This is going to be a list of cards that would be worth getting your hands on. These will be staple cards that can fit in many decks. I'm going to keep them separated by color and approximate price. This will give you more of an idea of how much you would need to spend and what priorities you can put on getting them. There is no way this list could ever be complete so if any of you feel there is something important I left off this list (and there will be), mention it. I left important cards like Duress, Hymn to Tourach, and Rancor out of the first draft so I'm positive I left off many other important cards as well. If you think of any (or just want to mention some of your favorites), leave a comment.

As you all know by now the Type 3 format has two distinctive features. One is that the maximum number of each card you can run is 3 instead of 4. The other is that we control the banned/restricted list. I'm going to take a look at the type 3 format and discuss exactly what that 3-card limit means. Then I'm going to look at the types of decks most effected by the format.

This obviously means I'll be talking about consistency. Really to maximize your consistency you want the largest percent of your deck to do the same thing possible. This will allow you do that thing more often. There are different ways of maximizing this percentage. The first of course is to just play with less cards. You will have a greater chance of drawing a specific card if there are less other cards in your deck. A 60 card deck will certainly draw the single Yawgmoth's Will you have in there more than an 80 card deck. 1/60 is a bigger number than 1/80. Another way to maximize consistency is to run more copies each card in the deck. A 60 card deck will certainly draw a card more often if it runs 4 copies of a card than if it runs only a single copy. Once again 4/60 is a bigger number than 1/60. Another way of maximizing consistency is to run tutors. Randy Buehler's Pro Tour Chicago deck from 2000 ran 4 copies of both Necropotence and Demonic Consultation. This basically makes the deck act like it has 8 copies of Necropotence. Once again 8/60 is a bigger number than 4/60. Similarly just drawing extra cards effectively reduces the size of your deck which increases your consistency. The last way to maximize deck consistency is by running multiple cards that basically do the same thing. This would be something like running 4 Lightning Bolts, 4 Incinerates, and 4 Chain Lightnings in your burn deck. While these are functionally different cards they all pretty much do the same thing (3 damage). Once again 12/60 is a bigger number than 4/60. I will admit that there are plenty of cards out there that are unique enough that there really isn't anything similar enough to use as redundant copies but most aggro decks and many control decks use this method of consistency maximizing.

So it is obvious to see that reducing the card limit to 3 of each card rather than 4 makes it harder to maximize consistency. I'm now going to look at each major deck type and the effect this loss of consistency has on them. I'll ignore our banned/restricted lists for these examples since it could vary depending on the decks that are abusive.

Aggro:

This is what I feel is the least effected archtype. It is generally the most redundant archtype and as such will have plenty of similar cards to fill holes with. I'll use an example:

This is a very consistent and pretty fast red aggro deck. It also has a decent late game with Grim Lavamancer and Cursed Scroll. Now lets see what it would take if we tried to convert it to type 3. We can replace the two non-basic land slots with 2 more Mountains. The rest leaves us with 10 free slots. I'd like to keep the deck running as close to the same as possible. We'll add 3 Incinerate to replace the missing burn. I'll also add 3 Frostling and 2 Suq'Ata Lancer to fill the missing creature slots. The remaining two slots will be a Blistering Firecat and a Mountain since the mana curve went up slightly. The deck now looks like this:

How has the performance of the deck changed? Not really much at all. It is about 1/3 of a turn slower but just as consistent as ever. Type 3 has have a very minimal effect on it. If aggro was strong in a normal environment it would continue to be strong in type 3.

Control:

At first you may think this archtype would be heavily effected by the lower consistency in type 3. However it actually isn't that bad. There are enough substitutes that the effect is still pretty minimal. It is more effected than aggro but not by much. I'll use a Draw Go deck as the example.

To make it type 3 legal we pull the extra cards and have 10 slots to fill. I'll add 2 Blinkmoth Nexus for the land slots. This keeps the man-land count at 8. To fill the 4 missing cards in the countermagic slot I'll add 3 Daze and a Foil. The last 4 slots can become a Powder Keg and 3 Serum Visions. The deck now looks like this:

How does it stack up to the original. Once again it isn't hurt quite as much as you'd expect. The most missed spells are the extra copies of Force of Will and Disk. Both have pseudo replacements though both are of a much lower power level. Everything else is easily replaceable. They may even games where this deck may perform better due to the extra free countermagic even if the deck has less hard counters. This deck is still quite the powerhouse and would make most of you very unhappy to see me play.

Combo:

Here is where we see the effect of type 3. Combo takes a huge hit to both consistency and speed. The reason is that except in very rare cases a combo deck wants to find a few specific cards as fast as possible. Not only does type 3 remove a copy of each of those cards it also removes a copy of each of the cards used to find them. Finding redundant replacements for creatures or removal is easy. Tutors tend to make a much bigger drop in power level when you have to run the second rate options. Sam has explained that Type 3 was originally created because his group was very annoyed that the environment was dominated by combo. While I wasn't around as much back then I'd be willing to be this was when type 2 was Tempest and Urza block, which was the most dominant combo ever was in type 2. I'd try to use another example here to try and convert a combo deck to type 3 but I really suck at combo and would likely start with a combo deck that is already terrible. If I used a proven tournament combo deck I'd probably ruin it just from lack of understanding. I do think it should be obvious enough that it would not stand up to the changes near as well as control or aggro.

Conclusion:

So we have concluded that the only archtype that is hit hard by the 3-card limit is combo. Type 3 also has a few innocent bystander cards that are now quite terrible because of the limit. Accumulated Knowledge goes from being an excellent card drawing spell to being quite terrible. Similar things can be said of the Oddessy burst cycle and Kindle. It also broke a few cards such as Jester's Cap, which we even had to eventually restrict. The fact that it can remove all copies of a card rather than leave one make it a much more powerful weapon (or at least more annoying). What I think really suffers though is any deck based around a single card. I'm not talking about combo decks but stupid things like Chance Encounter decks or something based around other dumb cards like Shared Fate or Timesifter. We started playing type 3 because we wanted to weaken the environment to allow stupid decks to be played. Since our environment had trouble not with combo but with control I don't think it was the correct call. After all I think the type 3 environment made control dominate even more. It certainly seem to win every week regardless of who played it. This was because the stupid decks were hurt by the 3-card limit more than the dominating control decks.

I don't want to sound completely negative about type 3. It had one feature that made me really like it. That was the fact that we controlled the banned/restricted list. This is what I think made the format fun. If we were to start playing a constructed format again it probably should be either an existing sanctioned format or a new home-brewed format with our own banned/restricted lists but with a 4 of each card limit.

For this article I'm going to conduct an experiment. I have no idea how well it will work out. I'm going to pick a card and design a deck around it. This will be a card I have not used before so I wont just be pasting a decklist I've tried and tested. This will also be done in real time. As I'm starting this I have no idea what will be in the deck or even really anything beyond the card I plan to base it around. There is a chance this deck may end up decent but there is an equal chance it will be absolutely terrible. I'm hoping that even if the deck ends up being teh suck this will still be a helpful look at deckbuilding.

Since my personal preference is also Wednesday and no one else really had a preference I'll be throwing up a new article every Wednesday starting next week.  For this one I wanted to wait at least a week mostly just to give people time to read some of those articles.  Some were in fact quite lengthy and I know everyone isn't as crazy as I am and would read them all in one sitting, especially some of the ones that were slightly above your head (they were at least slightly above my head).  I wanted to get that first post out of the way at the beginning because I felt as though it was the perfect place to start.  It isn't like I'll ever be able to come up with any new ideas that totally redefine how people think about magic.  I'd be lucky to come up with ideas that redefine my own thoughts about magic.

Today's topic is going to be mostly type 3.5 specific but will apply to any constructed format.  I'm sure everyone noticed I seemed to win the type 3 tournaments were having almost every other week.  I probably ended up winning about 65% of them or so.  Play skill of course always plays a big portion in how well you do but that isn't what I'm going to look at today.  Besides I believe Dustin is at the very least equal to me in pure play skill terms and in many cases better.  I'm probably a bit better at playing control or at least the control mirror but he is either equal or better than me at playing pretty much every other archetype.  I'd also like to mention the rest of the group is a lot better than they usually get credit for.  BJ has been playing for long enough that I don't need to lump him in this category.  I think the only reason he hasn't been doing as well lately is because he has been borrowing other people's decks rather than playing his own.  Kim is improving a lot and really the only thing holding her back is that her collection is more static than many of us because she is responsible enough not to spend all her money on magic cards.  In fact it seems the largest reason for Kim to get new cards is because they have pretty art, not that that is a bad reason.  Branden has been playing for less time than the rest of the group and I think started playing sometime during Mirrodin block.  He has improved a large amount recently and I don't expect this to stop anytime soon.  He is not near as terrible as most people are during their first year or two of playing.  His decks are better than he might give them credit for as well.  While most of them could use a few tweaks here and there and possibly a more stable mana base they seem to all be built around strong concepts.

Getting back on topic the things I want to talk about today though all take place before the tournament starts.

The first step is of course deciding on and building a deck.  If each of you were to be honest, how far in advance did you usually have your decks built?  I remember many a time when Dustin would IM me on Friday afternoon declaring he had no idea what to play or would be putting the deck together as people arrived.  I think I built more of Kim's type 3 decks than she did and that was ususally 5 minutes before we started.  I will admit some of my decks were built the night before the tournament but most were built at least a week in advance.  In fact the ones that were built the day before also were the ones that didn't do so well.  Why is it important to build the decks in advance?  So you can test them.

There are many ways you can test a deck without an extra person handy (though that would be the best method if possible).  The first thing you should do after throwing a deck together is to shuffle it up and just draw a few hands and maybe play the first few turns of a game.  This is mostly to make sure the mana base is decent.  You want to pay attention to whether you draw enough land or even too much land early in the game.  If there is a problem make some small adjustments like adding or removing a land or two.  Some people have a knack for being able to just know the correct mana base for a deck just by looking at it but I'm not one of them.  I'm usually close but a few tweaks are often necessary.  Another way of going through a few goldfish games is to use a program like Apprentice or Magic Workstation.  These programs let you build decks and goldfish them.  I much prefer Magic Workstation as it will also let you test the deck in the mirror match, or if you pay for the program, against another deck you have built.  Both will let you play against other people online but I don't like trying to play actual games with these programs.  These programs also don't know magic rules so it is mostly just a digital playing mat that will shuffle your deck for you.  That said I got so much use out of Magic Workstation that after debating it for a few months I eventually ended up paying for the full version so I could use it to test decks against other decks.  After the mana base is stable the next step is to test the deck against actual disruption.  There are multiple ways to do this.  One is to build a different generic test deck to play against your deck.  You just basically take turns swapping between decks and playing both sides.  It looks really stupid and may make you feel like a loser (It is sort of like playing Monopoly by yourself.) but it will drastically help you get a feel for how your deck performs in an actual game.  There are some problems such as the fact that you know what in both players hands (since both are you) which makes things like Cabal Therapy hard to play.  You basically have to try and figure out what you'd name if you didn't know what your opponent was holding.  Other problems include thinks like knowing when mass removal is coming so you don't overextend or knowing when to not counter a spell because a worse one is coming up but these problems don't actually affect too much.  After all it isn't like you are trying to make the pro tour or anything, just play in a 4-6 person casual tournament.  You generally want to test your deck against a couple different deck types.  Maybe a few aggressive decks, some with removal and some without.  Then against a few more controlling decks of different types.  This can help you find a deck's weakness which will help you try and fix it.  This testing always provides good results and always results in me changing parts of my deck.  The decks I bring to the tournaments (or even just have in the box) are never the same decks I first put together.  Ever.  I absolutely can't just sit down and throw together an optimal decklist, even of an archetype I play often.  When I skipped this testing I often discovered major problems with the deck during the tournament where it is much too late to fix. During the first tournament I had all my removal in the sideboard and lost to decks playing with cheap creatures.  I had planned on fetching it with Cunning Wish but it ended up way too slow.  I remember getting beat down by things like Merfolk Looter before I had the mana to cast the Wish and the fetched removal spell.  A deck that can't handle a 1/1 for 1U has some major problems.  I wound up tying for last place even though the deck had more powerful cards than anyone else's.  Even multiple copies of Force of Will and Fact or Fiction and plenty more broken cards didn't stop me from getting trampled by crappy creatures.  I would have been able to notice this if I had played even a single game with the deck before the tournament.

The other thing I want to talk about is Metagaming.  This to put it as simply as possible is just what you expect there to be at the tournament.  While you can certainly build a metagame deck this usually has to do with the contents of your sideboard.  Remember that you play between 50% and 67% of your games after sideboarding.  This makes them very important.  The main reason I want to talk about metagaming is that in our group (at least in type 3) it seems to be nearly impossible to do.  I think the main reason for this is the fact that all of us seemed to have the unwritten rule of never playing the same deck twice.  This means that the metagame is completely different every week.  There are however certain patterns you can detect.  As I'm sure everyone noticed I am quite fond of control decks.  Not just draw go but control of every type and color.  I didn't play control every week but it was more than 50%.  I also tend to avoid combo.  I really just don't like combo decks very much unless they are very fast and consistent and those tend to be broken and thus contain cards I can't afford.  I actually think I would even like a good combo deck.  In other words I probably wont be playing combo (though I wouldn't say never).  I'm also quite fond of mass removal so never overextend.  Discard and land destruction is useful but take it easy on the land destruction.  No one likes it in casual.  Armageddon is fine unless it is multiplayer (where each time it is cast it seems to add an hour to the game and no one wants to play one game until 3:00 AM).  I've noticed Branden has a tendency to have either black or red (or both) in his decks and they tend to be on the aggressive side.  This means pack color hosers like Chill or Light of Day and/or mass removal like Pyroclasm and Wrath of God.  BJ tends to lean towards either aggressive green decks with things like Overrun or defensive white decks with life gain and damage prevention.  Mass removal is excellent against the former and the latter is only a problem if you are playing a super aggressive deck (especially an aggressive red deck).  Cards like Sulfuric Vortex and Flaring Pain can certainly help in those cases.  The rest of the group is much more random but Kim's best decks seem to be B/W aggro control or decks with lots of bounce.  The bounce is likely more fun to play annoy people with but the B/W ones are much more powerful.  Then again Desolation Angels tend to be like that.  Bounce isn't as effective against creatures that cost less than the bounce spells and you'll probably want to either counter that Desolation Angel or keep her from getting 7 mana.  Dustin is very hard to peg down as there really isn't anything he doesn't play.  He does tend to gravitate toward certain colors for periods of time though (I think he is at the U/G stage right now).  He does tend to lean slightly to the control side though so things like discard is helpful.  Disenchants are always useful.  He never builds decks without targets.  He also runs more non-basic lands than the rest of us so cards like Sowing Salt and Dwarven Blastminer can be useful against him.  These of course all just tendencies and everyone breaks them often.  However knowing the tendedcies of the players in your group can really help you not have any useless cards in your sideboard.

Since it has been over a year since my last update I figured I may as well do something with this thing.  I've been wanting a place to discuss Magic with just our group.  I believe that all our players are well beyond that awkward beginner stage and are ready for actual strategy.  I think I have improved at magic considerably over the past two years or so.  I contribute most for my improvement from simply reading about magic.  I read every (free) article posted on magicthegathering.com, StarCityGames, and Brainburst as well as occasionally browse other sites and message boards.  I also like to go back and read old magic articles from times either before I started playing magic or at least before I started reading about it.  Through all this reading I have been able to understand parts of the game I didn't before.  A good strategy article may help you think about a part of the game you didn't think about before and help to improve yourself in that area.  At the least it could just help you to understand the game better which will help you both be a better deck builder and a better player.  A good deck tech article can help you in ways beyond just seeing a cool deck.  Often seeing an interesting deck can inspire you to create a deck of your own based either on something you saw or even just something that seeing the list made you think of.  Inspiration for deck building can come just like inspiration for anything else creative.  Often just looking at other's work can help you create your own.

I don't know how long this use for my Journal I never use will last but do at least have a few other entires for it planned.

This is a list of some of the most important Magic articles past and present that I feel every magic player needs to read at some point.  If there are any articles you have read and liked or think are important go ahead and post a link to them.