The Planeswalker's Stronghold

Seismic Assualt x4 Treasure Hunt x4 Mountain x39 Island x13 No really, that's it. $10, and you can wreck someones day at a PTQ in the near future. That's all you need. It goes off pretty consistently, often by turn 4, and almost always by turn 5.It really doesn't benefit from a sideboard. The deck is truly too simple to deal with board adjustments. What it can deal with, is adjustments to the land base. I intended this to be an ultimate budget example, and it works pretty well with just basic lands. If you do have more resources, then go for the gusto. Honestly though, it doesn't greatly improve the consistency. Here is some things to consider; Manlands (particularly the red one) RU shocklands RU painlands RU fetchlands Cascade Bluffs Crumbling Necropolis Reliquary Tower   Valakut, the Molten Pinnacle

I was looking over the set last night, attempting to find some edge to take into this weekends events, and stumbled across something pretty fresh.Give this a try this weekend, if your pool gives you the opportunity. I think you will find that it's a solid level up. Turn 1: Play a fetch land. Turn 2: Play a basic land, and Wind Zendikon the fetch land. (This works with any of the enchantments, but I like this one best.) The created creature is fairly exceptional. Not only is it a creature in a traditional sense, but it becomes a super blocker. Us it as a chump blocker, and before damage resolves, sac the fetch land. You prevented the impending combat damage, searched up a land, and returned the fetch to you hand to be played again. I'm not say'n, I'm just say'n! This same technology can be applied to any profitably sac'ed land. Anybody play Wasteland in Legacy? Did Dark Depths Combo, just get a free repeat as a back up plan? Gargoyle Caste 2.0? ...

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 ...

It’s that time again, and I want to be one of the first with their obligatory New-Expansion-Set review article. The spoiler is complete for Worldwake now, and I have to say I’m a little disappointed. I thought the second set on a Land-themed block would offer some fantastic Tier-1 cards for 5-Color, but instead just gives us some average ones. Let me premise this article with what 5C is. 5-color Magic is a format that requires you to build a deck of at least 300 cards, with a minimum of 25 cards from each color. I encourage everyone to go to the actual http://www.5-color.com/ link, but basically all cards are legal, except for the Unglued/Unhinged expansions, and there is a special Banned/Restricted list specific to this format. Highlander is optional, but extremely fun. When I consider a card for this list, it’s in terms of a big-deck format. There will be a lot of cards out there that are better for Standard or Legacy or whatever 60-card format, but for this review, I’m really just ...

Welcome to the fourth installment of my Repack Walk Through Project. Each week I'm going to crack a repack, and do a walk through of the contents. I've seen these sort of draft walk through done a lot of different ways, but in my mind, there is one critical question to ask about every card. Should this wheel and why? I use a three point system to analyze a pack  In a "normal" pack, there should be 5 cards of each grade in them. 1) Shouldn't Wheel- these are the best cards in the pack, and should be scooped up before the pack comes back around. Your first pick should almost always come from this group, since odds are you shouldn't see any of them again. If one of these does come back around, and it still fits your developing plan, it's almost a sure thing to pick up on the wheel. One of these coming around may also indicate an open color, or deck strategy, and always worth giving a little thought to. 2) May Wheel-I put these at a 50/50 to wheel. your se...

Contributed by special guest correspondent Paul Abduela It's been another exciting week here on Planeswalker Idol. Sorin put the bite on the competition, and sucked the life out of Garruk. Nicol on the other hand, did not rise to the occasion, and may have been to proud to allow America to decide his hate. This last week puts Sorin, Ajani, and Jace head to head, in a fight for the 2009 Planeswalker Idol title. Lets put the spot light on a couple of our last contestants. Ajani Goldmane is a planeswalker who wields white magic. His specialty is magic of the purification of body and soul: spells that heal and strengthen his allies, and spells that evoke the inner, spiritual essence of others. Ajani Goldmane is torn between his leonin ferocity and his sense of justice. He was born as an outcast within his own family, an albino leonin never accepted by the rest of his pride. The only person who cared about him was his brother Jazal, the leader of their pride and Aj...

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...

Welcome to the third week of my Repack Walk Through Project. Each week I'm going to crack a repack, and do a walk through of the contents. I've seen these sort of draft walk through done a lot of different ways, but in my mind, there is one critical question to ask about every card. Should this wheel and why? I use a three point system to analyze a pack  In a "normal" pack, there should be 5 cards of each grade in them. 1) Shouldn't Wheel- these are the best cards in the pack, and should be scooped up before the pack comes back around. Your first pick should almost always come from this group, since odds are you shouldn't see any of them again. If one of these does come back around, and it still fits your developing plan, it's almost a sure thing to pick up on the wheel. One of these coming around may also indicate an open color, or deck strategy, and always worth giving a little thought to. 2) May Wheel-I put these at a 50/50 to wheel. your second pic...

I was able to line up sponsor ship for SciFi Genre's weekly Legacy event on the 17th. I am going to have to play the "B" team, since I won't have Goyfs for the event. I've been playing the list that way all week, so I can have a good feel for that mode, and I've been able to draw several conclusion in the process. First off, and please excuse this observation, but damn this list has gotten good, if I do say so myself. Secondly, the "B" team is pretty good in it's own right, and actually (slightly) improves one of my worst match ups, CounterTop-Goyf. I also found that while I have no sideboard support, my unique build gives me a very strong mirror match up. It  even stands up well against other Zoo decks after boarding. I especially like Zoo players that use Lightning Helix against me, making Kavu bigger if it can survive the blast.. This mirror match up is going to continue to be of increasing importance as my list evolves. Zoo is an entry lev...

With the Starcity Games Legacy 5K coming up in Richmond on February 28, 2010 , I am nearly certain I will be able to attend. It's really a question of how many Worldwake launch related events I will attend. Honestly, I'm more then happy to sacrifice launch events for the wealth of experience I expect to gain from a Legacy 5K. The really good news is I've been able to make significant strides in my build through trade efforts, and have not needed to invest any new cash. I was able to trade in to 2 Grim Lavamancers, and a second Sacred Foundry (not foil, but what are you going to do?). I've also been able to borrow to additional Grim Lavamancers for the moment, but I am uncertain how long I'll be able to hold on to them. It would be nice if I could retain use of them through the 5K, but we will just have to see. Lastly, and most importantly, I've been able to tentatively borrow a set of Goyfs  from a team  mate who will not be attending the event. With this in min...

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...

Welcome to Week Two of my Repack Walk Through Project. Each week I'm going to crack a repack, and do a walk through of the contents. I've seen these sort of draft walk through done a lot of different ways, but in my mind, there is one critical question to ask about every card. Should this wheel and why? I use a three point system to analyze a pack In a "normal" pack, there should be 5 cards of each grade in them. 1) Shouldn't Wheel- these are the best cards in the pack, and should be scooped up before the pack comes back around. Your first pick should almost always come from this group, since odds are you shouldn't see any of them again. If one of these does come back around, and it still fits your developing plan, it's almost a sure thing to pick up on the wheel. One of these coming around may also indicate an open color, or deck strategy, and always worth giving a little thought to. 2) May Wheel-I put these at a 50/50 to wheel. your second pick in th...

Submitted by special guest consultant, Paul Abdula. Every January for roughly a decade, the counrty get hooked on the phenomena of American Idol, and while I'm no Ryan Seacrest, I think it's about time the superstars of Magic get in on the act. Our judges scoured the multiverse for the brightest Planeswalker talent to be found in 2009. In order to qualify for the Hollywood portion of the contest, these planeswalkers had to make it through rigorous rounds with the R&D judges, and get selected for the 2009 year. Now it's your turn America, to see what these Planeswalkers bring to the big stage, and decide for whom the spotlight shines. Lets meet our Contestants, and their round one results; Ajani Goldmane [ 13 ]  [18.06%] Chandra Ablaze [ 5 ]  [6.94%] Chandra Nalaar [ 6 ]  [8.33%] Garruk Wildspeaker [ 12 ]  [16.67%] Jace Beleren [ 13 ]  [18.06%] ...

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 after playing Jeff Red Legacy Ed for a month at the Sci-Fi Genre Legacy Sunday Series, I decided I wanted to spice it up a bit. I knew one of my weaknesses was against Zoo, as it’s really hard to deal with my opponents Tarmogoyf. The best way I have to beat a Tarmogoyf is to set it on fire. Except that rarely works. By the time the fire starts, the silly thing is bigger and the fire doesn’t kill it, and while two for ones are occasionally acceptable, you don’t want to have to rely on that to kill a silly little (or big) goyf. So, the next best way to kill a goyf is to not kill it, but put something in front of it that doesn’t die either. Like another goyf. So Jeff Red is no more, it is now “Weregoyfs of London.” Jeff Abbott said to me the other day, “you're doing something different, which is always good (so long as it works, of course).” I realized he’s right. There isn’t a forum or a discussion anywhere about an essentially aggro red splashing goyf. I’m carving new ground...

I'm attempting to put a new spin on Repack this year, so each week I'm going to crack a repack, and do a walk through of the contents. I've seen these sort of draft walk through done a lot of different ways, but in my mind, there is one critical question to ask about every card. Should this wheel and why? I use a three point system to analyze a pack In a "normal" pack, there should be 5 cards of each grade in them. 1) Shouldn't Wheel- these are the best cards in the pack, and should be scooped up before the pack comes back around. Your first pick should almost always come from this group, since odds are you shouldn't see any of them again. If one of these does come back around, and it still fits your developing plan, it's almost a sure thing to pick up on the wheel. One of these coming around may also indicate an open color, or deck strategy, and always worth giving a little thought to. 2) May Wheel-I put these at a 50/50 to wheel. your second pick...

This was a series of facebook posts made by the one the only Patrick Chapin. I'm pretty sure a few things are a bit out of order, and some of the facts have been simplified a bit, but it's mostly dead on! I hope you enjoy it as much as I did, and I really felt like it deserved to be saved. Did you know that Urza lost to Yawgmoth? Yawgmoth, who had fully corrupted Mishra in the first place presented Urza with the clockwork hell that had been torturing Mishra for thousands of years after his death and Urza bowed to Yawgmoth who then had Gerrard and Urza fight, Gerrard cut off Urza's head. Urza also had 9 Giant titan robots similar to battle tech that were driven by 9 planeswalkers, Commodore Guff, Tevesh Szat, Bo Levar, Daria, Taysir, Freyalise, Kristina, Lord Windgrace, and of course Urza himself. Like with Jesus and Judas, Urza knew Tevesh Szat would betray him and did not stop him. Unlike Jesus and Judas, Urza responded being putting Tevesh Szat inside a Nuclear Soul Bo...