"Thanks!"; or, A Quick One, While He's Away

As I write this, I am several states away from New York City, at my parent's home in Delaware. Ah, vacation! Ah, not having to work! Aaaah, my blog! Okay, so I'm not actually super stressed about updating this, but I don't really have anything new deckbuilding-wise to talk about this week. Well, that's not entirely true, but... we'll see.

Admiring the Architect-er

As promised! A Builder!

I've seen a couple lists around the internets with this guy. I'm sure you've all seen it too. The deck that powers out a turn 3 Wurmcoil Engine or Myr Battlesphere or whatever. These will not be those decks. Nothing against them, but you can find those anywhere. I want to show you something new.

Retracing My Steps

After taking a little time off for some much needed rest, I've had some more time to think about my GDS2 submission. On this, the eve of the 8 finalists moving into the most exciting part of the competition, I'd like to take a quick moment to go over my designs and talk about exactly why they weren't quite up to par.

End of the Line

You may or may not know that I was entered in the Great Designer Search 2, and made it to round 3 - the design test. By now I'm sure that you can figure out that I didn't pass that part.

I'm basically okay with that. The more astute of you might, if you took note of various timing convergences, realize that part of my motivation in starting Journey to Nowhere was as a cathartic action. As part of that, and with my personally-driven participation in the GDS2 (though I still plan to participate on the wiki because hey, I like designing), I'd like to share my various submissions.

One last thing to keep in mind. Even though this particular journey didn't go anywhere for me, I've got no regrets (other than not doing better!). Overall, I feel like this was good for me, and it's gonna give me something to think about in the coming years. Fortunately, I've already got a pretty good job, so I'm still doing fine without this, but I definitely have a better feel for what I'm capable of and what I can work on. Look out, WotC, you haven't heard the last of me!

Life and Death; or, How to Build a Terrible Deck

Some ideas are just so bad, you have to use them. This is one of them. I'm not saying this is a good deck. In fact, it's a terrible deck. But terrible decks have their place too, and for this idea, this is that place. Let's walk through this idea from genesis to its inevitable, terrible conclusion.

Two-In-One

Last week, I thought to myself: "Rise of the Eldrazi draft was a great format. How can I recapture that appeal?"

Okay, maybe I didn't. But bear with me. I draft a lot. And I get sidetracked in drafts by really dumb archetypes based on getting all the copies of a single card that I can. Jace's Erasure? All over it. Halimar Excavator? Got me! Golem Foundry was a failed experiment in this, but I'm recovering from that.

My Journey to Nowhere

Hello, the Internet! I am on you! Hm. Okay, let's rewind a bit. Who am I?

My name is Chris Young, and as you can probably guess, I play Magic. I've been in the game since I was quite young; the first cards I remember seeing are cards like Tor Wauki and Marhault Elsdragon (yeah, look those up). One of my first decks ran Zuran Spellcaster alongside Prodigal Sorceror because hey, they're awesome right? Fast forward to 1997 and 10-year-old me going into my local game store (Days of Knights in Newark, DE) and buying my first Magic product(the $5 stack of assorted Ice Age, The Dark, and Alliances cards I got from a schoolmate notwithstanding): the Tempest "Deep Freeze" precon because it's "the blue one." Yeah, 10-year-old me knows where it's at. (More than 23-year-old me does probably, but we'll get to that.)