Juuudddgggeee!

By: Mark Young

Greetings all.

I hope that everyone had a good holiday and a great new year.

I thought that I would start 2013 with something a little lighter than what happens at Comp events.
Also, I would like some feedback from everyone as to what they would like to see me write about as
coming up with topics from the top of my head is a little difficult some times.

Any way, I thought we could look at a few areas where I know I made mistakes in my rules
interpretations in the past or areas that I regularly see players struggle with.

The first has to do with first strike.
When a creature with first strike is involved in combat, and additional step is created in which any
creatures with first strike will deal their combat damage before creatures that do not have first
strike.
Once this combat damage step happens, giving a creature first strike will do nothing as the first
strike damage phase is now over.
If a creature had double strike it will then get to deal damage in the normal combat damage step,
otherwise its’ part in combat is now done.
Secondly, if a creature with double strike kills its blocker in the first strike damage step, the creature
is still blocked and will deal no combat damage to the defending player unless said creature has
trample.

Principles for building a good Control Deck in Magic.

By: Sanjay Roopnah

I have been playing magic since the release of Urza's Legacy. I used to play quite a bit, but because of this thing called work, I only get to play at prereleases, a weekly draft and maybe FNM. I am a degenerate Control addict and will only play a control deck at constructed tournaments; if I ever play a non control deck, you can safely assume that aliens have abducted me and done 'bad' things to me. My love for control decks is so great that even my draft decks tend to sway towards control. Today, I will give beginners insight on how to build a good blue based control deck.

An Overview of the Standard Metagame

By Sanjay Roopnah:

I figured I'd write something for the SA magic community to contribute. This article is aimed primarily at the newbies to assist them in identifying their preferred archetype and choosing the deck that most suits them. I will give a very simplistic overview of each archetype and list the decks available in each, but I will not be posting deck lists for couple of reasons:

1. I believe that a Magic player needs to do some research by themselves.
2. Deck lists are supposed to be dynamic, and need to be tweaked on a weekly basis.
3. By the time they print this article, there will be some more deck lists that will be available.

The new player should therefore decide which archetype he/she most likes and pick a deck and play. If he/she wants some help with a deck list, I will gladly assist.

 With the release of Return to Ravnica, Standard has become very interesting again. The reprinting of the Ravnica Shocklands was the best thing that Wizards of the Coast could have done. The most important thing in Magic is having access to a stable mana base because it allows you to consistently cast all the spells in the deck. Moreover, there are some very interesting cards that were printed. I will put the decks in the following categories (archetypes) and the list of decks is not exhaustive by any means:

1. Aggro
2. Pure Control
3. Aggro-Control
4. Midrange / Fringe