Old School Mtg

Threats beat answers. Maybe a familiar mantra for those who brew. I think it was David Price, "The King of Beatdown", who first coined it in a Magic setting.  Questions beat answers. If an answer is to move your agenda forward, it should do something more than just respond to the question at hand. It could give you card advantage or tempo. Swords to Plowshares and Lightning Bolt would be pretty bad if they cost five mana each. Wrath of God wouldn't be much to look at if it didn't have the ability to X-for-1. Threats are always relevant, answers are specific. The answer must be to the question posed; otherwise we are just sitting with useless information. We can't willy-nilly respond with any random answer. "What's the capital of Kyrgyzstan?" "There are 27 bones in each hand." While building a deck  there are questions that we don't expect to have specific answers for, or just don't take the time to ask. How would m...

So I stopped writing " This month in oldschool " posts a few months ago. During the period I wrote them (between August and December last year), the number of happenings went from 'plentiful' to 'vast' surprisingly quickly. In particular regarding upcoming tournaments it became too much to follow for me to maintain a sound work/life/nerd balance. Maybe I should just have scaled it down a little and focused on new content. Like last month, some of the noteworthy updates were the Magic 4 David campaign (still up, go donate a few bucks); Bryan and DFB discussing budget decks on All Tings Considered ; Music City Mtg 's take on monogreen aggro; Stephen Menendian's article on Eternal Central about B&R strategies; Gordon posting all the n00bcon decks at Wak-Wak; Matt Shields finishing up his first all-Alpha 40 on 52-week Beta ; some guy at Wak-Wak discussing lessons from losses; a n00bcon tournament report at the Brothers of Fire blog ; another n00b...

Q: My friend got several Magic decks and put them together into one deck. How can I compete with that without doing the same? A: There are many answers to this question. If your friend is playing with more powerful cards, then your occasional victories will net you more valuable cards. [...] A person who obtains their cards by guile is usually more formidable than a person who simply buys them.   - Beta rule book, page 33 True words. In the old days, Magic was played for ante. At the start of each duel, the players would remove the top card of their decks for ante, and whomever won would get the cards in the pot. This would create some excitement and supposedly help even the odds of gaming. If you were stuck with a measly starter deck and your next level friend had amassed a WW, a monoblack control deck, and a Channel/Fireball combo deck and put them all together in one glorious 230-card pile, odds were that on the rare occasions you would pick up a win, you would ...

Today we have another friend returning to the bloggoblag! Constantine first shared his stories a couple of years ago in  The Россия Perspective  and have since become something of the face of Russian oldschool Magic. He is not only a community organizer, but also an avid deck builder and skilled player that always manage to end up with a winning record at n00bcon with his creations. Today he'll guide us through the murkiest paths of the woods. Enjoy! /Mg out I like a challenge. Being an underdog is always fun. It makes every victory even more sweet and stories more colorful. When we talk about going uphill in oldschool magic, it usually means playing an unpowered and/or mono-colored deck. But this article I wrote right after n00bcon X is generally not about that. At least not only about that. I will speak about just two colors: green and black. Why those two? Exactly one year ago I sold all my unlimited cards (power and a lot of 93/94 staples; enough to build almost...

Today we have a treat! Valerio Gregori is one of the most skillful and active players in the Italian old school scene, as well as a returning contributor to this blog. A month ago he made an impressive run at the World Championship, and decided to contribute with a deep report of his adventures. He did in fact write this post a couple of weeks ago, and the delay to post it here is all on me. So without further ado, let's check out Valerio's report from n00bcon X. Enjoy! /Mg out [TAKE A CHANCE ON ME] or a great idea to spend Easter Holydays Planning a five days visit of Stockholm during Easter Holydays with Valentina, I got a hit reading a post where my best Magic pusher, Luca Di Santo, was saying that he was going to meet people at N00bcon X. A short diving in my memories remembered me that N00bcon – the Old School World Championship! - is supposed to happen exactly in the same time. So why not to try to get a wild card? And make a short deviation to Gothenburg (at...