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A staggering amount of Magic content is published each day each day on a plethora of content sites, blogs, podcasts, and discussion forums. No matter how honest an effort you make, it's easy to fall behind and miss incredible articles because there just isn't enough time to read everything.
To that end, we've collected some of the best articles of the week covering a broad range of topics. If you're looking for articles, these are the ones you don't want to miss!
On Snacks
This week Mike Linnemann and Ant Tessitore debut a new way to get your weekly Vorthos fix: Snack Time. This is a short cast where Ant and Mike get to share all their Vorthos thoughts, from art to stories to design. Not sure if Vorthos content is for you? This is the perfect time to find out. In this first episode, the topic of the day is the fundamental question: what is Vorthos?
GatheringMagic.com: Ant Tessitore and Mike Linnemann (@antmtg and @vorthosmike) - Snack Time #1 - Episode One
In the show, Mike and Ant also discuss their Flavor Gems for the episode. The Flavor Gems segment is something that Mike and Ant will be doing as a kickoff for each episode. Each time, both Mike and Ant will pick a single card to discuss as his Flavor Gem. Mike’s gem will always be a piece of art, and Ant’s gem will always be either a card name or a card’s flavor text. Sometimes, they will pick the same card, but that is not always the case. However, Mike and Ant will do their best to keep their picks relevant to the topic for the episode when possible. This week, we picked Commander (2014 Edition) cards. Yay!
On Foolproof Magic: Redux
A. E. Marling is back with more foolproof Magic. This is a copmlicated game; there's no reason to make it harder than it has to be. So avoid small mechanical mistakes and tactical errors with these foolproof tricks for tracking important gamestate information. From Morphs and triggers to complex combat math, A. E. Marling has tips for everyone.
GatheringMagic.com: A. E. Marling (@AEMarling) - Foolproof Magic 2
Last week in Foolproof Magic, we learned methods to avoid confusion over land drops and to remember triggered abilities. This week, we’ll master improve our management of morphs and complex board states.
On Owning Original Art
What goes in to purchasing and owning a piece of original Magic artwork? John Dale Beety's first series of articles was on purchasing and maintaining your very own piece of Magic history. Given that it's been a few years, John thought it was time to revisit the topic.
StarCityGames.com: John Dale Beety (@jdbeety) - Buying Original Art: Revisited
On Beating Combo
Legacy is a complex format where the smallest subtleties make the difference between victory and defeat. Nowhere is this truer than agains the blisteringly fast and amazingly resilient combo decks of the format. Between Lion's Eye Diamond, Dark Ritual, Show and Tell and all manner of other busted combo enablers, you have to know exactly what you're attacking and when to pull the trigger. This week, Paulo Vitor Damo da Rosa runs down the key combo archetypes, the kinds of disruption they are vulnerable to, and how you want to try to play out that disruption in those matchups. Step up your game against combo just in time for Grand Prix New Jersey with help from PV.
ChannelFireball.com: Paulo Vitor Damo da Rosa (@PVDDR)- How to Disrupt Combo in Legacy
Of all the formats we currently play competitively, Legacy is the one where you can do the most powerful things—you have the most powerful cards, the best card draw, the fastest mana, the quickest combos.
For this reason, there are very few decks with no disruption that can succeed in Legacy. If you let them do whatever they want to do, they will kill you. There are a few—like Elves—that have such a powerful plan on their own that they force the opponent to have to disrupt them. Everyone else has to dedicate quite a few slots to simply stop things from happening.
It's important to realize, however, that simply having disruption is not enough—you also have to use it effectively. It's common for people to read “disrupt them with discard,” or “use removal to keep them off their key guys,” or “counter the key pieces of their combo,” and not elaborate any further. What am I supposed to take with my discard? What are the key guys? What are the key pieces of the combo? Many games have been lost because a player had the Force of Will and chose to wait for the Ad Nauseam rather than countering the Dark Ritual.
This is what I'm going to talk about today. Disruption in Legacy. More specifically, what forms it takes and when and how to use it against the most popular combo decks in the format.
On Breaking Down Deckbuilding
Ninety-nine is a lot of cards. Particulary when you only get one copy of any given card, there are infinitely many interactions and implications to consider as you begin to assemble your Commander deck. The sheer magnitude of possibilities can be a deterrent for many players. In the second segment of his Level One Hundred series, Adam Styborski introduces key Commander deck building concepts and strategies so you and your friends can build Commander decks all your own from the ground up.
DailyMTG.com: Adam Styborski (@the_stybs) - Level One Hundered: Building Decks
You can build a near infinite number of decks in Commander. Between combinations of commanders and the cards eligible to play with them, even leaving off all the nonsensical combinations (say, adding 99 Islands to go with Teferi, Temporal Archmage) leaves far too many to try and compute.
The possibilities for decks are, in a word, daunting.
I don't have a special secret for you. There's no magical way to ease into things. What I do have is a set of tools Commander players should put into their pockets and a set of suggestions based on years of play.
This is everything you need to know to start building a deck in Commander.
On Worlds
The World Magic Cup is coming. Worlds Week is almost upon us, and that means it's time to get to know your competitors. The Pro Tour Historian, Brian David-Marshall, has spent the last few weeks interviewing the best players in the world who have earned invitations to the World Championship. This week he takes a closer look at one of the most compelling and exciting events of the year. More than 70 teams. Three players. It's time to find out which team play the best Magic when there's national pride on the line.
DailyMTG.com: Brian David-Marshall (@top8games)- Scout the Borders
The World Magic Cup has quickly become one of the events I look forward to each Pro Tour season. There is an intensity to the event that is unmatched by any other tournament—even by the 200 proof field of the World Championships distilled over the course of the season—that stems from national pride. The Pro Points are nice, the money is sweet, but you need only look at the painted faces, the camaraderie, and coordinated wardrobes to realize this is not your average high-level Magic event. There is, ultimately, something at stake that no Expected Value calculations can measure.
