Thursday, December 25th – I know some of my readers get amused at how often I get up on my soapbox about various issues I have with the current state of Magic. A lot of it seems to boil down to 1) Blue is too powerful and 2) Green gets the shaft. Yeah, yeah, we’ve certainly heard that before, ho-hum, next please…
Thursday, December 18th – So what did you think of Worlds? I know Wizards goes out of its way to promote the personalities on the Pro Tour, but honestly I was much more interested to see what the Pros did to further define the new Standard and Extended formats. Standard to see what netdeckers might be bringing to Friday Night Magic, and Extended to figure out what deck to play at the local PTQ in January.
Thursday, December 11th – The end of the year is often a time for retrospect… and one thing I realized was that I have been pretty negligent in attending to my starcitygeezer email inbox. So, allow me to remedy that!
Thursday, December 4th – As someone with a casual streak who also enjoys finding bargains, I’ve been enjoying The Ferrett’s recent Casual Player’s Bargain-Hunting Guide series. But a thought suddenly struck me like a lightning bolt as I read about acquiring playsets of certain cards – it’s been somewhere going on two years since I actually built a casual deck where I worried about playsets…
Thursday, October 23rd – This past Saturday I got to play in another Elder Dragon Highlander game. This time we only had seven people muster out. Last time I didn’t get to play, and they tried something different – letting everyone choose an old Vanguard card from Arena seasons past to go with their general, and from what I hear things got a little degenerate due to the combo engines you could set up. This time around they decided to cull the “broken” Vanguard cards and hand out the rest to people at random…
Thursday, October 16th – Star City’s deck database has a great jump on the fall Standard metagame, recently uploading the Top 16 decks from their “Mana Overboard†Magic boat cruise qualifier Sunday. Not only is this great information for building your gauntlet for States, but it also gives particularly relevant insight into what you might expect to show up at the Star City $5K Standard Open two weeks prior.
Wednesday, July 30th – Isn’t it interesting to think that Oona’s Prowler never got much play? It’s a three-power flier for two mana, with a drawback that is not really much of a drawback. Pitch Evershrike to the graveyard on turn 3 with Oona’s Prowler, then spend 3 mana to put it into play with, say, Edge of Divinity attached, for a 7/7 flier. Is that worth all the trouble?
Wednesday, July 16th – The Eventide spoiler is out, and ‘tis the season for set reviews. While you’ll be getting the Spike-side view from the Premium gang, and the casual review from some of the free side regulars, I figure I’d go ahead and give my takes on it too.
Wednesday, June 18th – Mark Rosewater recently mentioned that, starting with Shards of Alara, each set is going to be comparably smaller than the sets sizes we’ve currently been seeing. Personally, this thrills me. As someone who likes to play competitively, it’s difficult to acquire a playset of so many cards out there that you want to build decks with, especially since we’re living in the era of Tier 2 cards, which widens the pool of “must-have” playables.
Tuesday, May 27th – The last time I went to battle at an Elder Dragon Highlander game, I got horribly color-screwed nearly the entire game and vowed to play Mono-Green the next time around in the hopes that mana troubles wouldn’t be nearly as bad. Green isn’t exactly known for its powerful multiplayer cards, so I wanted to use that notion as camouflage to lull people into not really regarding me as a threat.
Wednesday, May 21st – In the first age of Magic, Blue was dominant for two perceived reasons: its ability to counter spells, and its ability to draw cards. These elements were considered to be “in-flavor” for Blue, when in reality this was giving one color dominion over two fundamental, basic mechanics of the game – playing cards and drawing cards.
Wednesday, April 9th – I can’t help it; now that we’ve started getting serious previews of the upcoming set Shadowmoor, I’m totally bored of current Standard. I want to make decks for future Standard, the Standard of the upcoming $5K Mega-Magic Weekend tournament that Star City’s holding in my backyard on May 10th… Warning: contains spoilers.
Wednesday, April 2nd – For the last EDH, I played a rather ridiculously tricky and powerful Experiment Kraj deck, so this time around I wanted to be more or less straightforward. Yes, I had some powerful cards, but I didn’t work in any infinite combo engines. The sickest thing I had going was Kiki-Jiki and either Reveillark or Karmic Guide…
Wednesday, March 26th – My life is full-tilt boogie busy, but I’ve been making an effort lately to play in more sanctioned tournaments, for all the usual reasons – it’s fun, it helps keep my play skills from atrophying further, and gives me at least semi-relevant stuff to write about. One side benefit I was looking forward to was an increase in the number of Magic Player Reward cards I’d get mailed to me…
Wednesday, March 19th – While restocking my trade binder the other day, I ran across a foil Jhoira of the Ghitu, a card that I’ve always found intriguing but had not yet fully tested out her potential. The foil Jhoira looks awesome – her eyes flash and it’s like she’s radiating power!
