Sean Plott, best known for his Starcraft II history and commentating career, has started up a new series on the Geek and Sundry Vlogs channel called SpellSlingers. This series focuses on playing Magic: The Gathering, starting with M14, which released earlier this year.
Be a better Magic player?
What’s interesting and really beneficial to this series is that Day9 is already an established gamer and personality who has a loyal following. Earlier this year, he was invited to the Magic: The Gathering Pro Tour for the Dragon’s Maze edition–as a guest. Though some were upset that Plott didn’t actually qualify for the event and thus didn’t really belong there, Plott’s brief appearence in the even stream brought about 100,000 extra viewers, if not more. This was one of the main reasons he was invited to the Tour at all, considering he isn’t actually a pro Magic player.
The series, at least in this episode, takes the time to explain what land (mana) is and how to tell how many of what land you need for a certain card. The episode also explains power and toughness for creatures. Given that Day9’s Starcraft II career is focused around becoming a better gamer and analyzing Starcraft, it’s probably safe to assume that a key aspect to this series is going to be learning how to play Magic. This is great to see–it’s definitely not hard to learn how to play, but seeing it broken down this way can certainly help those who prefer to learn through visuals.
Bonus thoughts
The commentary throughout the episode is pretty funny, and the time they take in between plays to give information or talks with Bobak and Sean are a really interesting way to format the episodes. Both players recognize common mistakes that most Magic players make–especially in the case where you smack yourself because you forgot to buff your creatures before (or after, depending on whether it’s an instant card or not) your combat phase.
Plott isn’t the only personality who has recently taken to MTG; Felicia Day, founder of Geek and Sundry, also plays. And hates white.
As a Black/White girl, I have to say that four Knight Exemplars, matched with Masks of Avacyn, plus Avacyn herself is a pretty sweet combo that gets really stupid really quickly. Against a green Hydra, it’s ideal.
Teysa and Obzedat, Ghost Council are also amazing cards and are my favorite two.
