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Jeb's magical school of Magic
I got back into Magic (after an admittedly very brief absence) thanks to a similar dude, a relatively well-known judge. He introduced me to the booster draft format via his regular, free-of-charge drafts where he got to keep all the cards. In fact, after a while, he got tired of organizing the drafts, and we made a deal where I got to keep everyone's cards from the draft if I went to the minor trouble of organizing them. He crushed all of us, every time, but loved hearing our naive but enthusiastic feelings on all the cards. I was determined to beat him, just once, which triggered my headlong plunge into learning everything I could about Magic strategy. I finally beat him!
I saw him this spring for the first time in 8 years, and organized a draft with my Cube. He had never Cube-drafted before, and was thrilled to cast Time Walk and other ridiculous cards for the very first time. He crushed me with his blue-black Reanimator deck, while I drafted an overly ambitious Storm deck with which I made play mistakes literally every 30 seconds.
I'll stop now, but I could keep going and tell crazy impressive stories about him. I have a total man-crush on him for both Magic-related and Magic-unrelated reasons. He is easily the smartest person I've ever met in my age cohort.
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- metalface13
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- Space Ghost
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dragonstout wrote: God dammmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmit I hate losing posts
I got back into Magic (after an admittedly very brief absence) thanks to a similar dude, a relatively well-known judge. He introduced me to the booster draft format via his regular, free-of-charge drafts where he got to keep all the cards. In fact, after a while, he got tired of organizing the drafts, and we made a deal where I got to keep everyone's cards from the draft if I went to the minor trouble of organizing them. He crushed all of us, every time, but loved hearing our naive but enthusiastic feelings on all the cards. I was determined to beat him, just once, which triggered my headlong plunge into learning everything I could about Magic strategy. I finally beat him!
I saw him this spring for the first time in 8 years, and organized a draft with my Cube. He had never Cube-drafted before, and was thrilled to cast Time Walk and other ridiculous cards for the very first time. He crushed me with his blue-black Reanimator deck, while I drafted an overly ambitious Storm deck with which I made play mistakes literally every 30 seconds.
I'll stop now, but I could keep going and tell crazy impressive stories about him. I have a total man-crush on him for both Magic-related and Magic-unrelated reasons. He is easily the smartest person I've ever met in my age cohort.
What is your age cohort?
Also, Storm is very difficult to play in general -- I think people put too much emphasis on the deck building part of magic as the barrier to magic (as in "I can compete because I don't have as many good cards") or the it all comes down to who draws what and when.
So much is about knowing how to play the game -- especially timing. People usually lose because they are not as experienced players, more than anything else.
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It's interesting, because I've played Storm in Legacy before, but playing it in Cube is an entirely different experience. In Legacy, the primary difficulty is in dealing with the opponent's very high-quality disruption; executing the combo is of course difficult too, but without disruption, a bit of practice makes the normal execution not too bad. In Cube, where your deck is a singleton drafted hodgepodge of Storm-related effects, the disruption is not too bad (there is just one Force of Will and Daze in the whole Cube, after all), but executing the combo is incredibly difficult, and completely different literally every time.Space Ghost wrote: Also, Storm is very difficult to play in general
Edit: re: Space Ghost's age cohort question, I'm 30, Collin & I were undergrad math majors together. Okay, two Collin stories: 1. Back in the days of Inquest, they had a Magic-rules column. Collin noticed a mistake in an answer and wrote in; they told him he should take over, and he wrote the rules column for years before they found out he was 13. 2. Wizards ended up changing the age limit rules for judges to accommodate Collin. 3. Near the end of grad school, I was surprised to hear Collin's name for the first time in years...from a Computer Science professor, in the context of "this paper by Collin is the most important Computer Security paper ever written". I immediately wondered wtf I'd been doing for the last few years of my life.
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dragonstout wrote:
It's interesting, because I've played Storm in Legacy before, but playing it in Cube is an entirely different experience. In Legacy, the primary difficulty is in dealing with the opponent's very high-quality disruption; executing the combo is of course difficult too, but without disruption, a bit of practice makes the normal execution not too bad. In Cube, where your deck is a singleton drafted hodgepodge of Storm-related effects, the disruption is not too bad (there is just one Force of Will and Daze in the whole Cube, after all), but executing the combo is incredibly difficult, and completely different literally every time.Space Ghost wrote: Also, Storm is very difficult to play in general
I have played a lot of Storm in Vintage - where the timing is a little harder than in Legacy. But, yes, I imagine it would be more difficult in Cube where it is all just singletons (although, a lot of Vintage deck lists are almost full of singletons, too).
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I am envious; I've always wanted to play Vintage, largely thanks to Stephen Menendian, definitely one of my very top favorite Magic writers.Space Ghost wrote: I have played a lot of Storm in Vintage - where the timing is a little harder than in Legacy. But, yes, I imagine it would be more difficult in Cube where it is all just singletons (although, a lot of Vintage deck lists are almost full of singletons, too).
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- Black Barney
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I need to buy the cards too
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The main thing to keep in mind is that Necropotence, Dark Ritual, and Knight of Stromgald are in the set; oh, and Zuran Orb! I literally cannot imagine that there is a better strategy that does not involve all four of these cards (I'm assuming your format is Ice Age only, not Ice Age & Alliances & Coldsnap). My guess is that it should also play Abyssal Specter, but I haven't looked too deeply.
Edit: Whoops, I just checked. In official Ice Age Block Constructed format, Zuran Orb is banned (Necropotence is not, though????!?).
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- metalface13
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metalface13 wrote: I quit playing Magic shortly after Ice Age came out. That speaks for itself.
Same here, maybe I stopped one set afterwards but it was that expansion that did it for me.
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And seriously, the WHOLE point of doing a weird-ass non-mainstream format like this is to force people to NOT net-deck and make their own decks. I don't care if you're "bad at making decks", it's fucking Ice Age Constructed with your buddies, not a $25000 tournament. So if you're really going to go ahead with this, dig in to that Ice Age spoiler list and figure stuff out for yourself!
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- Black Barney
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Did I ever come to wrong place. I'll go ask some friends. Maybe someone who wants to sell some cards too.
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But start with:
4 Necropotence
4 Knight of Stromgald
4 Abyssal Specter
4 Dark Ritual
4 Soul Burn
maybe:
4 Icy Manipulator
Icequake?
Hecatomb? (if so, also play Ashen Ghouls)
Demonic Consultation?
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