Taking the Initiative: R/W Purphoros Deck Tech

Hey guys, what's going on? This week I want to talk to you guys about the deck I hyped up in my Dragon's Maze article a couple weeks ago. Before I start on the deck though I want to say a brief something about GP: OKC a couple weekends ago. After building a very impressive W/R Heroic deck I barely missed making day two by one win finishing the tournament at X-3. I feel that I played alot better there than in Houston, my first two round losses being very close matches going game three both times. However I scrubbed out pretty hard in the 8th round by flooding out hard against a pretty solid GW list in game one and drawing only two lands in game two. So despite my improved play, the cards just didn't want to come through for me. Anyway, let's take a look at what is slowly beating out my former MG: Geist list and becoming my favorite deck I've built.

Setting Sail for Theros: Dragon's Maze

Gonna be honest guys I kinda phoned this article in, but I felt obligated to still get the list out there. I just wanted to be upfront that this isn't up to my usual standard quality of work. With the Grand Prix this weekend I had a decent amount of work I needed to get done along with some studying, and when I started making the list I realized that for half of these cards I was drawing at straws to show why they should be played. So let's get on with it shall we? Here are my picks of cards from Dragon's Maze.

Setting Sail for Theros: Gatecrash

Alright first off I would like to reiterate that I'm leaving some cards out on
purpose, so the cards I left out of the last list were Abrupt Decay, Rakdos Cackler,
and a few others. I did however forget Golgari Charm which had I remembered would
have been included with the honorable mentions because I really like what all the
card does. Now that those issues are out of the way let's take a look at the cards given to us in Gatecrash.

Setting Sail for Theros: Return to Ravnica

So I was really hoping to keep my article a week promise, but school and work picked
up fairly quickly and this last week I had several tests. I hope you all will
forgive my lack of writing, but school and work come first before writing for this
blog on the side. Now with my absence explained Theros is releasing THIS Friday, so
to make up for my absence I've planned out three articles for this week/weekend to
pick out cards 10 cards, with honorable mentions, from each set in RtR block that I
feel people should be looking to pick up to go along with the new cards in Theros.
Some of these cards will be quite obvious choices and some of them will have gone
pretty under the radar until now that Innistrad is rotating out. Now without further
adieu let's get started with Return to Ravnica, and in no particular order.

White Weenie with M14

Hey guys, what's going on? My summer class is about to finish up this week giving me about a week and a half until my actual semester starts, but hopefully with the start of a consistant schedule I can start posting regularly again. So for this week's article I want to talk about a deck that has been a joy to play lately, mono-white humans.

The Heavy Hitters of M14

Hey guys, I'm back once again to talk about the game we all love. Really sorry 
I've been quiet the last couple weeks but I've had alot going on and just 
started my newest round of summer classes, yay college. I know that in my last 
article I mentioned that I'd talk about my overall thoughts on the RtR block. At the time that was my plan for this article, but since several weeks have gone by
and M14 being released this past weekend I wanted to go ahead and give my 
thoughts on the set. Now I really enjoy limited, but not being able to take 
place in a prerelease and due to the fact that I haven't gotten to draft the set yet the purpose of the article is to look at the cards from a constructed 
standpoint and maybe drop a few thoughts on them in limited. Maybe in a couple 
of weeks after I've had a chance to draft the set a couple of times I'll talk 
about it from a limited standpoint, but I've heard from several people that it 
isn't that great of a limited environment. Anyway, without further adieu let's 
get started.

Naya Blitz: The Man, The Deck, The Legend

Naya Blitz:
Hey guys its Geoff again. This last week has been pretty busy wrapping up my summer Physics class, now that it's over I have time to write this primer! Last FNM went well, I played modern, piloting the Living End deck to a 3-0-1, splitting top 4, while my roommate took control of blitz going 3-1. His famous quote now about blitz "You have an 80% win rate, especially if you are on the play".

A New Challenger Appears: Enter Geoff

Who is this Geoff kid?

Going 5-4.......Make That 4-5 at Grand Prix Houston

Hey guys how’s it going? First off I want to say I’m sorry to my tens of readers out there for not finishing my other two articles I was going to write in preparation for the Grand Prix last weekend, but starting Thursday afternoon and leading into late Friday my internet was cutting in and out and from 7 p.m. Thursday to 1 p.m. Friday was out completely. At that point Friday I was getting ready to drive down to the convention center to pick up my play mat and get into a last minute trial, and when I got back I was tired and wanting to sleep since I would be up early to meet up with people from school. So since the event already passed I decided to just skip the articles since they won’t be of any more help. Enough of my excuses let’s move onto the actual event.

Sealed articles on hold for the weekend

Sorry guys, my internet was out for most of yesterday and today and I was unable to get my writing done. I meant to put up the last to articles yesterday and tonight, but without much time I've decided to either cancel them or put them off till next week.

Talk to you after the GP,
Zack

Gearing up for GP Houston Pt. 1

Ok guys, I’m finally at a point where I can start writing again. Sorry for the long absence but sometimes things come up. Since I’ve last written several things have happened Prerelease/Release of Dragon’s Maze, Pro Tour Dragon’s Maze, and most recently the release of Modern Masters. My original thought on my first post back was going to be my thoughts on Dragon’s Maze and my picks for best and worst cards, but with Grand Prix Houston coming up this weekend and just having my wisdom teeth removed I decided to sit around in my drugged state and crack some packs. So today, tomorrow, and Friday I’m going to walk you guys through my thought process behind making the decks out of the card pools I’ve opened. Each day will be a different sort of card pool in its immediate representation in what kind of deck to build, to me at least. I’m sure that when you guys read this some of you might see a different deck to build, and I’ll be interested to hear what you guys came up with.

A Treatise on Mono-Green

Sorry for another delayed article, things are starting to get pretty crazy on campus as finals approach. Expect sporadic articles until after the 15^th of May. Moving on now, for those of you that don’t know April 13^th was the PTQ held in Lubbock, TX that I competed in with a little deck I like to call M.G. Geist. This simple mono green deck managed to go 6-1-1, with the draw being to ID into top 8 contention, and finished in 2^nd place. While I didn’t take many notes to run down the tournament I’ll run through the deck and how certain matchups work.

Most Dangerous

Three Simple Lessons in Player Etiquette

Hey guys sorry that I didn’t post last week, but with my semester winding down I've got a lot of things going on. Originally I was planning on writing about how to pick a deck to play that fits into your local meta game, but after several bad experiences at my past couple FNMs I thought of a better topic for old and new players alike. As the title suggests I’ll be talking about player etiquette, covering a few major topics on the subject attitude, asking, and knowing.

What is Popular is Not Always the Best

Hey guys it's time for the first lesson, what's popular is not always the best.

Gather For An Introduction

Hello everybody, its introduction time. My name is Zack, and I'm relatively new to Magic: The Gathering having only a single year of play under my belt. Granted this is still 1/20 of Magic's existence but in regards to some of the people I play with they are a few years ahead of me. Despite having only a single year of play I consider myself to be very competent player when it comes to standard and limited format, those of course being the only ones that I play. However, I'm slowly learning a lot of modern and legacy intricacies and how a majority of the decks work. Regardless, my hope is that this blog will serve as a guide for those players who are just starting out and would like to learn from somebody not too far above their level of play and that does not spend a lot of money on the best deck there is to play. In my experience if you can invest around $50 into a deck then you can make it very viable at your local game shop with a lot of fine tuning and practice. The deck topics I write about will lean mostly towards the aggressive side of the meta game, I'm not the best control player out there. Also decks you see on here won't all be of my creation and will come from various sources including people I brew with, decks I see at my local game shop, my own brews, and of course popular online outlets and streams. I plan on posting weekly, but depending on time I have between course work and other things I might make a post or two on quick little topics. That's all for now everybody, hopefully these entries will be helpful and informative to those of you that read if not at least entertaining.

Talk to you later,
Zack