Spectacular Failures

These cards are the most limiting, useless piles of trash you could possibly find.  I'm not necessarily going to tell you that they are thoroughly unplayable (though one certainly is at the moment).  That's the beauty of well-done CCGs when there are so many possibilities that even the worst cards can have their place in the right deck.  In most cases though, you're probably better off avoiding them.  Keep in mind, this is assuming you have infinite resources at your disposal, so I'm accounting for all the rares, ultra-rares, fixed cards, and promos that are legal to play.

So Bright & Shiny

Finally, I get to start writing about individual cards!  I've been keeping everything so general lately, because I want to raise the overall strategic quality of people's decks.  Of course, no CCG strategy section can be complete without single-card evaluations.  I really don't like doing individual cards for whole articles though, so I'll try to have a bit of a theme with this.  This week, I'm going to go over what I consider to be the best and worst Ultra-Rares in the set.  Maybe I can watch my ego inflate as my opinion ends up shaping card prices.

The Art of Friendship: tactics for common situations

This guy has a plan for every situation and readily adapts on the fly.

I've given you lots of advice on how to build your deck.  This time, let's examine some common game scenarios and what you can do to turn things around.  Many of the options you can do will really have to a lot to do with how your deck is designed, because you'll constantly be planning for the future (unless you've entered the late game, in which you sometimes have to see if you can win that turn or solidify the game).  In learning Chess, I was taught to evaluate the opening, midgame, and endgame.  The opening is how you plan on getting your forces out of the gate immediately and start the foundation of your strategy.  In the midgame, players have already claimed a problem or two, maybe even had a problem faceoff already.  Troublemakers are known to extend the opening for a while if they're especially, ahem, troublesome.  In the endgame, it's a race to see how you can get those bonuses quickly while preventing your opponent from doing the same.  Here's some scenarios you will likely encounter.
(Please forgive the strange word coloration.  Something's going on after I post links and I can't undo it without basically rewriting the whole article.  It's late as it is and I have work early on Mondays.  Maybe I can edit this later.)

We Can Work Together: how colors pair up

Because when I think of ponies working together...

Although some rogue decks exist, you pretty much always need 2 colors for your deck to really function.  I hear people asking all the time what could be done for X & Y color combination.  Personally, I think this is actually kind of backward, which is why my last article was more about "what colors work for what I want to do?"  Still, I know many players here play because they like their favorite characters, so here you go.  Pick your favorite two colors and I've come up with strategies to make them work.  I've arranged them in clockwise color order, starting with blue at the top.  If you just want to find your preferred pairing, that can at least help you find the general area for it.  These are only my suggestions, by the way.  I've heard of people trying 3 colors or even just one.  I always encourage experimentation.  This will probably help steer you the right way, though.

Choose Your Weapon: various deck styles

In a collectible card game, there are always a very large number of options for your decks.  How do you choose the right combination of cards to make things work?  It's more than just plugging a bunch of cards that look good.  You can't just make a Yu-Gi-Oh deck out of all strong monsters.  They have to work together in some way.  In this article, I'll examine the general ideas behind how decks typically work and how to make the colors do that.

My Little Judgment: Interesting rules problems

So sorry for my absence lately.  Blogger was having a problem regarding adding images, and I know you all would not enjoy big blocks of text.  Have something to make it at least look nice, amirite?
Anyway, the subject today is going to be my attempt to give some commonly asked rules questions some answers, because if it's being asked here, it's likely being asked elsewhere.  Firstly, everyone ought to check EnterPlay's FAQ page.

WhatisthisIdonteven?: Tutorial

I've heard there are still people who don't know how the My Little Pony CCG is played and want to learn.  I know there are plenty of tutorials out there, but here's my take to help them out.  Since I know everyone learns different and I know I have a rather unorthodox teaching method, maybe this will be the thing that tips you toward understanding.