Welcome back to Magic Gatherings! So! How about that Pro Tour, huh? I started out the weekend with a preview for PT Oath of the Gatewatch, and watching coverage was so much fun that I even came back to update my thumbnail guide to Modern after the first day of competition. By the end of the …
Welcome back to Magic Gatherings! Oath of the Gatewatch has been out for a week now, and I hope you’ve all had a chance to draft it. Unfortunately, I haven’t—I’ll get my first crack at the cards tonight at Friday Night Magic—but apparently last week’s article on draft archetypes for Oath has been hopping. Check it …
Welcome back to Magic Gatherings! We’ve spent the last few weeks talking about Standard and how the cards from Battle for Zendikar have helped shape it. But the Magic calendar waits for no column, and there’s already have a new release on the horizon: Commander 2015, the latest in Wizards’ now-annual multiplayer precon series. I won’t cover every …
Welcome back to Magic Gatherings! Last week I spent some time breaking down the results from Pro Tour Magic Origins, highlighted some cool new decks, and talked a little more about drafting the set. But after several weeks talking about Standard, Sealed, and Booster Draft, it’s time to go back to Commander. Casual mages, this …
Welcome back to Magic Gatherings! Last week we finished up our short series on themes. This week we’ll put some ideas from that series into practice as we look at my Selvala, Explorer Returned deck. This is a deck I was excited about, but it didn’t work out. I’ll talk about what was going on …
Welcome back to Magic Gatherings! This week we’re wrapping up our extended look at themes in Commander decks. In case you missed the previous installments, here are some links: Part 1: Series intro, Blink, Equipment, Tokens Part 2: Sacrifice, Artifacts, Tribal Part 3: Ramp, Fatties, Pillowfort, Lifegain Graveyard and Recursion One of the most robust …
Welcome back to Magic Gatherings! Last week, we took a look at the new set, Dragons of Tarkir, and tried to figure out what sorts of limited strategies its cards would encourage. Today, we’ll have a bit of a grab bag: first, having actually now played the cards at the prerelease, we’ll refine our picture of …
Welcome back to Magic Gatherings! This week we’ll continue our survey of Commander themes, and take another look at new cards for Dragons of Tarkir which have been spoiled in the last week. If you missed them, here are the other two theme articles: #1 (Intro, Blink, Equipment, Tokens), and #2 (Sacrifice, Artifacts, and Tribal). Ramp/Big Mana …
Welcome back to Magic Gatherings! Last week we started a long-term project: examining themes you can use to build your Commander decks. As we mentioned, themes help you wrap your mind around the deck itself, and choose the right cards for it. They also help you explain what the decks do, and give the deck’s …
In last week’s article about preconstructed Commander decks, I mentioned that among the best features of these decks (as well as a source of a few of their flaws) was that each deck supports multiple themes. By “theme,” I mean a set of cards in each deck which all support a common strategy or gameplan—they …