Magic The Gathering Advanced Strategy Guide: For Advanced and Expert Magic Players [Paperback]

Mark Justice (Author), Tim Dedopulos (Author)

Book Description

Series: Magic the Gathering | Publication Date: September 17, 1998

Written for serious Magic players, the "Advanced Strategy Guide" features cards and techniques for the intricacies of high-level and tournament play. The focus of this book is on winning, and it addresses the player who already knows how to play and is approaching tournament level. Topics include: constructed deck vs. sealed deck; evaluating cards; draft tournaments; metagame; and Magic ethics. An appendix lists decks and standard decks that tournamanet players should play-test against.

Product Details

• Paperback: 128 pages
• Publisher: Thunder's Mouth Press (September 17, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1560251999
• ISBN-13: 978-1560251996
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 7.2 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (12 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #381,964 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Excellent book for building a base for future deckbuilding, November 18, 2002

By 

Ken Ng (Bangkok Thailand) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Magic The Gathering Advanced Strategy Guide: For Advanced and Expert Magic Players (Paperback)

This book is quite good in that it takes you through the author's thought processes in how to assess new card sets and as such is not limited to the latest set.

It is not a speed read as you need to take in the reasons why a particular card is good or not, otherwise you may miss the point.

Not enough detail for some cards in his stronghold example as to why they were good or bad. Without description/pictures of cards, it was also difficult for me to follow some of his analysis. I needed to have a reference book with separate descriptions of each card to get full value from his comments.

His detailed example of drafting for sealed deck play would have been better if it was easier to follow but does provide some insight into how one can build a good deck without having to go through the experience the hard way. But again would have liked more detail as to why he would have picked a certain card and not another.

All in all, I would recommend highly for players looking to move from beginner/intermediate to expert to read this.

11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Good For The Newcommer...In 1998!, January 12, 2004

By A Customer

This review is from: Magic The Gathering Advanced Strategy Guide: For Advanced and Expert Magic Players (Paperback)

This is one of the only real strategy guides for Magic that I could get my hands on when I was still starting out. Written by one of the great masters of the game, Tim Deopulos, the book gives instructions on the more advanced aspects of the game, including tournament formats, deck history, tips and tricks, and even bluffing advice. In my mind, it acts as mostly as an "advanced rulebook." However, it is now six years old. The game changed so much since Tempest was in Standard, which seems like ages to any Magic player now (Honestly, since when did you play Tempest Booster Draft?). This was even before the Sixth Edition rules upheaval, which tried to simplify the game not only for newcomers, but also for tournament players. Due to this large expansion of the games rules, this guide is now a relic of a forgotten time; when the Auratog deck was still considered a cool idea (I remind you that this is before Urza's Saga) and when Standard was still fresh out of infancy. So, in conclusion, it was a great buy way back when, but now it's just part of the discount section, along with the Homelands boosters and The Wheel of Time CCG.

15 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars well..., April 12, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Magic The Gathering Advanced Strategy Guide: For Advanced and Expert Magic Players (Paperback)

This book is good... it'll help you understand booster and rochester (i didn't knew nothing , but now i'm well informed) and it has some cool stuff BUT... -and this is the problem- it takes alot , and i mean alot of pages evaluating stronghold cards , not some intersting examples or something , the whole thing , it ends up boring you because you don't need to know what he thinks about every card of a set , he could just say 5 or 6 good examples and thats it.It didn't help much with deck construction , though those "rules" of how to build good decks will be followed by this MTG player. In short , when they said advanced player theyh mean ADVANCED , they expect you to have 4 cursed scrolls , your own set of moxes and al the rares in tempest! (kidding) Its a good book overall , but not i expected