Tuesday, February 22, 2011

MBS Phyrexian Sealed - Winning without Infect


I figured since I haven’t posted an article in an eternity, that it was time I put forth the effort and did one.  Usually I don’t like playing in MODO Prereleases because they are such –EV (check the prize structure), but because it was with faction boosters, I didn’t care.  I ended up getting a really good pool, and eventually settled on this deck:

Saturday, February 19, 2011

Need Jaces? How many?

 




You can guarantee your favorite Rusty writers will be there.

Get some!  (Jaces)

Friday, February 11, 2011

Jokesin' with Non-tier—4 Color Control (Part II)


Part II of the 4 Color Control leaves off from deck observations of last week's article, and continues with the sideboard plan.

Thursday, February 10, 2011

SCG Open Report Follow-up: The State of Legacy

I'd like to start this article by saying that I am not a Legacy player.  I have likely played under 20 Legacy events in my life, with the vast majority of those being weekly Get Your Game On events when the top 4 split after playing an unexciting 4 or 5 rounds.  I have previously chosen to write about Legacy as little as possible, since the format is not important at a PTQ level and other Rusty contributers (aka Gandhi) are much better equipped to tell you about the format than I am.

However, after witnessing what was going on at the SCG Legacy Open I decided to write down my full view of Legacy as a format.  Of the people that were playing in the event, the vast majority of them had very little idea what was going on in the format.  Whether it was Ari's opponent who had to ask him what he meant by the phrase "storm count" or the fact that one of my opponents was playing enchantress, it simply bewilders me that someone would drive several hours to pay $30 for a 9 round tournament where they have no real idea what's going on.

I'll admit that in Ann Arbor (and southeastern Michigan in general), Legacy is a much more popular format than most anywhere else in the Midwest, and the quality of players at Get Your Game On is relatively high (in fact, 3 Game On regulars made top 16 in Indi and another 2 made top 32).  This doesn't change the fact that most decks people are playing in Legacy can be vastly improved upon.


Monday, February 7, 2011

SCG Open Report Part 2: Legacy (12th)

Standard on Saturday was ok.  I made some money, but wasn't really satisfied.  It was time to step my game up for the Legacy portion of the weekend.

Here's the deck I played, which Amir was kind enough to let me borrow for the weekend.


















SCG Open Report Part 1: Standard (19th)

Recently, the Star City Open series has skyrocketed in popularity due to an impressive prize structure and the appeal of back to back tournaments in 2 different formats, and therefore double the chance to get some cash money.  With Indianapolis being withing reasonable driving range, plenty of the guys from Ann Arbor decided to head down and teach some lessons about Standard and Legacy.  I was able to borrow Show and Tell/Sneak Attack from Amir to play in the Legacy event (more on that in a later article), and had a Valakut list that was performing at or above 50% against every major deck that existed pre-besieged, and it even got some awesome new additions.

Then I discovered the existence of this monstosity:

Wednesday, February 2, 2011

Jokesin with Non-tier—4 Color Control

In my hiatus with my 5 dollar decks I have been playing around with different ways to challenge myself with building budget decks. This was spurred mainly because the competition at my local magic store has been terrible. I even brought a deck that I had just made with cards that I got for free...so yes, non-chase commons and uncommons (look for a future article on this deck!) and managed to clean house with it. Next I started trying to develop a deck using sub-5 cent commons only...and surprisingly it's 50-50 in the casual room of MTGO (look for this one in the future too). Eventually I stopped caring about playing magic in the store and haven't been to a competition in quite a few weeks.

Tuesday, February 1, 2011

Kai Draft #28 (ME4 8-4)

Team Wild strikes again! This time bringing you a Master's Edition 4 draft. Enjoy!

Pack 1, Pick 1: