Laharl’s Magic Supplement: Tournament 06 Special It’s tournament time again at OGC, and with the Magic tournament less than a month a way I thought a tournament special was in order. The OGC tournament has many features about it: · Limited Format-Players are given a tournament pack and 2 boosters and are expected to construct a deck within the time limit. · Ravnica Block- The latest three sets of Magic: the Gathering, the tournament pack being one of Ravnica: City of Guilds supported by a single booster pack of the Guildpact expansion and another from the Dissension expansion.  · Deck Size-Minimum 40, no maximum size, decks under 40 cards will probably be disqualified · Deck Building-To my knowledge players will get 30 minutes to build their decks from their cards. · Rules-All decks must be tournament legal, that is to say are at at least the minimum deck size and contain no more than 4 copies of any card that isn’t a basic land. Also cards that are banned in the current standard cannot be used (currently none) · Judges-To my knowledge, myself, Luke and Mike Brandon will be judges at the tournament, we know what we’re talking about and I like don’t question your warhammer rulings please don’t our decision. Now that’s sorting you’ll want some tips for deck construction and the like, first you’ll notice Limited is a much more difficult format of magic than constructed, you are confined by the cards you get, it get crap you have to deal with it and make the best deck you can. Once you get your cards and had a look through you’ll have a rough idea of the deck your going to build. First on the agenda is to choose the style of your deck, either: · Aggro-Decks that are offensive and specialize in dealing as much damage to your opponent as quickly as possible, or · Control-Decks that are defensive and focus on denying your opponent the opportunity to play or use any threats. Control decks are quite specific and generally unplayable in limited, whilst aggro decks thrive, other types of deck like the combo deck are impossible to run in the limited format. The big difference I find between Limited and constructed is that in limited a lot of cards suddenly become playable: Ravnica: Strong in limited, strong in constructed: Farseek Strong in limited, average in constructed: Ordruun Commando Strong in limited, weak in constructed: Woodwraith Strangler Weak in limited, strong in constructed: Suppression Field Guildpact: Strong in limited, strong in constructed: Pillory of the Sleepless Strong in limited, average in constructed: Streetbreaker Wurm Strong in limited, weak in constructed: Daggerclaw Imp Weak in limited, strong in constructed: Silhana Ledgewalker Dissension: Strong in limited, strong in constructed: Seal of Fire Strong in limited, average in constructed: Assault Zeppelid Strong in limited, weak in constructed: Utvara Scalper Weak in limited, strong in constructed: Jagged Poppet Now for actually building your deck, there are some points and abilities that should beware of whilst constructing your deck: · Build your deck around your commons and NOT your rares, put it into perspective, that’s 60 commons to 5 rares, you can get a lot more synergy with you commons, which is very important, go into the tournament with a mindset based around certain rares, not only will you be dissapointed, you build a crap deck too. You get 15 uncommons so you can start to think which ones would be useful to you pretournament. · Ravnica block has a guild of each colour combination making a mono coloured deck near impossible, the chances you will get enough strong cards of a single guild to use those colours alone are minute. A more effective tactic is to find your strongest guild then add cards from another guild that share a colour with it, for example you may use boros cards (red and white) to strengthen your main selesnya body (green and white). Making three colour decks the most likely and most effective as any more will more than lead to mana problems. · Creatures with evasion abilities should be pretty high on your choose list. Evasion abilities are flying (in cards like Snapping Drake, Screeching Griffin and Wee Dragonauts) and Fear (in cards like Undercity Shade) and they are incredibly useful as they take life points from your opponent rather quickly.  · Creatures with Regeneration are also incredibly useful as they are very difficult to destroy, examples include Woodwraith Strangler and Restless Bones, these can buy you enough time to turn the tide of a battle or stop your opponent attacking with a big creature. · Creatures that have both evasion and regeneration are invaluable in the limited format; two that spring to mind are Dimir House Guard and Tattered Drake, as they serve both the purposes mentioned above. · Removal is also very useful as it gets rid of your opponent’s threats; good examples are Last Gasp, Seal of Fire and Seal of Doom. It can easily get rid of creatures with evasion and remember creatures that have -x/-x are still that size after they regenerate, hence they drop dead. Now you’ll want to know what cards you should be looking out for in your packs. Here are some examples: White: Faith’s Fetters, Leave No Trace, Veteran Armourer, Beacon Hawk. Blue: Muddle the Mixture, Snapping Drake, Tattered Drake, Silkwing Scout Black: Dimir House Guard, Last Gasp, Enemy of the Guildpact, Seal of Doom Red: Galvanic Arc, Tin Street Hooligan, Seal of Fire, Taste for Mayhem Green: Civic Wayfarer, Farseek, Scatter the Seeds, Wildsize Multi/Hybrid: Guardian of Vitu-Ghazi, Scab-Clan Mauler, Mourning Thrull, Riot Spikes And where there are good cards, there must be bad, not even the limited format saves these monstrousities: Zephyr Spirit, Goblin Fire Fiend, Stone Seeder Heirophant, Lurking Informant Guardian’s Magemark, Runeboggle, Cry of Contrition, Pyromatics Aurora Eidolon, Valor Made Real, Sandstorm Eidolon, Street Savy Perhaps the most important part of the tournament is the multiplayer and Ravnica block has plenty of ways to makes friends…and enemies! Cards that affect each player are generally a lot better in the multiplayer, cards that make you friends: Er…Vision Skeins…as for cards that make you enemies: Lore Broker, Rain of Embers, Benediction of Moons, Poisonbelly Ogre, Savage Twister and Delirium Skeins I’ll conclude with some of the strongest kinds of decks you can make in limited in ravnica block: · R/W/G-Primarily selesnya, plenty of ways to make tokens, such as Fists of Ironwood, Scatter the Seeds and Selesnya Evangel and use these tokens to power out huge convoke spells such Guardian of Vitu-Ghazi and Siege Wurm, Red provides the burn to get rid of blockers in the form of Seal of Fire, Lightning Helix and Galvanic Arc amongst cards, green also provides mana acceleration with cards like Civic Wayfinder, Farseek and Silhana Starfletcher. · U/W/B-As control like as limited decks get, plenty of fliers like Snapping Drake, Tattered Drake, Mourning Thrull and Azorius First-Wing, ways to disable your opponents creatures with either auras (like Faith’s Fetters, Pillory of the Sleepless or Clinging Darkness), removal (like Last Gasp, Disembowel and Seal of Doom) or countermagic (like Convolute, Frazzle and Overrule). Also uses Fear creatures like Dimir House guard and Smogsteed Rider, chipping away at the enemies life total and usually building up your own. · R/B/G-Very aggressive packs lots of removal, both burn and death spells, uses generally efficient creatures like Scab-Clan Mauler, Streetbreaker Wurm and Golgari Rotwurm to maul opponents whilst having a very strong mana base to be able to play these big spells as quickly as possibly, also spells that makes your creatures bigger like Wildsize and Gather Courage make killing the opponent quicker and spells like Savage Twister and Rain of Embers can kill little annoying blockers.