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The Four-Headed Scourge Review: Blue!

Evidently, two heads are better than one; all your average Joe readers seem to agree on this. What’s better than two heads? If you said three, you’re not”thinking outside the box.” You’re not”ahead of the curve.” A three-headed review would be the next logical progression. But several people may think of that and saturate the market with it, eroding its novelty at record speed. Hence, I present to you… The four-headed Scourge review!

By

I would like to start this week by going on record saying that I do not dislike [author name="Jeff Cunningham"]Jeff Cunningham[/author]. He is a good man and a humorous writer. I wish everyone could be just like him. You know, like in Being John Malkovich.


You probably should have figured out by now that the”Nate Hittomy” article was actually written by me. Remember two articles back when I said I would try to write an article as badly as possible and see if the hordes still came a-throngin’? Evidently, I was serious.


There are a few problems with testing that theory, though; first, how were you supposed to know it was me by looking at the byline? Second, my articles apparently have a rather low hit rate regardless. A good day for me is still a bad day for most, which is a little disheartening, considering the fact that (despite any cutesy comments or joking asides) I do quality work, and most of you wouldn’t know a good article if it sprouted teeth, leapt from your monitor, and bit you in the…


Hmm. This isn’t going well. I’m gonna start over.


I would like to start this week by going on record saying that I like [author name="Jeff Cunningham"]Jeff Cunningham[/author]. He’s funny and a talented writer, and he’s a decent human being, even if he can’t defeat such luminaries as Modhead and Chola in money drafts. And I can’t forget”No-Butt.” That’s beside the point. The point is, I was just kidding. And Jeff read the article before I posted it! That’s right, kids, the Magic world around you is as fake as War of the Worlds or the moon landing. At the end of the day, after the articles have all been written and the final life points have been taken away from the worthiest of mages, PTR sits down to a nice cup of tea with Geordie Tait, Eric Froehlich and Jose Barbero take a leisurely stroll on the beach, and Mike Long runs off to teach an Ethics seminar. We’re all characters in a book. None of this is real.


Hmm. I’ve said too much. That wasn’t really clever or amusing, and it was rather convoluted. It was tired, it’s been done. That was quite a lot of digression, even for me. I’m starting over. Last time, I promise.


I would like to start this week by going on record saying that I love [author name="Jeff Cunningham"]Jeff Cunningham[/author]. He’s an incredibly funny guy, and from all accounts, a very good man, too. Read his work on the sideboard dot com; you’ll be glad you did. I was kidding last week.


And for those of you who didn’t catch it, I suggest you go back and read Nate Hittomy’s article from last week. It was written as poorly as possible (well, I’m sure it could have been worse if more time had been put into it), as per a promise made in my Scourge Black review.


And on a more serious note, it has been brought to my attention that I don’t really have a wide fan base. Probably never will. Each week, I pour my heart and soul into this work, and for what? Absolutely nothing. The strategy is sound but no one reads it. No one appreciates anything I do. This article – nay, this column – is a colossal waste of time. You know what? I’m done. This article is over.


Tim Aten

The Scum of the Earth

[email protected]


Okay, fine. I’ll pretend like people actually read my stuff. It’ll be fun, like playing a character in a movie. A little denial helps us all get through the day, does it not?


There is a little bit of pressure for me, even though more people read Nate Hittomy’s article than mine. And yes, I know you know that that was actually me. I’m not trying to”fake” a new identity, like one Peppermint von Corduroy; I was just making an analogy, or something. The point is, if you’re reading this you’re in a tiny minority. We’re talkin'”black hockey player” minority, here.


But there’s still pressure, since I have half-a-dozen people who I either respect immensely or who admit freely to being fans of mine (or in several cases both); these people read the articles expecting quality. I don’t want to let you all down. You know who you are.


In case you don’t, here are your names:

There may be others. I’m probably forgetting a name or two. But these are the people I’m trying to write for. If an article sucks, take it up with them. If they hated it too, I’ll get fired, possibly tarred and feathered, and be left to myself to drown my sorrows in Jack Daniels and Robitussin.


I’d sort of like a fan club. It can be a cult, and the members can have, like, t-shirts and a mailing and stuff. If you’re interested, message me at the usual e-mail address. I can envision it now: The Tim Aten Underground.


No, that’s just plain stupid. Disregard that.


Well, this article has been sort of weird. I’ll try to be more”mainstream” next week when I review Scourge White for Limited – a controversial topic. I’ll start with an anecdote or two, such as how the author of the pirate songs once said,”Hegstad is the only man I’d ever consider kissing,” get into the meat of the article, write my top 5 songs of the week, and sign off. You have to stick to what works, you know.


I’ll leave you with some lyrics to my favorite song.


“They’ll force you down

And strap you in

Now we agree and understand.”


Tim Aten

The Scum of the Earth

[email protected]


Actually, I guess I’m not done with the article, since I just remembered that I haven’t told you in what order to pick the Scourge Blue cards. And by”just remembered,” I mean”knew all along but decided to be a wiseass.” Isn’t it pathetic what I’ve reduced myself to? Parlor tricks and shenanigans. The old”fake the end of the article” gag. What the hell is wrong with me? I hope I die. No, really I do.


But yeah, now that the obligatory buffoonish introduction has been successfully breached, it’s time to get at the Scourge Blue review. Before I start, I’d like to encourage you all to tune in after the review for this week’s installment of RyanG’s Corner.


I’ve been thinking about the best way to go about this, and my thoughts keep returning to the two-headed reviews. Evidently, two heads are better than one; all your average Joe readers seem to agree on this. What’s better than two heads? If you said three, you’re not”thinking outside the box.” You’re not”ahead of the curve.” A three-headed review would be the next logical progression. But several people may think of that and saturate the market with it, eroding its novelty at record speed. Hence, I present to you…


The Four-Headed Scourge Review

I have gathered an elite team to review Scourge blue. First, there’s me. My credentials speak for themselves – namely, I play a lot of Magic and used to have funky hair. Second, there’s Joey Bags, who you’ll remember from my mock-multi-headed review. Even though his simple remarks were in jest at the time, he knows his stuff in Limited, and his knowledge will be invaluable. Third, I’ve recruited local player Aaron Schulz for the multiplayer perspective on the cards. And finally, local legend”Hot” Karl Scott will wrap things up with a concise review of the cards’ overall quality.


And I know what you’re thinking: Why not be way ahead of the game and have a five-headed review? Man, that’s just retarded. Are you some sort of idiot? How can you expect to go places in this world making asinine comments like that?


Okay, that was a little excessive, but I’m not going to start over. Instead, Hot Karl, Aaron, Bags, and I will jump right into…


1. Day of the Dragons

Tim: Blue’s only”bomb” in the set, one need only read this card to determine its obscene power. That statement may be a little misleading, since it’s not quite as good as it looks. In several cases you’d rather turn -most- of your creatures into dragons, leaving one or two utility creatures back. But hey, nothing ends the game quicker than five or six 5/5 fliers.


A word of note: There is no way for your opponent to screw you out of your creatures using the stack. If the Day is Wiped Clean with the comes-into-play on the stack, all that happens is that you get dragons permanently; your removed creatures will never come back.


Joey Bags: I won’t lie. I tend to favor spells and creatures that I can cast within the first few turns of the game. This costs seven, and therefore I cringe a little when I pick it up for my deck. However, I’m not cringing because the card is not good; in fact, if you resolve it, one attack is usually enough to finish the game. And it is indeed a first-pick quality card, but you must make sure that you have a fairly heavy commitment to blue when you draft it. As Tim said, there is really no drawback to the card, besides its casting cost (and don’t kid yourself; seven mana, three blue can be a little tough to muster sometimes, and when you draw it in your opening hand it’s a virtual mulligan). I’m not as big a fan of this card as some people, but that doesn’t mean you’ll catch me passing it along to you any time soon if I’m playing blue.


Aaron: This card is insane. It lets you make enough big creatures to take out two or three opponents in a single turn. Combine this with Anger so they won’t see it coming. I like putting this in my Squirrel decks. Think I have 10 1/1 tokens? Nope, I have ten giant dragons!!


Hot Karl: How dragon-ful!


2. Mischievous Quanar

Joey Bags: This is more like it. This card has so many uses its scary, from its most simple use as a blue Snarling Undorak to more complex situations involving the”Fork” ability. I had this card in a Team Sealed PTQ over this past weekend and it was handy each and every time I cast it; the most disturbing situation that came about was when my opponent attempted to Smother my morph on my end step with a morph of his own on the board, and ended up virtually Smothering his own creature while I’m left with a 3/3.


Now of course, it is still only a morph creature, and a 3/3 after it unmorphs, so its impact on the board will usually be more subtle, but with enough mana available, this will make any player think twice about casting anything that can be”forked.” I’d rather have this than Day of the Dragons, but only because it always will be useful, if not as obviously game-winning.


Tim: Brutal and efficient, the Quanar is probably going to be a first-pick if you’re playing blue. It would be a decent card even if it didn’t do anything when you flipped it; blue can benefit from quick bodies this large. If you manage to fork something, you’ll probably be in pretty good shape. And it’s not just for targeted removal. Your opponent wants to Rush of Knowledge? You get to Rush, too, and yours is for at least five cards. Later in the game, you can flip the Quanar down again, and possibly have enough mana during your turn to fork your own spells. Double Cruel Revival! Erratic Explosion a creature and your opponent! Syphon Soul for four!


Well, you know.


Aaron: This card is insane too. She-SHE. Like, being able to copy any spell played when there are so many people at the table is good. How do you get the mana to do all this, you ask? It involves Early Harvest, Cunning Wish, Mirari, and a few other cards. It’s a great combo. Get your hands on the Quanars before they skyrocket in price!


Hot Karl: How mischievous!


3. Pemmin’s Aura

Tim: We all know that Morphling was the inspiration for this card. Almost as many of us know how ludicrously powerful Morphling was. It could attack for five in the air, block the biggest of attackers (on the turn after it attacked, mind you), and couldn’t be killed with targeted removal. As long as you had enough mana, it could do almost anything.


Now, you can bless any creature with those talents; the bigger the creature, the better. Put it on a utility man, like a Lavamancer’s Skilled Mistform Wall or a Timberwatch Elf, to abuse the”untap” ability. In a pinch, you can put it on one of your opponent’s creatures and”pump” its toughness down to zero. The only two liabilities for this card are its double-blue cost and the possibility that the creature will die in response to you putting Aura on it.


Joey Bags: At first, I was not sold on how good this card actually is. I mean, it requires four mana to actually do anything, which seems very limited, and it is a creature enchantment, providing the opportunity for an opponent to garner some easy card advantage. However, once this thing gets in play and active, the game becomes very difficult to lose. On something as simple as a Gravel Slinger, this becomes a fine attacker and a disturbingly effective deterrent. The ability to dominate a game on utility creatures and the pseudo-removal aspects of the card are just gravy. A welcome addition to any deck willing to support a double blue spell with blue activation costs.


Aaron: This card is so good too. All you need is a Wirewood Channeler and an elf and you win the game with a huge Fireball. This is best in combo decks. Otherwise, just play Morphling, unless you don’t have any.


Hot Karl: How aurrific!


Okay, well, this is getting tedious. And I think I’ve overplayed the”make fun of two-headed reviews” angle. You get the point. I apologize to Mr. Telfer if he thinks this is excessive, since I’m starting to get a little tired of it myself. As far as the first three cards go, Bags’s and my assessments should be strategically valid, so go with those. I’ll take care of the remaining 24 cards myself. Let’s see if I remember how to do this…


4. Rush of Knowledge

You’ve been going back and forth with your opponent for awhile, the board is stable, and your hands have dwindled down to one or two cards. Then you play this, draw four or five cards or even more, and simply win. Sounds like a fine card to me.


This entry has been rather Wise-esque so far, but since he doesn’t write set reviews anymore, I’m sure he won’t mind. Anyway, play cautiously with this – don’t let all your creatures die if you’re planning on casting it soon; don’t play this on a turn where you should really be trying to advance your board position instead; don’t play this with only one non-land permanent if you think your opponent might kill it in response; and so on.


5. Shoreline Ranger

The landcyclers are really good. I cannot stress this point enough. If you need a land, cycle this for an island. Otherwise, content yourself with your 3/4 flier. Not really much to this. What puts this card over the top is its tribe; not all tribes were created equal. With the full block in place, it seems that the best type of creatures to be are soldiers and zombies. Clerics and elves are okay, and there are a few goblin effects, but it’s the soldiers and zombies that have the most relevant effects – Cruel Revival, Frontline Strategist, Daru Stinger, the respective Warchiefs… The list goes on and on….


What was I talking about? Oh, right. Even at six mana, 3/4 evasion soldiers are of the highest quality.


6. Riptide Survivor

The key to playing this little wizard is to flip it up when you have no cards in hand, or just a few bad ones, when at all possible. In the late game, this becomes an Ancestral Recall and can break a stalemate in a similar manner to that of the Rush of Knowledge. In the early game, you can just drop it face-down and do with it what you will. Again, this probably goes without saying by now, but this one should usually be played face-down. I think most creatures with morph are like that, with notable exceptions including Snapping Thragg and Snarling Undorak.


7. Frozen Solid

It doesn’t kill a creature outright. It sucks a little if you play it on an untapped man. It has two blue in the casting cost and is susceptible to all the standard enchantment removal effects. That said, it’s a reasonable facsimile for removal in a color decidedly lacking in such cards.


It’s a nice answer for problem cards like Timberwatch Elf, Sparksmith, and Twisted Abomination. If you happen to be red, comboing this with a pinger of some sort will solve your creature problems in a hurry. This isn’t to say, of course, that you need an Embermage Goblin or Lavamancer’s Skill to make this worthwhile; I’d say this card is”solid,” but no one likes horrible puns.


After the next card, blue dips into the realm of the mediocre rather quickly; it’s one of the weakest colors yet again. Red and green are no walk in the park, either; the most powerful decks nowadays will likely feature either white or black.


8. Aphetto Runecaster

This card is especially good in red/blue and blue/white. In some blue/white decks, you’ll have a lot of cheap morph tricks; in many blue/red decks, half or more of the creatures can come into play face down. Cards like Gravel Slinger, Frontline Strategist, Echo Tracer, and Skirk Marauder combo well with this, since they are quality creatures with morph. At the very least, you can always safely block their morphs with this, as you’ll get a card out of the deal no matter what the opponent turns face up. Needless to say, since a 2/3 for four mana isn’t that great, how highly you pick this card depends on how many solid morph men your deck has in it. And hilarity shall ensue when you combine this with Wall of Deceit or Master of the Veil (targeting itself enables you to pay 2U at any time to draw a card).


9. Raven Guild Initiate

Wow. What a dropoff. I mean, this card’s alright, but blue is full of filler in this set. Like with Wirewood Symbiote, you should use the”cost” of this card to your advantage. You’ll be able to save one of your precious birds from removal or evil enemy forces at faster-than-instant speed with this li’l humdinger. There’s potential for many a combat step where they attack with two morphs (or something similar) and you block one with this and one with a bird. Damage on the stack, flip over the Initiate, let the bird fly home to safety, and your opponent will probably spend all his mana flipping one morph and be forced to let the other die. In some cases you can just play this as a Mistform Wall, but that’s usually not the optimal plan.


10. Dispersal Shield

This card isn’t that good, but it’s still useful enough that you’re never ashamed to have one. The best use of this card is, going second, to counter your opponent’s attempted morph (which by now I’m sure you know you can do even with nothing but lands in play), then play one of your own. It’s almost like you went first.


You’re not always going to be able to do this, for various reasons; hence, the card isn’t great. In the mid-game, you want to be building your team, using your mana as efficiently as possible to commit the best threats to the board. This often means tapping below two mana, meaning you won’t be able to counter what your opponent does. Even if you went first, and on turn 5 you dropped, say, a Smokespew Invoker, leaving your two mana open… Your opponent can just play something that costs five.


Suppose you’re trying to debate whether to play a creature or sit on your counter. What if your opponent plays nothing? Or even worse, something you can’t counter with the permanents you have on the board? Many times, by the time you can afford to leave mana open for this, it’s too late. So, basically, this reads”counter target morph” for much of the game; in the late game, it can do so much more. Play this correctly and it will serve you well.


11. Stifle

As is the case with many rares in this color, the jury is out on Stifle barring further information. The information is hard to come by since Stifle is a little -rarer- than the other cards I’m gauging. The versatility of this card is simply astounding. Just about anything that doesn’t involve playing a spell or attacking can be thwarted with a simple blue mana. You can counter a swampcycle, a Timberwatch activation, an Aphetto Exterminator’s -3/-3, the bonus from Gempalm Avenger, and much more. But I will be neither the first nor the last to state the following: this card really feels like it wants to be a cantrip. There will always be a target for Stifle in your opponent’s deck, so it won’t be a dead card; however, just because you can counter something doesn’t mean you should. Try to get a card out of this if at all possible; the best use will probably be countering morph-triggers during combat.


12. Coast Watcher

Unless you have a good reason to suspect half or more of your opponents will be green, or unless you really need the soldier or two-drop, this is best as a sideboard card. It doesn’t attack for an appreciable amount, it dies to everything, and if your opponent isn’t blue, it’s worse than an Escape Artist. It’s a decent 22nd-23rd card.


13. Mistform Warchief

I like this card; it’s sort of like a blue Elf. In fact you can make it a blue elf if you so desire. Durr.


This can help smooth out a high mana curve while providing you with a passable body. And if you have a decent amount of illusions in your deck, you could possibly play two discounted creatures in a turn. On turn 4 you could play Mistform Dreamer for two, make the Chief a Cleric, and toss out a Zealous Inquisitor for two.


Its size and late-game capabilities aren’t too impressive, though. I encouraged Bags to take this over Chartooth Cougar in a MODO draft yesterday since his three opens were Rorix, Kilnmouth, Dragon Mage. Thoughts?


14. Mercurial Kite

The bird with the bad rap. It’s a 2/2 flier with a decent ability for four mana, yet you’re still disappointed if you have to play this guy. That’s because there are superior replacements for it, like Ascending Aven and Keeneye Aven, that you should probably have in your deck already if you’ve chosen to pursue blue, as well as other fliers depending on your other color. But still… Two in the air per turn is two in the air per turn. It would be more playable if it were a Soldier, but it’s not, so get over it.


15. Thundercloud Elemental

Seven mana is quite a bit to spend, even on a 3/4 flier. By the time you get to that mana, there may not be that many relevant two-toughness creatures to lock down. Its activation costs are quite prohibitive as well; if you use the”all lose flying ability” to get through with this, you’ve got yourself a grossly overcosted Covert Operative. I hear from Josh Smith that this is good against white decks, though, so give it a try out of the board. It should be hard to remove and do a good job of shutting down their offense.


16. Decree of Silence

When you pay eight mana, you want to be able to repeatedly give opponents’ creatures -3/-3, or attack for six haste damage in the air, or even hit em up with a little Scion of Darkness. Countering the next three spells they play is not the optimal ability.


It does nothing to affect what’s already on the board, so one would hope you’re ahead when you spend all your mana to play this. Yes, I know, you can still play your own spells when this is out, but that really doesn’t matter much. And six mana for Dismiss is a little much. If you can afford the luxury of leaving six mana untapped, God bless you. This is getting a little long-winded, so if you have any questions or comments about this card, please feel free to e-mail me. In essence, no.


17. Scornful Egotist

An off-color morph that provides a marginal bonus when you play something like Rush of Knowledge or Torrent of Fire. Even if you have three Torrents, don’t take these early since they’ll come late. And aren’t very good.


18. Raven Guild Master

This becomes slightly better than an off-color morph if you have a plethora – and I do mean plethora – of ways of getting it through unimpeded. You don’t want to be spending your mana to Millstone ten cards if your opponent can just win with the other thirty. In order to deck an opponent, this would have to get through twice, and sometimes even three times; no easy task considering the meager body.


19. Temporal Fissure

This is awfully expensive and, since it’s a sorcery, unlikely to be stormed. And of course, it doesn’t permanently solve your problems. It can provide some tempo or stall should you not be blessed enough to have an Echo Tracer or Essence Fracture. It’s actually not half-bad in hyper-aggressive blue/white or blue/black decks; unfortunately, you only have so many non-creature slots, and these will hopefully be filled with higher quality cards. You may consider siding this in against green or decks with a few enchant creatures.


20. Dragon Wings

Believe me, there really aren’t that many six-mana creatures that end up making your decks. And in blue, if you spend six on something it will probably already come with wings. This is at home in a blue/green deck, where its cycling ability makes it maindeckable. Cycle it early and bring it back on a huge monster later. This card fills a niche previously occupied by Crown of Ascension, making the latter totally unplayable now. In general, though, there’s a reason these go so late.


21. Metamorphose

The risks involved with this card should make you think twice about playing it. It gets much better in the late game when the opponent is less likely to have something nasty to drop on you. A two-mana Repel is quite powerful, but I just can’t see that I’d want to play this. You never know what an opponent could have in hand, and your perceived tempo advantage could cause you to blow an unlosable game. Time will tell whether this card is as bad as it seems.


22. Hindering Touch

A Discombobulate that doesn’t let you re-arrange the order of your deck, the Touch suffers from all the same drawbacks as Dispersal Shield while costing twice as much. Since, by definition, it has to Storm at least once, it’s virtually a hard counter; however, this does little to salvage it. Be proactive, not reactive in Limited, my good men and/or women. Side it in if they have an expensive bomb rare that you have no answers for.


23. Parallel Thoughts

Here comes the part of blue I hate. We’re down into the unplayable chaff, yet since the cards are so complicated, I have to spend a little space justifying to you and myself why they’re unplayable. This costs five and doesn’t change the position of the board, which is”not good” from a temporal standpoint. It doesn’t increase card quantity, just quality. Since you draw randomly from the pile, you may not get the card you’d like for a given situation. If your opponent destroys this, you’re out of your seven best cards. This last reason is probably the most compelling one not to play it. Granted, you could search for seven lands as a mini-Mana Severance to increase your draw quality regardless of whether they have a Daru Sanctifier (just don’t ever choose to draw from the Thoughts pile), but I don’t think I’d want to waste a slot in my deck on that. I might try siding this in if my opponent has no conceivable way of destroying it.


24. Long-Term Plans

It’s a tutor, it’s a tutor!!!


Not so fast. You’d need one insane bomb and few other outs before you’d want to play this one. There’s a delay on when you get the selected card, and by the time you get that deep in your library, the game state may have changed to the point where you’d rather have something else entirely. But at least you wasted three mana and a card on this.


25. Faces of the Past

Interesting effect, but not worth the slot. It’s too dependent on other cards and situations; in a word, it’s unreliable. The thoughts of a Cruel Revival on one of their creatures locking down the rest for a turn, or their Pinpoint Avalanche untapping the rest of your clerics may be intriguing – but in the end, it’s not powerful enough, especially considering you’ll probably both have several creature types in play, thus diluting its effectiveness.


Look, I can still write run-ons with the best of them. Not that anyone is actually reading this part.


Let’s be frank for a moment: The few people who read my”articles” do so for a chance to be entertained by my embarrassing picture. A fraction of those people also derive some amusement from my attempts at humor within the writing. No one actually reads the strategy. And those who do certainly don’t care about what I say about a piece of dung like Faces of the Past, especially considering the fact that this has become perhaps my longest article to date. I could write anything here and get away with it, like delightfully bourgeoisie profanities or the fabled Neiman-Marcus cookie recipe. Evidently, I need to pretend to ridicule”pros” to keep your interest. What if I decided to go off on a rant here about a name player? Most people would miss it, since it’s not going to be incorporated into the title of the article.


See? Look!”Gabe Walls is chubby and smelly.”* No one will ever know I write that. Unless Ferrett decides to title this article”Scourge Blue, and Gabe Walls is Chubby and Smelly.” I may have spoken that into existence.


Oh, Jesus, there’re still two cards left?


Ugh.


26. Mind’s Desire

This card is ridiculously good if you set it up properly… In DC-10, that is. This is probably only playable in Type One, where you can play lots of spells and generate enough mana to play this in one explosive turn. In draft, you get a random card out of your deck, which may very well be a land. If you somehow have enough mana to play a spell before this, or can trick your opponent into playing something, you’ll get two random, possibly-land cards out of your deck. Who cares that they’re”free”? Look how much you spent to get the free spells!


27. Brain Freeze

Look what I said about Raven Guild Master. On a good day – a very, very good day – you’ll get to mill twelve with this. That leaves them plenty of cards to work with to finish embarrassing you as much as you’ve embarrassed yourself by playing this garbage. I would have thought that maybe the praise”Nate Hittomy” gave this card could have given me away, since not even the dumbest player at your store would run this. I bet PTR could break it, though.


Wow, I just name-dropped. It had to be done to make a point, though: PTR and Huey can sometimes win with the most bizarre cards. The reason I feel the need to say this is that Huey may have played the Freeze before and won with it, and I don’t want to incur his wrath, since he is large.


And I don’t mean large in a bad way. I mean it in a purely objective way.


Thanks for reading. Even though you and I know (I’m talking to solely the Ferrett here) that no one made it to the bottom of this article. I doubt he’ll even publish it. I hope he at least liked it.


And now, the part of the article you’ve all been waiting for…


RyanG’s Corner

It’s time once again for the bi-weekly musings of Florida’s premiere fashion expert/conspiracy theorist, Ryan Golden. This week’s edition seems somehow more caustic than last week’s. From here until I write some sort of Joydrop lyric, these will be Ryan’s words and not my own. I take only the smallest fraction of personal responsibility for what is said here.


  • Jeff Cunningham“Ten Mistakes I Made Last Week” is clearly an even more blatant attempt at reaching his word count than Aten’s”humorous” anecdotes.

  • Gary Wise negative portrayal of 1999 Canadian National Champion Mark Rajotte in his recent article will most likely yield a subsequent apology for his gross lack of professionalism in a manner we see so often from the bipolar Canadian.

  • Richard Hoaen’s clashing baseball attire is, in fact, fashionable.

  • Nick Carter’s beloved girlfriend, Mandy Moore, has in fact dumped him, prompting him to say,”If you date anyone else I’ll just die.” You do the math.

  • Ben Stark’s article on a competing website entitled”Mmm, Brains,” is downright vulgar, unbeknownst to him or the editor. He further admitted that the article was edited to such a degree that all he can take credit for is the decklist; any word with a length of over six letters was not his own.

  • The real reason US Nationals was moved to San Diego this year was due to the fact that Wizards could not coincide the event with Gay Disney in Orlando, as they have done two years previously. I swear this to be the truth.

  • A Mexican by the name of Johnny Gonzales may or may not have succeeded in sneaking into U.S. Nationals.

  • Jon Becker has admitted to seeing Jordan Berkowitz and William”Baby Huey” Jensen in matching Adidas jogging suits. I really do not want to think about this.

“This is the line that will fall now that there’s nothing left that can shut you down.”

– Joydrop,”The Line”


(Get this song).


Tim Aten

The Scum of the Earth

[email protected]


*- Don’t get mad, Gabe, I still love ya. And no one is reading this anyway. If for some reason this bothers you, which I doubted it would, otherwise I wouldn’t have written it, I’ll make it up to you in money drafts in Detroit. And nice job at Nats 🙂