I said Spencer’s forum post was my favorite but I actually forgot about this one, which actually touched what passes for my soul:
oldbsturgeon
i just want to say that this article was very inspiring to me for maybe a very strange reason.
i work as a therapist in substance abuse and i sometimes have clients that have codependency issues with another person.
today we were discussing this persons relationship and how the other person is currently dictating the field of battle and that the client is agreeing to her strategy and will continue to stay with her. by eliminating interaction, such as dredge’s strategy, she can focus on her goal of bettering herself, and when her partner trys to interact in will not matter and she will ultimately lose. either her partner must accept the new terms or will fall further trying to pursue her faulty goals.
thanks mike
I was reminded of this because of an email this morning (which has transformed itself into a Star City forum post also) by Anthony LaCassa, or Ath0919 here and on Star City.
Anth0919
Mike,
So I just read this article and all I have to say is holy crap!
I feel kind of stupid for being blown away by the article, since it’s pretty much based on simple math and I’m an accountant. I guess this is something I feel that I should have been able to realize on my own without having it explained. That being said, I’ve just begun venturing into competitive Magic over the past few months.
Thanks for this article… it’s the best I’ve read regarding theory on choosing a deck.
Which just goes to show: It’s not just for teenie weenie kids any more. Grown ups with jobs love michaelj too!
yes Yes YES
I will go over the deck that prompted young Zack Hall to proclaim “you should go into sales” to me yesterday. Maybe later today depending on Lost, Top Chef, etc.
I was reading Star City Games this week and until I saw a poll for most popular articles by some author or other, I totally forgot they had end-of-the-year awards.
What do you think the chances are that this two-time Writer of the Year gets a nod now that he is no longer in the weeklies? Winky-wink.
Anyway, I decided go go over my eight or so months at Star City in 2008 and pluck my favorite articles. I am pretty sure they are all non-Premium now for those of you who don’t have that service.
michaelj sez: This article is superbly written. Ego, yes; but still a fact. That is, it is a good read and would have been the kind of article I would have liked to have read had I not written it (actually I liked re-reading it, so I guess it has nothing to do with whether or not I had written it). This article features Dune battle strategy, lightsaber duels, basically everything awesome including passably awesome Magic strategy.
My favorite forum post:
SRmogg Just wanted to say that as of now this is currently my favorite magic article ever. Like, it was pretty unreal. I’ve read every enderverse novel many times, and I also really like Kurt Vonnegut. I alreayd knew most the startegic content, but if someone didn’t and was looking for a new way to attack a wide open format with many powerful linears like extended, it’s pretty excellent.
michaelj sez: Just a fair number of good ideas in this one, including getting the pat on the head from Pat, actually learning something while I was working on it, and answering a request by Adam Prosak. Just a pretty good article. I had actually forgotten doing the Wrath of God math; at the time (“that” time, actually) I was playing at my absolute best (this was right before Charleston and my States win)… I think combined with my The Touch tee shirt, GerryT’s mulligan advice, and remembering to do the math when I am pressed with a difficult decision, I will probably knock off a Honolulu PTQ win in one try. On that note…
My favorite forum post:
qwertius this article helped me a great deal.
I see myself as a talented player that never reached his potential for several reasons. Flores points to several directions I should look upon to improve.
michaelj sez: I had just come back from meeting millionaire copywriter Dr. Harlan Kilstein the first time, and I had inadvertently invented a sub-array of NLP theory, and was all excited about learning how to do modeling correctly. I actually want to do more modeling exercises in my writing in the future (in fact I have been thinking of creating a mulligans model inspired by GerryT’s post in The Hidden Value of MTGO Ringers; I don’t know if you noticed but I am pretty excited about that one. Just a great contribution to the site by Gerry). Also this one has a maddening amount of hand-written sections from The Confusion as well as the best opening page of any novel: madness and goodness both.
My favorite forum post:
Anselm And then there’s Thomas Pynchon, who does (almost) everything Stephenson does, but better.
[Actually this is like my least favorite forum post of all time. Ravitz and I went out and bought Gravity's Rainbow after this forum post and it's been close to a year and neither of us has finished it yet.]
michaelj sez:
I actually forgot that I wrote this one. This was both one of the best articles I ever published and not as good as it should have been (I had been keeping it under my hat for about three years to be honest, and didn’t get to flesh out everything I wanted to in one article… It was meant to be a video series). This article lays out the advanced rock-paper-scissors theory I use (or more aptly, “used” when I was really good at that kind of thing during Kamigawa- and Ravnica-era Standard formats) to pick the right deck consistently. Certainly my favorite of the five, and a short list contender for Article of the Year (provided anyone remembers I wrote it… Like I said I didn’t).
My favorite forum post:
ThePChapin Flores! I knew you still had it in you!
This article hit home with me like no other article since that fateful “How to win a PTQ” last year…”
Grand Slam. Not close.
center425 Man I love the people flaming the advice on sideboards. Honestly, I bet everyone one of you played cards that were awful in your bad matchups for no reason.
So I hope you like reading or re-reading some of 2008′s best stuff, from me, on Star City. Hopefully I will continue to be able to produce passably awesome content now and forever. Hopefully.
LOVE
MIKE
PS In case you haven’t noticed (and I think I mentioned it roughly DI times in this article, you should read GerryT’s comment in The Hidden Value of MTGO Ringers. Like right now!).
PPS Follow me on Twitter. Please! I want to feel loved.
You Make the Play returns with a mirror match dilemma from this past weekend’s Star City Games $5,000 tournament in Philadelphia, PA.
The situation: You are 4-1 or thereabouts in the Star City Games $5,000 tournament in Philadelphia last week. Your deck in this one is Blightning Beatdown… So is your opponent’s.
That opponent is Zack Hall, who has a Grand Prix Top 4 this year and is probably better than you.
That said, you got Game One at least in part because Zack shipped to Paris on the play; he had a lot of Flame Javelins to your Bitterblossom, but you got there with the card advantage.
This one is kind of like a Who’s the Beatdown? redux.
It wasn’t really intended that way… The first part especially is about the Reflecting Pool Control deck Mike McGee used to make Top 8 of the Star City Games $5,000 event. But game play gave us a rare opportunity to observe the control deck switching roles.
I guess it all came down to turn one, where the opposing beatdown deck played Ghitu Encampment. Because I was on the play, this let me Remove Soul his first play and buy a ferocious amount of time.
Then it was Kitchen Finks, Kitchen Finks against an opponent with no creature set up to block.
Normally a deck like Red Deck Wins or Blightning Beatdown is a challenge for Reflecting Pool Control. However instead of playing a sit-there attack-acceptance strategy where we would win (hopefully) after a lifetime of draw-go Magic, I saw multiple Finks as an opportunity to attack.
A lot of the readership (viewership?) has been asking for full matches. So we will probably be following this one up with Game Two… and why we didn’t side in something that would seem obvious to most of you.
Until then… Don’t get played.
LOVE
MIKE
P.S. Oy! Mike’s deck list:
2 Island
3 Remove Soul
4 Wrath of God
3 Condemn
2 Cascade Bluffs
2 Flooded Grove
2 Cloudthresher
4 Cryptic Command
3 Jace Beleren
2 Mulldrifter
4 Vivid Creek
3 Vivid Grove
1 Vivid Marsh
4 Vivid Meadow
1 Negate
2 Ajani Vengeant
2 Cruel Ultimatum
4 Esper Charm
4 Kitchen Finks
2 Mystic Gate
2 Sunken Ruins
4 Reflecting Pool
It’s a redux of Vengeant Reveillark aka the Brian Kowal Boat-Brew.
Our good friend Osyp Lebedowicz just scored Top 8 at the Star City Games $5,000 tournament in Philadelphia with Brian’s deck, which he considers one of the top two decks in Standard (alongside the Fae).
For those of you who haven’t seen the most recent list, here it is cut down to a manageable 60 cards:
Sideboard:
4 Guttural Response
4 Stillmoon Cavalier
4 Voice Of All
3 Wrath Of God
The Boat-Brew is just chock full of great cards; Osyp was close to saying that Bantoine Ruel (Ranger of Eos) is his favorite card in Standard, but his final vote goes to powerhouse Planeswalker, Ajani Vengeant.
The deck is very robust against the majority of the Standard field, though there is a potential soft spot against Faeries. Faeries with four Sower of Temptation is very difficult to overcome, particularly because Sower of Temptation is just the scariest possible prospect when you are laying out 4/3 Reveillarks.
Osyp took the time to talk to me about some potential changes for the deck, along with justifications.
1) The deck already cut the first Murderous Redcap; Osyp wants to do away with the other three, plus one Kitchen Finks, and replace that quartet with Spectral Procession. Spectral Procession is a known quantity in Windbrisk Heights decks. It is also probably better against Red Decks than Kitchen Finks because the tokens can block a Demigod of Revenge while still getting damage in.
2) Swap the main deck Burrenton Forge-Tender for a Flamekin Harbinger. Flamekin Harbinger might seem like a strange choice for a deck with… What? Three elementals? But think about it like this: With Flamekin Harbinger, you can get Reveillark with Antoine Ruel, meaning Ranger of Eos gets better and better. If you can get your 1/1 killed (not hard) look to be able to set up more than one Reveillark. Osyp feels the Red Deck matchup is strong enough to justify this change, and the following video does nothing to change this opinion:
This list is 72/75 what I have been featuring every related blog post and video. Josh Ravitz supplied the physical cardboard and told me that I had too many cards for Reflecting Pool Control (my best matchup) and elected not to supply me with Thoughtseize, instead gave me some Lash Outs. The Lash Outs were great!
ROUND ONE – Merfolk
I played against Curtis, an old friend of WillPop aka Will Price of Progress aka Will Price (boring) from Top8Magic.
Game One I rolled the ‘folk, no probs, won at 19 drawing two Blightnings.
I hadn’t really thought about sideboarding against Merfolk and sided out Blightning for Infest, Hell’s Thunder for Gutteral Response.
Basically got runner, runner-runner’d out of Games two and three. In Game Three, it was literally 14-19 my lead and I ka-powed through two Reveillarks and all his little guys with Infest and a Mogg Fanatic. My grip was double Demigod of Revenge versus nil. He ripped Reveillark #3. Okay, well, I guess I’m sending Demigod #1 to his doom. Back come Merrow Reejeery and Sower of Temptation (no targets). However he has a Windbrisk Heights and some man land action. He comes in for six or so and forces me to pick up a Ghitu Encampment. No probs I have Sulfurous Springs to get back in there with Demigod and have to take two points to play my Demigods. The prob is… He ripped Loxodon Warhammer off of the Cryptic Command off of the Windbrisk Heights. So now I have two Demigods, am north of 10 life… and can’t attack.
Still he has no card in hand. I have to leave my guys home in case he draws a Merfolk for Reejeery tap but once I have active mana I can defend with Ghitu Encampments on the ground.
What is the single worst card he can pull?
Sower of Temptation!
Nil into ‘Lark into Cryptic into Loxodon into Sower?
Magnanimus!
Actually not magnanimus at all.
He takes my 5/4 and… You know how it went.
0-1
ROUND SEVEN – Reflecting Pool Control
I won five or six straight to go 6-1 at this point. Details at Top8Magic. Brian did a bonzer job by the way, updating on-the-go all day from his iPhone (have I mentioned we live in the future)?
6-1
ROUND EIGHT – Disaster!
So you are on a six round run.
You have beaten Story Circle on Red (on turn three, with no Blossom on board) and Story Circle on Black in the same game — without siding in Everlasting Torment; you’ve won the 56/60 mirror against probably a superior player (upcoming You Make the Play); you’ve pulled out a close one against the Fae by ripping Gutteral Response exactly when you needed a Gutteral Response.
Now you are two games from Top 8.
First.
Turn.
Windbrisk Heights.
Man!
Game One I only pulled five spells… and one was a Hell’s Thunder — it doesn’t even count!
Yet I have gotten him to two with a really brave Mogg Fanatic.
He’s on two.
If he’s not lethal next turn, it’s close.
You pull Incinerate!
The problem? Previous turn he picked up Burrenton Forge-Tender and played it.
Yeah.
No!
Game Two I was maybe tilting. I kept five lands (no Ghitu Encampment), Tarfire, Everlasting Torment. The only other spell I pulled the entire game was a second Everlasting Torment.
6-2
And that was the tournament.
I played the last round to see if I could get away with a $100 Top 16 prize.
Opponent was Fae.
I shipped to Paris four times in the two games. The real pisser was I had to ship a “perfect” two-land hand… but both lands were my two Reflecting Pools! No! Even against the Fae this was a pretty bad disadvantage. I could have won either game if I hit a break, but in Game Two he played three Cryptic Commands when any other response spell meant that I was going to get there.
And that was the tournament.
Josh says I was on tilt the last 1.5-2 rounds, but I think I played pretty well overall. I do not regret my deck selection by even one card, though I think three Everlasting Torments might have been better than four (final Lash Out).
MichaelJ is sick! Also some things are not available at any price. Others are available for between $4.99 and $24.
First of all, sorry for the few / lame updates the past week or two. I am back in New York and have been in I think five cities in three days (Cleveland, Richmond, New York, Ft. Lauderdale, New York again) between Thanksgiving and now. Most recently I flew down to Florida for less than 24 hours to do a speech, back in the office the next day (today).
I am wiped from traveling and the speech / presentation.
Millionaire copywriter Dr. Harlan Kilstein let me do a presentation at his Tactic7 seminar which was daunting. I have done presentations about being awesome at Google before but… like… only at Google or at seminars talking to Googlers. So yes, it’s a big honor to be one of the few online marketing experts to actually present at the epicenter of the online marketing universe, but the stresses are very different. Sure it can still be intimidating, but when you are speaking at Google, you are sharing with a room full of professionals who basically get paid to be there.
Presenting at Harlan’s made me nervous because the situation was reversed: Entrepeneurs and students were paying to hear me speak. Yes it was Harlan’s event and I was just a guest speaker for the day but the people present paid a deep four figures to sit in that packed room so it was important for me to do a good job.
Luckily I aquitted myself quite adequately.
Unluckily — and if you know me in real life (instead of just listening to my videos) you can probably imagine this — I spent a lot of my speech shouting at the top of my lungs. Specifically I repeated THIS IS EXACTLY WHAT YOU ARE LOOKING FOR five or ten times, Gregorian chant style (if Gregorian monks, you know, shouted THIS IS EXACTLY WHAT YOU ARE LOOKING FOR at the top of their lungs).
So I have no voice now.
Which is kind of horrible because I am going to do a video on my Star City Blightning Beatdown tonight. I kind of have to. I did the footage more than a week ago, intending to do the video while I was home in Ohio, but wall to wall family stuff came up for a week and the raw files have been sitting on my computer for however long. But the Star City $5K event is less than two days from now… So when you get to see the video (which will be later tonight, getting back to the “sorry for the few / lame updates the past week or two” bit up top), you will have to deal with my non-voice. I am the equal and opposite of Blackagar Boltagon. My voice is THAT un-powerful at present.
So what does this have to do with this blog post’s headline ["Not Available at Any Price!" if you forgot]?
While I was at Tactic7 I met up with fellow presenter, quality human being, and Career RenegadeJonathan Fields, an imminent Amazon.com best seller and expert in social media (you know, like this blog). Jonathan turned me onto Twitter. So if you want to follow me on Twitter (no one is following me on Twitter, please follow me on Twitter, I want to feel popular), I am unsurprisingly FiveWithFlores, that is, Twitter.com/FiveWithFlores. Apparently I previously registered my Madmanpoet self some time in the distant past, but I have since forgotten the password to Madmanpoet’s account. Poor Twitter.com/Madmanpoet. You are alone forever. Long live FiveWithFlores!
Jonathan pointed out the agile use of “not available at any price” in a sales letter he showed me, and I just found something also not available at any price (though my use is dramatically less agile).
I was perusing 80sTees.com, home of The World’s Greatest Tee Shirt (sorry… still not in stock in M, L, or XL… did anybody bug them yet? I didn’t [yet]), and came upon this Decepticon belt:
I am not sure if that Decepticon belt is cool or lame; only that it is bright purple. However I have the following little mice turning gears in my noggin:
1) It’s only $4.99 (meaning that if it turns out to be lame, I blew less than a latte), and
2) It fits up to 38 inches (meaning I’m good… Is there anything more embarrassing than buying a belt you can’t fit into?)
So I’m thinking to myself, “Self, there is a reasonable possibility this belt is lame. Maybe there could be some other belt that is definitely cool, or at least not lame?”
So I came upon this belt:
IT IS NOT AVAILABLE AT ANY PRICE.
Zero dollars?
Really?
I had to double-take.
This Thundercats belt is $0… You know, like my lifetime winnings in individual Pro Tours.
Yet it is in stock.
How can this be?
When price = $0, that throws the whole cool / lame cost / benefit matrix completely out of whack. Free things are basically automatically cool, or at least not lame.
Then I read that you actually have to buy a Thundercats tee shirt to get the NOT AVAILABLE AT ANY PRICE belt “for free.” Oh, that’s how they get you. Actual commerce and product purchases. The arrogant bastards. You have to pay them before you get goods and services. How gauche. Maybe they should just let me buy The World’s Greatest Tee Shirt instead of it being out of stock. Did I mention “bastards”?
Anyway, I was leaning towards this one, because then I can pretend that I didn’t know there was a double entendre (my life is more or less non-stop shenanigans, and pretending I didn’t know I was committing a faux pas is basically my favorite scam):
The only problem is that if you have a daughter and you want her to be proud, independent, free-thinking, and strong, you have to at least THINK ABOUT / consider certain ridiculous actions and intentional unintentional double entendres, especially if you want to dodge the ire of the Mrs. For the unmarried among you, there is a high benefit to relatively low cost in dodging the ire of the Mrs.
So what is a man to do in order to shotgun a free Thundercats belt?
There is the Underoos-looking route:
Or alternately the hipster “I found these Underoos crumpled under my bed” route:
Personally I like the second one more, but I am worried the Mrs. will mistake it for a ratty old shirt and will accidentally throw it away.
This is more difficult than “Figure of Destiny” or “Tarfire the Birds of Paradise” on turn one.
So long story short, video + Magical post later tonight.
Thanks everybody for continuing to love what Mike Flores loves. If I can get my free Thundercats belt in time for the Star City $5K, it will match my deck of choice (Blightning Beatdown, obv).
LOVE
MIKE
Firestarter:
What is actually more difficult? Figure of Destiny / Tarfire the Birds of Paradise on turn one or Underoos-looking Thundercats shirt / “distressed” Underoos-looking Thundercats shirt?
Game One – Elementals is a deck that I tested early for the States format. Properly built, it can be hell on the Reflecting Pool Control suite, it has fast — sometimes uncounterable — Cloudthreshers for the Fae, and Reveillark for a legitimate Stage Three game plan. The reason I discarded it is that Elementals often got slow draws against The Red Deck that could not be corrected (Shock your Smokebraider, &c.); and the slow games without Mulldrifter just seemed like a lot of comes into play tapped lands and glacial Harbingers.
In this game he actually has some Fulminator Mages to slow me down and a Horde of Notions.
I start on Bitterblossom and triple Mogg Fanatics. I kill the Horde two-for-one and he follows up with a Reveillark.
I just attack all in to get damage in.
He borrows a play from my States Jund Mana Ramp deck and runs a Gift of the Gargantuan for a Mulldrifter and Fire-lit Thicket; but I have Flame Javelin to finish.
Game Two – I didn’t sideboard (maybe I should have taken out Demigod of Revenge?) … I opened on Ghitu Encampment and pointed my Mogg Fanatic at his mana guy.
He played another mana guy and I came in with another Mogg Fanatic and Hell’s Thunder, then repeated the previous Mogg Fanatic play.
Time for Blightning!
The bad news… He discarded Gift of the Gargantuan and Horde of Notions (a little scared of Makeshift Mannequin in this spot).
“Luckily” he followed up with a Harbinger for another Horde of Notions, then played Gift for that Horde (pretty nice)… but managed to miss his necessary land drop.
With five mana I sent Incinerate and Hell’s Thunder #2.
His fifth land came into play tapped!
… But he had the dreaded Mannequin. How anticlimactic. In for five.
I flashed a Thunder from down under, putting him to one. He can’t do 15 the following turn.
1-0
2. Faeries with White
Game One – He opens with Arcane Sanctum, then Secluded Glen into Bitterblossom.
I skipped an attack with my Mogg Fanatic to preserve the option of a two-for-one (learned that from Brett’s video); he tries for the Scion, but I burn it.
But his double Mistbind Clique is really much more clever (or at least effective than anything I had this game).
Game Two – I sided out two Tarfires for two Gutteral Responses. I wanted the threat of being able to mess with his Cryptic Command set to Fog… but didn’t really have anything worth taking damage sources out just to force through with extra mana. I came out quickly with Figure and Mogg Fanatic, and we are to Game Three just like that.
Game Three – I open on turn one Fanatic and turn two Blossom; however I stick on two with a hand full of awesome threes. He has a Loxodon Warhammer so my goal becomes to not let him use it on me.
Anyway, once I start to get a little mass he sees the writing on the wall and points a Cryptic Command at my squad… but that’s why I have Gutteral Response (even if I only sided two of them, see above).
It would have definitely been better to side out Incinerate instead of Tarfire. Tarfire is just better against his guys (no one has three toughness), plus Tarfire is cheaper and a Goblin for Auntie’s Hovel. Oh well, that’s why we test.
2-0
3. Reanimator
Game One – He opens Swamp.
I go first turn Figure.
He goes Island.
I’m in. No pumps. He runs Agony Warp. Ha ha, I didn’t pump. Awesome Blossom.
Now it gets weird… Cunning Lethemancer?
The joke’s on you: I discard Demigod of Revenge.
He evokes a Mulldrifter; I evoke the Chris Pikula rule and Tarfire the Lethemancer.
Then he Beacons up his Mully… I play my own five mana Black spell, being a Demigod of Revenge… for Demigod of Revenge.
He points Profane Command at one of my Demigods but passes the turn on three, convenient for my Blightning.
Game Two – I put in three copies of Thoughtseize, dropping a trio of Hell’s Thunders. In hindsight this is probably wrong as there is a particularly good synergy between his Lethemancers and my Thunders. But with a deck as unpredictable as his, I think Thoughtseize is right… just a question of what to pull; I think Flame Javelin?
I drew Thunder anyway.
This game I stuck a pair of Bitterblawesomes. He played Blackman style and kept Warping my jones to only take one from my Thunder and eat a token.
He kept Warping tokens whereas I stuck Blightning the flash on Thunder until he was at 11 and I was gripping circa ten.
3-0
4. Jund Mana Ramp (possibly Jund Quillspike Combo)
Game One – I shipped Swamp (only land) with double Blossom into Hell’s Thunder and five land… make that six land after my draw step.
He opened on a Jund tri-land.
I went Fantastic.
He played a Devoted Druid and the juices started flowing.
I don’t think he can combo me if I have a Fanatic in play.
I just killed his Druid based on my hand.
He followed up with Garruk and a second Druid. I hit him with Thunder and pointed a second Fanatic at his second Druid.
He went Chameleon.
I went Demigod.
I did the math and realized I had to kill Garruk or the Chameleon would go intensely large + trample. Unfortunately my Demigod was not comely to the Elves and Eyeblight’s Ending got him.
Game Two – Paris to five.
Off curve; third turn Bitterblossom… against his Finks. I start to accumulate tokens and get a Figure.
He Jund Charms and I’m afraid he is going to kill my tokens and Figure and reset his Finks… but he just eats these two Hell’s Thunders that were hanging out in my graveyard. Then he evokes a Cloudthresher to actually kill my tokens. But Figure makes it in for four!
It’s a race!
… Until he plays a pair of Finks and sends Eyeblight’s Ending at my Figure.
I rip all lands of course.
3-1
5. Tokens
He opens on a Fire-lit Thicket.
I answer with Sulfurous Springs into a turn two Bitterblossom. Ouch ouch.
His first move is Nantuko Husk.
I want nothing to do with that and Tarfire it, following with Figure of Destiny.
A follow up Blightning reveals to Soul’s Fires (have I mentioned how good Blightning is?). I have 13 more points in my hand when he concedes.
Game Two – I remove four Mogg Fanatics for four Infests; mulligan a one lander.
I get a quick Figure of Destiny; his first move is again on turn three… a Sprouting Thrinax. I just draw lands and he eventually kills me with Sarkan Vol.
Game Three – Mulligan again; turn two Bitterblossom.
I spend a bunch of turns Incinerating Marsh Flitters; mana is pretty tight this game. He has four Goblins from his Marsh Flitters and I have some Bitterblossom tokens. Eventually I draw lands and play a ton of Blightnings and Demigods.
6.
He plays Birds of Paradise (always trouble).
I play Figure of Destiny turn one over Tarfire.
Luckily he has no explosive turn two and I Tarfire his Birds and get in for two.
Blightning reveals Wrath of God and Garruk Wildspeaker.
He Oblivion Rings my Figure of Destiny; I deal four anyway with Hell’s Thunder, then play another Figure. He plays a Liege of some sort, which I burn out, prompting the concession.
Game Two I remove four Flame Javelins for four Everlasting Torments.
He opens on Murmuring Bosk, plays the 0/4 Harbinger and goes and gets another Mosk. My Figure bounces off of it until he deigns to play a Shriekmaw.
Hell’s Thunder in.
He goes 4/4 of his own – Chameleon Colossus.
This looks like it might be an interesting game except I have three Hell’s Thunders and a plenty of overload damage to race.
5-1
7. Jund Mannequin
Game One – He opens on Birds of Paradise. I open on Figure of Destiny, which earns an Incinerate. Okay; slow game this one. Blightning and Blightning snag six life, Violent Ultimatum, Firespout, Chameleon Colossus, and Makeshift Mannequin.
He tries to slow the old man down with some Fulminator Mages but I have enough lands this game. He switches gears and drops a diffeent Chameleon. Meanwhile I send three Flame Javelins at the face and finish with a Tarfire for the perfect 20.
Game Two – He mulligans into a weak hand and quickly concedes to Mogg Fanatic and some burn spells.
6-1
At 6-1, given the imaginary eight rounds of my imaginary tournament, I am in ID land. Top 8? Heh.
I decide to play one more because I don’t have any footage (look for this video to come up later in the week).
8. G/W Little Kid
Game One – You probably know I made a deck with all G/W cards and Wilt-Leaf Liege for Block that won one PTQ (that I know about). I actually started thinking about this strategy again for Standard just because Wilt-Leaf Liege is so good against Blightning and Cruel Ultimatum. So basically, alongside Kitchen Finks and better guys than are in my colors — let alone my deck — this is the nightmare match.
Luckily he had a slow opening, which was my only saving grace. One too many lands came into play tapped so he couldn’t overrun me with superior forces. I stuck a Blightning that was pretty ironic. A turn or two later and I would have been eating 4/4.
Anyway he got out a ton of 4/x and 5/x creatures (with Liege boosts) but I had a late Bitterblossom to get in for a tiny amount of damage… eventually burned him to death.
Game Two – I side out Blightnings (obviously) for Everlasting Torments.
I luck out that his third land is a Mosswort Bridge, meaning my Figure of Destiny is 4/4 before he has a Wilt-Leaf Cavaliers in play. This is just what I need to get in -one too many times-. Then it’s all Hell’s Thunder and burn to the face. No sweat, thanks to his stumble.
Wherein Michael J. Flores discusses the beginnings of his preparation for the upcoming Star City Games $5000 tournament in Philadelphia, PA. This article features initial deck selection, card choices, and testing with a modified version of Blightning Beatdown.
So there is a big Standard tournament coming up the first week of December.
It is a Star City Games $5000 tournament (you know, the kind Alex Bertoncini always wins) in Philadelphia, PA. I lived in Philadelphia for four years, and won my first PTQ there with a heavily metagamed B/R Necropotence deck.
Aside:
Recently, over at Top 8 Magic, I have been thinking a lot about my deck selection over the past couple of years. It all started when Brian David-Marshall accused me of being the Greenest One of All in a recent Top 8 Magic Podcast. [In case you haven't been reading Top 8 Magic... which you should be] I have been some kind of Green in 80% of my last 20 individual Constructed tournaments. I even did a spreadsheet breakdown.
Yep, down 199 rating points over that time period.
On balance, the twenty individual Constructed tournaments before those I was Green only about 1/3 of the time. Instead, I was up 146 points, qualified for two Constructed Pro Tours, crushed a late summer Standard with my U/W “Wafo-Tapa” deck that won five straight NAC Qualifiers (Steve Sadin, Julian Levin, yours truly, some guy not in our crew, and Chad Kastel), finished Top 16 in that respective NAC, and of course finished two-then-one in the New York State Championships in consecutive attempts.
I am not 100% down on Green at all (in fact, Critical Mass was one of the best decks I ever developed, hands down)… But I think Brian probably has a point that I am biased towards Green.
But not in Philadelphia; when I won that PTQ, it was with B/R.
End aside.
Speaking of B/R, I have been heavily impressed with Oscar Almgren’s Blightning Beatdown since I first stumbled upon it and made the initial Blightning Beatdown videos.
At the pre-States Top 8 Magic Mock Tournament, Brian David-Marshall kicked all kinds of bum with Matt Ferrando’s version of Blightning Beatdown — which didn’t even have Bitterblossom or Demigod of Revenge if you can believe THAT — and recommended it for States on basis of our previous Mock Tournament prognostication with Jushi Blue, B/W Deadguy Ale, &c.
However for myself, Josh Ravitz had already [physically] made me my Jund Mana Ramp deck and told me he would punch me in the face if I didn’t play it. Josh himself, though, smartly switched to Blightning Beatdown! He finished a match out of Top 8 in New Jersey, parallel to me.
So anyway, based on many factors — including a deliberate effort to broaden my color choices, my frustrations with playing Reflecting Pool Control mirrors, and my hatred of plus desire to quash the First Among Equals — I decided to at least try out Blightning Beatdown as the initial weapon of choice. I really love this strategy and its combination of pressure, domination over the Fae, and the namesake card Blightning itself.
For reference, here is Oscar Almgren’s original LCQ-winning version:
4 Bitterblossom
4 Ashenmoor Gouger
4 Blightning
4 Demigod of Revenge
4 Figure of Destiny
4 Goblin Deathraiders
Here are the modifications I made for this one:
-4 Ashenmoor Gouger; +4 Hell’s Thunder
-4 Goblin Deathraiders; +4 Mogg Fanatic
I like the relentless pressure that Hell’s Thunder gives you when you already have a little momentum. Neither 4.4 for three mana is particularly good against beatdown, but the Shards of Alara option is a much better racer. Ashenmoor Gouger is better against the Fae, but Hell’s Thunder is much better against Reflecting Pool Control. Those are obviously the two most popular decks, and the First Among Equals is already a cakewalk, so I wanted to err leaning the other way.
Josh played Goblin Deathraiders at States, but no Tarfire. Basically both of us — and Oscar himself — all ran some combination of these Goblin cards. I just wanted more fast action (which might be in slight conflict with this deck’s Ghitu Encampments and annoying basic Swamp).
I borrowed Oscar’s mana base in the entirety; no complaints so far, really, other than I mulligan more than I am used to and I don’t particularly love the Swamp; on balance Josh loves the Swamp and says you might need 26 lands in this strategy (I don’t know if I am that brave, though).
As for the sideboard modifications, I really wanted to play with Gutteral Response because the only way the Fae can get out of your tempo games is usually with multiple Cryptic Commands, and Gutteral Response v. Cryptic Command is about the best fight you can expect in Standard. I really don’t like Magma Spray and if you are already playing Everlasting Torment, I just don’t see the value in it; those are the side justifications.
A brief card breakdown:
Bitterblossom
Unsurprisingly, the best card in the deck. It feels so much better in this deck than in the Fae. I really like the pressure this card provides against control — which typically operates in that old school “remove the threats” way even in 2008 — allowing you to sit back and set up with burn spells. Just such a great card… which is why I and everyone else hates it so damn much. But hey, if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em!
Blightning
Probably my favorite card to play in the deck. You just feel so powerful resolving this on turn three. Do you realize it only does one fewer damage than a Flame Javelin? Ka-pow! My favorite play is attacking with my 2/2 Figure of Destiny on turn three with mana open, and playing the chicken game. Nope; let’s go to damage. Grumble Grumble. Here, have a Blightning. Grumble Grumble.
Demigod of Revenge
Ferrando didn’t play this card at all! Honestly I don’t play it very much on account of stalling. It is still like the best big guy in Standard, and one of the scariest possible threats against any kind of Counterspells.
Figure of Destiny
Obv.
Flame Javelin
Obv.
Hell’s Thunder
As above; we replaced Ashenmoor Gouger with this guy, 4/4 for three for 4/4 for three. Ashenmoor Gouger is mostly better against Faeries and Hell’s Thunder is mostly better against Reflecting Pool Control. Of the two most popular decks, one is a near bye. So we went with the card that was / is better against the other one, that is more likely to tap out for a Firespout / Wrath of God and give you an open to brain for four.
Incinerate
This is probably my least favorite card in the deck. I can see going to two copies for 26 lands per Josh’s suggestion, and / or swtiching to Lash Out. But no official changes as of yet.
Mogg Fanatic
Mogg Fantastic! I re-added this to the strategy (if you recall my pre-States Demigod Deck Wins videos all featured Tattermunge Maniac) based on the Brett Blackman video. He could not stop ranting about how bad Mogg Fanatic is for Faeries. In.
Tarfire
I actually have loved this card so far. Not powerful, but a Goblin for my Auntie’s Hovels… and it works nicely with this deck’s often tight mana.
As for testing format, I decided to do eight rounds in the Tournament Practice room as an initial run.
A lot of people have been asking me about Star City. I just want to say there are no hard feelings (from my end, any way) and that I plan to write there in the future. Leaving my weekly column was something I had been considering for some time, and it was just time.
However I did write one last article that was never published on Star City. It is kind of uselessly dated now that the Magic Hall of Fame for this year has been decided already, but here it is for anyone who wants to read my last, never-was article for Star City Games dot com.
Enjoy!
(This was originally intended for 29 August 2008.)
–michaelj
First Impressions, Two Trees, and the Democratic Process
The US presidential election is still a little ways off, but ballots for the 2008 Pro Tour Hall of Fame are due… um… today.
Okay then!
I started with the original 66 potential members list and cut down to the 10 or 11 players I would seriously consider voting for (this includes all of the still-eligible candidates I had voted for in the past… or at least all of the still-eligible candidates I remember voting for in the past).
The list of players I cut to was pretty arbitrary, and left off more than one of my good friends, people I talk to or hang out with on a regular basis:
Dirk Baberowski
Marco Blume
Brian Hacker
Itaru Ishida
William Jensen
Steven O’Mahoney-Schwartz
Chris Pikula
David Price
Ben Rubin
Michael Turian
Jelger Wiegersma
Of the players I had voted for in the past, I decided to cut most of them off the bat, leaving the following:
Dirk Baberowski
Marco Blume
William Jensen
Steven O’Mahoney-Schwartz
Chris Pikula
Ben Rubin
Michael Turian
Jelger Wiegersma
I still firmly believe that Brian Hacker should have been first class; if you want to look at a previous ballot that I was very proud of writing, please consider One Man’s Ballot from 2006, which in addition to being awesome contains an engaging if somewhat factually inaccurate section on Randy Couture… who has since made a mixed martial arts comeback, won the UFC heavyweight title, and retired again (to the annoyance of Dana White, agents, and lawyers aplenty)… at least unless he can get his superfight.
On the subject of mixed martial arts, hrm… in a bit.
So I am left with eight players, these eight in fact:
Dirk Baberowski
Probably the best player on this year’s ballot, Dirk is typically the fourth player mentioned in the crowd of “Kai, Jon, and Bob” in terms of ability. He was always held in high regard especially by Kai, and if anyone’s opinion means anything, it has to be Budde’s. It is easy to think of Dirk as “merely” a multiple Pro Tour Champion due to his membership in Phoenix Foundation, but don’t forget that he won (if memory serves) his rookie Pro Tour… and that Pro Tour was a draft victory… with green-white. If that isn’t a testament to skill, I don’t know what is. The rules have changed this year (you need vote share to get into the Hall of Fame, rather than just being one of the five most popular); if any player is a lock under the new system, I think it is Dirk.
Marco Blume
Three Pro Tour Top 8s. Two wins. Two wins. Yes, they were with Phoenix Foundation, but… two wins. No matter what anyone ever said about Marco over the years (Gary Wise used to talk about restaurants in terms of how much Marco would have liked one of them) the one thing that I will always remember about him has nothing to do with him, personally. I misspelled his name in a Deck Histories and Concepts article on Ponza Rotta Red as Maro Blume (he was a German National Champion), and when the bags at the Pojo plagiarized the article, they made sure to leave that misspelling in rather than fix it; now there was (is?) a site that was (is?) as editorially capable as it was (is?) ethical!
William Jensen
I always had a good relationship with Huey over the years but I don’t know that I would have short listed him at all but for a forum post that I read by my good friend Jonathan Becker just last week. You can read Jon’s post here, in Teddy Card Game’s forum from last week.
I taunt Jon all the time, disagree with him on sports (I am currently in arrears one Katz’s pastrami sandwich), and so on but Becker really is pretty awesome (if a former member of the Tongo Nation); I have been lucky enough to have made Jonathan my son’s Sirius Black, even.
Jon’s post pointed out that in a significantly shorter career than Ben Rubin, Huey had the same number of Top 8s (including a win, which Ben lacks), and more Grand Prix Top 8s, as well as (slightly) superior average finishes. Rubin fans will be quick to point out Ben’s Masters victories, but you know what? Huey won the very first (a lot of people forget that one)!
Steven O’Mahoney-Schwartz
Steve should have been first class. Shame on me for not voting for him then. I don’t think that most people fathom how good Steve was (heck, is… he played in I think one Grand Prix last year, and won it!) when he was on top. He was the strongest Rochester drafter in the world at his height (or if he was second, it was only to Jon, whom he beat in the LA finals), and racked up double-digit Grand Prix Top 8s in addition to winning odd things that most people on the ballot have never done, like taking a Master’s Grinder with G/R at the dawn of Psychatog. Steve’s ~$88K in lifetime winnings might not seem huge against today’s full list of top performers, but he actually retired something like third or fourth in lifetime winnings. I hadn’t thought of this until just now, but Steve also played the most impressive game I had ever seen, at least by April 2, 2002.
Chris Pikula
I don’t know what I was thinking in 2005. I mean maybe you could read A Bunch of Topics and try to figure it out yourself. Buehler himself called me due to my not voting for Comer (I should have voted for Comer, probably, and immediately regretted not doing so). I wish I hadn’t talked to Teddy Card Game that one time because then I probably just would have voted for Finkel, SteveO, Hacker, DaveP, and of course the Meddling Mage. This would have been a fine ballot, certainly better than the one I turned in.
Three years later the Hall of Fame criteria remain performances, playing ability, integrity, sportsmanship, and contributions to the game in general. For a Hall of Fame candidate in 2008, Chris is probably slightly below average for performances and playing ability, but he was average-or-better in 2005, and a paragon or near-paragon of integrity, sportsmanship, and contributions to the game in general (Pro Tour community, having the coolest Invitational card, tournament report writing, storytelling) all in 2005, and remains so today. Personally I feel like most ballots overly favor performances to the exclusion of everything else — including playing ability to be quite frank — which is a harsh flaw on the part of the voters, not the system. This year, Chris for certain has my vote.
Ben Rubin
I’m definitely voting for Ben. I wish I could have voted for Ben last year, but which of Kai, Zvi, Tsuyoshi, Turian, and Randy could I have cut? Kai only, and Mike didn’t even make it.
Michael Turian
Speaking of Mike… I think it’s a crime he didn’t make the team last year.
Jelger Wiegersma
Scuttlebut in some circles is that Jelger is just the best player on Tour now (again); be might not be tops in performances, but he has a Grand Prix Top 8 that isn’t even dry yet. I don’t know Jelger very well or have very much to say about him so I am just going to go into the storytelling section.
The first time I met Jelger Wiegersma was a Sunday afternoon in 2004. I just checked a calendar, and in fact, I think it was July 4, 2004 based on the timing. Gerrard Fabiano called me to ask if I wanted to eat at Plataforma and of course I said yes. He and some TOGIT guys brought along some foreigners but I had no idea who they were; I would probably have recognized their third, standout Kamiel Cornelissen, but these other two, I had no idea who they were at the time. Okay maybe I knew Jeroen was that Rock guy.
However I definitely didn’t recognize Jelger on sight (I had been averaging one or fewer Pro Tours per year for about three years running at that point), so I had no idea exactly what kind of hole I was digging when I started talking about Affinity. I decided that Somber Hoverguard was the best card in Affinity (“it’s the only card that lets Affinity beat my Green deck”) and rolled my eyes and dismissed Jelger with his cockamamie theory about this “Aether Vial.” Jelger actually humored me. His graciousness was rewarded by the gods, and Von Dutch took Pro Tour Seattle the following week.
It wasn’t until much later that I found out that he was coming off an Affinity Pro Tour Top 8… With Aether Vials and no Somber Hoverguards.
But for right now I am not voting for Jelger. Here is my final five:
William Jensen
Steven O’Mahoney-Schwartz
Chris Pikula
Ben Rubin
Mike Turian
I didn’t vote for Dirk, but that doesn’t seem remotely as blasphemous as not voting for Jon or Kai (though Josh [Ravitz] suggested I vote for Marco and not Dirk, just to see what happened). I feel like Dirk is very likely to make the Hall of Fame this year, and that I can spend my votes for different kinds of recognition, or at least to help keep some players on the ballots so they can claim Hall of Fame slots in the future.
William Jensen
I decided very early that I was going to vote for Ben Rubin, and what can I say? Becker’s side-by-side comparison swayed me to vote for Billy Jensen, the “other” Rubin, at least on paper.
There are a lot of very good Billy Jensen stories, but this is my favorite:
I am on a flight to Pro Tour Los Angeles and end up on the same one as Huey. I am qualified on rating and have very few actual drafts under my belt (my only practice draft being a local sanctioned 8-man after ratings qualifications are awarded, where I went down 0-2 to Mowshowitz). Billy instructed me how to draft.
“In this format, I like Green-Black or Green-Blue.
“Basically, in this format, you want a tree.
“Green-Black is great because people have all these stupid little Rebels, and the fact is, they can’t deal with a tree. If you have a tree and a Banishing, come on. Usually they need two cards to deal with your tree, and you play your Banishing, and it’s even worse for them than they originally though.
“Green-Blue is almost as good because a tree and a Counterspell. Wow! Like I said, they can’t deal with your tree to begin with, but a tree attacking them? With a Counterspell in hand? That’s basically like having to deal with two trees… and they couldn’t deal with the first one!”
I foolishly tried to draft a non-Huey scripted strategy in my first draft and quickly had my back to the wall. I missed Day Two on a combination of savage cheating and, believe it or not, blatant judge collusion. Luckily, I was able to hold up the Pro Tour for two hours complaining to the DCI, which was a personal victory because think about the sheer amount of wasted group time! Talk about sharing my misery with the world! (Or at least the rest of the Pro Tour). Huey’s U/G got me a 2-1 in the next draft, though.
I had a separate problem, then, which was I had like five losses in the last two weeks, which blew my top 25 rating. Luckily I won the Nemesis Prerelease at the Pro Tour undefeated in games, as well as a half a dozen Nemesis side events, where I did Huey proud, drafting “Blastoderms and Banishings” every time. Rating was safely back in place… only to be blown at that summer’s US Nationals.
Steven O’Mahoney-Schwartz
I spent quite some time rasslin’ with Google to find an Edison, NJ Type II report from 1997 where I first met Steve OMS (he put me to 3-1 in Round Four but we both made Top 8). I was going to paste it but I wrote like a bit of an ass (how did I ever catch on?) plus I dropped an F-bomb. If you want to read about a U/W deck from 1997 yourself, have at thee.
Instead, I’ll post my all-time favorite Steve story for the 777th time:
It may have not seemed like much; both of these great Pro Tour Champions was now just one match out of Top 8 contention at the 2000 U.S. Nationals. In the last round of Swiss, just one year before that vaunted expansion of prize money, with nothing on the line but some DCI points that would be ultimately meaningless for combatants of such standing, these players clashed for nothing but pride… and the opportunity to show off a perfect game.
Steve knew that Dave was running Replenish. Going first, his hand was absolutely perfect… A couple of lands, a Dark Ritual, a Phyrexian Negator, a Stromgald Cabal, and that most miserly of mulligans, the Vampiric Tutor itself, stared back at the boy from Brooklyn.
Think back at what you would have done with a grip like this.
Testing showed that in order to beat a Stromgald Cabal, Replenish needed either to ramp up to eight mana under absolutely no pressure or to have a Ring of Gix in play. Steve knew that if YMG had Ring of Gix at all, it wouldn’t have been in the main deck. My first instinct as a spectator and Silver Bullet player was “swamp, Ritual, win!”
And then Steve showed me the right play.
Instead of turn-1 Stromgald Cabal, Steve went for turn-1 Phyrexian Negator. After the Hump passed his first turn, Steve untapped, cast Vampiric Tutor on his upkeep for a second Dark Ritual, and ensured the win by playing Stromgald Cabal on turn 2. Watching this game, it was painfully obvious how vastly superior Steve’s play was to the one I would have made. Of all the people to whom I have ever told this story, the only ones who came up with the complete, correct, answer to that opening hand were Pro Tour champions Finkel and Mowshowitz.
Zvi once explained to me that the problem with perfect play is that, especially with an overpowered-yet-decision-heavy deck like Napster or Turbo-Land, you will have ten possible plays, nine of which are wrong, but seven of which win the game. Making a play like mine would have in all likelihood won the game at some point, but would not have promoted correct play… In fact, a win in the face of an error rewards being bad. Go figure.
For his part, Jonathan Magic said “Mike, if you keep testing with me and Steve, that will be the only play you see!”
Delighted at this prospect, I was prepared to become a technically proficient Magician. Of course history tells us that immediately after this brilliant Championship-over-Championship summer for The Machine, despite a subsequent pair of back-to-back PT Top 8s, Jonathan Magic decided to completely eschew Pro Tour preparation…
… And I remain exactly as bad as I ever was.
Chris Pikula
Looking back to that 1997 tournament report against Steve, and now gazing back to my first Pro Tour*, where I — through Worth Wollpert — worked with Chris Pikula, it strikes me that I must have been some kind of annoying barnacle. You know that guy who barges into your conversations with cooler Magic players, tries to attach himself to your entourage, swipes your deck (but then fails to make Top 8 or Top 16 with it)… I am pretty sure that was me!
Wow, holy dark mirror Batman. Like Spock with a moustache or something.
I mean now I’m basically a slick-haired, wolf-lean, rock star of a Magic player, but honestly… I have no idea why Chris is still willing to talk to me at all. Maybe if I continue to vote for him?
By about 1998 or 1999 I was “off” the Pro Tour (for the first time, it seems). Snow was high as an elephant’s eye and at that point I was just not serious about getting on the Pro Tour (contrast with my 2001 self, who would fly to PTQs)… But Chris called me and told me to make the long overnight trek to this Detroit PTQ being run by Mike Guptil. I read a Brian Weissman analysis of the format and visualized Brilliant Halo. For the first time, I made a multi-day trip for a PTQ. Eleven or so rounds later, I had the envelope.
I don’t know how long I would have continued to play Magic but for that win. I just don’t know. I was on fire (at least in terms of local play) for the rest of the school year, winning another PTQ, Top 4 at Regionals, then a set of Grand Prix and Nationals runs that would cement ratings-based invites for every Pro Tour for the next year and a half… But that second PTQ win was another lengthy trip to Detroit, and the Regionals was a four hour drive to a Mike Guptil event in Columbus. I was in law school at the time, and my parents were trying to straighten me out and make something useful of me. Would I have ever moved to New York to manage The Dojo? I really do wonder.
Ben Rubin
Ben and I have a lot of friends in common, but I don’t know him very well. My first clear memory of him (beyond Dave’s beating him to take LA in 1998) was a road trip with Brian Schneider, who declared Ben “one of the greatest of all time” with just his LA and Worlds finishes behind him… no Masters wins yet, no sickestever.dec yet. Brian’s opinions are good enough for me.
I think I might owe Ben a blue envelope, though. It was a Las Vegas PTQ in 2001, which I flew to to hang out with Bill Macey. John Shuler, Chapin, edt, and Buehler were also there. Anyway, I was 14-0 in games through three tournaments against Donate, the top combo deck of the day, (a Grand Prix Trial I had won, a Grand Prix, and the PTQ itself) going into a Donate matchup in the finals. My opponent wanted to scoop the slot. I was riding pretty high on my zero game losses, and intended to play. It was Ben who explained this concept of “what happens if you get manascrewed” to me, and I walked away with the envelope, and even got to keep a decnt chunk of the travel award.
Mike Turian
I was going to write about the first time I met Mike, which was at a Mir/Vis/Lite constructed PTQ in 1997 (I committed one of those all-too-common Flores brain farts to miss Top 8, even though my Mono-Blue deck had Cloud Elemental instead of Ophidian). I thought Mike was just one of those goofball local scrubs due to his G/W Striped Bears / Mistmoon Griffin strategy, but he not only won the PTQ (if memory serves), but placed in the Top 8 of the subsequent Grand Prix with the same deck (this he definitely did). Some scrub!
No one needs to be convinced about Mike’s playing ability. You can just look at the numbers. Listen to the right people, and they will have you believe that Mike is the greatest Limited player of all time (I vote for Jon)… But instead I want to think about Mike the ambassador of the game. I roomed with him at a Pro Tour just before Ravnica, and he was full of so much joy about seeing some cards he worked on actually in print. I think that some people might shy away for voting for Mike because he works for Wizards of the Coast, but the thing about working at WotC that stuck with me (from Mike’s perspective that is) was that working at WotC was even more fun than weekends! Imagine the acquisition that could be harnessed by bottling that sentiment.
Well, those are my votes for this year. Discuss (I’m sure you will).
Wherein Michael J. Flores discusses the beginnings of his preparation for the upcoming Star City Games $5000 tournament in Philadelphia, PA. This article features initial deck selection, card choices, and testing with a modified version of Blightning Beatdown.
