Locations
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 Liliana
Join A.E. Marling as he recounts the story of a pair of siblings and a bargain gone bad. At the end of the day, there's only one thing we know about Liliana: she will always pay her debts.
GatheringMagic.com: A.E. Marling (@AEMarling) - Paying Her Debts
A planeswalker should never go to the Abyss looking for friends. Liliana Vess had learned that the hard way. This time, she came with her own help: sixty tons of maggots and undead flesh.
The Grave Titan crawled through the portal after its mistress. Dozens of decaying arms attached to the giant’s torso, all scrabbling at the obsidian stone of this underworld plane. The decaying colossus pulled itself through. Liliana closed the portal behind it by removing a sacrificial dagger embedded in her arm. Both her wound and the gate sealed with a glow of purple. She licked off the last drop of blood.
Liliana strutted down a cavern passage. She inhaled with relish. “Smell that? Brimstone and despair—a place where serious work gets done.”
On Last Proposals
It's always intriguing to look at what the colors of Magic and the color pie have to say about the larger issues of life. Magic is many things, and some of them are much bigger than a card game. This week, Mike Linnemann looks at the custom of marrige - proposals, more specifically - and what Magic's colors have to say about this ritual, from love to proposal, wedding to marriage.
GatheringMagic.com: Mike Linnemann (@VorthosMike) - Marriage, Proposals, and the Color Pie
This past weekend, I had the pleasure of helping a young man propose to his longtime girlfriend after a theatrical performance of The Wizard of Oz. I work for a large performing arts center, and, of course, I had to help them “win” a gift card from a contest that forced them to visit an exquisite restaurant across snowy and lit Rice Park.
Requests such as this aren’t all that uncommon. During the holidays, many young men try to have that perfect evening, a foundation on which to make an event memorable forever. I heard he won. Good for them.
While talking to a coworker about this event, she asked me how I proposed.
“What time?” I replied.
“What do you mean, ‘What time?’”
I had seven marriage proposals set up, and finally, the seventh worked out simply because I couldn’t wait for a Pinterest moment anymore. It was the day before we were to drive from Minneapolis, MN to Madison, WI—where my wife is from—to celebrate Easter with a bowling-ball-sized ham to devour. It’s a full four-hour drive, and I had told her mother days before that I was going to propose within the week. Elaborate proposals simply weren’t working, so it wasn’t flashy, picturesque, or notable in any way.
I was in athletic gym shorts, in our bedroom, with no shirt on. She said, “Yes,” and we went on our merry way to enjoy some ham and celebrate both my upcoming Master’s Degree and a wedding.
On CawBlade
Some players like to change decks from week to week to stay on top of the ever-evolving metagame. Some prefer to stick with a deck over the course of season, learning and tweaking from week to week. This is only ever really possible when there's a "best deck" in the format. Faeries, CawBlade, Jund. Those decks were always reasonable choices if built correctly, and you could invest time over the course of a Standard format learning the ins and outs. How do you find that deck in a metagame where there isn't a single dominant deck? Jon Corpora shares his take on how to find the next CawBlade.
ChannelFireball.com: Jon Corpora (@feb31st) - Searching for CawBlade
It’s Christmastime. Yay Christmas! You’re in a Marshalls with your girlfriend (domestic partner, according to New York State!), and she’s looking for Christmas gifts for her family. Just lookin’ around in a store. You do not understand this—the idea of physically transporting yourself from place to place in order to buy things is insane. The internet was invented specifically to stop this from happening. None of this is making any sense. You have seen this woman use the internet before, and yet, you are here, in this Marshalls. The two of you are the youngest people in the building by about 20 years, and you are waiting to die along with the rest of them. You round a corner, and a woman who refuses to make eye-contact warns you that there’s broken glass on the ground but that she’s “going to go get someone,” so do not roll around on the ground or do whatever it is you were going to do because, hey, there’s some broken glass on the ground. A death march plays over the speakers to the tune of White Christmas. Fresh lake effect snow—we’re talking huge flakes—falls outside in a soft, steady rhythm, because only five hours of daylight is still too many to keep you from breaking. At some point, your mind inevitably starts to wander.
* * *
More and more, it feels like Magic is in a good spot, especially in Standard. People can complain about the linear nature of the devotion mechanic, or the homogenizing effect that a play set of Thoughtseizes can have on a match, but the fact remains that good players keep winning, and the Top 25 players list has remained relatively stable. Huey Jenson literally cannot stop winning. It’s a good time to be a Magician.
On Improving
There have been hundreds of articles written on how to improve at Magic. The problem is that many of these articles focus on finding better players or stepping up the mechanics of your game. This week Craig Wescoe wrote an article that highlights how great Magic players think about the game. How do you learn to maximize your opportunities to make good decisions while minimizing mistakes? It's all about giving yourself chances to learn, and being able to identify when you're making a choice.
Magic.TCGPlayer.com: Craig Wescoe (@Nacatls4Life) - Five Tips for Stepping Up Your Game
This weekend I played in the SCG Invitational in Las Vegas. While I did not do so hot in the tournament, I learned a few valuable lessons that I would like to share with you. If you have aspirations of making it onto the Pro Tour, or at least performing better at FNM, the tips in this article will help you to achieve your goals. All of the lessons in this article are based on mistakes I made this weekend, so I can only assume they're applicable to players at every level.
On MTGO UI
It was Magic Online week on DailyMTG, and that meant a great opportunity to talk about where MTGO is and where it's headed in 2014, especially in the wake of the issues that the program has had in recent weeks. This article by James Sooy gives us a chance to peek under the engine of Magic Online and understand how the team is prioritizing different issues, how they plan on responding to feedback, and what the 2014 may hold for Magic Online.
DailyMTG.com: James Sooy - UI and Everyone We Know
h, hello there; I didn't see you come in. My name's James Sooy and I'm a wizard. In fact, everyone here at Wizards of the Coast is a wizard, which comes in handy when we're cleaning out Conjurer's Closets, bug databases, or sweeping up the stray homunculus. I'm here today to tell you a little about something we at Wizards like to call Magic Online (but, please, her friends call her MTGO).
I was introduced to Magic Online many moons ago, somewhere around the release of Judgment. Since that time, more than one version of MTGO has been forged, crafted, and tempered by the hands of Fugitive Wizards using the whispered incantations of unspeakable languages (C#, C++, and quite possibly Cuneiform).
It has been a challenging experience coming into Magic Online so late in development, since I prefer starting on a project from the get-go. When I was hired, the new client had already been in beta for some time. Getting my designer-claws on the inner gears of MTGO has been akin to Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite finding the plane of Mirrodin. The world is already built, I can only dip that world in the Glistening Oil of today's design standards and wait for Steady Progress.
On Gruul Blitz
We haven't seen a whole lot of aggressive decks in this Standard format. Sure, we've got a plethora of creature-based Devotion decks, but many of those are really midrange decks that don't start to apply pressure until turn four or five, with Master of Waves, Desecration Demon, or Stormbreath Dragon. What about those of us who want to curve out with one-drops and just kill people who keep Island, Mutavault hands?
Tom Ross may just have the deck for you. Check out RG Blitz featuring Akroan Crusader.
StarCityGames.com: Tom Ross (@CitrusX)- Introducing RG Blitz
"How do you ever beat Master of Waves?"
Mono-Red Aggro has been assumed to be hated out of the metagame by Mono-Blue Devotion and its continued success. I personally had a respectable win rate against Mono-Blue with Mono-Red but still considered it to be a poor matchup. Master of Waves (in particular protection from red) felt truly unfair, and I would lose on the spot unless I was able to get in early pressure and have a Legion Loyalist to battalion past the swarm of horse Elementals.
Going into the SCG Invitational in Las Vegas, I felt that the metagame would be about the same as the weekends before, with a touch more U/W Control following William Jensen's second-place finish at Grand Prix Dallas-Fort Worth. Here's what I played:
On Las Vegas
Brian Braun-Duin traveled to Las Vegas and put up an incredible performance at the StarCityGames Invitational. This week he shares not only that story, but his first Las Vegas experiences. Brian has proved to be an incredible story-teller and writer, and this article is no different. Join Brian has he battles his way through Standard, Legacy, and Las Vegas.
StarCityGames.com: Brian Braun-Duin (@BraunDuinIt)- Sin City Collector
Apparently, Las Vegas is a happening place. I personally wouldn't have known one way or another if it wasn't for last weekend. I am what some may call a "degeneracy noob." Prior to last weekend I had never been to Vegas, never stepped foot into a casino, and never gambled a hundred dollars on the flip of a few cards or the roll of a dice.
Outside of playing the credit card game from time to time—and never for significant amounts of money—the most degenerate things I can recall doing involve keeping one-land hands in high-pressure matches. Sunpetal Grove, Avacyn's Pilgrim? Snap it off! Judging by how often I "get there," you would think I'd fit in perfectly in Vegas. Never mulligan!
My first taste of the city was at the casino where I was staying, El Cortez. Now, I feel like a lot of readers probably aren't avid Spanish history buffs, so I'll give you a little breakdown about El Cortez. Loosely translated, El Cortez means "The Cortez." Therefore, a little logic dictates that this isn't your average run-of-the-mill Cortez we're talking about. This isn't simply "a" Cortez. This is "The" Cortez.
Let me tell you more about The Cortez. I have to imagine Cortez was a salty, bitter, curmudgeonly old man because "The Cortez" is the place where dreams go to die. I would say at any given time the average age of people inside El Cortez was about 63. That was taking into account me and the couple of other Magic players littered around. The place was filled with the sensation of cigarette smoke and depression.
Question: What did the people at El Cortez have in common with my parents' backyard in late October?
Answer: They were both getting raked.
It's a weird combination, but Vegas was both exciting and depressing at the same time. The thrill of winning is exhilarating. When I was winning hand after hand of blackjack, increasing my bets each time, it was fun. It was exciting. Yet the entire city was filled with the sinking knowledge that eventually you would lose your money. There was some sort of implicit understanding that while you may be winning now the city would eventually take it back from you.
If you have suggestions for next week's recap you can mention us on Twitter, or share throughout the week in the comments below.
