Welcome back! No time for formalities—let’s get to the events: SCG Invitational Somerset, NJ (US) Decklists For those of you who don’t know how the SCG Invitational works (and who might be confused as to why a Standard and Legacy deck could both win the tournament), please refer to this link for the specific details…
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Hello, all! If you don’t recognize me, my name is Jared Yost and I am an active member of the Magic finance community. I graciously received my first weekly column over at MTGPrice.com and have been writing for those folks over the past year. Now I have been added on to the great team here at…
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If I had to guess why most games are won and lost in Magic, the first stop on the blame train would be mulligans. A good number of players have a hard time knowing what is keepable and what would be better as a random six. An even larger number of players don’t know when…
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It’s been a long time, Since I’ve seen a su-u-u-u-u-u-unny day. – Cake, Long Time I’ve been playing Magic a long time: since Fifth Edition/Weatherlight. For a while, I was grinding PTQs, but there was no MTGO, no local Magic scene in my college town, and basically nothing but rolling up to the tournament after…
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Welcome back to part two of my M15 set review! If you weren’t here last week, we went over my predictions of what some of the more expensive cards Magic 2015 would look like price-wise two months from now (in September). This gives everyone enough time to play around with their synergy with all of our current toys,…
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Welcome back! Today we’re talking about brewing with M15. I’ll cover just some of the possibilities that the cards from Magic 2015 create, and fair warning, this will include four [card]Chord of Calling[/card] builds—sorry, I get excited when I can play with a toolbox deck. We have nine Standard and two Modern lists today, which…
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A new brew, a new you. With Magic 2015 fully spoiled, there are some exciting cards that will immediately impact standard. Will the Soul “Titan” cycle be good enough? Will everyone underestimate Liliana Vess for a second time? Will Chandra, Pyromaster shine in its second term? These questions and more I hope to answer with some…
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Junk Midrange has been one of the fastest-growing decks in Standard of late, especially after Jeff Hoogland’s third-place finish at SCG Cincinnati. You can see his list here. I first saw this deck shell when Ryan Gerhart posted a top four at SCG Detroit with his list. I fell in love. The [card]Underworld Connections[/card] plus…
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“Cast [card]Immortal Servitude[/card] for X = 3… get back my whole graveyard…triggers…kill you?” Standard is not a format renowned for combo decks. Most of the time, we see a rock-paper-scissors metagame filled with aggro-midrange-control matchups, as opposed to the aggro-combo-control matchups we read and hear about when beginning to learn “Magic theory.” However, this is…
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Currently Standard is just a big ole mess. Right now the options are endless—or so we believe. After a couple of weeks of tournaments, the metagame has been broken down and it seems you can’t just play what you want. Let me tell you why. [deck title=B/g Devotion, Andrew Tenjum, 1st Place, SCG Open Cincinatti]…
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When a newborn Magic players opens her eyes for the first time, it’s difficult to not be overwhelmed with the price others will pay for multicolored cardboard. If you read the title to this three-part mini-series, it’s obvious I’m not here to justify card prices or imply the financial requirement to play this game. I’m actually…
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There are some great bargains on MTGO right now. I usually write articles about strategy or trends because I think they are most valuable and because there are a lot of writers who do a better job picking cards than I can. Still, every now and then I see enough opportunity somewhere to make me…
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I have a confession to make. I have an unhealthy obsession with [card]Ral Zarek[/card]. I’ve heard it all: “He’s just bad.” “He doesn’t give you card advantage.” “Nice untap.” Look, I get it. [card]Ral Zarek[/card] requires some help and his +1 ability is a bit underpowered. Using two loyalty to get a [card]Lightning Bolt[/card] is…
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There are a number of basic concepts that you learn when starting in Magic finance. These are the building blocks that make Magic finance predictable enough to be profitable—the fundamentals that dictate supply and demand. I’m talking about things like rarity, big set versus small set, draft pack ratios, scarcity of older sets, and rotation….
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It’s been a long, hard couple of months after making top eight in back-to-back tournaments with my Mono-Green Beast Wars deck that I discussed here. Since then, I’ve been to two more PTQs and GP Cincinatti, but was unable to recapture the success I previously had with the deck. However, some others had quite a bit…
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While I still intend to battle with my trusty RUG Monsters deck for the foreseeable future, that has not put a halt to my desire for a good brew. With that in mind, let’s talk about a spicy number that I have been thinking about since the Journey into Nyx prerelease. [deck title=The Divine Aristocrats…
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Welcome back for Brewing with Journey into Nyx. I’m going to run you through some possibilities that this great new set has created for us. One thing I can’t do is provide complete sideboards, but I will provide some suggestions to look at when you decide to take one of these decks out for a spin….
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With all of Journey into Nyx spoiled, the question to be asked is the effect these cards will have in Standard. While decks falling out of favor play a role to speculators, there is often little money to be made in a fall from grace. What we care most about is the ascent of tier-two…
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It’s round four at SCG Detroit. Across from me is Joe, who is playing Mono-Black Devotion. He swings in with a [card]Nightveil Specter[/card] to deal two, but what do I care? I’m playing Gruul Aggro with [card]Skylasher[/card], [card]Titan’s Strength[/card], and [card]Armed // Dangerous[/card] in hand. He plays a second [card]Nightveil Specter[/card] and I panic. I…
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Please allow me to introduce myself. My name is Ken Crocker, and some of you may know me as a Midwest Magic grinder. Others may know me as the guy who once threw his deck against a wall at a PTQ (long story, some other time). However, most of you know me from this. Today I…
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To start things off, my name is Deshaun Baylock. I recently started devoting myself to this game called Magic: The Gathering and the payoff has been huge. I started playing around the time of [card]Jace, the Mind Sculptor[/card]. Within a year of trying to go “pro,” I have scored a GP Top Eight, a GP Top…
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In very recent tournaments, there has been a Red/Blue/Green (RUG) Monsters deck seeing some success. I believe the deck was popularized by Sam Black. My friend and I have been playing and tuning a different type of RUG deck lately: RUG Midrange. I’ll be showing this deck to you, along with what card choices can…
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Welcome back, brewers. Surprise, surprise, today I’m going to talk about GW Scion. It’s been a while since I last wrote about it. In fact, it was before Born of the Gods was even released. Now that the new set has been out for a while and I’ve had a chance to play with it,…
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Sweeper effects have been a long-lasting staple in Magic. These effects make aggro players cry and control players gleam. They can make or break a game and trigger the same “ooooh’s” and “ahhhhh’s” Wizards of the Coast (WotC) tried to accomplish with the Miracle mechanic from Avacyn Restored. These game-changers will continue to be…
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Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work. -Thomas A. Edison I’m going to take a bit of a break this week and shift into getting L.U.C.K.y while playing the game. In a game such as Magic, where there are sixty randomized cards built from thousands of…
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