A Critical Review of Spikes Academy – Paulo Vitor’s Online Magic: The Gathering Classes

If you are interested in taking classes at Spikes Academy, you can do so here: https://spikesacademy.com/p/the-ultimate-mtg-course-by-pvddr

Be sure to check out my review of the Next Level Series of books by Patrick Chapin here: https://youtu.be/foD6gqBU5mQ

Improve Your Magic: The Gathering Gameplay by learning about Card Advantage here: https://youtu.be/yUnytR_VDng
Or just by by watching each and every Tolarian Tutor on my playlist: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q6aUeTn-DYY&t=0s&list=PLvqw7t0kbGX_w_HxyEq2DGzLpuATyxgKi&index=2

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A Critical Review of Spike’s Academy, the online Magic: The Gathering course by Paulo Vitor Damo Da Rosa. Spike’s Academy is an intensive online course in Magic The Gathering strategy developed and hosted by Hall of Fame Pro Magic Player Paulo Vitor, where over the course of several hours you the viewer are taken through lessons covering fundamentals, virtual card advantage, limited, sideboarding and more.

Paulo Vitor’s Magic resume is indeed impressive:

A member of the Magic Hall OF Fame, he has been player of the Year, has achieved twelve Pro Tour top eights to his name, including wins at PT San Juan in 2010 and at PT Hour of Devastation. It is no over exaggeration to say that Damo da Rosa is one of the most accomplished Magic players of all time. He is also an extremely popular writer of Magic content, focussing on strategy with an analytical approach to the game, he often boils a game down to the key decisions that led to a win or a loss.

But does this online class truly teach the skills to help bring your gameplay to the next level? Let’s take a look!

Spike Academy’s Courses are comprised of a series of online videos, annotated with other references such as footage of specific games of Magic, and peppered with online quizzes. The course is divided into 6 sections, covering a variety of topics including, Fundamentals, Resources, Combat, Sideboarding, Limited, and Mental and Psychological strategies. Within those sections are lessons such as How to draft a deck, signaling, combat math, instants in combat, virtual card advantage, bluffing and defending from a bluff.

The classes are aimed for an audience who already plays Magic, and want to get to the next level. As such, these video lessons are streamlined, never covering basic concepts or rules of the game. It assumed you have these basic skills and intends to go forward.

This is a critical point to note: do not enroll in this series if you are looking for beginner’s tips and tricks, or basic rules.

To help put the skill level in perspective, my own Tolarian Tutor series which viewers should be familiar with is clearly in the beginner-intermediate level. The previously reviewed Next Level books by Patrick Chapin, fall between Intermediate and advanced, and I would place SPike’s Academy as at least on par with this, if not more squarely in the advanced category.