The MTG Review is Back!

Welcome back to the MTG Review, folks. I'm all done tutoring Toreros over at USD for this school year, and have been slowly catching up on my MTG reading. I'm not going to try and backtrack to stuff I've missed, but rather stay contemporary. There may be some down time over the holidays where I'll go over some stuff for earlier in the month.

We'll start with one by one of my favorite bloggers/writers who we haven't seen much from lately.  @wrongwaygoback put up another article at TopDeckHero.com yesterday, where he interviews Mark Rosewater. He focuses his questions around the Great Designer Search 2, and really picks at some information that we don't get to see in the coverage of the contest. It appears that this was a list of questions sent by email, which came back with a list of responses. This is probably because both parties are extremely busy and in different time zones, but it was clear it wasn't an actual dialogue or interview taking place. A blurb about that at the beginning would have slightly enhanced the experience for me.  If I'm wrong about this, then it would have been cool to see follow-up questions to Mark's responses.  I highly recommend reading this. I always jump on his content, as he's a great writer and his style is enjoyable to read. You won't see much of that in this piece, as its more of a straight Q/A, but keep this column on your favorites bar.

I'll say this over and over and over and over, but I hate Tournament Reports.  However, here's one that's certainly worth reading.  Brian Kibler's Worlds report, over on SCG Premium, was not your typical report.
It was more about how it felt to be the favorite going into the final day and to throw it away. He ties in "Searching for Bobby Fischer" which is such an amazing movie, and it really goes to show how much he disappointed himself. That was what I liked the best about it. He really convinced me that he was disappointed. Not angry, not unlucky, not blaming anyone, but that he knew he had a chance to win it all, and he failed. This time.

Now that Worlds is over, and the Sealed PTQ season is winding down, most people are turning their focus towards Extended. Gregory Marques, on the other hand, is teaching us how to brew up something fresh for Standard.  He writes Prototyping a New Deck on QuietSpeculation.com. A really great insight to how a former Future-Future-League player takes cards he feels are underutilized and builds a deck around them. We see different iterations and notes about what does and doesn't work, and get to literally see the gears turn as he tweaks the deck every which way. I've really grown to enjoy this column, and look for it each time it is posted.

The most creative Extended brew I've seen so far comes from Gavin Verhey on the Free portion of Star City Games. He writes How I broke Rage Forger. This deck looks extremely fun, and I'm not sure how awesome it actually is without testing, but I'm certainly going to try it. I have a fond place in my heart for the Treefolk of the Lorwyn Block, and while this isn't a Treefolk deck, it features one of my favorite cards from my old Treefolk deck, Leaf-Crowned Elder. I really like the linear-tribal strategies from that block, as they are really fun ways to get some powerful effects. I guess the only sacrifice is non-creature spells, but whatever. ;)  He also gives some ideas how you could make a more greedy build (which is almost certainly what I'd do).

Then, I found the Mother lode. Not sure how I missed the original publishing of this article in August, but ManaNation.com recently reposted this article, and boy am I glad they did. I'm a game theory enthusiast, and stuff like this really gets me pumped up. I love when people actually try to progress the way we think about the game, and I know Sam Stoddard (@samstod) is another big proponent of this. The old school writers of the Dojo set the framework, but many have stopped trying to come up with a Grand Unified Theory of Magic. Chingsung Chang hasn't given up on this, and presents his new metric: Marginal Mana.
This may not be for everyone, but I'm really excited about this. Putting together the concept of Stock Mana and Life Total in one idea is something at the level of what Einstein dreamed could happen for Physics. He promises to continue the vein to include Card Advantage in the next installment, and I'm literally drooling to consume more of this goodness. MUST READ! NOW!

Well, that's all I've got for today, now that I'm less busy hopefully you'll see more of this. Lately most of the crap out there is Tournament Reports from worlds, and I just can't really bring myself to review them. Kibler's was awesome and well worth reading, but for the most part, they're all the same. I think most people have some favorite writers, and they will read the reports from those people. It's nice to get an idea of what the scene was like at Worlds, but just not from 1/3 of the players that went. As the season changes I'm looking forward to fresh brews in extended. I'm also waiting for the pros to put together something respectable in the form of Limited writing. Lately, it's been non-existent, or just bad. Maybe Mirrodin Besieged will break them out of their slumber. It's really hard to peel me away from reading draft articles, or watching the pros draft, but honestly, I feel like I understand the format better than they do right now, and I think the time spent prepping for Worlds has something to do with that. I'm not a good magic player, and I'm certainly not a World Class player, but this set has been one of my best yet, and it doesn't seem to stop.


Also, I want to give a big shout out to the future champion of Pro-Tour Paris @ITOmarHernandez. He recently Q'd and you should follow him on Twitter, if you know what's good for you.
Withstand Death FTW!