This Dark Ascension Creature Makes Heartless Summoning Much Better
January 12, 2012 | Posted by Dee
Heartless Summoning was one of those cards that many pros predicted would see a lot of play in Standard. At first glance, it looked like a hard-to-kill Lotus Cobra. Sure, there was the drawback of shrinking all your creatures but it didn’t seem too hard to overcome.
Well, fast forward a couple months and Heartless Summoning has not been a big factor at all in the Standard metagame. Its drawback hampered deck builders too much.
Because of the -1/-1 ability, you can’t play cards like Birds of Paradise. Your Titans die to Dismember. And it was just tough to win creature battles when all your creatures got smaller.
However, Dark Ascension gives us a creature that seems very good with Heartless Summoning. This creature only costs five mana yet it can give you a ton of card advantage.
More importantly, it adds a combo element to the Heartless Summoning deck. By adding this new angle of attack, the deck becomes more powerful and more resilient to hate.
Check out Havengul Lich below.
Sorin, Lord of Innistrad (New Planeswalker in Dark Ascension)
January 11, 2012 | Posted by Dee
Wizards just spoiled the new Sorin planeswalker and it looks like a game changer. I can see it making a big impact in Standard.
They made it very different from the original Sorin. It’s black/white whereas Sorin Markov was heavy black. Its abilities are geared towards creature heavy decks especially token decks. Sorin Markov was a late game finisher for control and midrange decks.
It only costs four mana instead of six. This bodes well for its competitive viability because the four mana casting cost has become the gold standard for top planeswalkers. Think of the best planeswalkers ever printed. Most of them cost four mana: Elspeth, Jace, Ajani Vengeant, Koth.
Check out Sorin, Lord of Innistrad below.
6 Things Every PTQ Grinder Should Know About Modern
January 10, 2012 | Posted by Rocky
Modern is probably the most fun format I have ever played.
Now that some of the format’s problem cards are gone, there are a lot of decks that are viable. Zoo, Affinity, Gifts, Teachings, Jund, Storm, Boros, Tron, and Delver decks are just some of the different archetypes.
Also, each of those archetypes has at least one or more completely different lists. For example, there’s big Zoo and little Zoo, Blue Affinity and Red Affinity, Past in Flames Storm and Ad Nauseum Storm, and U/B Delver and RUG Delver. I think you get the point.
I’ve played with and against most of these decks in playtesting. Here are the biggest things I’ve learned.
Soul Seizer (Dark Ascension Spoiler)
January 9, 2012 | Posted by Dee
It’s spoiler season again 
With the prerelease just a few weeks away, Wizards of the Coast is previewing new cards from Dark Ascension.
Today Mark Rosewater spoiled an interesting card which shows how the card designers are taking the transform, or “Werewolf”, mechanic to the next level.
Check out Soul Seizer below.
UW Illusions With Geist of Saint Traft
January 1, 2012 | Posted by Rocky
I’m sure most, if not all, of you have heard what happened with Alex Bertoncini and Starcitygames circuit. If not, just Google it, I’m sure you’ll find something. (Don’t anger Drew Levin, whatever you do.)
Whether he’s a cheater or just sloppy, he still knew that Illusions was the best choice for the Invitational in Charlotte. I completely agree, the Illusions deck is just insane. It has an incredible amount of play to it and gives the pilot chances to outplay their opponents as well as just letting you nut draw people into oblivion.
Here’s the preliminary list I would start with if I were to play at the upcoming Grand Prix in Orlando.
Play a Game with Me: Value Bant Pod vs UW Humans
December 30, 2011 | Posted by Dee
Tight technical play decides more games of Magic than all other factors combined.
- Patrick Chapin
Improving your technical play is one of the best ways to win more at Magic. To help you play better, let’s do a gameplay exercise.
Try to make the best plays in this game I played. I chose this game because it had some interesting decisions.
First, I’ll setup the game.
It’s game three in a match from the 2man Standard Queue on Magic Online. I’m playing Value Bant Pod while he’s playing UW Humans. You can see my list below.
Esper Control Deck With a 75% Win Rate in 150 Matches
December 23, 2011 | Posted by Dee
Magic The Gathering is a game of skill and chance so sometimes a player will do well in a tournament even though his deck not very good. The luck factor allows people to get high finishes with a mediocre deck. This doesn’t happen too often but it’s still something to keep in mind. Just because a deck did well in a tournament doesn’t mean it’s a good deck.
To find out how good a deck really is, you should play a lot of matches with it. The more matches, the better. Or you can get someone else to test it for you.
Based on an interview in this article, Caleb Durward played around 150 matches competitively with the Esper Control deck below. His win rate is 75% including a 7-2-1 record at the Starcitygames Open in St. Louis and a 6-1 record in the Standard rounds of Swiss at the Starcitygames Invitational in Charlotte.
That’s a ton of matches and a very good win rate, so his deck is definitely the real deal.
UW Blade (Don’t Sleep on Sword of Feast and Famine)
December 19, 2011 | Posted by Dee
One of my favorite strategies is to pick an unpopular deck that is actually pretty good. I like this strategy because people often don’t know how to play against unpopular decks.
Because these decks are under the radar, players don’t playtest against them so they’re likely to make suboptimal plays. On the other hand, they probably have experience playing against popular decks like Wolf Run Ramp and Illusions. Their experience helps them play better against those decks.
Right now, UW Blade seems like a great choice if you want a strong deck that players are not familiar with. Here’s a UW Blade decklist that I recommend for your next Standard tournament.
Five Color Control by GerryT
December 12, 2011 | Posted by Dee
Gerry Thompson and Michael Jacob took their UWR Control deck from Worlds, made some big changes to the deck, and posted strong finishes at the Starcitygames Standard Open in Saint Louis two weekends ago.
Gerry went 8-2 to earn 19th place while Michael went 7-3, which was good for 42nd place. There were over 550 players in the tournament.
The new version bears some resemblance to the original list but in many ways, it’s a totally different deck. Check out Gerry’s list below.
Two Most Popular Innistrad Draft Strategies and Equipment in Innistrad Draft
December 11, 2011 | Posted by Rocky
Note from Dee: I’m happy to publish the first blog post of Ralph “Rocky” Creighton. Check out his bio page to learn more about him.
Innistrad is widely being called the best limited format Wizards has ever created. It is incredibly skill testing and greatly rewards tight play. Knowing what decks to shoot for and which to avoid can make or break every draft you play in.
You want to have an aggressive deck or a really powerful deck that can stall until you have a chance to play your game ending spells. While this format isn’t blazing fast like Zendikar, it doesn’t move as slow as Rise of the Eldrazi limited. It reminds me a lot of M12 drafting, where aggressive decks have the advantage. Due to the presence of werewolves, having a good mana curve is important. Otherwise you’ll end up being overwhelmed by cheap monsters.
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