Patriot Games

Tuesday 30 October 2012

Aftermath...

So here I am some 32 hours or more after the invitational.  I don't really remember yesterday - I got up , it was cold, I went to work, thought I had forgotten my door key (even though I couldn't have got out of the house without it), went home, tried to watch the telly, fell asleep, went to bed, fell asleep and then there is now.  The invitational seems to have been a great success.  For those of you who didn't see it on Facebook - here are the final standings at the end of the weekend:


1 Robert Tinsley
2 Andrew Mather
3 Daniel Cocking
4 Andy Sims
5 Mike Boon
6 Patrick Bateman
7 John Roberts
8 James Brook
9 Diarmuid Verrier
10 Grzegorz Flis
11 Fabian Quinn
12 Stephen Kay
13 Richard Tinsley
14 Adam Pollard
15 Matt Cooper
16 Owen Debenham

That was pretty cool, I think we will make that an annual event!  Congratulations to all those who played in the invitational, all those who made day 2 and the top 6 who will make up Team Patriot Sheffield.  We are ready to take on the world (well at least the UK).  There were feature matches over the weekend and I will be editing the footage over next weekend to put up on You Tube.

For now here is FNM Relax's very own James Brook laying the smacketh down on Mike Boon's candy ass!



Sorry couldn't resist that one!  Tom Behan asked on Facebook about the editing process.  I put in for some funding in the job I was doing 5 years ago for a bunch of digital media stuff which we got.  Part of these was the Adobe Premier video editing software which is pretty versatile.  I have only had time to chop out the audio and replace with Strange Kind of Magic by ELO and just show the first game in the match in raw format.  When I have finished I will be adding graphics with life counters etc which you make in Power point and overlay on the footage.

Following the highly laudable decision by Wizards of the Coast to stop putting up full deck lists for constructed decks from pro tour etc I will no longer be posting my full deck lists on here but will rather be talking about some of the cards in the deck.

I think this deck should be called "Noble Vampires" - oh wait that sounds a bit Twilight!


This week is extended and I thought I would have a go at a deck which is both tribal and linked into the whole guild idea, as well as being inspired by one of the players in the top 6 of the invitational - Patrick Bateman.  So this week I will be playing Rakdos Vampires!


Back with a vengeance!


BR Vamps was pretty good in Zendikar and now it has some sweet toys to fill up the top end of the curve.  4 Drop, indestructible, sac outlets with haste for 4 mana seem good too.

Happy I got these when they were worth nothing!


With 2 Liliana's that snuggle happily in the deck as well it seems I have a pretty cool line up of   cards to call upon.

What a card in a deck that loves you opponents to sacrifice stuff!


Liliana's +1 Ability is very effective when you have a certain BB cost vampire in your hands who loves to be in the graveyard and then leap back into play when you play a land.

Do you think he means me?


Anyway that is all I have time for today - will be back on Friday with a guest blog!  Who it is penned by will be a secret till then.  See you all soon...






Monday 22 October 2012

Accepting the Challenge

Well what a weekend...  I managed to take my menagerie of non magical zoo creatures to a 3 - 0 finish in Pauper and won the event.  This is only the second time I have won FNM Relax and it feels good to have done so with a bunch of vanilla animals and a few squadron Hawks.

We have a new Pro Tour champion who played a deck called Eggs or now Second Breakfast.  Didn't mention that during my recent blogs on Modern.  I would like to say that I had never heard of the deck before but that would be untrue, I just didn't take it seriously - I think everyone will take it seriously now!  Keeping a no land hand and suspending 2 Lotus Blooms was pretty awesome I have to say...



I can wait three turns for a Black Lotus, sure.

The Pro Tour is over until Gatecrash and we have events at home which are far more pressing.  Saturday and Sunday see the first Patriot Sheffield Invitational.  I wanted to just spend a minute talking about the invitational, what inspired it, and who has been invited.

I watched SCGLive one weekend and saw some truly bad players playing some bad decks.  My first thought was "Wow we can do so much better than this" and then I thought "Why don't we?"  Patriot Sheffield is not Star City Games, but everything has to start somewhere and why should we not have invitational tournaments because we live in the UK?

I took the idea to Jim and Paul at Patriot and gave them a basic rundown of what I was thinking.  They liked the idea and had some really good questions with regards to formats etc.  We discussed it for a while and Paul said he could come up with an attractive sponsorship package for the "winners" and the scene was set.  

The invitational is a serious challenge designed to test players ability to play Magic over 4 different formats with the knowledge that if they don't "Bring It" on day one it is all over, they are going home, no day 2 for you.

As to who has been invited this was based on 2 factors - the players general results (originally I was going to base it on FNM results, so Glad I got talked out of that) and for people who have contributed to the Magic community in Sheffield by turning up and having a go.  Here for the first time is the list of players who have been invited:

Steve McAleer
Andy Mather
Mike Boon
Grzegorz Flis
Ben Pearson
Owen Debenham
John Roberts
Pengyi Liang
Patrick Bateman
Adam Pollard
Keith Miller
Ian Richardson
Stephen Kay
John Kay
Richard Tinsley
 Robert Tinsley
Alastair Kennedy
Zead Said
Sarah Sidaway
Michael Radford
Joe Alexander
Jimmy Wild 
Daniel Cocking
Richard Fuller
Christopher Parks
Ollie Firth
Lee Parker
Russell Clarke
Diarmuid Verrier

Fabian Quinn
Piran Oliver
James Brook
Matt Cooper
Andy Sims
Dave Hancock
Neil Lockwood
Bryan Connolly
Thomas Ellis
Michael Readhead
Callum Bilbe


Should this prove to be a success we will look to getting other stores interested in the concept and then we can look at team competitions like they are now doing at GP.  We will also have a feature match table which will be videoed and put up on You Tube after the event.  the purpose of this event is to promote high level play in Sheffield and give other places something to talk about.

In other news, this Friday at FNM Relax it is 2 Headed Giant and I have a little bit of Jund Midrange to play which looks like this:

 2 Cavern of Souls
4 Overgrown Tomb
4 Blood Crypt
4 Dragonskull Summit
3 Rootbound Crag
3 Woodland Cemetery
1 Kessig Wolf Run
2 Swamp

23 Lands

2 Blood Artist
3 Dreg Mangler
2 Olivia Voldaren
2 Desecration Demon
4 Huntmaster of the Fells
1 Rakdos Lord of Riots
1 Reaper form the Abyss
1 Griselbrand

16 Creatures

4 Tragic Slip
1 Devils Play
1 Bonfire of the Damned
1 Rakdos's Return
3 Dreadbore
1 Abrupt Decay
3 Rakdos Charm
3 Farseek

17 Instants/Sorcery

2 Liliana of the Veil
2 Garruk Relentless

4 Planeswalkers

If you are not in the invitational still come down and cheer on your favourites, there is a lot of Magic talent on display.  It may not be Pro Tour but it is in our own back yard.  Support Sheffield and its players.  Hope to see you there...

Friday 19 October 2012

Modern Day Magic

So here we are at Pro Tour Return to Ravnica (not literally) and it is Modern.  Also (what a massive coincidence, not) we are one week away from the first ever Sheffield Patriot Games Invitational, where day one sees us play Return to Ravnica sealed and Modern.  Just to cap it all off tonight it is Modern Pauper at FNM Relax, it almost looks like this was planned...

Æther Vial
 As close as you get to a modern staple.

This is the second part of my blog on Modern, looking at the cards and decks which have defined the format so far.  The first part can be found here.  

Birthing Pod

Birthing Pod has led to a variety of powerful decks in Modern.  Naya Pod was good in standard and instantly better in Modern because of the diverse number of creatures available to Pod into/from.  Bant Pod is equally well placed to take advantage of creatures like Strangelroot Giest, Eternal Witness and of course good old Elesh Norn.

Kitchen Finks


Perhaps the best known of the Pod variants is Melira Pod.  This can gain infinite life by sacrificing Kitchen Finks to Viscera Seer with Melira out so that Kitchen Finks comes back without a -1/-1 counter, rinse and repeat.  The same can be achieved using Murderous Redcap to infinite damage your opponent as it enters the battle field dealing 2 damage a time.  The ability to Pod Kitchen Finks into the Murderous Redcap for a net cost of 1 mana is equally a powerful option.

Lava Spike

RDW (Red Deck Wins) has been a staple of Magic for many years.  With a number of 3 damage for 1 mana cards in the format and the likes of Goblin Guide and Ash Zealot as a creature base RDW can be a very quick way to die!


Figure of Destiny

Boros has all of the burn mentioned above as well as great removal spells like Path to Exile and figure of destiny.  It also get Lightning Helix, what's not to love about a lightning bolt that gives you 3 life as well for just 1 more mana.  Part of me would love to see it back in Gatecrash but I recognise that it is never going to happen.


Angel of Serenity

Reanimator/Frites has become a serious contender in Standard of late mostly thanks to the Angel above.  Coupled with Griselbrand, Iona and Zombify in Modern this could make someone very sad...

Life from the Loam


Way back in February Bronson Magnan (what a great name) won GP Lincoln with a deck no one was quite ready for.  It used a combination of Seismic Assault, Flame Jab, Raven's Crime and Life From the Loam to empty opponents hands by ditching lands to the Raven's Crime and then Dredging them back with Life from the Loam to then ditch them again to the Assault and shoot you in the face.  With a large number of tron decks around this was even more effective as the deck could Ghost quarter away the tron pieces each turn and they quickly found themselves unable to find any basic lands to replace it with.

Dark Confidant
You just can't do an article on Modern without Bob...

I hope you have enjoyed my little trip through Modern as a format and I also hope you enjoy the Pro Tour his weekend which promises a load of great Modern play and hopefully a few new deck ideas.  Hope to see you there...




Monday 15 October 2012

Trip to the Zoo

One of my oldest memories was going to London Zoo with my dad and a friend of his back in 1970.  I saw Guy the Gorilla, who was a bit of a celebrity way back then, and got lost for a little bit in the reptile house; going up to someone I though was my Dad's friend only to have a complete stranger stare down at me as I tugged on his sleeve.

Guy the gorilla as he looked in 2006 -  on display in Sheffield's Weston Park Museum!

40 years later things are quite different.  Both Guy and myself found ourselves in Sheffield instead of London although Guy has returned home and I am running FNM Relax at Patriot Games.  This week is Pauper and having done many fun things in this format I wanted to play Zoo.

Kird Ape - a long time member of Zoo and friend of Guy.

Zoo is an established archetype from both Legacy and Modern, although following the banning of Wild Nacatl it is not seen quite as much and has many rivals, but more of that on Friday.  Some of it's cards are common but not many of them...

Sorry but you're banned mate!

After the most complicated search I have ever done on Gather (36 possible creature types over 3 colours, all of which have to be common and Modern legal).  This brought up 9 pages of creatures which you might find in a zoo.  Having cut this down to non fantasy creatures I chose the following:

4 Selesneya GuildGate
4 Transguild Promenade
6 Forest
5 Mountain
3 Plains


22 Lands

4 Kird Ape
4 Squadron Hawk
1 Jackal Familiar
1 Skitter of Lizards
4 Timberpack Wolf
2 Ambush Viper
2 Lurking Crocodile
2 Rumbleback Rhino
1 Stampeding Rhino
1 Ulvenwald Bear
2 Slash Panther
1 Sentinel Spider


25 Creatures

4 Lightning Bolt
4 Oblivion Ring
3 Travel Preparations
2 Common Bond


13 Spells

Naya (RGW) was the only way to go with the creature base I was looking at.  With some main board removal and some decent buff spells my legions of zoo animals are ready to do battle!

Became known as "Piss Cat" during New Phyrexia pre-release...

I'm quite looking forward to this one.  I don't think that Steve Kay can copy this one as he has no Kird Apes, but we will see.  Looking forward to this Friday, there will also be some EDH at the shop this Sunday as well as Modern testing for the Invitational players and then it will only be 1 week to the invitational and it is only 1 month till the first ever Sheffield PTQ!  Pretty exciting month all in all for Magic in Sheffield, hope to see you there...





Friday 12 October 2012

Thoroughly Modern Magic

So standing at the tram stop waiting for the tram is possibly not the best place to start the Friday blog. Today I wanted to look at modern, I remember when they were calling it super-extended before wizards revealed its true name of modern.

Tarmogoyf
Goyf - as big a pain in Modern as it is in Legacy...

The premise of modern is very simple - cards printed in the "modern" card frame from eighth edition onwards are valid in the format. There is quite a large banned list which I feel needs to be listed in full:

The following cards are banned in Modern tournaments:
The idea of the banned list is to stop some of the more massively broken deck archetypes from being played. Having said that they continue to tweak the banned list and have recently lifted the ban on Valakut, the molten pinnacle.

Valakut, the Molten Pinnacle
So you played lands and won the game...great, that took some skill...

This I feel is a massive mistake as Valakut is a very negative play experience for people and is likely to see more people rage quit than it is to bring new players into the format.

Spreading Seas
This card says "go stick your Valakut where the sun don't shine..."

Valakut aside, I thought we would look at some of the prime cards in modern and the decks they are played in.

Liliana of the Veil

The lovely Liliana of the Veil is a big part of Modern Jund (BRG).  Her ultimate can spell disaster for decks that require the urza lands to ramp into huge things like Karn and Eldrazi.  Dark Confident is another major player in this deck giving massive card draw to an already strong deck.

Vedalken Shackles

Another broken artifact from the Mirrodin block.  Combined with something that plays lots of Islands (like Merfolk) this card means that all of your opponent's best guys are now yours.

Emrakul, the Aeons Torn
+
Urza's MineUrza's Power PlantUrza's Tower

The Urza's lands (Mine, Powerplant and Tower) allow you to ramp very effectively into the Eldrazi and the old adage of "Play Emrakul - win" was never more apt, there is a reason my twitter account is called @Emrakulftw ...

Bridge from Below

Even though Golgari Grave Troll is banned and Lion's Eye Diamond is an older card Dredge is still a possible deck to face in the format.  As mentioned previously dredge is just not playing magic in the accepted way of things.

Grapeshot

Storming out and playing a million spells is always fun and a sneaky threat in Modern.  Actually doesn't see that much play but the threat of it is enough to have those sideboards twitching...

There is still many things I would like to say about Modern but this blog seems to be dragging on a bit so I will turn this one into a two parter I think and reserve the second part for next Friday.  Don't forget that tonight is Standard in both FNMs and this Sunday is Steel City.  See you all on Monday with the list for my first RtR pauper deck.


Monday 8 October 2012

Defining the standards

So Return to Ravnica is here, the dust has settled, packs have been cracked, Todd Anderson has won SCG first blowout with Rob's deck from 6 months ago and new Jace is much better than fat Jace.

I can't get used to the fact he doesn't look Emo or have a rude word across his chest.

I must apologise for cutting Mike Radford off in his prime at the end of his article last week.  He had put a sort of summing up paragraph at the end but it didn't fit with this blog so I cut it off and totally forgot to replace it with anything else!

We went and had a release weekend despite the "Launch Parties" no longer existing we went and had a bunch of them.  I went 6-2-1 over 3 drafts which was pretty good and opened my 4th Hallowed Fountain which made me happy.  I played Grixis, Jund and Bant over the 3 drafts I did and felt that all of the combinations had strength.  Cracking games with, and a nod of respect to, Andrew Vagg, Ian Richardson and Mark Smith.

Launch Party
I feel that this card is adding insult to injury with regards Launch Parties!

Anyway back to the whole blog thing.  So it is standard in both FNM Elite and Relax this week.  I had intended to do the whole thing with the intro decks again but when I opened the intro decks they were not as good as the previous selection and would have been very little fun to play.  So I thought I would come up with a guild based deck for each time we tackle standard or one of its derivatives.  I decided to start with Izzet as we seem to have some quite cool new wizards and I love mono purple wizards so this seems like a no brainer.  Here is the list:

4 cavern of Souls
4 Sulfur Falls
4 Steam Vents
6 Island
5 Mountain
_____________________________________________________________________
23 Land

4 Delver of Secrets
1 Nivix Guildmage
3 Augur of Bolas
4 Snapcaster Mage
2 Talrand, Sky Summoner
3 Mercurial Chemister
1 Niv-Mizzet, Dracogenius
_______________________________________________________________________
18 Creatures

4 Izzet Charm
1 Street Spasm
4 Syncopate
1 Rewind
1 Brimstone Volley
1 Bonfire of the Damned
1 Devil's Play
3 Mizzium Mortars
3 Runechanters Pike
_______________________________________________________________________
19 Spells

I have not finished the side board for this deck yet so I can't put that up.  It makes me sad to run Delver in a deck but he is just the best fit for the rest of it rather than the focus of the deck.  I'm a big fan of the Izzet colour scheme and look forward to playing with some nice looking cards.

If Magic is a game of options this sure gives you some good ones.

Don't forget this Wednesday (10/10/2012) is the start of the new sealed league at Patriot Games Sheffield - £20 will get you 6 boosters to build your deck with and then battle it out each week by adding an additional booster.

Mercurial Chemister
How can you not love this guy - U, tap, draw two cards - don't mind if I do.

Next Sunday is the first Steel City Magic of the new era at Patriot Sheffield with a standard tournament kicking off at 12pm and a draft which starts around 2.30 - 3pm.  Good luck with your booster opening, I will be back on Friday with a new blog looking at Modern until then may you curve out with style!

Friday 5 October 2012

Limited Understanding Part 2


This is the second half of Mike Radford's article on playing limited, the first half can be found here.  Thanks once again for this Mike, the feedback has been very positive, you can come again!  Should I mention at this point that we are still waiting for a guest blog from Rob Tinsley about side-boarding?  I am sure it will be coming up soon.  Don't forget we will have rolling 8 man draft pods this weekend with a 4-2-1-1 prize support for just £10.  I'll be back next week, enjoy Mike's words of wisdom.

Another piece of "good removal" as mentioned last time.


Today I want to discuss a concept that I heard about on the excellent podcast, Limited Resources.  The idea of ‘results orientated thinking’ sounds like some complicated psychological theory, but it’s deceptively simple.  Simply put, it’s basing your card evaluation on results.

Wait, basing card evaluation on results is a bad thing?  Well, yes, it can be if you let it.  Last time I talked about card evaluation we were discussing mana curve and deck synergy this time, with the help of some examples, we’re going to discuss pure power.
Lets start with one of the examples that separates a new drafter from an experienced one. 

Fog
The only way I could make this card look interesting was with the Alpha version...

Fog is one of the biggest hurdles for new players to overcome, because even a brand new player can grasp the idea that “not dying” is pretty important.  This becomes a pretty toxic idea, especially if you happen to win off the back of a Fog because your opponent swung with all his guys, leaving himself open to a lethal attack when you prevented all his damage.  This is a pretty common story, and if you don’t look at the bigger picture you will continue to play what is actually an awful card.

The problem is that because winning off Fog is a pretty cool story, your mind will remember that over the times where it did nothing.  The fact is that nine times out of 10, Fog does nothing but buy you a turn – it’s essentially a lifegain spell, which you should already know is not something you should be playing.  The value of that extra turn is completely random: if your opponent still has lethal damage on the board next turn you better be drawing something amazing on your bonus turn or all you did was waste time.

Heroes' Reunion
Slightly better than Angel's Mercy but still not good - stop it, these spells are BAD!

The real issue here, though, is the value of a card.  There are several different resources in Magic: mana is the obvious one, life is another and your deck completes up the trio of obvious resources.  But each individual card also has a value, and it’s important that you try and keep that value as high as possible.  In limited, a creature is almost always more valuable than similarly powerful spell because it does more.  Last time I spoke briefly about the importance of removal, but a creature can be removal (by blocking), it can be damage (by attacking) and it can be lifegain (by blocking – or by making a smaller creature unable to attack).

Inaction Injunction
3 little words that spell value - Draw A Card!

Why is that relevant when we’re talking about Fog?  Well, Fog is a spell which only has one of the three modes of a creature.  But on top of that, it is the worst part of a creature – the lifegain part.  Fog will never win you the game; it will only stop you from losing.  That has some amount of value, but not much at all.  Honestly, a vanilla 2/2 for two is better than Fog in almost every scenario.  At worst, it blocks and prevent some damage – in other words, the worst thing a 2/2 can do is roughly the same as the best thing a Fog can do.  In some instances, Fog will do this more flashily, but what actually happens in the “fog for the win” scenario is exactly the same as in the “fog and pray” scenario.

Mind Sculpt
"I see you making better draft picks because you read this article..."

Mind Sculpt is another example of a card that new drafters can trip over.  Winning in non-standard ways can be fun and milling is the most common of those.  It’s usually around in most limited formats with varying degrees of viability.  In M13 it seemed pretty viable thanks to Sands of Delirium, Vedalken Entrancer and Mind Sculpt.  Two of these cards are actively good, the other is unplayable in all but the most dedicated mill decks – guess which is which.

First up, lets work out exactly what Mind Sculpt does.  Since your library is essentially your life total against a dedicated mill deck, some basic maths tells us that Mind Sculpt is the rough equivalent of five damage.  Five damage for two mana seems really good, right? Except there are no other damage sources following it up.  Unless you’ve got an Archeomancer or two, Mind Sculpt is a one-shot, fire-and-forget spell.  Creature damage is helping you, and you can’t redirect the mill to deal damage to remove an opposing creature.

A card that only does one thing can be fine, of course, if that thing is worth a card.  Mind Sculpt falls short again here.  If you’re running one or two of them in an otherwise vanilla deck, stop.  Randomly milling cards achieves nothing.  One argument that newer players state is that “I might mill their bomb.”  Well, you might not.  I don’t mean to be flippant, but unless you actually succeed in milling their bomb away, all you’ve done is made them draw it faster.  Let that sink in for a moment: the odds of you milling away something good are the same as the odds of you helping them to draw their best card faster.  A WoTC employee and limited guru (Ryan Spain) backed me up on the maths of this but it was a bit too long for an already lengthy blog.

Wednesday 3 October 2012

Limited Understanding

So Return to Ravnica pre-release was nuts.  21 Rounds of MTG over 50 hours from Friday night till Sunday night.  As a result the whole blog thing has been skewed somewhat.  Here is the blog that you should have got on Friday by Mike Radford, a big thank you to Mike for all his efforts and sorry it is so late.  This is particularly relevant as we have rolling pods of draft going on all weekend to celebrate the launch of Return to Ravnica.
  
Card evaluation is one of the most important skills in Magic and nowhere is this truer than in limited.  With all the advice in the world, you only have seconds to make a decision while drafting as opposed to the days you have before finalising a constructed deck.  When do you take removal over a creature?  How highly do you value mana fixing?  What exactly is a curve anyway?  Hopefully, I can answer some of these questions and this can serve as your introduction to drafting.
Loxodon Smiter
Beware big elephants with big hammers!

In this article I’m going to assume a few things.  I know this blog is for the Relax crowd but I assume that anyone reading this will know enough about Magic that, for example, you know a pure life-gain spell is not a playable card. 

Angel's Mercy
This is a really bad card - no matter how many times it gets printed!

I will assume you know that a card that says “deal 3 damage to target creature or player” almost always translates to “deal 3 damage to target creature.”  If not, well, you learned something already!

So assuming that you know the mechanics of a draft (take a card, pass the pack around – pretty simple in theory), lets get down to the specifics.  Card evaluation is something that has to be honed and practised.  Like most things in Magic, there a are few shortcuts – pure life-gain is bad, for example – but oftentimes these are only guidelines and not rules.  Even then, context plays a big role; life-gain is bad, but in the right deck, Gnaw to the Bone was fine in Innistrad limited.

Angel's Mercy
Seriously this is such a bad card - never put it in your deck, ever!

The key phrase here is “in the right deck.”  It can be tempting in limited to just jam together a bunch of cards that feel powerful but this approach is largely luck-based: if you end up with a bunch of powerful but expensive five drops in your deck, you can easily just lose before their power takes over if you can’t stall your opponent.  If you’re trying to win with big powerful spells or creatures in a long game, it’s important that you build your deck with that in mind and have some good blockers in the early game, paired with solid removal.

Ultimate Price
The latest in "solid" removal from Return to Ravnica.

This is about synergy, but a huge part of that is your mana curve.  Limited can sound complicated and scary for a new player, but often it can be quite straightforward.  One of the most reliable ways to win is to “curve out” – to play a creature every turn.  In this scenario, if your opponent stumbles it’s likely that he never recovers and loses to superior numbers if he doesn't have a sweeper or a game-changing bomb.  


Isperia, Supreme Judge
Hi, I'm Isperia, I'll be your game changing bomb for this evening...

That might seem like more luck, but you can build your deck to improve the chances of that happening.  If you have plenty of low-cost spells you’re obviously more likely to draw them early.  Like I said, Limited can be pretty simple at times.

What a good curve looks like varies wildly from deck-to-deck and format-to-format.  If you just want to cave people’s faces in with creatures, taking two and three casting cost dudes is hugely important.  This means that sometimes you will need to pick Mogg Flunkies over Fire Elemental in M13 because you just don’t need five-drops in your aggressive deck.  When you’re picking cards in the draft portion you should always have this in mind.  Early in the draft it’s fine to take the most powerful card, but at some point you need to stop and say “which of these fits my deck better?”

Good removal – Searing Spear, Murder, Pacifism should be taken over everything except game-winning bombs.  In fact, when you know what your colours are you will likely take removal over off-colour bombs that aren’t splashable.  For example, lets say your going into pack three of a draft and your main colours are black and red and you have no white cards.  You open a pack with Captain of the Watch and Murder: what should you pick?  Hopefully it’s obvious by now – you slam the murder and be happy that you have one of the best spells in the format.

Murder
Doesn't care what rank you are just kills you!

Murder is pretty obvious because it kills everything for a reasonably cheap price, but what about something like Turn to Slag?  In Scars block draft it was a relatively high pick due to the abundance of equipment making the upside a genuine consideration.  In M13, though, it’s mostly just a slow removal that eventually kills just about anything and occasionally blows out your ring-wielding opponent.

My original intention was to go into a few examples that often trip up newer players, but this is already 800 words and we’ve barely scratched the surface of a complicated topic.  If this goes down well, I’ll get the specific examples out there so until next time… pick removal high, try and stick to two colours, and don’t draft Mind Sculpts!

The second half of Mike's article on playing limited will be on the blog on Friday, barring disasters.

Before I go as this should have been here Monday I need to put up my deck list for extended this Friday (5th October 2012).

It is traditional for players to "play safe" on the day of release as everything is up in the air and no one has told them what to think yet.  This normally results in people playing Red Deck Wins (RDW) as there is a good chance it will do what it says on the tin.  I have a different default setting - that being if in doubt play the Eldrazi, so that is what I am going to do.  I will be putting the new Jace in the main deck (if I have any) and Tamiyo, the moon sage may have to go in the sideboard.  Here is the list - look forward to seeing you there...


4 Misty Rain forest
4 Eldrazi Temple
1 Eye of Ugin
2 Scalding Tarn
2 Verdant Catacomb
Island
Forest
1 Overgrown Tomb
25 Lands

1 Kozilek, the Butcher of Truth
1 Emrakul, the Aeons Torn
1 Ulamog, The Infinite Gyre
4 Lotus Cobra
2 Primeval Titan
4 Birds Of Paradise
3 Fauna Shaman
3 Oracle of Mul Daya
1 Conundrum Shinx
1 Griselbrand
_________________________________________________________________________
21 Creatures

1 Tamiyo, the moon sage
1 Garruk, Primal Hunter
2 Time Warp
1 Temporal Mastery
2 Swiftfoot Boots
4 Explore
1 Omniscience
2 Genesis Wave
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14 Spells

Sideboard

3 Spellskite
1 Emrakul, the Aeons Torn
2 Thrun, the Last Troll
2 Vengevine
1 Time Reversal
1 Tamiyo, the moon sage
1 Temporal Mastery 
1 Genesis Wave
1 Jace's Archivist
1 Green Sun's Zenith
1 Garruk, Primal Hunter