Below you'll find a list of all posts that have been tagged as “Strategy”
Commander players love firing off removal, but removal has a finite supply. Kristen is here this week to argue that there’s a simple solution: playing more blockers. Most points of contention in a game of Commander center around what to do with removal. “Why did you target X, instead of Y?” “If you didn’t remove, X, you would have had …
Aggression has always been a common play style in Modern, but it has outgrown hyper-linear decks that “try to kill your opponent as fast as possible without interacting” — decks like Burn. That’s why you won’t see the famous archetype on this list of the best Aggro decks in Modern despite the fact that it’s still around and seeing play. …
What makes a particular combat trick special? Must it create a blowout or just maximize the efficiency these cards are known for? Or is a great combat trick one that exceeds our expectations, generating additional resources or utility beyond its combat application? These questions make it difficult to identify the best combat tricks in Commander. One thing you notice trying …
Commander is about self-expression; playing with your favorite cards and mechanics with the best possible support from across Magic history. But what if your favorite cards in Commander are combat tricks? Single-target creature pump spells can be gamewinners in Limited or 1v1 Constructed, but it takes some special effort to help them scale up to the 40 life multiplayer metagame. …
If you’re looking to build a white Commander deck, you can’t miss our rundown of 20 essential white cards. These are the most flexible and often best cards in their class, and will fit into pretty much any strategy or archetype. They’re perfect to add to your collection. White is a great color to play with in Commander, and it’s …
The Commander format has one really fundamental problem: it’s explosive. And it’s only getting worse as time ticks on. I don’t just mean that the community discourse is liable to blow up at the slightest provocation (although, true). I mean that multiplayer Magic, especially with the card pool and ruleset present in this format, naturally trends toward explosive play patterns …
The weekend of Jan. 13 brought us the most competitive Modern tournaments than we’ve seen in a long time. SCG Con New Jersey had both $20,000 and $5,000 tournaments while the LMS Open Qualifier took place in Trieste and the NRG Champs closed things out. Naturally, each high level Modern tournament offers worthwhile results to parse through. Modern is in …
One interesting part of non-rotating formats in Magic is that players learn how the wide array of cards start to work together in new and exciting ways over time, which allows for strategies to crop up using cards that have been available for a long time. This doesn’t happen often, but players have recently discovered a handful of new, viable …
Kristen lends a few thoughts on how to navigate a game of casual Commander based on what seat you’re in. I’ve been thinking, lately, about how useful data can be when reviewing games of Commander. A lot of theory and observations on the format skew toward subjectivity and anecdote, and as we all know, that’s not the most reliable type …
SCG Con New Jersey, the first large Modern tournament of the year, is taking place this weekend, and I’ll be in attendance. Naturally that means figuring out what deck I am going to play — a task I’ve been working on for a couple weeks. Those who know me can tell you I have a bad habit of waffling between …
