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Shards of Alara Sealed Deck by A. Newby

Submitted by Uncle Ho on October 15, 2008 - 01:39

Personally, I don’t like the Shard of Alara Sealed Deck format. I prefer drafting the set. But, because most of us played in at least one prerelease or release event, and a few of us are planning on attending a PTQ for Kyoto, the Sealed format at least deserves a look. I’m going to take a look at a sealed pool and try to help you figure out how to properly tackle this format. I have read and seen quite a few people trying to “teach” the format to others, yet I feel like most of them don’t really teach you anything, but instead just tell you what deck they built with the random cards they were given.

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Sarkhan Vol - by A. Newby

Submitted by Uncle Ho on September 8, 2008 - 01:52

Let’s talk about the recent preview card from Shards of Alara, Sarkhan Vol. For those of you who don’t know what it’s abilities are…

2RG, Planeswalker
4 Loyalty Counters

+1: Creatures you control get +1/+1 and haste until end of turn.
-2: Gain control of target creature until end of turn. Untap that creature. It gains haste until end of turn.
-6: Put five 4/4 red Dragon tokens with flying into play.

I remember when I read about Mythic Rares (the new rarity for Magic that will be introduced in Shards of Alara), Mark Rosewater (lead Magic designer) assured me that these Mythic Rares, even though they are harder to get than normal rares, wouldn’t be tournament-staple cards and merely be limited to Dragons and other flavourful cards. Well, Mark lied to me because he printed Sarkhan Vol as a Mythic Rare.

First of all, this card is a mere 4 mana. Llanowar Elves or Birds of Paradise also accelerate it to turn 3. Needless to say, it comes into play pretty fast. When it does, it comes in with 4 loyalty counters. Now, let’s take a look at the power of each ability.

The first ability is reminiscent of Ajani Goldmane’s second ability, except this time, you add a loyalty counter. I don’t really care what deck you are playing, but chances are if you are playing red and green, you’ve got a creature or two in your deck. This ability is just plain strong because of the surprise element alone. Most decks have trouble dealing with surprise right away. Also, since you add a counter, the card is immune to Flame Javelin, which is one of the strongest burn spells and best ways of dealing with Planeswalkers right now. The reason Flame Javelin isn’t amazing against it is because when you play the card, you can activate the first ability right away without passing priority to your opponent. It’s a little trick of the stack. You play the card, and if your opponent has no responses, it resolves. Right after it resolves, you receive priority to do whatever you’d like before your opponent has a chance to do anything. So, when you activate Sarkhan Vol’s first ability, as a cost, you put a counter on him, and THEN his ability goes on the stack, which is the first point since you played him, that the opponent gets a chance to burn him, but since he now has 5 loyalty counters on him, it’s tough for the opponent to burn him away.

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“30 bucks??? I don’t have that kind of money!” - by A. Newby

Submitted by Uncle Ho on September 2, 2008 - 14:28

Recently, Grand Prix – Copenhagen just finished and a lot of good players made it to the top 8. Most of them were piloting very powerful decks. But a lot of US can only imagine playing all the cards in some of those decks because they are just too expensive. Living with my parents while going to University, and only having time to really work one day a week, puts me in this budget player category. Yet, I still manage to make top 4 or at least come close at Standard tournaments on a regular basis. How do I do it without the money to buy Mutavaults and Tarmogoyfs? How do I do it without spending $200 on just a mana base alone? Today I’ll let you in on a few tips on playing popular decks but replacing some of the expensive cards with more inexpensive options.

First is Mono-red. This deck recently became popular because of the addition of Figure of Destiny.

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Opinions on Net decking - by A. Newby

Submitted by Uncle Ho on August 31, 2008 - 03:08

First of all, for those of you who don’t know, Net-decking is a term coined by trading card game players (in this case, Magic) for when a player in a tournament of any level plays with a deck that is an exact or near-exact deck list from a large tournament. For example, at Regionals this year, I played Marijn Lybaert’s R/G Mana Ramp deck that he used at Pro Tour Hollywood. My main deck was exactly the same as his. I Net-decked a list and went to a tournament. Many players do this at local tournaments and especially for larger tournament like Pro Tour Qualifiers or Grand Prix Trials, mainly because of the guarantee that if they don’t do well, it’s not the deck’s fault, because the deck has been proven at a high level tournament already.

Net-decking is not only anticipated for, but expected of. Most of the time, from what I’ve experience at local tournaments, when someone has a rogue deck (a deck that people don’t expect to see at a tournament, not literally a deck of Rogue creatures) the other people will be confused as to what you are playing and be interested if you do well. But, this doesn’t happen very often. More often the people who Net-decked will do well at the tournament.

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Drafting Black in Shadowmoor/Eventide

Submitted by Uncle Ho on August 29, 2008 - 17:28

This is the first article by our guest writer Andrew Newby:

Drafting Mono-Coloured in SHA/SHA/EVE

I’ve recently been trying to draft a little differently for Shadowmoor/Shadowmoor/Eventide lately. Instead of going two or three colours, I have learned that a very good strategy is to go as mono-coloured as possible. The first mono-coloured deck I drafted was a mono-black deck. Essentially, the deck was about 7 removal spells, and a whole lot of decent creatures. Mind you, none of my creatures were really amazing. They were just mediocre creatures. I ended up going 3-1.

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MTG Drafting Tactica I

Submitted by Uncle Ho on August 15, 2008 - 03:05

For many people, one of the best way to start playing Magic: The Gathering is by "Drafting". Drafting is very simple. In fact, all you need is 4 or more players (there are 2 player versions but we won't be talking about that today), each with 3 booster packs.

HOW TO DRAFT
All you do is randomly sit around a table and decide on the order to open the booster packs (everybody need to open theirs in the same way):

1. Open your first pack and look over the cards thoroughly.
2. Pick one card and pass to the left.
3. Repeat until there are no more cards to be passed.

4. Open your second booster pack and look over the cards thoroughtly.
5. Pick one card and pass to the right.
6. Repeat until there are no more cards to be passed.

7. Open your first pack and look over the cards thoroughly.
8. Pick one card and pass to the left.
9. Repeat until there are no more cards to be passed.

Here is the meat and potatoes of this article: BOMBS KILLS CREATURES!

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Warmachine/Hordes Tactics: Entice the Tiger to Leave its Lair

Submitted by Uncle Ho on May 7, 2008 - 03:21

"Never directly attack an opponent whose advantage is derived from its position. Instead lure him away from his position thus separating him from his source of strength." - Thirty-Six Stratagems

This strategy was first told to me by Justin (you all know... the other Skorne player). One day, I saw him putting his warlock in the open, seemingly without any defenses, and with only 1 fury left. Normally, this is suicidal but he had a plan. You see, he said that without luring the opponent's warcaster/warlock to waste their fury to try to assassinate your warcaster/warlock, it is a lot harder to kill their warcaster/warlock who is heavily protected.

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