Maybe Chapin's book? That would be the only one, if even that. I don't know how successful he was at pulling it off, though.

Flores had a book right?

Same here, really interested in like some service / site or book that goes in depth at analysing situations and teaches you how to think correctly about the game.

Cash games have like EV analysis street to street, Magic should have that too.

I read the Flores book called Deckade when it was first released 5-6 years ago. It was a solid read and I learned a bit of overall strategy theory from it.

I have not read Chapin's book yet, but I've heard good things about it and was literally just talking about it with some people at FNM tonight that really enjoyed it.

I read chapins book and didn't find it to informative. I think the problem with magic is that it is nearly impossible to formulate into a general theory because the interactions of cards is constantly changing and therefore almost every answer to "what should I do when facing this situation" is that "it depends". Outside of a few core concepts that amount to magic 101 like tempo, card advantage, combat math, there is very little strategy that can be generalized and applied to multiple situations. When authors do try to generalize you get garbage like Sullivan's philosophy of fire that Flores recently wrote about, vague theories that might seem to apply to your specific situation but in reality don't.

Reading chapins book felt like a total exercise in this kind of strategizing. Pulling theories from past environments and claiming they can be applied as a general theory to any format. Not only is this strategizing not very useful it might actually be harmful if it makes players start to think there is some automatic answer to their particular situation.

From an RL draft last night:

"I attack for 4"
"block"
"can't, it's unblockable"
"Wha? I just saw a bunch of one-drops and assumed they were terrible!"

I love M13 black.

I bet it was attack, exhaled triggers, then you tried to block.

Well I was the one attacking but yeah. Tormented Soul + Duty-bound dead + servant of nefarox

So I've qualified for the online season 8 championship which is Legacy. I don't really have any cards and usually only play limited but would like to play. Does anyone have any deck recommendations for me or better yet a deck I can borrow to play? The tournament is August 18th.

If I have to buy the cards for the deck myself, I guess cost would be an issue and I would probably look at playing something cheaper like goblins. What resources are out there for me to research the format and what I might want to play/possible deck prices?

For fun and cheap legacy deck try Zombies. (I think it was by Sam Black but might be wrong. You should be able to find it from scg)

If cost is an issue then any deck with FoW or Lion's Eye Diamond is out, which leaves various creature decks. Zombies is a good suggestion, Goblins and Affinity are fine too.

I put together Goblins for about 50 tickets and have been having fun with the deck. I have all the cards I need except for Wastelands which seem impossible to find. I'm fine buying them and reselling them after but I can't even find any bots that have them in stock.

Are the scg forums the best place to read strategy pertaining to a particular deck?

anyone want to sell me tix for Cake $$$?

I've found the forums to be pretty lacking if you're looking for anything in-depth regarding strategy. For whatever reason, the really good players just don't post to forums and it's basically the FNM crowd. It's frustrating.

The only exception was before SCG went to Facebook comments and they had a forum topic for each article. The original author would often participate in the forums for the article he wrote, and you could get good information there.

Yeah the scg forum update was wtf, they even went back and deleted the old article threads for no reason

Yeah, that was awful. In one way it's good that the comments section isn't anonymous any more since it stops a lot of the trolls (particularly when the author is unpopular/female/both) but the quality of discussion is a lot lower.

For strategy the best places are ChannelFireball and SCG; most of the good and up-to-date SCG articles are premium, but there are some nice ones on the free side occasionally.

Want some tix for stars if anyone want to trade

This describes poker pretty well, though, and many books on that topic are helpful.

I probably agree with you on this, however. I also thought the Flores article was weak.

I dunno I found general poker theory much more informative when I was learning poker than I did for general magic theory. I feel like poker theory gave me tools that I could apply when I deemed them necessary, magic theory seems like a bunch of isolated strategy advice and when it is general it is too vague to use. I think that's just because in poker you face more of the same situations so it's more amenable to a general theory.

I think there's a lot to be said for general magic theory when it comes to the stuff that makes the game tick - card advantage, tempo, mana utility, flexibility and power vs. consistency, etc.

The thing is that like poker, a lot of people playing don't want to take the long road of understanding what makes the game work and what makes winning decks win, they just want to find out what best deck/best cards are and play them.

The market fills that desire accordingly.

Curious, how do people like M13 so far?
Any thoughts on top archtypes and their idea?

I started playing again for the first time in years and I've been getting destroyed whereas in AVR (all limited) I won a decent amount of the time. I probably just suck, though I have no idea how or why. M13 seems like it should be better (more balanced obv), but I don't know if that's actually the case.

whats the cheapest way to draft any MTGo?

i have been just buying from the store to play is the dumb?

Yea I think it is not the best option. Buying your tickets for cheaper at other stores and using that to buy boosters is a better option.

Anyone know a cheap(er) way to get tickets ? The lowest in classifieds are like .98$ via paypal.

sucks that drafting costs so much i want to play like 15 drafts a day