to come. It will be difficult to find these in the singles boxes at almost any store, so you may have to trade for them. They are still worth having, and you can probably pick up a handful for any of those rare ...

Good Day, and welcome to our on going experiment to take budget play to it's limits. Over the last few weeks we have stretched our $20 budget to it's to the extreme by attending each prerelease event and participating in open dueling. So far we have attended Lorwyn, Morningtide, and Shadowmoor. With these three event uder our belts we have amanged to assemble a pretty incredilble card pool. We have a playable card pool in all five colors, with strong utility support in each. This week we are attending the Eventide Prerelease, and receive the U/B Life Drain deck, a randome booster pack, and the Overbearing of Myth promo card, leaving us with $5 to selectivly spend on singles. The sealed product contents are detailed below. 2 Apothecary Initiate Archon of Justice Divinity of Pride Flickerwisp Goldmeadow Moth 2 Gwellion Hedge-Mage 2 Kithkin Zealot 3 Nip Gwyllion Resident Mentor Restless Apparition 2 Safehold Sentry 2 Smolder Initiate Soul Snuffers Suture Spirit 2 Voracios Hatchlin...

Thank you for joining me today, and welcome to the largest Standard Environment in the history of the current Magic game. By my estimate, there is over 2300 cards currently in Standard. Ironically enough, I can't recall a time when meta game was more narrow. In recent year(s) the meta game has been defined by 3-5 top tier decks, and for nearly a year the meta has been defined by Faeries. If someone said they were not playing faeries in the last year the correct response was "why ?". The real question to ask at this point is what impact Eventide will have on Standard, and I think the short answer is, not much. I really don't see anything in this set to 1) un-hing the current faeries build, 2)promote any other current deck concept to better compete with faeries, or 3) inspire any new build to adequately address the faeries dominance. Tribal was such a strong linear concept, and faeries was in the right place at the right time. They had the best selection of d...

Those of you who know me are aware that I have a son whom I affectionately call Tater. I am writing this from his perspective of a younger player, and talking about the new Johnny cards of the Eventide set. First up is Helix Pinnacle, with a rating of awesome. This card lets you use your extra man to build up to an alternate win condition, and is already inspiring the Johnny's out there to cook up decks built around the card. All you have to do is play it on turn one, then set back and dump mana into it every turn until you win, and try not to die while you are waiting. Hey it's green so mana acceleration may be an option. In a word AWESOME! Second up, also with a rating of awesome is Waves of Aggression. This card is great, I get a second attack phase, that's two times to smash face in the same turn. I get double work out of all my "until end of turn" stuff. Usually a turn is untap , draw, stuff, pound, maybe more stuff, go. Now it's untap , draw, stuff, p...

Good day folks. Today we are going to take a crack at Eventide from the Big Deck perspective. Before we get started I wanted to touch on my recent Tooth and Nail article. I find that I like this concept so much, and get such a great effect from it that I decided to take it to the next level. Enter Defense of the Heart. Next week I promise to go into this in more detail. Now onto the Eventide. I will leave the individual card choices to you since they will very according to your decks. Instead I will focus on the major concepts of the set. Off the top the rare dual lands are a good addition to any 5 color concept, but are weak color fixes in the broader terms of the vintage card pool. Speaking of weak, Chroma will only offer answers to very focused mono colored Highlander deck. Now Retrace has real potential for the Big Deck player, and warrants a careful look at each card. I have to say that when I sat down to research this article, I was really surprised to find just how few retr...

Today we are going to talk about he top 3 cards in each rarity to acquire from the budget perspective. In each case, these are the cards that are either already chase, and expected to go even higher, or the ones that are sleepers. In commons the early stand out is Unmake. This is going to see play in Standard, and maybe post standard extended. Next up is Quillspike. Any card that enables an infinite combo at the common level is going to get a second look, and is bound to be a chase card in the near future. Last but not least is Snake form. It's removal and card draw in a nice under-cost package. This one may not go up in value, but it is going to get hard to find quick. This could easily be a first pick in pack three for many folks. Uncommons bring more to the party, although we will not see the ridiculous uncommons of Shadowmoor. Spitemare is a house, garage, and pool in a great neighborhood, with good schools. In other words it's worth picking up. It has already become a chas...

This weekend I attended the Eventide Pre-release, and spent my time at the open dueling station. I have to say I was very impressed with the over all balance and power of all the theme decks. There really didn't seem to be a dominate deck, each was able to win against the field. The deciding factor often appeared to be which deck got off to a smooth early start. In this article I will discuss the over all strengths of each deck, and how they contribute to our existing card pool from the Lorwyn and Shadowmoor super block. First up is my MVP deck, the B/W Life Drain. This deck ties into our Kithkin, but has a strong enough concept to be playable with no other support needed. Both the rares, several uncommons, and even a few of the commons have the potential to be chase items in the near future. This is heads and shoulders above the others from the budget player perspective. Next up is what I believe to be the dark horse of the precons this season, the B/G Death March. Both the rares ...

As I'm sure everyone knows by now we get first chance to play with Eventide this Saturday July 12, 2008 at the. For sneak peeks, you can check out the officially released previews on the mother-ship, and the unofficial spoiler provide by mtgs . If you are unsure where to play this weekend, check out the pre-release event schedule . I'm an really looking forward to the event, but so far am a little unimpressed with the set itself. Next week I'll be stealing a page from the mother-ship, and bring you our first theme week focused on Eventide. There will be articles on pre-con evolution, plus card reviews from the Pauper, Big Game, Johnnie, and Budget perspectives. The week will wrap up with an impact analysis for Standard.

I have recently had the opportunity to see just how important it is to keep a collection like Magic the Gathering. i spent this last Saturday assisting a friend in organizing his collection. This step was long overdue, and I hope that maybe it will inspire you to get your collection organized. I had often comment that my friend did not live in a home, but in a card box. Literally everywhere you look, there was stacks of cards. We even found some the pantry. Okay, so rather then spending this entire article ranting about what had been done wrong, please allow me to discuss best practices which I have found, and allow you to work them into your own collection. First up, know your limit. No matter what your budget is, or how great an individual card is, there is a limit to how many copies you need. My limit is four. I don't mind cards being shared between decks, because I tend not to run similar decks that often, and I rarely run more the 2-3 decks in a given season. I don't care ...

Many of you out there may have recently become acquainted with my Deck of Many Things. I have wanted to write an article detailing the card choices in the deck, but have found it to be to large a task for one shot. Over the next few weeks, I intend to put out several articles discussing utility cards in the deck, and using them to discuss the contents of the deck in broader terms. One other the key functions of any deck this size is being able to search out particular answers for the current game state. This allows you to balance the power of the table, or allow you to take an advantage. Tooth and Nail is beyond question one of the most powerful creature search tools available to any Magic Arsenal. For an entwined 9 mana this spell allows you to search out any 2 creatures, and put them directly into play. This can be used for any two creatures in the deck, but for today, I am only going to talk about those with a converted casting cost of 5 or greater, since they make the best use of ...

Once upon a time there were two friends passing an evening playing pack wars. If you don't know pack wars is a Magic variation that takes 3 of each basic land and shuffle sit into a newly opened pack of Magic cards. That is 15 basic lands, and 15 other cards. In this particular game I had pile shuffled twice followed by a bridge shuffle , and a cut from my opponent. I then preceded to draw all land for my opening hand, confident that my next few cards would be gas, I kept the hand, and my opponent played first. I drew a land, and passed turn. I then proceeded to draw every land card, all 15 over my next few turns, before I finally drew any kind of real spell. Just for S&G's I figured up the odds of this happening at approximately 155.1 million to one. Failure of epic proportions.

Over the last couple of weeks we began what will continue to be a series of article centered around the concept of pre-con decks, and evolving them through out the block. For the basic concepts, and the beginning of the Lorwyn/Shadowmoor Super block, please read last weeks post. So far we have taken our $20 budget and attended the Lorwyn, and Morningtide Pre-release events, and ended up with a very playable collection of cards. We have a very good green/red deck option with a good contingent of white for second decks, or color combination options. We have a splashable black option, and very little blue. I was a little concerned with our collection with such week offerings in both black and blue. This could make 3 of the 5 deck options for Shadowmoor less then ideal for our collection. This week we will take our $20 an attend the Shadowmoor pre-release, and see what we fun and value can be had for our minimal investment. In this case we win the virtual lottery, and receive the Turnabout...

co-written by Jeff Darran (Phfantom on Scifi Genre and jcdarran@gmail.com ) and the_magi Wizards made another recent announcement regarding changes to the pre/release schedule, which has caused a lot of discussion. If you have not read the announcement , you may wish to do so prior to continuing this article. Wizards has opened the field to a broader range of organizers to run events for thesepre/release times, and has narrowed the time frame between pre-release and release event from two weeks to one week. One of the regions highest level organizers, James Bailey of shuffleupevents.com , has taken the time to organize his thoughts and conerns on this issue. The following article is written in a dueling banjos style of point, counter-point by myself, and with Jeff presenting the opposing opinion. We have had numerous board,IM , and telephone conversations here, and have compiled and recreated the spirit of those discussions in order to present a fair and balance perspective on a subj...

Submited by J Darran. Last week, Shoebox called me "hardcore." I had been to my 4th major tournament in 3 weekends. Not letting up on the pace at all, this past weekend found me at both the PTQ-Berlin event on Saturday in Roanoke, VA, and the Sunday event that was being held for Richie Proffitt. Both events were good for me as I learned alot about myself that weekend. I will share my experiences from the weekend as i usually do. Then i will share what I learned. Saturday. Kithkinweave decided it was going to go sit in the corner and poop itself (thanks Crispy, i love that description). I faced 4 different decks in the six rounds I played. Yea, I don't normally drop from anything, but I had my reasons. Round 1 I got paired against Barkshell Blessing deck. I actually did very well against him and won round one. I think i swept him, but i don't remember, and i can't find my notes. Round 2 I drew Peter Ackley, one of our occasional FNM players here at Sci-Fi. i...

One of the interesting things happening recently in our Casual Game, is the developing interest in older cards. Both the developing highlander, and blossoming 5-Color decks have spurred an interest in Vintage Cards. While there are those flinging a lot of high dollars cards, and power pieces, it really isn't necessary to spend large dollars on single cards to increase the scope and power of your collection. Many of the best cards are commons, and to learn about commons and combinations of theme you have only to turn to Pauper, or Peasant Magic. For those of you who don't know Pauper is an alternative deck construction limit. You must build decks of at least 60 cards and follow the normal 4 copy. In addition you deck must be constructed of commons, but allows for 5 uncommons. That's right, no rares! These people get very creative, and work out the power of often over looked cards. I have talked several times about introducing the extended card concepts to our group with use ...

Eventide will be with us shortly, and half the set has already been leaked. There are a number of cards to keep and eye. One of the best spoilers is maintained by mtgsalvation. I am really surprised that Death Rattle and Thornweald Archer are not included. Puncture bolt has the making of being the best direct damage, creature removal printed in recent history. I think this may rival Lightningbolt, but only time will tell. Tilling Treefolk will be a hot limited pick to partner with the new retrace mechanic; Retrace (You may play this card from your graveyard by discarding a land card in addition to paying its other costs.) Retrace has the potential for breaking, but he chroma mechanic looks to be very week, and narrow. It may provide some narrow sideboard options for future standard. Cauldron's Haze, and it's instant persist has the making of a chase uncommon, as a combo with either Wraith of God, or Damnation for instant board advantage. Instant speed also makes it a great ans...