Stylin', Profilin', Limousine Riding, Jet Flying, Kiss-Stealing, Wheelin' n' Dealin' Son of a Gun!

Well that was quite a weekend.  We ran the maze and got lots of shiny land - somewhere I have some achievement cards that do stuff to my planeswalker points bits - I should probably get round to doing something about those at some time this week.  Congratulations to Rob Tinsley for dominating the whole thing on Saturday and going undefeated on the day.  Also congratulations to Adam Pollard who was "officially" the winner of the pre-release on Saturday daytime after an ID in the final saw him top of the board on count back.  Congratulations also got to Henry Hart for winning the Sunday pre-release, its great to see someone who has learnt to play through relax develop into such a strong player.

My apologies to my opponents over the weekend - I seemed to be suffering from an inability to play any spells due to a lack of land most of the time and was not much opposition.  We had 139 players participate in the pre-release over the weekend at patriot Game Sheffield.  I think the whole guild booster thing is a great idea, but it does massively skew the actual sealed format with the guild boosters dictating rather than helping you with your card and deck choices.  Having said that top marks go to Wizards of the Coast for the attention to detail in the packaging and little extras for the events giving something for almost everyone to get excited about.

This all leads me into today's blog and it's ridiculous title.  As you may well know if you read this on a regular basis I have a love of professional wrestling and the weird and wacky characters that inhabit that world.  I am in fact going to see Mick Foley (Cactus Jack/Mankind/Dude Love) today who is doing a talk about his experiences in the WWE and WCW at the City Hall in Sheffield.  The full quote for the title goes:

"I'm Ric Flair! The Stylin', profilin', limousine riding, jet flying, kiss-stealing, wheelin' n' dealin' son of a gun!"

Slick Ric - not known for his subtlety... 

These characters are developed to help the wrestlers "get over" with the audience weather this is as a heel (bad guy) or a face (good guy).  Over the weekend a number of people have commented on both mine and Rob's play style and the fact that Rob can particularly put people off and make them screw up just by talking to them.  This is a left over from our years of playing Raw Deal, where trash talking your opponents into a loss was almost as legitimate a win condition as actually playing cards against them.

It is part of our play style and that is what I really wanted to talk about today.  Everybody has a play style and this is reflected in the way they play cards and their deck choices.  Certain elements of your play style are fixed because they are part of your personality but many change as you play more and try out new tactics and ideas.

Many players, when they begin playing competitive magic, will opt for an aggressive deck with lots of fast little creatures and direct burn to face spells.  Some find that this does exactly what they want to do in Magic while others develop into different strategies.

Knowing and developing your play style is an essential part of getting better at playing magic.  Your personal play style is something which you need to discover for yourself and will change to a certain degree over time as your experience grows.  I like what I call "toolbox" decks which have multiple answers to different things based on the meta game at the time.  I tend to shy away from decks that go all in on one particular plan as should your opponent have an answer to it you just lose if you do not have the flexibility to go somewhere else with your deck.

Lightning Cow - a popular "answer" at the moment.

So next time you are building a deck or even playing with one think about what your deck choice says about your personal play style and look to do things that enhance it.  Eventually you will find that knowing how you want your deck to play will greatly inform your card choices and help in all aspects of your game.

Apparently this is MY card for this set as I already opened a play set...

This Friday is the official release of Dragon's Maze and it is legal to play in tournaments from then.  FNM Relax has pauper as the format and competitive are playing Block Constructed.  there will also be a draft with DGM-GTC-RTR as the boosters and everyone who participates at  any of these events will get the release promo of Breaking//Entering;

As it is release weekend we will have draft pods all day Saturday and Sunday but there are a number of events on so come down early to get a place, from 10 am Saturday and 11 am Sunday.