Posted on by Jed Fowler

What’s the Play: All Bad Choices

Sometimes you face a bunch of bad choices. Had a fun deck with five Body Droppers and only 15 lands. Good times! But sometimes you end up cornered.

I have drawn my sacrifice fodder but not my sacrifice eaters. Oppo took the play, pulled, and ate a discard but has a board with 5 power to my 2. Here are the lines as I saw it:

  • Attack with open mana and use Quick-Draw Dagger if they block.
  • Blitz out the Plasma Jockey and attack with the team.
  • Pass the turn with open mana to try and block the attack.

What’s the play?

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Posted on by Jed Fowler · 1 Comment

Decision Points Pt 2

Another pretty good one. It’s hard going deep into the tank and then, after fifteen+ seconds of grinding, remembering to capture the screenshot.

This was a pretty decent, aggressive BW brokers deck. And I have some interesting options! Some context: I attacked with both Lackeys last turn and they didn’t block (rightfully sniffing out the combat trick). The race isn’t going great in my favor.

  • Drive out of town a blocker and swing
  • Attack holding up Metamorphosis
  • Hold for Ransom… something.

And which do I target with which? What’s the play?!

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Posted on by Jed Fowler · 2 Comments

Decision Forks: Ep. 1

I’ve fallen again into the pit of “Blog about magic… or just play more magic.” It’s a literal Sophie’s Choice over here! The new set, Streets of New Capenna, has definitely felt rough. I always feel like my drafting skills are better than my playing skills and that leak has really revealed itself because it’s so fast and there’s so few edges to glean in draft. As such, I’m going to try and review moments of the game where I go into the tank and then see how it turns out.

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Posted on by Jed Fowler · 1 Comment

Projected Best Commons in New Capenna

A little busy there for a bit… but also a little too busy playing Magic to talk about Magic. Not the worst problem to have but it is a little ironic sitting there thinking of fun posts to make… then just hitting “Join Draft” instead.

But I come not to bury Caesar. There are new magic cards to stare at and figure out what will be good. Often this gets immediately trumped by… actually… playing with the cards. Regardless, it’s still a good exercise to familiarize with the cards.

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Posted on by Jed Fowler · 1 Comment

Trophy Report 3-12-22

The knock against the way I play magic is that I seem to reliably win ~60% of games on Arena while not snagging as many trophies as that sort of win-rate would suggest. I don’t know if this is due to hitting singles instead of swinging for the fences or just variance or maybe it’s not a problem and I’m on rate. Regardless, it’s a pretty good feeling when I land two trophies in one day.

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Posted on by Jed Fowler · 1 Comment

All the nonsense

I’m not great at kitchen-soup decks. I don’t draft them well, I’m paranoid about my manabase, I want to curve out and beat down like a proper Boros player. Yet I have to say, I think this is what the Good Doctor intended for magic.

Not pictured: at one point oppo had 33 life and I had 4. It’s hard to read, as I had so many cards in play they had to shrink, but here’s a taste:

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Posted on by Jed Fowler · 2 Comments

On Osmosis

For the past few weeks, Lil Chandra has wandered the house singing under her breath, “We don’t talk about Bruno, no no.” This in and of itself is not that interesting, since at any given time ~35% children aged eight and under are singing songs from Encanto.

What is mildly interesting is that she hasn’t seen Encanto yet.

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Posted on by Jed Fowler · 1 Comment

A Brief Artistic Detour

It is not a huge shock that the art in Kamigawa: Neon Dynasty is stunning. It would be hard to screw up Magic + cyberpunk. What’s striking isn’t just how good it is, but also how *varied*. At the prerelease, an art discussion broke out and someone commented how they liked how Magic was veering away from the “Marvel house style.” I loved that framing. Compare:

No shade thrown to M. Villeneuve. Serra is a great illustration (related to one of my most beloved cards, Serra Angel) that would have absolutely blown my mind not long ago. But it’s not flavorful: it has the CGI-ish sheen that the 20-minutes-too-long climax of Black Widow also suffered from. Where as the art to Inkrise Infiltrator is just… gorgeous. Anime-influenced without being overt, great color balance. And even though it’s almost certainly digitally drawn as well, it doesn’t have that same-ness feel. And the rest of the art in this set delivers as well.

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Posted on by Jed Fowler · 1 Comment

Prerelease!!

Well I did it. I attended a pre-release. I ate ramen before the pre-release. I went to a gaming store (all hail Mox) and went in person and everything was as delightful as could be. I opened packs. I day-drank. I met up with friends. I made new friends. Oh and most importantly: I opened bomb mythics in the same color

Let’s zoom in a little tighter on those mythics, shall we?

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