Okay, so last week Bennie Smith kicked things off by giving you all a bunch of rogue decks to play in Type Two. Then, Geordie Tait quoted some Stallone movies while getting in a fight with a kiwi vendor at the supermarket (or was that the New Zealand National Champ?), and it looked in the forums like he might be losing his marbles. Then, the very next day, he delivers an article about Madness. Coincidence? Next, Nick Eisel delivers the extremely well-received, but constructively criticized”The Snapping Thragg Experiment Revisited“, and finally Ben Bleiweiss wrote an article for his new picture, wondering why White continues to be Magic’s red-headed step-color. I keep trying to reduce the size of this column, and the content keeps getting better, so I lose again. Go figure…
Fundamentals
Friday saw a bunch of us Theorizing with Doobie, as he (Will Rieffer) introduced most folks to the concept of Card Impact, a term you will probably hear more of in the coming months. The material is a skosh dense, but the thoughts it makes you have are pretty interesting. Of course, what else would you expect from a guy with the last name of Rieffer?
There’s a bit of a conflict of interest with me posting my own work (The Magic University: On Magic Theory) in the Digest, but when I say that it’s important that anyone who wants to write or critique Magic Theory articles for Star City while I’m editor reads this article, maybe it makes up for it? It doesn’t? Well, just pretend Geordie wrote this paragraph then. A surprising amount of readers chimed in with supportive comments about the project, and everyone should expect a proper introductory overview of the literature I’ll be covering within a week or two, and then every two or three weeks from there on out.
Constructed Strategy
In case you missed it, on Tuesday we had this guy write, and he was talking about his love of power equipment and Dump Trucks. He said something about getting a backhoe for Christmas too, and… hmm, perhaps I better speed this up. Anyway, this guy (the Dump Truck guy) wrote an article, and it talks about one of those rare instances where a Grand Prix is won with an original deck and whomever created the deck (and won the Grand Prix), actually writes an article to talk about it. Exciting stuff, but mostly for the backhoe material. Oh yeah, in a complete unrelated note, Star City would like to welcome Ben Rubin to the staff.
Thursday saw a strange amalgam of things come together. The first item was that we received an interesting deck article about Suicide Black in Standard. The second was that it had real testing results that looked, um, real. And the third was that it was written by a fellow with the last name of Xaxson. Cool deck, real testing methodology, alien name. I smell a conspiracy here… but it’s not because it finished in second place in the weekly contest.
Vintage
Many of you may have been avoiding Philip Stanton work because he regularly talks about”numbers,” and numbers, particularly when combined with words like”crunching” tends to make folks a little weak in the knees. I view this as lingering effects from High School math classes, but you may view this as incontinence. Whatever the case, Phil of Ip, Earl of Stanton (as he is often referred to), makes numbers easy, sexy, and downright hot to look at. Read his articles (in this case, Number Crunching Type I: Designing Cards For Vintage), feel smarter, but don’t harass the office accountant. Numbers aren’t that sexy.
Wednesday. Stephen Menendian. Predictions for 2004. ‘Nuff said.
Thursday. Stephen Menendian. Review of 2003. I’d use more words, but Steve used entirely too many over those two days, so I’ll cut this off rig
Issues
Usually, if you see the words”heartbreaking” and”tragic” on a Magic website, they should be written in a sarcasm font, but such is not the case with Richie Proffitt A Little Bit More Thankful. Read it, hug your loved ones, and appreciate your health a whole lot more. Get well soon, Richie!
Friday’s update was huge, so I felt a little guilty about sticking the article that officially coined the term”Oscar ‘Cinnamon Buns’ Tan” at the bottom, especially when it was an insightful and humorous issues article (called [author name="Oscar Tan"]Oscar Tan’s[/author] Sordid Love Live… Revealed!) written by one JP Meyer. Thankfully, I’m able to make up for sticking one of my favorite articles of the week at the bottom of the page by giving JP $50 in Star City credit. Consider that incentive to keep writing, even if your readers stop giving you ideas.
Humor
Dan Murphy’s On The Stack: Yam Replica was a hard article to classify, but I stuck it under humor in the end because, well, because it was funny. From the reaction of most of his fans, they thought it was funny too, and it just goes to show that Magic players love potty humor, even for Thanksgiving dinner.