Archive for the ‘Magic: The Gathering’ category

This week, the previews for Scars of Mirrodin started.

In connection to what Xias posted last time, the mechanic that Mark Rosewater said was coming back turned out to be Imprint. Though, according to the site, the ability will be utilised in new ways.

There are a few other new mechanics that have been mentioned, but I think I’ll handle the return of Phyrexia.

In Scars of Mirrodin, the Phyrexians are on the assault, trying to take over the plane. But they do it the sneaky way, taking over from the inside. In this set, the Mirrans (the inhabitants of Mirrodin) don’t even fully realise that they are under attack.

To play on this overtaking abilities of the Phyrexians, Magic has decided to use an ability. Infect, as discussed here, is an ability that the Phyrexians will probably exclusively have.  The set is said to have a poison theme.

Mark Rosewater mentioned that there will be no way to remove poison counters from yourself as there was back in Homelands. No Leeches in Scars of Mirrodin, it seems. Rosewater also mentioned that there will be ways to ‘deal with’ the poison, but you won’t be able to remove them. He was very mysterious.

Hm. That’s all, until I hear more.

There’s been a lot of speculation about which block mechanic will be making a comeback in the upcoming set Scars of Mirrodon. Well we can officially scratch sunburst off the list. Mark Rosewater’s Twitter account confirmed it as such about 24 hours ago:

“For a while I’ve said that a Mirrodin block mechanic is coming back in Scars. Everyone assumes it’s sunburst. It’s not.”

Straight from the horse’s mouth people. If you’re not familiar with Sunburst, I can point you to one such card that uses it: Pentad Prism.

Are you ready to go Pro? I hope so (ho ho!). Wizards of the Coast has officially announced the 2011 Pro tour schedule. These “magic weekends,” as they are called, will be the successor to the Magic Festival concept that started in the 2010 Pro Tour.

Naturally, the idea here is to drive a big tournament that will help bring in sales for the game, but it looks like the company is trying to involve more players. Here’s the schedule, but you can also check out the official page here.

Paris, France: February 10–13, 2011

* Location: Espace Champerret
* Pro Tour format: Standard and Booster Draft with a Standard Top 8
* Grand Prix format: TBA
* Qualifier Season: October 2 through December 31, Sealed Deck format

Nagoya, Japan: June 10-12, 2011

* Location: Nagoya Congress Center
* Pro Tour format: Block Constructed and Booster Draft with a Booster Draft Top 8
* Qualifier Season: January 1 through April 10, Extended format

Philadelphia, PA USA: September 2-4, 2011

* Location: Philadelphia Convention Center
* Pro Tour format: Extended and Booster Draft with an Extended Top 8
* Qualifier Season: April 16 through July 31, Standard format

San Francisco, CA USA: November 17-20, 2011

* Location: Fort Mason Center
* 2011 World Championships formats: TBA

See you there!

Wizards of the cost recently published the decklist for the upcoming Duel Decks: Espeth Vs Tezzeret via their digital magazine (DailyMTG.com). This has caused quite a buzz, as it is the first time the decklists have been officially made public.

The Two Planeswalkers have been given their own custom artwork as well, and you can view them below:

You can also check out the official deck list in all of its glory here.

I recently got myself two Jhoira of the Ghitu’s.

Jhoira’s ability allows you to suspend 4 any non-land card for 2 mana. Now, this on its own is already pretty awesome. This means you get to play Emrakul, the Aeons Torn on turn 8. With no mana accelaration.

Better yet, if you get the right cards, you can get both Emrakul and Kozilek, the Butcher of Truth on turn 8. Plus, they have haste. Goodbye ten permanents.

Even better, the suspend ability lets you cast the spell, allowing you to even get the Eldrazi’s special abilities.

With this in mind, I added something to spice it up a bit. Rift Elemental was the answer.

This awesome card is the second pillar that my deck stands on. For 2 mana, you can remove a time counter.

That means you can ramp up to the powerful creatures even faster.

Not good enough for you? Well, all right. Let’s add a Training Grounds.

One mana to suspend. One red mana to remove a time counter.

I’ll do the math for you. With the right opening hand, you can win by turn 5.

Turn 1 – Play an Island and Training Grounds.

Turn 2 – Play a Mountain and Rift Elemental.

Turn 3 – Play a Mountain and Jhoira of the Ghitu.

Turn 4 – Play a Mountain. Suspend Emrakul and Kozilek with Jhoira’s ability, using one blue and one red mana. Then remove a counter from each with Rift Elemental.

Turn 5 – Play a Mountain and remove 2 counters from each of your two suspended cards. Swing for the win.

Of course, your hand probably won’t work that well. Though, wouldn’t it be nice?

That’s all for now.

For some players, building the deck is half the fun. The hundreds of thousand of combinations make for some clever and interesting deck themes (even if most tournaments feature only a handful of them). For others, though, they just want to play the game, and the’d happily take a well built deck that comes right out of the box. As it is in the company’s best interest, it isn’t surprising to see new “grab-and-go” event decks then, designed to cater to this type of player.

The idea behind these decks is pretty straightforward. They’re strong, standard decks with 60 cards and a 15 card sideboard. They also come included with a handy dandy spindown lifecounter and a strategy guide, too. They’ll be released February 25, 2011.

You can check out all of the details here.

Well news continues to trickle out regarding the upcoming expansion set, Scars of Mirrodin. One of the latest was revealed via From the Vault: Relics, and is called the Sword of Body and Mind. As you can see, this card could get nasty in a hurry.

Word on the street is that there will be a full set of these swords, and if that’s the case I can’t wait to see what other goodies will come from them. I’m sure each sword will be a combination of colors, providing protection and a nifty effect based on the color combination. Still a bit surprised that the card is only 3 mana though, given the effect.

Looking over the most recent article at the daily MTG (you can read it here), I noticed a rather playful looking die at the bottom of the piece. After clicking on a few times to see how my rolls turned out (not very well) the die changed to a skull, which also revealed a new creature abilitiy, presumably for the Scars of Mirrodin set: Infect

Infect: (This creature deals damage to creature in the form of -1/-1 counters and to players in the form of poison counters)

Now, you’ll likely recognize the mechanic of poison counters from previous cards like..say, Leeches, but how large of a role the new mechanic will play in Scars of Mirrodin is anyone’s guess. Either way it is a fun new toy, and I do enjoy Easter eggs, too!

In my decks these days, I take careful consideration how to divide my lands into colours. I mostly use the whole mathematical formula that I showed last time.

But, among the confusion, I’ve run into a problem or two.

Sometimes, I find that my mana is quite underwhelming when I’m using abilities.

When should you increase mana of one colour, even though casting costs point otherwise?

Abilities

When you have an Echo Mage/Freed From the Real combo going, you’ll want more than 2 blue mana, right?

Let’s say your deck looks something like this :

4 Echo Mage

4 Freed From the Real

4 Lightning Bolt

4 Fire Servant

4 Surreal Memoir

4 Beacon of Destruction

4 Burst Lightning

4 Punishing Fire

4 Shock

4 Searing Wind

That’s 40 cards, leaving 20 for lands. 12 blue symbols vs 40 red symbols. That’s a ratio of around 1:4.

Meaning your mana would normally look something like this :

4 Island

16 Mountain

When you get a Echo Mage with a Freed From the Real on the field, chances are you’ll find yourself with 2, maybe 3 blue mana. Not very useful, right?

For the purposes of this deck, I’d say that more blue mana is required. Since you’ll be constantly using the Mage’s ability, I’d say you need at least 5 blue mana so that you can make 4 copies of a spell.

In a rough calculation, you’d probably get a Echo Mage and a Freed from the Real by turn 15 at the latest. By then you’ll need at least 5 mana, right? In that fashion, I’d push Islands up to at least 10, or maybe even push the total lands to 24 or so (because it’ll be land intensive).

The point that I was trying to make is that when choosing your mana base, you need to keep in mind not only the casting cost, but also the cost that you want to use for abilities, or repeated cards (like Buyback spells).

That’s all.

A few days ago, I read an article on Magic the Gathering’s website where a staff member revealed the way he chose mana for his decks.

I tried it out, and the results was very satisfying, so I thought I’d share the method here.

The method works like this:

When you want to play your Elvish Warrior on turn two in your green-white deck, you’re going to need 2 green mana. Now, when you look at it, the more forests you have in your deck, the greater the chance that you’d have 2 forests by turn 2.

Now, using this method, you award a certain number to coloured mana in a card, depending on the turn you want to play it.

Here’s the ranking:

Turn 1 : 5 points

Turn 2 : 4 points

Turn 3 : 3 points

Turn 4 : 2 points

Turn 5 : 1.5 points

Turn 6+ : 1 point

These turns referred to here is the turn you want to play the card. Say you have a Disenchant in your deck. Rather than playing it on turn 2, you’d probably keep it until you need to use it. Cards like these don’t get less valuable as the time goes on, thus they can be played any turn to maximum efficiency. However, something like Elvish Warrior is more valuable on turn 2 than on turn 6. Thus, Elvish Warrior would count for a total of 8G points (Two green mana symbols, at 4 points each). Disenchant would count only for 1W (One white mana symbol at 1 point).

By doing this until your whole deck has been ‘ranked’, you will end up with a number for each of your colours. This will be your ratio. Then you just whittle it down to the amount of lands you’re planning to have in your deck, and then you have an efficient colour base.

So thanks to Jacob Van Lunen of the Magic the Gathering team, my mana seems to be much more stable. My method might not be exactly the same as his, but this is how I understood it.

Hm.