LSV 16-0'ed the swiss portion of PT San Diego. Absolutely NUTS. Having 16-0 streaks in like Daily Events on Modo and stuff is pretty nice, but on the Pro Tour? I'm stunned.
I saw that and was insanely impressed. Nobody goes undefeated at the Limited PT and to be 16-0 through the Swiss, talk about setting yourself up for an intense Top 8.
In local draft news, I saw all the draftcaps, and I can tell that missed out on quite the draft. Congratulations to Cardoc on his victory and I hope I'll be able to get in on the next one.
I really like either the Shade or the Djinn here, but unfortunately the Baloths are too good to pass up. If things go well we could get them out on turn 4 or 5, which would be incredible.
Honestly, I would take either the Shepard or the Basilisk. The rare is good, but it's the type of pick that will force players into black. With either of the Uncommons, you are given flexible cards that can work in a multitude of decks. The Shepard is splash-worthy which is great, and the Basilisk is cheap, efficient, and in the color in which a forced triple block and pump is not out of the question.
Snuff Out is the pick. We at least have ways to recur it for more than one use if we are so inclined, and we are lacking removal at this point. It might not make the final deck, but it's better than Harrow and there is no reason in Pack 3 to be starting to splash red.
We do have a lot of card draw at this point, which is a big plus for the Masticore, but I don't like the 5cc, and our deck is pretty loaded at this point so I don't know if I want to be chucking a card every turn, even if we are drawing 2+ optimally. Nighthawk changes games even if he only gets in for 4 damage. It's an 8 point life swing and a huge removal target, which will keep our other boys safe.
Take the puma, trigger allies, and block all the surrakar marauders you want. It's cheap, effective and we never have to worry about colors for our turn 3 drop now.
My gut reaction is to take Yawgmoth's Bargain. It's a powerful card that can easily help win us games. But we already have a lot of black card draw, cheaper draw, that wont kill us as quickly. I'm going with the recursion machine that is Eternal Witness.
The thing is, The Red Wheelbarrow, while his most well known and celebrated, is far from his best. This is some of his best IMO.
The Young Housewife
At ten AM the young housewife
moves about in negligee behind
the wooden walls of her husband's house.
I pass solitary in my car.
Then again she comes to the curb
to call the ice-man, fish-man, and stands
shy, uncorseted, tucking in
stray ends of hair, and I compare her
to a fallen leaf.
The noiseless wheels of my car
rush with a crackling sound over
dried leaves as I bow and pass smiling.
I'm not the biggest fan of poetry, but the one poet I truly and deeply love, as well as all his poems: William Carlos Williams. If you want to see what real modernist minimalism is about, just read a book of his poems. Mind blowing.
I don't know about Magic. I'm somewhat certain we already have essay contests of that sort somewhere on this site. That's where all the "MTGS writer" tags are coming from. I've also seen a number of trophies for writing up articles. Essays on Magic would be outside of Personal Writing scope unless the head honchos on this site were willing to concede it to us, which is unlikely.
That's not necessarily true. As a poster with the MTGS Writer tag, which you get from writing 3? or 5? (someone clarify for me) articles and having them make the front page of the site. And most of those trophies are for AotM, which is just for article of the month. Many of these articles deal specifically with game play in one sense or another. CI talks about rules, Usman just posted a Cube Draft article, Off Topic discusses the non-card aspects of playing the game. Also, articles tend to be 4000+ words long, these would be significantly shorter.
I was thinking more along the lines of positing their theories and ideas in a strictly non-game play related sense. For example, discussing Mythic rares and the secondary market has nothing to do with the way the game is played. Also, the topics can be more open ended. I was thinking about something like: What is the most important Magic card printed in the past 5 years? Explain why. Short, sweet, to the point, and there is minimal room for overlap. Had I asked what is the most powerful card, then we would be looking a short list of long names. The important thing we need to remember if we forge ahead with an essay contest is that all the writing still needs to feel personal and unique, not just a regurgitation of the forum boards and MTG.com articles.
I kind of disagree, their articles are structured much more like a journalism pieces or web articles than an essay. They don't really have a thesis or anything like that.
Well then clearly you have never read my poorly written article explaining why Blue was, (was being the key word) the most powerful color in the game, and is historically so.
I saw that and was insanely impressed. Nobody goes undefeated at the Limited PT and to be 16-0 through the Swiss, talk about setting yourself up for an intense Top 8.
In local draft news, I saw all the draftcaps, and I can tell that missed out on quite the draft. Congratulations to Cardoc on his victory and I hope I'll be able to get in on the next one.
Nighthawk gets my pick.
At ten AM the young housewife
moves about in negligee behind
the wooden walls of her husband's house.
I pass solitary in my car.
Then again she comes to the curb
to call the ice-man, fish-man, and stands
shy, uncorseted, tucking in
stray ends of hair, and I compare her
to a fallen leaf.
The noiseless wheels of my car
rush with a crackling sound over
dried leaves as I bow and pass smiling.
That's not necessarily true. As a poster with the MTGS Writer tag, which you get from writing 3? or 5? (someone clarify for me) articles and having them make the front page of the site. And most of those trophies are for AotM, which is just for article of the month. Many of these articles deal specifically with game play in one sense or another. CI talks about rules, Usman just posted a Cube Draft article, Off Topic discusses the non-card aspects of playing the game. Also, articles tend to be 4000+ words long, these would be significantly shorter.
I was thinking more along the lines of positing their theories and ideas in a strictly non-game play related sense. For example, discussing Mythic rares and the secondary market has nothing to do with the way the game is played. Also, the topics can be more open ended. I was thinking about something like: What is the most important Magic card printed in the past 5 years? Explain why. Short, sweet, to the point, and there is minimal room for overlap. Had I asked what is the most powerful card, then we would be looking a short list of long names. The important thing we need to remember if we forge ahead with an essay contest is that all the writing still needs to feel personal and unique, not just a regurgitation of the forum boards and MTG.com articles.
Well then clearly you have never read my poorly written article explaining why Blue was, (was being the key word) the most powerful color in the game, and is historically so.