Three Fundamental Magic Strategy Articles

Posted on December 14, 2008
Filed Under Not a Joke | 3 Comments

Of all the Magic strategy articles that have been written over the years, like grains of sand, there are three that stand out to us like lost silver dollars at the beach.

Anyone who wants to improve his game or even understand the game would be well-served by reading them. There’s more dreamed of in heaven and earth than in your Magic philosophy, or something like that.

The Metagame Clock Revisited — Will Reifer and Mike Mason

This first one was a little hard to find. It still exists on Star City, although the graphics that accompanied it seem to have disappeared. The original article that it references, published on the storied site The Dojo, is gone. You can still get the jist of what’s happening here, though. Think of Magic decks as the numbers of a clock. Each deck beats the numbers immediately before it, and loses horribly to the numbers immediately after it. If you understand this article, you’ll understand what unites all metagames.

Who’s the Beatdown? — Mike Flores

This article, also maintained on Star City, explains why you keep losing by trying to race when you shouldn’t be. Or by not trying to race when you should be. In a matchup, one of you has inevitability and one of you doesn’t. You need to know who is who.

Finding the Tinker — Mike Flores

We told you Flores is Lord. Did you know that there are only nine decks? It’s true. That Faeries deck you’ve been playing is actually CounterSliver. No? Well, read this and you’ll see that most of what you’re doing has been done before. It may have been done with different names, sometimes with better tools and sometimes with tools not as good, but it’s basically the same stuff. Bet you didn’t know that that aggro deck you were trying to invent was just Necro without the Necro. No wonder it doesn’t work.

Comments

3 Responses to “Three Fundamental Magic Strategy Articles”

  1. Basilisk on December 16th, 2008 10:24 am

    These were good articles, thanks

  2. Staff on December 16th, 2008 1:35 pm

    Flores loves you

  3. Brian Allen on June 27th, 2010 1:18 am

    Flores is awesome. If I could take a tour inside his mind ala Being John Malkovich, I totally would do that.

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