Tournament Report - NH States 2011

Allow me to start by saying that this year's States was the least prepared I ever was for a tournament, even to go so far as saying I didn't even know if I was going to enter when we got there. and in the end, I almost didn't. I was still missing some cards and had only played four matches with the deck, for that matter a different build of the deck, not to mention that I haven't played aggro in standard since years before I was doing this site, so this was a really risky venture for me. Without further ado, here's the list I submitted (but technically, didn't bring to) States 2011:

Innustrad's Destiny

For the past few months, I'd pretty much dropped the idea of brewing casual stuff, instead focusing on more serious content for the site. Well now, that's about to change, and you're still probably gonna steal some games. It was foretold in the heart of the cards, man. This is your destiny.

It's your destiny to get 2-for-1d with this card.

Modern Marvels: Soul Sisters

In the past, I've only done articles directly relating to standard. For limited, there's too many better than myself out there and I'll just be wasting your time. For the other constructed formats, well I simply never played them enough to offer an opinion. But I have been doing some tooling in Modern, and today I'd like to share that with you all.

HDC 003: Bombshell Babe

I haven't added to the HDC in a long time, so today I thought I'd take a look around that inbox and I found this email from Nick T:

Fastest Deck in Standard
The deck must be able to drop bombs on turn three or sooner.  Bomb being a plausible  win condition that cost five or more. Mana dorks/mana acceleration  should be the only none bomb cards. The core idea is to blast ahead faster then any other deck in the meta, by for example dropping a titan on turn three.  Green seems the optimal color but any color or combo is allowable. Just an idea, hope you try it out!

So basically, I need to construct a standard deck with mana dorks, ramp spells, fatties and nothing else. Oh boy, doesn't this sound like fun. Time to get my Timmy on.

Cheap Weenies

A local player had asked me yesterday about a list for a budget white weenie list.  And by this I mean regular old weenies.  No Quests, no Puresteels, no Tempered Steels.  Regular old weenies.  Come to think of it, I don't believe you can find much in the archetype at the moment, so I agreed to write up a list.  Instead of a passed along note, I thought I'd share my list with all my followers out there.  Without any further ado, I give you my cheap weenie.

That's what she said.

Build With Me- Standard Aggro Part 3

I didn't expect to keep on with this deck, but I've played a few matches with the deck against various opponents and I've quickly come to hate the choice in a few things.

Build With Me- Standard Aggro Part 1

Today, I decided I'd build a new aggro deck to play around with simply because I haven't played a true creature aggro deck in a long time (since pre-SSS Vampires).  But I want to do something a little different this time.  I'm writing this article with no preparation whatsoever.  I'm going to be building this deck right here and now, and take you through the process step by step; so you can see exactly how my thought process works when it comes to building decks.

Deck Tech: Super Saiyan Shock

A couple months back, I had built a deck known as SuperShock, my adaptation of the original post-rotation vampires list as was introduced to me by Bryan Haak during the last States.  I apologize, for some reason I can't find the exact list, but a similar build by Caleb Durward can be found here, only with three Doom Blades over Vendettas and Dark Tutelage and Captivating Vampire beating out two Pawn of Ulamogs and the equipment.

Tournament Report: TCGPlayer 1K Qualifier

This weekend, I was at a 1k qualifier (for the TCGPlayer.com invitational in Chicago) over at Level Up Gaming, in Manchester, New Hampshire.  There was a pool of 63 people at the event, not that big but larger than some.  Honestly, space was a bit tight, so I'm happy there weren't any more contenders.

Thinking about: Level Up

Now, I'll admit, I doubt that this mechanic will ever become mainstream.  As an aggro deck, it's just too slow, but as a control deck it involves way too much tapping out and leaving yourself vulnerable.  However, I feel like there's definitely some potential for the mechanic, and it comes from an enchantment I had completely forgotten about, stumbling across it when shifting through a binder of uncommons.

Thinking about: Living Weapon

As of late, my recent foray into Tezzerator had me scrolling through all the artifacts that appear in standard.  At the time, of course, I was focused on a different kind of artifact, but I can't help but think about one of the coolest mechanics I'd seen in a while- Living Weapon.

Tournament Report: Valakut Can Kiss My Moneymaker

This Saturday, the Game Castle held a Type 2 event, but it was kind of a spur-of-the-moment thing, so not a lot of people heard about it, so only nine people showed up, which means only three rounds.  The day actually turned out to be pretty lolzy, and I saw the whole thing with my round one bye.

Thinking about: Token Spam

Today's TA isn't really about a specific card, but more of a group of cards that could produce an interesting deck.  But I'm not talking about aggro with cards like Kutholda Rebirth, nor am I talking about Three-Way Titan recycling.  No, today I'm talking about the classic token colors: Green and White.

Tournament Report: TCGPlayer.com Qualifier- Toys N' Games Type 2

So today I'm heading to the tournament with a group of local FNM players, the qualifier is less than an hour from our store.  I'm playing Super Shock, Austin Ruthermund is playing WW Quest, Chase Genge is running Valakut, Josh Windsor is using Goblins, and Andrew Kwiatkowski is using Caw-Go.

Deck Tech: Super Shock

Super Shock is a deck that initially came about when a friend of mine, pro tour veteran Bryan Haak first came to  us with his Vampire deck-the one that turned heads during his feature match at a SCG Open in Boston, the one that put vampires back on the map.  At the time, the deck was still in it's roughest stages, and ran some cards that never made it into the build we see today.  However, the deck still ran Dark Tutelage.  When we were talking back and forth about builds, I pointed out that the deck was weak to early disruption.  At the time, a Pyroclasm on the third turn was pretty much game, not like it is now.  However, I brought up using red as a focus, using a burn package instead of the vampires and running four copies of Finkel 2.0.  He liked the idea, and I set to work, building what I called Super Shock for running every shock effect in the format: Forked Bolt, Lightning Bolt, Galvanic Blast, and Burst Lightning.  And Super Shock was born.