Welcome to the fourth Word of Command! I hope everyone had an excellent holiday break; mine was especially busy! Jumping right in, after our usual news section this article will focus on lesser known or less popular methods to generate continual advantage during a game. Hopefully you'll be inspired to try out some new ideas in a deck this year!
Some people would say that 8500+ words about multiplayer is overkill. Well, this is just part 7 of 13 of Bryndon's examination of Commander through the lens of Sun Tzu!
Game six of your long afternoon of Magic, and everyone is shuffling up the decks from the last two games. Every one of your friend’s decks is a familiar, well known machine for winning games (or just drawing hilarity out of them). You get to your first turn, draw seven and play: Swamp, Cabal Therapy. What to name?
You’ve come to enjoy the unique game-play style of large multiplayer: the out of nowhere huge plays, the turns-on-a-dime balance of power, and the huge variety of deck archetypes that appear and succeed. There is only one problem: you’re losing. Where are you gonna turn for the hints and clues you need to start taking home some game wins? Stronghold Slivers, obviously.
Hello everybody, and welcome to the second edition of Spinning the Top. The topic du jour is Combo, that specter haunting almost all large multiplayer games. Combo, as you’ve probably picked up in competitive magic, is a broad term that refers to decks that seek to assemble a combination of cards that allows them to instantly or assuredly claim victory. Most of us are aware of what attracts players to combo, and most players have played a dedicated combo deck at least once in their duel careers; but Combo has a place in multiplayer magic that has no real parallel in competitive constructed.
You can apply the same levels of focus and time to playing good, solid multiplayer as you can to top-eight-ing a PTQ, and yet many otherwise serious players avoid/don't succeed in multiplayer. I believe that this originates in three major differences in the nature of the game, which lead to five major deck building changes, which when combined properly will allow both the freshest newbie and the seasoned PTQ hunter to get what they want out of Magic "down time."
While Standard is the driving force of Magic, forging ahead with new innovations and ensuring that new players aren't overwhelmed by a massive card pool and still have a chance to play competitively, casual multiplayer is without doubt the heart and soul of the game.
[This article first appeared in August of '05, and here it is again - have fun playing in groups with your friends and possibly family over your winter vacation! -ed.]
So, Magic's Comprehensive Rules have finally acknowledged the existence of multiplayer Magic. The world will never be the same again and I'm looking forward to the first pro-level Two-Headed Giant games with a level of anticipation that would put Pavlov's dog to shame.
However, it's not true to say that prior to the appearance of multiplayer in the Comprehensive Rules all multiplayer games ...
It’s 10:00 p.m. and you’re sitting down at a table with four other players. Each of you pulls out your tried and tested deck, but you have no idea what the metagame is or how you’ll need to adapt. In a Type 1 multiplayer environment, you know that there are going to be wacky cards played. You can only hope that you will be the last one standing.
