==ISLANDHOME #29==
September 17th 2008
==IN THIS ISSUE...==
Magic Player Rewards
Shards of Alara Spoiler Season: More spoilers, and five rumors that may surprise you.
Running Out of Time (Spiral): In which I make no apologies for any puns.
Magic, Online: How to draft and play sealed deck online for free!
Madonia Minute
Five Tips for New Players: A guest article from veteran Pat Albergo
==THIS WEEK'S SCHEDULE==
Friday: FNM Booster Draft at Grim @ 7 PM
Saturday: Standard Constructed at FNC @ 1 PM
Sunday: Chaos Draft/Cube Draft at Brothers Grim @ 2 PM
==MAGIC PLAYER REWARDS==
Author: Brian Paskoff
==IN THIS ISSUE...==
Magic Player Rewards
Shards of Alara Spoiler Season: More spoilers, and five rumors that may surprise you.
Running Out of Time (Spiral): In which I make no apologies for any puns.
Magic, Online: How to draft and play sealed deck online for free!
Madonia Minute
Five Tips for New Players: A guest article from veteran Pat Albergo
==THIS WEEK'S SCHEDULE==
Friday: FNM Booster Draft at Grim @ 7 PM
Saturday: Standard Constructed at FNC @ 1 PM
Sunday: Chaos Draft/Cube Draft at Brothers Grim @ 2 PM
==MAGIC PLAYER REWARDS==
Author: Brian Paskoff
If you're not already signed up for Magic Player Rewards, I have three great reasons for you to: http://wizards.com/mtg/images/tcg/mprcards.jpg
Back yet? Yes, the new textless MPR promos are Flame Javelin, Unmake, and Cryptic Command! In order to get them, you have to be signed up for the Magic Player Rewards program. Then it's just a matter of playing in enough tournaments to get them in the mail. For every five sanctioned tournaments you play in, you get one new random textless promo and one older random textless promo (past ones include Disenchant, Mana Tithe, Giant Growth, Putrefy, and Mortify, among others), and for every twenty tournaments you play in, you get the newest foil textless card. The textless foil Cryptic Commands, like Wrath and Damnation before them, are going to be worth a fortune when they first come out, but will eventually drop to around the $20-25 range.
Cryptic Command is a weird choice. It's certainly the wordiest card they've ever made textless, and might actually cause some confusion in tournaments thanks to the order of the modes mattering. Usually it's going to be "counter and tap you out" or "counter and draw a card", but there are situations where knowing the order of the modes on the card does matter. For example, if your opponent has a Gaea's Herald out, you can't choose to bounce it and then counter his Tarmogoyf that's on the stack, because the "counter target spell" effect always happens before the "bounce target permanent" part. If you're ever in a tournament where someone plays a Cryptic Command and chooses modes where the order would matter, it might be a good idea to call a judge if you're not sure... and that goes for any textless card!
To sign up for Magic Player Rewards, visit the Magic Player Rewards homepage and click the signup link at the bottom of the page.
Back yet? Yes, the new textless MPR promos are Flame Javelin, Unmake, and Cryptic Command! In order to get them, you have to be signed up for the Magic Player Rewards program. Then it's just a matter of playing in enough tournaments to get them in the mail. For every five sanctioned tournaments you play in, you get one new random textless promo and one older random textless promo (past ones include Disenchant, Mana Tithe, Giant Growth, Putrefy, and Mortify, among others), and for every twenty tournaments you play in, you get the newest foil textless card. The textless foil Cryptic Commands, like Wrath and Damnation before them, are going to be worth a fortune when they first come out, but will eventually drop to around the $20-25 range.
Cryptic Command is a weird choice. It's certainly the wordiest card they've ever made textless, and might actually cause some confusion in tournaments thanks to the order of the modes mattering. Usually it's going to be "counter and tap you out" or "counter and draw a card", but there are situations where knowing the order of the modes on the card does matter. For example, if your opponent has a Gaea's Herald out, you can't choose to bounce it and then counter his Tarmogoyf that's on the stack, because the "counter target spell" effect always happens before the "bounce target permanent" part. If you're ever in a tournament where someone plays a Cryptic Command and chooses modes where the order would matter, it might be a good idea to call a judge if you're not sure... and that goes for any textless card!
To sign up for Magic Player Rewards, visit the Magic Player Rewards homepage and click the signup link at the bottom of the page.
==SHARDS OF ALARA SPOILER SEASON==
Author: Brian Paskoff
Author: Brian Paskoff
More and more details about the upcoming Magic expansion are pouring in, after one of the slowest rumor seasons of the past few years. Thanks to the official spoilers on magicthegathering.com, we now know the theme of each shard, and their respective abilities - Grixis has Unearth, Bant has Exalted, Jund has Devour, Esper has nothing but artifact creatures, and Jund has big spells and big creatures. For the official info you can always visit the official visual spoiler and jam the refresh button on the Magic website every night at midnight, but you need to get your hands a little dirty for the underground rumors. Always remember take rumors with a grain of salt, because they can easily be either dead wrong, fake, or half-right. During the rumor season for Planar Chaos, at least two of the cards had their abilities switched on the unofficial spoiler.
I was half right when I predicted each color would be getting a reprint. I thought blue would get Thirst for Knowledge and most of the others would get reprints straight out of Future Sight's futureshifted subset, but it turns out that I was way off about the cards. Instead, white gets Oblivion Ring, blue gets Cancel, black gets Infest, red gets Goblin Mountaineer, and green gets Naturalize. Now it's strange for Wizards to reprint cards in expansion sets that are already in a Core set; they haven't really done that since the days when Disenchant was in every Core set and every large expansion. If these cards really are in Shards, it'll be interesting to hear Wizards' reasoning for them: Do they really want them in Shards block constructed so bad, are they so good at what they do that they don't want to waste time printing a card that's "worse than Cancel" just for the sake of printing a new counterspell, or some other reason? Oblivion Ring is the best white removal spell since Swords to Plowshares, Cancel is the best cheap counterspell Standard has now that Rune Snag is going away, Infest is a decent replacement to Damnation and means black decks don't need to splash for Firespout, and Naturalize will give green an edge in block against the all-artifact-creature Esper creatures... but you don't even want to know how good Goblins will be in Standard once Goblin Mountaineer is legal. Why not just print Dark Ritual again, Wizards?
In all seriousness, the more you know about the set early on, the better prepared you'll be for the (pre)release events and future limited and constructed events!
Good day and welcome to another installment of the Madonia Minute. I'll begin our journey with everyone's favorite event: The Madonia Invitational.
Sadly, Mike Innace was able to elude 20 other combatants and claim the first event. He has taken a real interest in winning my tournament; maybe he's looking for the product, maybe he's jealous of how many hugs I get in an average week, all I know is, if you're looking to win the event be prepared and make sure you focus on the stronger players like Mike. I've even heard rumors of Mikes domestic partner Ralph may be joining the FNC ranks for the next few weeks.
I am keeping the statistics for the event, and in next week's article I'll list the top 16 players at our almost mid-point.
I wish there was a relevant format I could talk about. I can't spoil any Extended talk as I'm sworn to secrecy about any and all testing. I will say that I'm going to be prepared and I'll have a deck I'm confident with. I know my limitations going in, im a solid player, nowhere on the level of these players. But, I can't think that way, or why should I waste my time.
I'm in a bowling league every Friday night. I decided that my illusions of grandeur, or the $10,000 first prize at the end of my league, would allow me to not play Magic on Fridays. After last week, we were near last place after three weeks. My team was feeling like the league might be a waste of time because the teams we compete against are far superior to us. My team doesn't feel like we can win, and we probably can't honestly, but why compete if you don't think you can win.
I know many people do social activities for fun, not to win. I feel that you want to be the best at whatever you do. If you enjoy Magic casually, then you want to build the best EDH deck or singelton deck possible, and if you are a competitive player like myself you want to do the best you can at the grandest stage. I feel like I can do well at the Pro Tour, many champions comes out of nowhere to win major titles so I don't see why I can't with good preparation and some lucky breaks, make a great showing.
One thing at FNC I've noticed watching people play, is players play way too quickly and don't read their cards out loud to themselves. A lot of you guys also don't think before you play. You get 50 minutes each round, or 4 hours if you play in a Paskoff tournament, that's plenty of time to get a Kithkin/Mono-red match in. Make sure you know what every card in your deck and every card in you opponents deck does. Nuckalvee doesn't fly, but Evans lost a game because he assumed it did and didn't read the card. Grippa gave two games away by not playing lands and allowing Rune Snags to be lethal to his game plan.
This week's tournament is the grand finale of Time Spiral Standard. I personally will miss everything about Time Spiral. It was an innovative, thought provoking format with various options. The decks weren't built for you, and the best players in the room won PTQs, not players that can auto pilot a Faerie or Kithkin deck. If this new set continues the trend of bland deck building I'm honestly considering leaving Magic, although a possible new position at my job may force that hand as well. We'll find out in the coming weeks, but hopefully it will work out.
An oldy but goody for this week.
3x Vesuvan Shapeshifter
3x Brine Elemental
1x Venser
3x Teferi
3x Mistbind Clique
4x Ancestral Visions
4x Rune Snag
1x Commandeer
4x Crypic Command
2x Pact of Negation
3x Terror
4x Bitterblssom
4x Mutavault
4x River of Tears
3x Underground River
2x Sunken Ruins
10 Island
1x Mishra's Factory
1x Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
Thanks for reading
John Madonia
I was half right when I predicted each color would be getting a reprint. I thought blue would get Thirst for Knowledge and most of the others would get reprints straight out of Future Sight's futureshifted subset, but it turns out that I was way off about the cards. Instead, white gets Oblivion Ring, blue gets Cancel, black gets Infest, red gets Goblin Mountaineer, and green gets Naturalize. Now it's strange for Wizards to reprint cards in expansion sets that are already in a Core set; they haven't really done that since the days when Disenchant was in every Core set and every large expansion. If these cards really are in Shards, it'll be interesting to hear Wizards' reasoning for them: Do they really want them in Shards block constructed so bad, are they so good at what they do that they don't want to waste time printing a card that's "worse than Cancel" just for the sake of printing a new counterspell, or some other reason? Oblivion Ring is the best white removal spell since Swords to Plowshares, Cancel is the best cheap counterspell Standard has now that Rune Snag is going away, Infest is a decent replacement to Damnation and means black decks don't need to splash for Firespout, and Naturalize will give green an edge in block against the all-artifact-creature Esper creatures... but you don't even want to know how good Goblins will be in Standard once Goblin Mountaineer is legal. Why not just print Dark Ritual again, Wizards?
In all seriousness, the more you know about the set early on, the better prepared you'll be for the (pre)release events and future limited and constructed events!
==RUNNING OUT OF TIME (SPIRAL)==
Author: Brian Paskoff
Author: Brian Paskoff
This weekend is the last sanctioned Standard event I'll run where Time Spiral block is legal. Next weekend is the prerelease, and even though there'll probably be a tiny Standard event at FNC, it won't be the same as if everyone was there. The week after that is the Shards of Alara release event, where there'll be no constructed event... and even if there were, Time Spiral rotates out the day before. Or to be more precise, Time Spiral, Planar Chaos, Future Sight, and Coldsnap are all going away. No more Rune Snag, Ancestral Visions, Greater Gargadon, Lord of Atlantis, Slaughter Pact, Damnation, Skred, Venser, Teferi, and oh... no more Tarmogoyf, either. My "all types" Standard deck is going to suffer for sure.
It shouldn't be a shock that Standard will change drastically when it loses about 900 cards, the largest loss to the card pool most of you have seen before, and probably will see, what with sets being a lot smaller from now on. So what does it really mean for Standard? Without a full Shards spoiler, it's hard to say what decks are still going to be good and which ones are unplayable. As new sets come out, there are typically less and less cards from older sets played because of the larger card pool and the "answer cards" Wizards likes to print. Decks that lose the cards they're based around will be gone for good. It's kind of hard to play Pickles without Brine Elemental and Vesuvan Shapeshifter, just like it's hard to play TarmoRack without Tarmogoyf and The Rack. Some decks barely use Time Spiral/Coldsnap cards, so they'll be safe - Kithkin is basically a block deck; some builds from Nationals top 8s around the world don't even use any Time Spiral cards! Disenchants and Sunlances are definitely replaceable.
The weeks after a new set comes in and pushes out the old block is the best time to be a constructed player. Entire archetypes are left in ruin, and until there's a major constructed tournament and net decks rear their ugly head, it's up to your own creative mind to find a deck you like. Find a card, or group of cards, that you like from the new set and try to build a deck around them. You never know, you could come up with the new big thing that everyone's packing at the top 8 tables at the store, a PTQ, or a Pro Tour! All the famous decks started with someone noticing that certain cards played well together. And don't worry if your deck isn't the most streamlined pile of sixty cards anyone's ever shuffled; look at how many different versions of Reveillark there were before it became stable! Even Faeries began as a sloppy UG aggro/control deck before someone realized that Bitterblossom was a great card and turned it into the "best deck in Standard".
For a while, you'll watch as some players play old archetypes using new cards to fill in the blanks that the loss of Time Spiral block left behind, and some players play brand new creations. Even if you've found Standard to become stale and boring, you should definitely take an interest in the "New Standard" while it's still got that new-format smell.
It shouldn't be a shock that Standard will change drastically when it loses about 900 cards, the largest loss to the card pool most of you have seen before, and probably will see, what with sets being a lot smaller from now on. So what does it really mean for Standard? Without a full Shards spoiler, it's hard to say what decks are still going to be good and which ones are unplayable. As new sets come out, there are typically less and less cards from older sets played because of the larger card pool and the "answer cards" Wizards likes to print. Decks that lose the cards they're based around will be gone for good. It's kind of hard to play Pickles without Brine Elemental and Vesuvan Shapeshifter, just like it's hard to play TarmoRack without Tarmogoyf and The Rack. Some decks barely use Time Spiral/Coldsnap cards, so they'll be safe - Kithkin is basically a block deck; some builds from Nationals top 8s around the world don't even use any Time Spiral cards! Disenchants and Sunlances are definitely replaceable.
The weeks after a new set comes in and pushes out the old block is the best time to be a constructed player. Entire archetypes are left in ruin, and until there's a major constructed tournament and net decks rear their ugly head, it's up to your own creative mind to find a deck you like. Find a card, or group of cards, that you like from the new set and try to build a deck around them. You never know, you could come up with the new big thing that everyone's packing at the top 8 tables at the store, a PTQ, or a Pro Tour! All the famous decks started with someone noticing that certain cards played well together. And don't worry if your deck isn't the most streamlined pile of sixty cards anyone's ever shuffled; look at how many different versions of Reveillark there were before it became stable! Even Faeries began as a sloppy UG aggro/control deck before someone realized that Bitterblossom was a great card and turned it into the "best deck in Standard".
For a while, you'll watch as some players play old archetypes using new cards to fill in the blanks that the loss of Time Spiral block left behind, and some players play brand new creations. Even if you've found Standard to become stale and boring, you should definitely take an interest in the "New Standard" while it's still got that new-format smell.
==MAGIC, ONLINE==
(Drafting and Sealed'ing online for free!)
Author: Brian Paskoff
(Drafting and Sealed'ing online for free!)
Author: Brian Paskoff
As with any PTQ season, the people who have the greatest chance of winning are the people who prepare the most. And that can be difficult when the big upcoming tournament is a limited event. Buying a box of tournament packs and a box or two of boosters and playing a few sealed deck practice games with some friends can be fun, but it's certainly not the most cost-efficient way to play. The best way to playtest is online, and there's no need to spend hundreds of dollars on Magic Online to do it; MTGO won't even have Shards of Alara until after the PTQ season is over, anyway! Your best option is to use a program called Magic Workstation.
Magic Workstation is a great little program - it can help you organize your collection, let you build decks and print the decklists out, let you play online against either your friends or strangers, or even generate a sealed deck to play. First you'll need the program itself, which can be downloaded from the Magic Workstation homepage. You'll also need the database files that include all the data for every Magic card in existence, which can be found at SlightlyMagic.net. Once you've installed everything (see the FAQ on the Magic Workstation and/or SlightlyMagic.net database page if you have trouble), you can open up Magic Workstation and start building decks.
To generate a sealed deck in Magic Workstation, just go to Tools -> Generate Sealed Deck, or press Ctrl+G. Up at the top of the sealed deck window there'll be a pull-down list of all the boosters and tournament packs available. Since Shards of Alara isn't available yet, I'll show you how to build a Shadowmoor/Eventide sealed deck. Select Eventide booster and click "Add to List" twice, then select a Shadowmoor starter and click "Add to List" once, then hit Generate. Then click the "As Deck" button in the "Work with it" section. When it asks if you want to move all the cards to the sideboard, click Yes.
Now you'll see a list of every card in your generated card pool. Everything is in your sideboard right now, as you can see by the numbers in the "sideboard" column. To move them to your playable maindeck, click in the card's quantity column (QTY) and type in a number, then click in the sideboard column and subtract whatever you took. Keep doing this until you have the right number of spells (remember, 23 spells is the magic number for limited decks!), and then find whatever basic land you want in the top section and click the little green down arrow to add them to your deck until you have at least 40 cards. You may want to save your deck along the way while you're constructing it, as MWS has a tendency to mysteriously crash at random intervals.
To test your deck, save it, then either press Ctrl+T to goldfish your deck in solo mode, or you can press Ctrl+I and find an opponent online. When you press Ctrl+I, a window will pop up asking you what server you want to connect to. mwsplay.net is busier and therefore better for finding random opponents online, while mwsgames.net is more of a meeting ground for players who know each other. If you have a friend who's also building a sealed deck at the same time as you, you can create a game by joining a server (press the "Call" button) and then typing their name in the "New Game" box and hitting Create. Your friend can then look for that game on the server by joining the same server and clicking the Join button next to your game.
It's going to be very hard to find a sealed deck game with a random person online, which is one reason I recommend playing with a friend. Even if you're playtesting Standard, I don't recommend playing online against people you don't know.
I won't go into how to play using the program here in great detail, but here's a few tips:
Ctrl+S shuffles your library.
Ctrl+I rolls a die.
Ctrl+D draws a card.
Ctrl+M mulligans.
Double-clicking on a card in your hand puts it into play.
Double-clicking on a card in play taps or untaps it.
Double-clicking on your life total lets you change it.
Right clicking on anything will give you a context menu.
Use the phase buttons to change what step/phase you're in.
Double click on the last phase button to pass the turn, but say "End my turn" or something first to give your opponent a chance to do anything at end of turn.
If you're itching to play sealed deck, I'm usually up for a game if I'm online. The Shards patch for MWS should be out soon after the prerelease, so you'll have plenty of opportunity to playtest for the PTQ season!
You can draft online for free too, using a program called NetDraft. It's a little more complicated than just doing a sealed deck or practicing Standard because of all the steps involved. First, download the NetDraft 2.0 program, install it, and then go to the official patch page and download the Eventide beta patch (EVbeta_nd.zip). Unzip the Eventide patch into the NetDraft folder where you installed it, and read the guide for instructions on how to draft. Unless someone you know is hosting a draft and willing to give you the info for it, you'll need to use an IRC client to connect to the solidirc server and join the chatroom #draft4u. If you don't know what that means, don't worry - you can just go to Magic League's chatroom and use the web form.
While you're in the #draft4u chatroom, eventually someone will post something like "127.0.0.1 SSE". Copy the IP address (the numbers), open up NetDraft (the program itself is called idraft.exe), and click File and then Connect. Either paste or type the IP address into that window, and hit connect. If you don't have a friend joining the same server, you can pair up with anyone who's asking for "mws cas" (a casual game on Magic Workstation, as opposed to Magic League league game for Magic League rating points or whatever they do there.) Once the draft starts, double click a card to pick it, and right click a card to read its oracle text. After you're done drafting, you'll use the built-in deck creation tool to build your deck, add lands, and then save it. Open it up in Magic Workstation, and find your opponent on whatever server you agree on. That's why joining a draft with a friend is more fun, because you get to play them and not worry about finding random.player on the internet.
Using NetDraft isn't really a perfect substitute for a real draft. It tries to follow the "print runs" - Magic cards are printed on big sheets and then cut up - but sometimes goes out of whack and will put out two identical packs. Eventide's print runs haven't been programmed in yet, so aside from a rare, three uncommons, and a few commons, the Eventide packs it generates won't look like the average Eventide pack you open in a real draft. There's also no foils, which is great if you're practicing drafting for Nationals. It's also not a tournament; you'll only play the person across from you, unless anyone else in the draft wants to play you after using the same draft decks. Oh, and you don't get to keep your cards, obviously!
Playing online is fun, but it's only practice for the real thing. Testing your draft and Standard skills will definitely give you an edge when competing for real prizes at FNM at Grim or our regular events at FNC.
Maybe I'll see some of you online!
Magic Workstation is a great little program - it can help you organize your collection, let you build decks and print the decklists out, let you play online against either your friends or strangers, or even generate a sealed deck to play. First you'll need the program itself, which can be downloaded from the Magic Workstation homepage. You'll also need the database files that include all the data for every Magic card in existence, which can be found at SlightlyMagic.net. Once you've installed everything (see the FAQ on the Magic Workstation and/or SlightlyMagic.net database page if you have trouble), you can open up Magic Workstation and start building decks.
To generate a sealed deck in Magic Workstation, just go to Tools -> Generate Sealed Deck, or press Ctrl+G. Up at the top of the sealed deck window there'll be a pull-down list of all the boosters and tournament packs available. Since Shards of Alara isn't available yet, I'll show you how to build a Shadowmoor/Eventide sealed deck. Select Eventide booster and click "Add to List" twice, then select a Shadowmoor starter and click "Add to List" once, then hit Generate. Then click the "As Deck" button in the "Work with it" section. When it asks if you want to move all the cards to the sideboard, click Yes.
Now you'll see a list of every card in your generated card pool. Everything is in your sideboard right now, as you can see by the numbers in the "sideboard" column. To move them to your playable maindeck, click in the card's quantity column (QTY) and type in a number, then click in the sideboard column and subtract whatever you took. Keep doing this until you have the right number of spells (remember, 23 spells is the magic number for limited decks!), and then find whatever basic land you want in the top section and click the little green down arrow to add them to your deck until you have at least 40 cards. You may want to save your deck along the way while you're constructing it, as MWS has a tendency to mysteriously crash at random intervals.
To test your deck, save it, then either press Ctrl+T to goldfish your deck in solo mode, or you can press Ctrl+I and find an opponent online. When you press Ctrl+I, a window will pop up asking you what server you want to connect to. mwsplay.net is busier and therefore better for finding random opponents online, while mwsgames.net is more of a meeting ground for players who know each other. If you have a friend who's also building a sealed deck at the same time as you, you can create a game by joining a server (press the "Call" button) and then typing their name in the "New Game" box and hitting Create. Your friend can then look for that game on the server by joining the same server and clicking the Join button next to your game.
It's going to be very hard to find a sealed deck game with a random person online, which is one reason I recommend playing with a friend. Even if you're playtesting Standard, I don't recommend playing online against people you don't know.
I won't go into how to play using the program here in great detail, but here's a few tips:
Ctrl+S shuffles your library.
Ctrl+I rolls a die.
Ctrl+D draws a card.
Ctrl+M mulligans.
Double-clicking on a card in your hand puts it into play.
Double-clicking on a card in play taps or untaps it.
Double-clicking on your life total lets you change it.
Right clicking on anything will give you a context menu.
Use the phase buttons to change what step/phase you're in.
Double click on the last phase button to pass the turn, but say "End my turn" or something first to give your opponent a chance to do anything at end of turn.
If you're itching to play sealed deck, I'm usually up for a game if I'm online. The Shards patch for MWS should be out soon after the prerelease, so you'll have plenty of opportunity to playtest for the PTQ season!
You can draft online for free too, using a program called NetDraft. It's a little more complicated than just doing a sealed deck or practicing Standard because of all the steps involved. First, download the NetDraft 2.0 program, install it, and then go to the official patch page and download the Eventide beta patch (EVbeta_nd.zip). Unzip the Eventide patch into the NetDraft folder where you installed it, and read the guide for instructions on how to draft. Unless someone you know is hosting a draft and willing to give you the info for it, you'll need to use an IRC client to connect to the solidirc server and join the chatroom #draft4u. If you don't know what that means, don't worry - you can just go to Magic League's chatroom and use the web form.
While you're in the #draft4u chatroom, eventually someone will post something like "127.0.0.1 SSE". Copy the IP address (the numbers), open up NetDraft (the program itself is called idraft.exe), and click File and then Connect. Either paste or type the IP address into that window, and hit connect. If you don't have a friend joining the same server, you can pair up with anyone who's asking for "mws cas" (a casual game on Magic Workstation, as opposed to Magic League league game for Magic League rating points or whatever they do there.) Once the draft starts, double click a card to pick it, and right click a card to read its oracle text. After you're done drafting, you'll use the built-in deck creation tool to build your deck, add lands, and then save it. Open it up in Magic Workstation, and find your opponent on whatever server you agree on. That's why joining a draft with a friend is more fun, because you get to play them and not worry about finding random.player on the internet.
Using NetDraft isn't really a perfect substitute for a real draft. It tries to follow the "print runs" - Magic cards are printed on big sheets and then cut up - but sometimes goes out of whack and will put out two identical packs. Eventide's print runs haven't been programmed in yet, so aside from a rare, three uncommons, and a few commons, the Eventide packs it generates won't look like the average Eventide pack you open in a real draft. There's also no foils, which is great if you're practicing drafting for Nationals. It's also not a tournament; you'll only play the person across from you, unless anyone else in the draft wants to play you after using the same draft decks. Oh, and you don't get to keep your cards, obviously!
Playing online is fun, but it's only practice for the real thing. Testing your draft and Standard skills will definitely give you an edge when competing for real prizes at FNM at Grim or our regular events at FNC.
Maybe I'll see some of you online!
==MADONIA MINUTE==
Author: John "Metagame" Madonia
Author: John "Metagame" Madonia
Good day and welcome to another installment of the Madonia Minute. I'll begin our journey with everyone's favorite event: The Madonia Invitational.
Sadly, Mike Innace was able to elude 20 other combatants and claim the first event. He has taken a real interest in winning my tournament; maybe he's looking for the product, maybe he's jealous of how many hugs I get in an average week, all I know is, if you're looking to win the event be prepared and make sure you focus on the stronger players like Mike. I've even heard rumors of Mikes domestic partner Ralph may be joining the FNC ranks for the next few weeks.
I am keeping the statistics for the event, and in next week's article I'll list the top 16 players at our almost mid-point.
I wish there was a relevant format I could talk about. I can't spoil any Extended talk as I'm sworn to secrecy about any and all testing. I will say that I'm going to be prepared and I'll have a deck I'm confident with. I know my limitations going in, im a solid player, nowhere on the level of these players. But, I can't think that way, or why should I waste my time.
I'm in a bowling league every Friday night. I decided that my illusions of grandeur, or the $10,000 first prize at the end of my league, would allow me to not play Magic on Fridays. After last week, we were near last place after three weeks. My team was feeling like the league might be a waste of time because the teams we compete against are far superior to us. My team doesn't feel like we can win, and we probably can't honestly, but why compete if you don't think you can win.
I know many people do social activities for fun, not to win. I feel that you want to be the best at whatever you do. If you enjoy Magic casually, then you want to build the best EDH deck or singelton deck possible, and if you are a competitive player like myself you want to do the best you can at the grandest stage. I feel like I can do well at the Pro Tour, many champions comes out of nowhere to win major titles so I don't see why I can't with good preparation and some lucky breaks, make a great showing.
One thing at FNC I've noticed watching people play, is players play way too quickly and don't read their cards out loud to themselves. A lot of you guys also don't think before you play. You get 50 minutes each round, or 4 hours if you play in a Paskoff tournament, that's plenty of time to get a Kithkin/Mono-red match in. Make sure you know what every card in your deck and every card in you opponents deck does. Nuckalvee doesn't fly, but Evans lost a game because he assumed it did and didn't read the card. Grippa gave two games away by not playing lands and allowing Rune Snags to be lethal to his game plan.
This week's tournament is the grand finale of Time Spiral Standard. I personally will miss everything about Time Spiral. It was an innovative, thought provoking format with various options. The decks weren't built for you, and the best players in the room won PTQs, not players that can auto pilot a Faerie or Kithkin deck. If this new set continues the trend of bland deck building I'm honestly considering leaving Magic, although a possible new position at my job may force that hand as well. We'll find out in the coming weeks, but hopefully it will work out.
An oldy but goody for this week.
3x Vesuvan Shapeshifter
3x Brine Elemental
1x Venser
3x Teferi
3x Mistbind Clique
4x Ancestral Visions
4x Rune Snag
1x Commandeer
4x Crypic Command
2x Pact of Negation
3x Terror
4x Bitterblssom
4x Mutavault
4x River of Tears
3x Underground River
2x Sunken Ruins
10 Island
1x Mishra's Factory
1x Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
Thanks for reading
John Madonia
==FIVE TIPS FOR NEW PLAYERS==
Author:Pat Albergo
Author:Pat Albergo
It may not seem like my style to write an article mainly to agree with someone else, but I was struck by how much Mike Innace's article last week had to offer the beginning player. If anyone out there who is struggling to win more than a round or two at FNC didn't read that article for whatever reason, you should really dig up last week's email and check it out.
Basically everything he said by way of advice for new players was not only dead on, it targeted a lot of areas where FNC players could stand to improve. The big one, which Mike touched on implicitly but I want to call attention to in a direct way, is the tension between someone asserting they are a "fun" or "casual" player and yet at the same time showing up to tournaments and complaining when their opponents beat them. While I disagree with Mike when he says that players would, deep down, rather win than have fun, it's certainly true that even players who want most of all to have fun would rather win than lose while they do it.
I want to elaborate a bit on some of what Mike discussed. I realize that some of these sections are long, so I've used bold headings to make it easier to skim through.
1. Play good cards. This is the lesson of Mike's Howling Mine story. Don't judge a card by how good it "seems" to you. Ask other players whether the card is good. See whether the card is being played in top level tournament decks. Howling Mine, for instance, is not. ("Turbo Fog" is not a top level deck.) Even if you are opposed to "net decking"--which you shouldn't be, but that's a topic for another time--you can at least use the information from high level decks to evaluate cards before you decide to play them. However, playing good cards isn't enough by itself. Time Walk is a massively powerful card, but there are decks in Vintage that don't play it because it doesn't fit their game plan. That brings me to my next point:
2. Have a plan. Make sure that you understand what your deck is supposed to be doing. This is the lesson of his story about Nester. If Nester really intended for his deck to be aggressive, then there really is no place for 0/5 walls. (It may have been that Nester's deck wasn't so much "aggro" as a "big monster" deck, but even then it may still be better to play two-drops that can attack and use one-drop mana accelerants) While it's important to play good cards, don't fall into the trap of thinking that any "good card" belongs in your deck. Wall of Roots is a good card, but not if your plan is to attack with creatures and win the game before your opponent has a chance to react to or neutralize your strategy. Thorn of Amethyst is good in some decks and some circumstances, but probably not in a deck that wants to win in the middle turns by attacking with big creatures. If the game has gone on that long, most non-combo decks won't be severely hampered by the Thorn.
3. Come prepared. This doesn't mean that you need to practice night and day before you play in a local Saturday tournament, but it does mean that you should at the very least have a sideboard. MIke is right that a sideboard can make all the difference in the world between winning and losing. At Regionals in June, I was playing Reveillark and was facing down a mirror match in the seventh round. His build had Bonded Fetch and mine did not, so he was better equipped to win the mirror in game one, and he did. However, I had expected this matchup and had cards in my sideboard (Wheel of Sun and Moon and Teferi) that were designed to shore up the matchup. In game 2, I stuck an early Teferi that forced him into a suboptimal position for the rest of the game, until he lost. In game 3, I resolved a second turn Wheel of Sun and Moon when he tapped out, and I saw as the entire combo ended up on the bottom of his library. My sideboard flat out won me this match. Having a sideboard is not a luxury if you want to win your matches.
4. Anybody can win any match. I understand that at a store like FNC, there can sometimes be a large divide between the best players and everyone else. That doesn't mean that the best players can never lose. Mike could not be more right about how bad it was for Travis to adopt a self-defeating attitude. It's even worse that Madonia, whom a handful of young players look up to, will come out and say that there's no point in playing a difficult matchup. I think Travis's attitude comes from knowing that there are other players who come to the tournament with more experience and more resources for deckbuilding, so he's at a disadvantage. However, that doesn't mean that he should resign himself to losing before he even plays a match. It's possible to win with inferior cards, and contrary to what Madonia said, it's possible to win difficult matchups, too.
I'm going to tell a long (but hopefully interesting) story to illustrate this point. I was playing Aggro Loam at an Extended PTQ in 2007, and I was paired against Counterbalance Psychatog, a matchup I considered basically impossible. Loam needs to resolve two mana spells to win, and while discard spells can help force those spells through against other control decks, Sensei's Divining Top and Counterbalance make that a difficult task. Top allows you to leave your best spells in your library, safe from Duress and Cabal Therapy, until you want to draw and cast them. Counterbalance, once in play, can't be Duressed away the way a conventional "counter target spell" card can be. When he opened on Watery Grave and Top, I figured I'd lose and began thinking about how many other matches I'd need to win to make the top 8. As it turned out, his next turn involved activating Top on his upkeep and then passing back to me without making a land drop! He kept a terrible hand (control decks need mana to function) that didn't yield him a second land until turn FOUR, at which point I had the game well in hand and went on to win. He kept a similarly risky hand in game 2, but this time his land showed up and he managed to have three lands, a top, and a Counterbalance out on turn 3. However, he didn't have mana untapped, so I snuck a Terravore out while he still had a five-drop on top of his deck. The next turn, I took a gamble because I knew that just sitting there with a small Terravore would not beat Counterbalance-Top over the course of seven or so turns. I tested the waters with a Burning Wish, and when he didn't find a two-drop for it with Top, I went ahead and played a Devastating Dreams, which resolved! It cleard the board of everything but my Vore, which let me win in a couple of turns. The Loam-Tog matchup was every bit as tough as I thought (and at least as tough as the Teachings-Faeries matchup), but I was able to win because my opponent kept bad hands and was unfortunate enough to whiff on Counterbalance when I just threw my best spells out there in the early turns.
I'm not saying that you should expect stories like this to happen all the time, but there are no "guaranteed loss" matchups in a game with as many random elements as Magic. Every match IS winnable, as Mike said last week.
5. Little changes make a big difference. I'm adding this one as a general reaction to what both John and Mike wrote last week. John said flat out that Five Color Control ("Quick 'n Toast") "was a bye" for his Doran deck. He's wrong. Besides the fact that no matchups are actually byes, Five Color has cards that are effective in the matchup. Cryptic Command, Wall of Roots, Cloudthresher, Condemn, Bogardan Hellkite, and even Rune Snag can muck up what Doran is trying to accomplish. Even so, the matchup is still
If you've stuck with me through this whole article, thanks. I hope it was worth it. If you see me around at an event and want to give me some feedback, go for it. If you like this and want more, bug Paskoff about it and maybe I'll write again sometime.
-Pat Albergo
-Pat Albergo
==RULES CORNER==
Author: Brian Paskoff
Author: Brian Paskoff
Q. Since Executioner's Capsule is an artifact, can I sac it to kill a Chameleon Colossus?
A. Traditionally, artifacts have been colorless, but it's about to become increasingly more common - at least for a while - for artifacts to have a little color in them. A permanent's colors are determined by the mana symbols in their mana costs, so as long as there's nothing changing the color of the Capsule, you can't target a Chameleon Colossus with the Capsule's ability.
Q. I attack with a bunch of guys, and my opponent Mirrorweaves his animated Mutavault. I know it turns all my creatures into unanimated Mutavaults, but can I activate them to make them keep attacking?
A. Once a permanent stops being a creature, it's removed from combat. You can activate them again, but they're not in combat anymore.
A. Traditionally, artifacts have been colorless, but it's about to become increasingly more common - at least for a while - for artifacts to have a little color in them. A permanent's colors are determined by the mana symbols in their mana costs, so as long as there's nothing changing the color of the Capsule, you can't target a Chameleon Colossus with the Capsule's ability.
Q. I attack with a bunch of guys, and my opponent Mirrorweaves his animated Mutavault. I know it turns all my creatures into unanimated Mutavaults, but can I activate them to make them keep attacking?
A. Once a permanent stops being a creature, it's removed from combat. You can activate them again, but they're not in combat anymore.
==THE ISLANDHOME BLOG==
One of the things I wanted to do was have an archive of past issues online so I could refer people back to them as well as let new readers peruse old issues to see what all the fuss is about. So I've archived all the old issues on the blogosphere at islandhomemtg.blogspot.com. Go and relive all the past moments of glory!
If you've noticed, in the past few weeks I've been having a few more guest articles in Islandhome. With tournaments all weekend and work all week, sometimes it's hard to find time to sit down and write an entire newsletter, which is why I love it when I get article submissions! Not only does it give more introspective on the Long Island Magic community from those who are a part of it, it saves me work. ;) It's especially useful to get articles from players who are a part of the metagame, as judges are notoriously bad players.
If you've got an article you'd like to submit, send it to IslandhomeMTG@gmail.com. Try to keep it a reasonable length - there's no word limit, but look at previous Islandhome articles for guidance - and avoid bad language and personal insults. Also try to maintain good grammar and spelling; doesn't have to be perfect, but you should see how long it takes me to spellcheck the Madonia Minute every week!
I can't promise every submission will make it into the next week's Islandhome, but I'll try to get as many in as I can, especially ones that are relevant to a previous/upcoming event.
==GUEST ARTICLES==
If you've noticed, in the past few weeks I've been having a few more guest articles in Islandhome. With tournaments all weekend and work all week, sometimes it's hard to find time to sit down and write an entire newsletter, which is why I love it when I get article submissions! Not only does it give more introspective on the Long Island Magic community from those who are a part of it, it saves me work. ;) It's especially useful to get articles from players who are a part of the metagame, as judges are notoriously bad players.
If you've got an article you'd like to submit, send it to IslandhomeMTG@gmail.com. Try to keep it a reasonable length - there's no word limit, but look at previous Islandhome articles for guidance - and avoid bad language and personal insults. Also try to maintain good grammar and spelling; doesn't have to be perfect, but you should see how long it takes me to spellcheck the Madonia Minute every week!
I can't promise every submission will make it into the next week's Islandhome, but I'll try to get as many in as I can, especially ones that are relevant to a previous/upcoming event.
==UPCOMING EVENTS==
September 27th: Shards of Alara prerelease
Gray Matter is hosting the Shards of Alara prerelease at the Sheraton hotel in Hauppauge, which will have dealers, team events, and multiple flights you won't find at in-store release events. Click here for details and directions!
October 4th - December 28th: PTQ Season for PT Kyoto
The next PTQ season kicks off October 4th, and the format is Shards of Alara sealed deck! The PTQ schedule should be released within the next few weeks.
October 4th (Saturday): Shards of Alara release event at FNC
More details soon!
October 5th (Sunday): Shards of Alara release event at Brothers Grim
More details soon!
Gray Matter is hosting the Shards of Alara prerelease at the Sheraton hotel in Hauppauge, which will have dealers, team events, and multiple flights you won't find at in-store release events. Click here for details and directions!
October 4th - December 28th: PTQ Season for PT Kyoto
The next PTQ season kicks off October 4th, and the format is Shards of Alara sealed deck! The PTQ schedule should be released within the next few weeks.
October 4th (Saturday): Shards of Alara release event at FNC
More details soon!
October 5th (Sunday): Shards of Alara release event at Brothers Grim
More details soon!
==STORE LOCATIONS & CONTACT INFO==
Brothers Grim
1244 Middle Country Rd.
Selden, NY 11784
Phone: 631-698-2805
Website: www.brgim.com
Friendly Neighborhood Comics
3 Grant Avenue, Suite 2
Islip, NY 11751
Phone: 631-470-7984
Brothers Grim
1244 Middle Country Rd.
Selden, NY 11784
Phone: 631-698-2805
Website: www.brgim.com
Friendly Neighborhood Comics
3 Grant Avenue, Suite 2
Islip, NY 11751
Phone: 631-470-7984
==FIN==
See everyone this weekend!
Got forwarded Islandhome and want to sign up? Send an email to IslandhomeMTG@gmail.com!
Got forwarded Islandhome and want to sign up? Send an email to IslandhomeMTG@gmail.com!
-Brian Paskoff
L1 NY
L1 NY
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