2010-11 Precon Championships: Make Your Predictions!
The first round of exciting Precon Playoff action should be coming to you this weekend, so it’s time to start making your predictions! Here are the first round matches:
The 2010-2011 Preconstructed Deck Championships
For the third time, we are descending into the battle arena with a season’s worth of contenders to battle for supremacy and determine the last deck standing! Having come to the end of the 2010-11 Season with the release of Magic 2012 (and Innistrad right around the corner), it’s time to crown a champion to stand beside 2008-09’s Dead Ahead and 2009-10’s Eldrazi Arisen. This time, though, there are some new faces vying for dominance, and the field is much more competitive.
To be sure, we have no shortage of decks lining up to do battle this season, coming in at the perfect number- 32! This time around, we’ll be looking at them in terms of tiers, to give you an idea of who the frontrunners look to be, and which decks are going to need a little extra luck- and a few upsets- on their path to glory.
Event Decks on the Mothership
Just a quick note to highlight a good article went up this morning on the mothership by Zac Hill about Event Deck design. Head on over and give it a read!
Whispers of the Muse: Lawrence M’s ‘Grab for Power’ (M12)
Welcome to the next installment of our Whispers of the Muse, the occasional series where a reader asks for help tinkering with and improving upon a precon deck from the Ertai’s Lament community! Today’s request comes to us from Lawrence M., who would like to improve the Black/Blue Grab for Power deck from Magic 2012. He’s building it almost stock from the box, but says “so far I have purchased 1x Throne Of Empires and 1x Scepter Of Empires.”
“I’m fairly new to the game,” he adds, but mentions that he’d like to make the deck more competitive. As you may recall from our review, Grab for Power is a combo-style deck heavily dependent upon hitting it’s three-card combo (the artifacts of Empires) for maximum effectiveness.
Because Lawrence is a newer player, it may be more helpful to limit suggestions to cards more readily available at his local gaming store, but of course any suggestions for improving the deck’s performance are more than welcome. Here’s the stock list:
So… how would you make the deck better? Let us know in the comments below!
MBtB: Ever wanted to build a cube (but were afraid to get it wrong?)
Ever wanted to build a cube? Not sure where/how to begin? I’m taking a brief sidestep from precons this week on Magic Beyond the Box to delve into the fine art of cube construction! For those who haven’t experienced the format yet, it’s where you essentially build a card pool, turn them into boosters and then stage a draft.
It’s a lot of fun and there’s a great deal of information out there on cube design, but when I went to build my first one I found very little on the actual hard numbers. Of course, there’s no ‘right’ way to build one, but having a defined step-by-step framework will give aspiring cubemakers a great place to start.
Come on over to the spiffy and redesigned Quiet Speculation and check it out!
Whispers of the Muse: Steve S’s “Mystical Might” (Magic 2012)
We might be on vacation, but Ertai’s Lament never sleeps! We recently received this request from a reader, Steve S., who was looking for ways to improve his Mystical Might deck. With some extra boosters (as well as apparent trace elements of Life for Death and Devouring Skies, and Sacred Assault) of raw material ready to go, here’s what he had to say:
My son and I have just started playing Magic and we really enjoy collecting cards and talking about our decks. Now that we have a good number of extra cards from booster decks, I would like to try improving the Intro deck I just picked up… Mystical Might 2012 Core Deck.
I have switched out a few cards to increase the flying attack and include some other rares I already had but I’m not sure which ones and how many to add without making the mana curve too high. I would like to use the deck in Standard format.
Here is Steve’s current decklist:
Creatures (23)
- 3 Hovermyr
3 Phantasmal Bear
1 Lord of the Unreal
2 Stormfront Pegasus
3 Porcelain Legionnaire
2 Kemba’s Skyguard
4 Aven Fleetwing
2 Phantasmal Dragon
1 Shattered Angel
1 Serra Angel
1 Chancellor of the Spires
Spells (13)
- 3 Oblivion Ring
1 Argentum Armor
2 Cancel
2 Elixir of Immortality
2 Vapor Snag
1 Throne of Empires
2 Mind Control
“However,” said Steve, “I have so many other cards I wish I could use as well. I will list a few and maybe I could get some advice on cards I should be using or ones to look for in trades.”
It’s great to see folks new to the game and already looking to tinker and meddle with what comes right out of the box. Who has some suggestions for them on their deck- what to keep in, what to take out, and what to track down?
On Vacation
Hey folks-
The Ertai’s Lament clan is packing into the car and headed for Cape Cod for a week, a vacation we’d all agree is long overdue. Don’t worry- while we’re whale watching, snorkeling with the friendly great whites, and introducing the baby to what a ‘beach’ is, the show will go on (we hope).
We’ve scheduled reviews to automatically post right on-schedule (and a couple of off-day treats), so readers should notice no difference aside from our absence from the comments. That said, we’ll still be getting comments emailed right to the iPhone, so we look forward to hearing your opinions and insights on the decks we review. We’ve never used the WordPress scheduler, so fingers crossed that it works as intended. If you see no updates, it’s strictly due to malfunction and we’ll be back at it when we return.
See you when we get back!
News: Magic 2012 Event Decks Revealed
We knew they were coming, but now we get an early peek of what they’ll look like thanks to our friends over at MTG Salvation.
In an article about the fiture of Event Decks, I wrote over at QS that I expected future Event Decks to be mono-coloured and aggressive, and it doesn’t look like Wizards has disappointed! The two decks are:
- Illusory Might: a mono-Blue tribal Illusions-based deck
- Vampire Carnage: a mono-Black Vamps deck possibly incorporating bloodthirst
Once they launch we’ll have full reviews here at the Lament, and until then we’ll have something to look forward to!
Passing the Hat
Some of you might remember awhile ago we announced a raffle/giveaway to help send a friend of the site (Jay ‘Boosh’ Tuharsky of The Eh? Team) to a Magic tournament. It was a win-win all around as the Magic community game together and helped out- and many won some very choice prizes!
We’re excited to see that another member of the community, Luis Acosta (@Auranalchemist), co-founder of Red Site Wins- has put together a similar effort to help get him to GP Montreal. Raffle tickets are dirt cheap- $1 each or 6 for $5- and the prizes are anything but:
Tropical Island (Revised)
Altered Pyroblasts from MJ Scott (@MoxyMtg), writer for Gathering Magic and showcase alterer for Don’s Magic and Sundry
Grand Prix Foil Umezawa’s Jitte
Urzaland alters from Carla Young (@CarlaArtist) in the style of Tron
Custom foil alter from Cyril Wong
AND any donor gets 15% off of on any MTGO dual land thanks to Jonathan Medina (through his bot, @LegitMTG), premium financial writer for Star City Games
Now we know that times are tight for everyone, and not everyone can chip in to help or is interested in doing so- and that’s perfectly fine! We post this here for the same reason as we did before- many folks love a chance to win prizes while supporting a good cause (like us), and we want to raise awareness that this is just one of those times.
If you’re interested, stop on over and show your support. Good luck, Luis!
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