Return to Ravnica: Wrack and Rage Review (Part 2 of 2)
It’s back to the table for our last visit to Return to Ravnica- at least until next year’s Preconstructed Deck Championships! Joining me is Sam, who’s been eager to get her hands on Creep and Conquer. Can she steer the Golgari to the finish, or will the Rakdos pitch a carnival tent stake on her grave?
Reads: Meddling the Azorius, and Creep and Conquer Goes Video
Happy Thursday! We’ve got two reads to recommend today, and don’t forget that one of them is tied to a contest!
2011-12 Precon Championships: Round 5 and the Leaderboard
What is it that makes people vote for ‘lesser’ teams? Is it blind loyalty to a childhood favourite? A stubborn and unwavering devotion? Perhaps faith that winning days may come back around someday? Surely, there is something in the fact that every organised sports team anywhere has at least a handful of fans, and many have more. Perhaps instead, they’re waiting for that one glorious day where the stars aline and the gods of competition smile on them, and they become the David to another’s Goliath.
Return to Ravnica: Creep and Conquer Review (Part 2 of 2)
The table is set and the tea is brewed, an altogether overly civilised setting for the brutal savagery that’s about to take place. I’m piloting the Golgari and their Creep and Conquer Event Deck, while Jimi’s looking to dance on our graves with the Radkos and Wrack and Rage. Can she burn her way to victory, or will she just end up another body in the fungus pile?
Return to Ravnica: Wrack and Rage Review (Part 1 of 2)
Inthe long history of Magic: the Gathering, few colour pairings have gone together like chocolate and peanut butter to quite the extent of Red and Black. Indeed, their iconic stature is rivaled perhaps only by White and Blue. This may not be a coincidence- if you plot the game on an axis with control and one side and aggression on the other, looking at colour combinations you tend to find both these two pairs on opposite extremes.
2011-2012 Precon Championships: Tinsman Division (Part 2 of 2)
It’s hard to believe that we’re a month into the competition and nearly at the halfway mark already, but after today’s matches we’ll have the two finalists for the Rosewater Conference decided. The lethal Hold the Line waits in the wings having bested the field of the Nagle Division, eager to see which deck it will have to face up against for the right to represent the Conference in the Finals.
Return to Ravnica: Creep and Conquer Review (Part 1 of 2)
Moreso than any other preconstructed product in recent memory, the Event Decks have become a lightning rod for attention and criticism amongst the Magic community. To be sure, there isn’t a thing that Wizards could issue that wouldn’t have a Greek chorus of detractors, bemoaning some or other aspect of the release- some of it fairly, some of it not. But perhaps because of the unique intersection that the Event Decks product line inhabits it finds itself much more squarely in the community’s sights.
Onslaught: Celestial Assault Review (Part 2 of 2)
We’re ready for our next look at the world of Onslaught through its Theme Decks. Up today is the White/Blue Celestial Assault, which takes advantage of the Gustcloak mechanic to preserve creatures where they’re most vulnerable-in combat. Sam’s ready to put the deck to the test, and has the tribal set’s version of the joker in the deck: Bait & Switch.
2011-12 Precon Championships: Round 4 and the Leaderboard
We’re three-quarters of the way done with the Rosewater Conference, after some thundering matches this past weekend. In a stunning display of dominance, all four winning teams didn’t let their opponents surface for air once they had them under the boot. Each game was a two-game sweep in this best-of-three series, and their shattered opponents were carried out on stretchers.
Onslaught: Celestial Assault Review (Part 1 of 2)
Famed Australian entertainer Peter Allen, who passed away in 1992 and had his life immortalised in a Tony-award winning musical The Boy from Oz (played by Hugh Jackman), has very little to do with Magic: the Gathering on first blush- or, for that matter, on any number of subsequent blushes. But of you were looking for a theme to describe the state of modern design you could well do worse than to lift a title from one of his best-known songs: Everything Old is New Again.
Ertai's Lament 