Yes, yes, yes… My character I carrying five rare items (WHATEVER Crown of Command, Dancing Shiv, Belt of Titan Strength, Star Opal Ring, and Winged Boots)… If it makes you feel better I have an unequipped Wand of Orcus, too. The crazy thing is what I just bought for 5,000 Gold…

Gloves of the Moon (+3 ATT, +3 v. Traps) just bumped Rogues Gloves… I am pretty sure these are better than Gauntlets of Destruction, which was the previous top of the line Gloves in Dungeons & Dragons Tiny Adventures.

Long story short: The Powers That Be have updated the game!

So if you have been away for a long time, it is time to get back and check out new classes like Warden, Sorcerer, and Bard!

That’s it.

Hopefully they will finally fix the leaderboards so this becomes true again: [Remember When I was #1 in the World?]

LOVE
MIKE

BDM and I decided to do something a little bit different this time around. We are both writing previews for Baloth Woodcrasher, without consulting each other. They are both going up tonight, and you can see our differing reactions to this new Beast:

Okay - How about the stats? Read the rest of this entry »

Let’s not beat around the bush here and get right into the preview card at hand…

…I will admit that when I first saw the Baloth Woodcrasher I was rather underwhelmed but as I have been living with him for the past few days he has gotten more and more exciting to me. I was immediately certain that he is first-pick material in Zendikar draft but I am actually thinking this fattie could see Constructed play in both Block and even Standard. Read the rest of this entry »

After a handful of delays, Top8Magic.com is about to publish our second collection of Magic: The Gathering writing from the game’s most respected and prolific authors. This time out we will be publishing a collection by Pro Tour Hall of Famer Zvi Mowshowitz that begins with his earliest works and follows his nomadic writing career from website to website.

There is hardly a Magic site of note that Zvi has not written for in his career and he was among the very first to treat writing about Magic as a way to augment a Pro Player’s salary. This is common-place in the modern era but — as Zvi points out in the new material he wrote for the section on his Magic Dojo careeer — that was not always the case.

Zvi has written abundant new material for this volume including “director’s commentary” after many of his more famous and favorite selections. As Mike did with  Deckade, Zvi has also written new material to sum up each era of his career. I am happy to present Zvi’s thoughts on The Dojo Philosophy. We hope you enjoy it and if you are interested in purchasing this volume, which will ship late September/early October, you can do so by clicking on this link.

The Dojo Philosophy
by Zvi Mowshowitz

In the beginning, we didn’t write because we were paid. We wrote because we wanted to share our wisdom. We wrote to make our name, to claim our ideas as our own while sharing them. We wrote because we enjoyed writing. We wrote because we felt it was part of our obligation to the Magic community in general and the Dojo in particular. We took in the words of others, and followed Sensei’s motto: Study and grow strong. In exchange, when our time came, we would report back on our decks, our tournaments and our ideas. Read the rest of this entry »

Duels of the Planeswalkers is a unique product. It does some things spectacularly right, and does other things spectacularly wrong. The things it does right represent some great work and show a lot of promise for other, better projects in the future. The things it does wrong range from places where I think priorities were misplaced, to places where we will need more time to improve the product to places where the game is intentionally being held back for reasons both good and ill. Overall, this is a great game at its absurdly low price point that has the promise to mature into something far greater.

Read the rest of this entry »

Wizards of the Coast just announced that there will be a new product, Planeschase, that will augment multiplayer play. There will be more details coming on Monday in Mark Rosewater’s column but until then we have been left to our own devices to draw conclusions from the following items in the official release.

Planechase Symbol

• There will be four Planechase Game Packs released on September 4th, 2009: Elemental Thunder, Metallic Dreams, Strike Force, and Zombie Empire.
• Each game pack will contain 10 all-new plane cards, a ready-to-play 60-card deck, a six-sided planar die and a Planechase strategy insert with multiplayer rules.
• Each of the 60-card decks will include 8 rares, and will be composed of cards from throughout Magic’s history - including a preview card from Zendikar.
• The 10 oversized plane cards comprise a planar deck. They feature all-new artwork depicting some of the more exotic realms of the Magic multiverse.
• Each of the cards in the 60-card decks will be black-bordered and tournament legal. This means that these cards are legal for use in any tournaments where the original printings are still legal.
• Planechase release events will be held September 4-6, 2009. Watch magicthegathering.com this summer for details.
• Initial Concept and Game Design: Brian Tinsman (lead), Aaron Forsythe, Peter Knudson, and Kenneth Nagle
• Final Game and Deck Development: Mike Turian (lead), Dave Guskin, Peter Knudson, Scott Larabee, and Mark Purvis, with contributions from Mark L. Gottlieb
• MSRP: $19.99

I do know that the new product will be playable within the Elder Dragon Highlander format ( a format I have recently started carrying around a deck for in case anyone wants to grab a game at Regionals this weekend) but it is by no means limited to that format.

My recent forays into EDH have gotten  me to thinking about older multiplayer formats that we used to run at Grey Matter events and Neutral Ground.

Some art from Planechase

One of the most popular and memorable eventss was always the Grand Melee that we held after each of our big tournaments. There were often upwards of 200 players seated in a circle and playing for a variety of prizes that ranged from first kill to bounties on specific players heads (which were often placed there by players outside the event) to highest kill counts. There were obviously all sorts of degeneracies that occurred (it was during these events that Zvi first stood out asa future evil genius) and the events generated their own unique banned list and specific rules. When one player killed an entire table of nealry 100 players in one fell swoop the concept of gravestone counters were introduced, which meant that when a player was killed his seat would remain until the active player passed their turn. This meant that players could not “pull” players into their range by killing players on either side of them.

More art from Planechase

Sometimes you would find that the games would bog down — with the meter running on a hotel ballroom no less — and we began to pack a deck of cards with global affects that would be randomly put into play after every turn around the table. Cards lilke Howling Mine, Mana Flare, and Underworld Dreams were put into play for everyone and it would usually be just the prod that players needed to move the game along. I have to wonder if the Planechase cards won’t serve a similar function or if they are like the Vanguard cards that used to be a part of Arena play. The Vanguard cards would change your rules for the game; altering your hand size, life totals, and the way your cards fucntioned.

I think my favorite Melee format was the old Anaconda Sealed Deck Draft Melee that we would do late nights at Neutral Ground. It was a Sealed Deck draft with as many players as wanted to play. Players would draft a card from a Sealed Deck and pass left, just like a normal draft. Except in this format you had to draft lands as well. As an addtional wrinkle you could snake cards in and out of the deck each pick as long as you had one more card than you started with after each pass. So if the deck came to you three picks in and you wanted four cards from it, you could slip the three cards you have already picked back into the deck and take all four cards you wanted. The tension of drafting the lands made for a fun late night format best played out in diners with accompanying adult beverages.

Hmmmm….might be time to bust out some Ice Age Sealed Decks with some other members from the senior super series come September.

Most Top8Magic readers have heard of Rob Dougherty and Darwin Kastle. In their Magic-playing heyday, Rob and Darwin were known as members/leaders of the Your Move Games team (along with Chad Ellis and Dave Humphreys). Over time YMG evolved into a game design company and recently they have launched the much-hyped TCG known simply as Epic.

We have been playing a bit of Epic around the office these past few weeks, and we decided it would be appropriate to put a review of the game up on the site for those of you who are unfamiliar with the game.

At its core Epic plays pretty much like Type 4 Magic — infinite mana, one spell per turn. Each player gets 1 “action” to spend per turn. Some cards cost an action to play, some do not. In addition to the binary costing, each card has a “speed,” which tells you when you can play it. Cards can be “fast” (played like Instants), “paced” (can be played in either the first or second main phase of your turn), or “build” (can only be played in your second main phase).

There are a few other rules differences between Epic and Magic, but for the most part they play the same. The big difference, however is the power level of the cards you get to play. For example, there is an Ancestral Recall in this game and I have cut this card from most of my designed (constructed) decks.

The power level of the average Epic card is incredibly high relative to cards from Magic: the Gathering. Since you spend no time developing resources, you can play your big effects right away. It is not out of the question for your opponent to drop an 11/11 Breakthrough (trample) creature on turn 1 in this game.

Playing Epic using sealed product is a lot of fun – typically 3-pack sealed. Open your 45 cards, cut 15 of them, shuffle and play. One of the things players tend to gripe about in sealed deck is not being able to play all of their good cards because of the difficulty of building a good mana base, or keeping their deck on a nice curve. That issue doesn’t really come up in Epic and instead you just get to cut your 15 bad/situational cards and battle bombs v bombs. Opening a good mix of Events (spells) and Champions (creatures) isn’t an issue either because each pack is divided evenly between the two card types.

Given the casual feel of limited play, designed deck is very Spike-y. There are quite a few instantaneous (Split Second) stops (counterspells) and removal cards in the set. Since you can play any cards you want, virtually every deck ends up playing some number of these. We have been testing the game a bit via MWS and control on control matchups can be incredibly frustrating and complicated. Aggressive decks are a bit more fun to play, some of which can reliably kill by turn 2 or 3. Getting those nut draws is pretty nice, but they are also vulnerable to getting blown out by many of the staple control cards.

Epic is a nice diversion from Magic. Coming from Magic, the game is really easy to learn. However, the lack resource development leads to a very different gameplay experience. A lot of traditional Magic theory applies, but there are places where strategy differs greatly, which makes Epic feel like less of a straight Magic clone than it might appear at first glance. I am excited to see where the game goes in the future, and am even tempted to try my luck in a couple of the big Epic tournaments that are going to be in the New York area later this year. If you know anyone who plays, or if your local hobby store carries the game, I would definitely recommend getting a group of friends together and trying the game out with a friendly sealed deck. If you like it, be sure to check out the official site, epictcg.com, to see if there are any events coming to you area in the future.

~WillPoP

Just got back from a week in Japan. I had never been before, although many people I know have gone multiple times for PTs and GPs. I went out to visit my friend Zeilend, who has been studying there this year. Luckily she has become quite good at Japanese and was able to function as my translator all week. Three things you should know about Japan:

1. Food: The food, at least in Nagoya where I stayed, is neither healthy or various. Every restaurant pretty much had identical menus. Also, most of the food is fried, and there are rarely any vegetable offerings. That being said, the food is very tasty, and some places have all-you-can-drink deals (alcoholic or non) for reasonable prices. I recommend Shochu, which is like a very smooth vodka. I do not recommend mixing it with whiskey.

2: Public Transportation: The buses and subways are very nice. There is very little waiting time and I never experienced any delays. The big difference is that the price per ride scales depending on how far you travel. This makes public transportation a much less affordable experience than it is in New York. Fortunately my hotel was located in the middle of the city, so I never had to spend more than $3 a trip. I do not recommend taking the bus, as even the Japanese do not seem to know how it works.

3. Trash: There are no trash cans on the street, anywhere. This is strange because there are vending machines and convenience stores everywhere, so there are ample opportunities to purchase snacks and generate trash. You will end up having to carry your trash with you until you find an opportunity to get rid of it. For me this usually meant keeping it in my backpack until I got back to my hotel.

Japan was awesome, and I’m glad I had someone to show me around who was familiar with the language and the culture. Zeilend, being a Magic player, was nice enough to take me to an FNM draft while I was there, so I will be posting a little tournament report in a day or two (spoiler alert: I won). I have also been modifying that BW extended deck I posted a few weeks ago, and I will follow up with a new list and some testing results at the end of the week (spoiler alert: I added Tarmogoyf). If anyone has any good travel stories, post them in the comments!

~WillPoP

Wow, I was wondering where all my cards were. I have spent my early Sunday morning sifting through plastic storage crates of Magic cards, Pro Tour detritus, and random crap in an effort to make my space at home a tiny bit less cluttered and possibly even just a tiny bit less disorganized.

I have found enough Seat of the Synod to fill an auditorium, more Lonely Sandbars than — well at least as many of those — and the remains of countless decks. I barely remember some of these and none of them are fully intact, with empty sleeves marking the graves of rares that moved onto a better place.

The quality of the decks range from tournament staples like Mono Black Control with Visara from that Block season to long forgotten experiments that no doubt would have brought out pitchfork wielding villagers had they come to light. Witness the monstrosity that is Chromeshell Ramp.

The remains of some of my all-time favorite decks were also among the ruins. Paper was a Masques Block deck that generated card advantage and selection with Brainstorm and Credit Voucher in tandem with the Howling Wolf cycle of creatures. Natural Affinity and Ensnare was the kill. I absolutely LOVED this deck.

Black Thumb and Threshold are both well documented love affairs for me. My fave version of the latter was during Block season when I played it with Grizzly Fate and Centaur Chieftain. The Big Chief never quite stuck but he was a fine stalemate breaker that would have gotten me into the Top 8 of at least one PTQ if I just tapped my Werebears for mana.

Some decks are just chock full of favorite cards. I have always loved Trinity Green for any number of the cards pictured below but none more than Yavimaya Elder.

One of the problems I found early on playing with Solitary Comfinement was how to win in time if your opponent did not scoop. Spirit Cairn provided a steady source of beaters if you were willing to pay 1UW to activate Compulsion.

Jolting Merfolk/Cowardice was one of my favorite combos in a blue deck that also used the Rishadan Cutpurse (a card I liked so much I bought the original artwork to it) cycle of creatures, Glowing Anemone, and Hoodwink to blue Stone Rain my opponents into oblivion. The deck is not pictured but I still have the white long box of cards I sketched the original list onto during a flight back from GP Cannes.

My first Astral Slide deck tried to take advantage of the CIP and LIP effects on Faceless Butcher and Mesmeric Fiend to permanantly remove cards from the game over and over again with Slide. I loved the deck but it never quite got there. My Eternal Slide deck fared better once we got the Witness.

More posts to follow as I continue to rummage through my stuff including a box full of beads, dice, and counters that puts the Royal Crown Dice Bag to shame.

The interns and Flores talk Magic before GP LA - Part 1

What’s the Best Deck Part 1?