Articles

Tournament reports, opinion pieces, guest articles, and whatever else we have that doesn’t really fit into any other category end up here.

Land Searching to Make Friends and Win Games, Pt I

Maze's End

Dragon’s Maze, the final set in the hugely popular Return to Ravnica block, draws nigh. Already we’ve heard about shockland re-reprints, a guild versus guild footrace, and at least 10 new multicolor legends to fuel the Commander fire.

The prerelease for Dragon’s Maze is set for April 27-28, so be sure to check with your local store about specific times and entrance fees. The one card you know you’ll get (although you can’t play with it this time)? Maze’s End. It’s a little funny to me that the first card you get upon “entering” the Maze is, in fact, the very end of the Maze. That aside, Maze’s End is a very interesting card to touch upon, so I’m going to be covering it in a two-part article series.

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Spellslinging at GP Charleston

Grand Prix Charleston

Lots of people have asked about the decks I played at Grand Prix Charleston.  So I decided to put them all up here so everyone will leave me the hell alone for all to see.  Since I was going to be there representing MTGCast, I decided that I wanted to play some decks provided by the various and sundry podcasters on the network!  So I poked around and begged for things, and came up with a handful of lists I liked.  I ended up with three decks for Standard, three decks for Commander, and two Pauper decks.

 

Commander

Might as well get this over with.  These decks were not inspired by anyone else, I just picked three of my favorites and played them.  I had the Spirit of the Night deck, the Johan deck, and of course my Kaervek the Merciless deck.  Those have all been discussed elsewhere, thus the links.  Click on them and be amazed!  That was easy, now let’s check out the poor man’s cards!

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Duels 2013 Deck Evolution – The Drake Equation* Part 2

Panoptic Mirror

*I still totally stole this from Jungle Rat Rob, one of the hosts of The Retro League podcast.  If you’d like more information on why this name is so awesome, you should just go read the beginning of Part 1.

Hey, look at that, I’m back!  I’m attempting to chronicle the evolution of the decks in Duels of the Planeswalkers 2013 as I unlock cards, just to give you an idea of how my brain works when it comes to Magic.  A vague and scrambled idea, but still.  Last time I stopped when I was halfway through Talrand’s Crosswinds deck.  I hit Panoptic Mirror and, looking at my notes sensing a change on the horizon, decided that would be a good place to insert a break.

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Duels 2013 Deck Evolution – The Drake Equation* Part 1

Talrand's Invocation

*This name was completely stolen from Jungle Rat Rob, one of the hosts of The Retro League and the man responsible for our first three audio montages.  It was just too good not to blatantly rip off (thanks Rob!).  As for why it’s really cool, the Drake Equation is used to estimate the number of extraterrestrial civilizations in our galaxy that could potentially communicate with us.  As you may or may not know, I have a degree in physics and have always been fascinated with anything astronomical in nature, so…I’m a dork and this is awesome.  Shut up, don’t judge me.

It’s that time again!  I’ve been playing Duels of the Planeswalkers 2013 and charting how the decks change as cards are unlocked.  After burning through Chandra’s deck last time, I needed a change of pace.  So I went with red’s polar opposite and picked up Talrand’s blue deck.  It actually started out as a fair amount of fun to play, contrary to what one listener whose name is lost to the aether (I honestly can’t remember who said it) told me.  Here’s the deck in its initial form:

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Duels 2013 Deck Evolutions – Kill It With Fire!

Flames of the Firebrand

I love me some Duels of the Planeswalkers.  I played the hell out of the first two, and this latest one is proving to be no exception.  In fact, this one might be more fun with the new Encounters.  Those things are a blast.  Since I don’t play all that much Magic (yeah yeah I know – “but you have two weekly Magic podcasts, how do you do that without playing?”  Think of sportscasters or something and you’ll figure it out), I really enjoy these games more than I probably should.

Because the game is so much fun and really helps kick my brain back into Magic mode, I wanted to exploit that for some content here on the site.  I mean, I thought I might give you some idea of how my brain works by explaining how I edited these decks as I unlocked cards.  To be honest, this is actually more of a writing exercise for me to get back into the groove of writing and thinking about Magic,  but hopefully you’ll enjoy it as well.  I really hope you do, because I plan on doing one for every deck in the game!  Possibly more than one for each deck, since there are a LOT of cards to unlock.  Let me know what you think.

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