New favorite cards

When I started this blog, I edited the ‘about me’-section to be relevant for Magic-players: instead of talking about myself, I talked about my favorite cards. With the most recent card being from Worldwake, I figured it was time for an update. These are my new favorite cards.

TezzeREDRUM, revisited

What most of you don’t know is that I started writing for Red Site Wins after I did so for my own site, Stidjen’s Magic. I started writing before Mirrodin Besieged came out, so I was all over Tezzeret once he got spoiled. There was a bit of holding back, however, as I did not want to geek out over a card that could end up out of my price range. A four mana blue Planeswalker? Hold your horses, gentlemen! I did, however, end up with a playset shortly after the set was released and eventually ended up with one of my most favorite decks. Today, I am going to recap the entire journey up until the point where the deck resides today.

New Phyrexia, Old Decks

Hi all and welcome back to another installment of my writing attempts. This week I want to take a look at the New Phyrexia spoilers, a lot of cards which we’ll be seeing in flesh for the first time tomorrow. At least I am! However, my article today will not be a 1 to 175 card-by-card set review. Instead, I’d like to focus on the cards that got me excited, cards that can supplement old decks or cards that will inspire new ones. Strap your goggles on real tight, ’cause we’re diving straight in!

A deckbuilder’s diary

Saturday, April 16th

Today, my latest article went up. I haven’t tested the Glissa-deck yet, so I hope it can hold its own. As always, I’m curious for reader feedback and comments. Luckily, after some goldfishing I got the idea that the deck is much better than the first version. While goldfishing doesn’t give you an idea how interaction with an opponent goes, it does help playing the deck. You get to know some little interactions and just get the general feel of the deck. Plus, you can draw conclusions just by looking at how the deck plays. I came to the conclusion that 4 Golgari Rot Farms was too much, and I removed two of those for a Swamp and a Forest.

More treasures ahead

The Tezzeret-deck I discussed in my last blog post looked good on paper. The newest version of the deck wasn’t played with after I put it together after I played Rick. It still needed to prove itself in the ultimate test: playing against a human goldfish. That turned out to be my good friend Robert. He has a couple of decks that, while singleton, are usually on a level a bit above most of my decks. Therefore I knew my deck had to put up a fight. Luckily, it did.

TezzeREDRUM

The usual performance of a new deck isn’t very good. As I build decks using theoretical elimination and selection, topped of with a goldfish, I am usually confronted with the reality of real life play and non-domesticated opponents. That is a fancy way of saying the decks are off to a slow start and get pounded on before reaching a level I’m happy with. Either that, or the deck is discarded. This weekend I was pleasantly surprised when my Tezzeret-deck (that I built with Robert and that you can read about here) held it’s own pretty good against Rick’s new deck. Tezzeret was out to kill. Tezzeredrum was born.

Tezzeret Dead Redemption

Wednesday last week I visited my good friend and aspiring shop owner Robert to help crack some Mirrodin Besieged packs. Twelve boxes of ’em, in fact. Cracking a lot of packs without taking any cards afterwards was surprisingly fun, although admittedly in good company. We did a Tezzeret-war, which ended in 3-3. We actually only opened ten boxes, so Robert got a bit above average with Tezzes. And then there was the hilarity of me cracking three Mirrorworks in a row, with Robert proclaiming “wouldn’t it be funny if I cracked one now?” – and he did. Robert rewarded my helpful efforts with a fresh-smelling Tezzeret. And so began my journey.

Mirrodin Besieged: Mawre Cards!

Hurray, the Mirrodin Besieged-spoiler is complete already! This is a continuing trend from recent sets, where the spoiler goes up on wednesday instead of the night before the prerelease. Anyhoo, I decided to round up my personal thoughts on the new set with giving the new cards a look. Just the cards that interest me, mind you. Let’s get to it. Oh yeah, you can find my first review here.

On Mirrodin Besieged

(If you don’t want to read about new cards from Mirrodin Besieged, you will want to skip this post. But come back after the prerelease, okay?)

One week from now I’ll be at the Mirrodin Besieged-prerelease defending the home turf from those Phyrexian nasties. While I fear that Phyrexia will submerge as the victor in the third part of the Scars of Mirrodin-trilogy, I’ll try to beat those vile poison counters using my favorite type of counters: charge counters. What I’m gonna do here is take a peek at the official visual spoiler and comment on the cards I could see myself sleeving up some time. No metagame talk or new secret tournament tech, just cards I enjoy. Gotta love having your own blog!

Tightening the thumbscrews

First Article – Second Article

After I made the final decklist in my second article about this deck I quickly found out some things I couldn’t have by just making the decklist. If I would be able to, I’d not do it ofcourse. In this article I’d like to go over those, try to locate the problem and suggest a change. Second, at the end of the second article I already located some possible problems that might arise. No question will be left unquestioned after you’ve read this. Let me walk you through each issue or question there currently is. With each issue there is a possible solution. After reviewing all the issues I will try to make a new list of the deck based on the solutions to the problems below.