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Tag Archives: Doug

Competitive Edge: Failure to Brew

March 11, 2012   Doug   No comments

For a while now I’ve been brewing for Standard. Sticking to an Esper shell, I’ve made several control decks with different win conditions, tried my hand at making Chalice of Life work in an artifact combo deck, and finally have switched to aggro with an illusion/spirit tribal deck. I’m no Conley Woods, so naturally all of my decks have failed miserably. So now I’m going back to control, where I’m most comfortable, examining other Esper control decks in the format and finding one I’d like to play.

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Competitive Edge: Losing to Variance in Limited

January 20, 2012   Doug   1 Comment

Losing to variance sucks. There’s no better way to put it. Whether you get too many lands, or not enough, or your spells are too expensive, or you never draw your bombs, or your opponent simply gets lucky – there are just some games that you lose where you can’t do anything about it.

This is how last week’s Friday night draft went for me:

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Competitive Edge: My Dark Ascension Wishlist, part 1

January 13, 2012   Doug   No comments

By the time you read this, we’ll have seen at least one week of Dark Ascension previews, but at the time of writing I’ve hardly seen any of the set. What I have seen, however, has already got me very, very excited – Gravecrawler signals a push for a zombie deck in Standard, Increasing Confusion will replace Blue Sun’s Zenith as a finisher in decks looking to win through Nephalia Drownyard, and the new mechanic Fateful Hour gives us new ways to play with Phyrexian mana (and maybe even completely break it, finally, if there’s a Fateful Hour effect powerful enough.)

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Competitive Edge: Casting A Modern Eye

January 08, 2012   Doug   No comments

If you don’t know about Modern, it’s the newest non-rotating format introduced by Wizards of the Coast, includes every set from Modern onwards, and is still very, very open for exploration and experimentation.

I don’t play Modern, but I am looking at breaking into the format and starting to compete in Modern events, once I can afford to build a deck. I’ve been following the development of the format and what players are doing, and think I have a pretty good idea of what the format will look like for the upcoming PTQ season.

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Competitive Edge: Consistency vs. Synergy in Innistrad Draft

December 30, 2011   Doug   No comments

Hi everyone! Read these next few paragraphs carefully, because I’m only saying this once. Maybe three times. Maybe ALL OF TEH TIMEZ. I’m not sure yet.

Ahem.

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The Standard Metagame: A Madman’s Scattered Thoughts and Angry Ramblings

July 08, 2011   Doug   No comments

The recent banning of both Jace, the Mind Sculptor and Stoneforge Mystic in Standard have breathed new life into the format. We have a metagame now! Which is, like, totally cool and stuff. But what exactly is the meta? What does the format look like?

There’s been much buzz about Tezzeret, Agent of Bolas and Valakut, the Molten Pinnacle decks ruling the format, but it’s actually quite a bit more vibrant than that. With the bannings and M12 about to be released, the format has been blown right open as if there’s been a rotation (well, really, there kinda has been.) Here are the decks that should be in the format, or will be given time, starting with…

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Confessions of a Token Collector

May 29, 2011   Doug   1 Comment
Tokens title image small

I have a little bit of a confession to make. Well, it’s not so much a confession as an admission. An admission of a problem. Well, not so much a problem as an addiction. Which is in itself a problem, so I guess ultimately I’m admitting that I have a problem. And so the cycle continues.

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