Posted on by Jed Fowler

What’s the play: turning the corner (ish)

17lands Info

The Play

Okay, at last a welcome change from being cornered in a bad situation. I’ve finally stabilized versus a pretty good UW deck. I just countered their 7-mana shattered Seraph, some good card advantage in Evelyn’s exile pile and a big-honking flier. Of note, we are both in some danger of decking (I have 9 cards, oppo has 5) What’s the play

  • Attack with the 4/5 and the 5/5 flier
  • Attack with just the 4/5 to leave the flier back on defense
  • Cast Raffine’s Informant
  • Or mill some more with another 3/3 Snoozy.

What’s the play?

Read more
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.

Read more
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.

Read more
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:

Read more
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.

Read more
Posted on by Jed Fowler · 2 Comments

Rolling Ratings, 1-30-22

Whoa, spoiler season seriously snuck up on me! I suppose the silver lining of ‘already falling behind’ is that I don’t have to try and kill myself perusing the list of daily drops and make a post. Then again, this blog hasn’t exactly been suffering from excessive effort.

Read more