Ben Iverach-Brereton – The Mana Base

Rant of Valakut: Remembering Tiny Leaders

April 23, 2018

With so many people talking about the new Brawl format, I thought I should take a look at another Commander-like format that surged in popularity not that long ago: Tiny Leaders. Some of you may remember Tin...

Rant of Valakut: Modern Horoscopes

Ben Iverach-Brereton

April 2, 2018

Rants of Valakut

THAT WHICH WILL COME TO PASS What deck you choose play says a lot about who you are, but you may not realise just how much it does. It is a little known fact, but the Modern metagame functions much the...

Rant of Valakut: The Touch of Death

Ben Iverach-Brereton

March 26, 2018

Rants of Valakut

Paper Covers Rock The best games are ones in which every threat can be answered in some way. Rock, Paper, Scissors, while not a shining example of game design, hinges entirely on this principle; it w...

Rant of Valakut: My Long Road

Ben Iverach-Brereton

March 12, 2018

Rants of Valakut

My history with Magic: the Gathering hasn't been as straightforward as you might expect. For years I had no interest in playing, and it wasn't until about seven years ago that I fell into the game. It's been qu...

Rant of Valakut: Tuning Up Delver Grow

Ben Iverach-Brereton

February 26, 2018

Rants of Valakut

The Simic deck is back! If you haven't read my "Building Delver Grow" series, about my Modern Blue-Green deck, you can read it here: In Part 1 I talk about how I adapted the old Miracle Grow deck for Modern. ...

Rant of Valakut: Inverter Doomsday

Ben Iverach-Brereton

February 12, 2018

Rants of Valakut

Some of the most iconic Magic decks pop up in multiple formats. Modern, Legacy, Pauper, and even Standard often have variations on these popular archetypes: 'Tron shows up frequently in Modern and Pau...

Rant of Valakut – Designing the Eldrazi Horde Deck (part 2)

Ben Iverach-Brereton

January 29, 2018

Rants of Valakut

3

"What are you doing?" "This is my Horde deck." "Is this like the Magic equivalent of Solitaire?" "Kind of, yes." In my last article I shared my take on a cooperative Magic format called Horde Magic. This ...

Rant of Valakut – The Eldrazi Horde Deck and Rules (part 1)

Ben Iverach-Brereton

January 15, 2018

Rants of Valakut

14

Years ago, I learned about a format called Horde Magic. Unlike other formats, Horde Magic has all of the players working together to attempt to survive a zombie apocalypse. The zombies are a part of a...

Rant of Valakut: Gifts Unwanted

Ben Iverach-Brereton

January 1, 2018

Rants of Valakut

The holidays have come and gone, we're facing down a new year, and bracing ourselves for the horror that is Valentine's Day. As we slowly put away our decorations and presents, it is inevitable ...

Rant of Valakut Holiday Special: Christmas in Five Cards

Ben Iverach-Brereton

December 24, 2017

Rants of Valakut

Season's Greetings! Growing up, we always had advent calendars in my home. Each day before Christmas we'd open up a little box to discover a treat, or a chocolate, or a little picture. It was a fine traditio...

Rants of Valakut – About Mulligans Part 2: So You’re Down to Six Cards…

Ben Iverach-Brereton

December 18, 2017

Rants of Valakut

Sometimes you have a terrible opening hand and have to mulligan, shuffling it away and drawing a new hand. Your new hand has fewer cards in it, but it's hopefully better than what you had. Unfortunately, regard...

Rants of Valakut – About Mulligans Part 1: Identifying Bad Hands

Ben Iverach-Brereton

December 4, 2017

Rants of Valakut

Having a bad opening hand in Magic is not good. It's bad. It's... ... Hang on, let me start again. Do I Have a Good Opening Hand? Many players will start the game with the hand they are dealt ...

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