It’s that time again. No, not time for me to explain how I rarely have time to write actual articles anymore – that time is long past. Instead, it is time for me to make my twice-yearly sojourn into putting my reputation as the best Standard format metagame predictor in the world on the line. Welcome to the 2005 Regionals Metagame preview.
In recent years, predicting Regionals has actually been significantly easier than predicting States. The lead up to U.S. Regionals was often for a solid three months after the release of the middle set, so by that time the format was quite ripe (some might say it was often stale), and there were few surprises to be expected. That is not the case this year. For the first time in recent memory, we get a Regionals environment that will be fun and fresh, complete with 155 new cards for you to test – cards that could possibly combine with the other thousand or so cards out there in the format into new and excitingly lethal combinations right before our very eyes. In short, this Regionals has a potential metagame that could be wild and exciting, and I could end up making a complete fool of myself.
Thankfully, Saviors is probably the least impressive third set in years when it comes to Standard-playable cards, making my job considerably easier than it otherwise could be. Thanks R&D!
And now for the tremendous, the stupendous, the has-moved-beyond-trite-into-comfortably-quaint-territory …
The Top 5 Things You Absolutely Must Know About 2005 Regionals
5) The Year of the Dark Horse?
The last time I can remember having really good underground decks appear at Regionals was in 2002, when the Madness decks came in and made life very interesting for ZevaTog and R/G players, while generally mashing Braids players with beats and card advantage far too dangerous for the psychob*tch to comprehend. I happened to be playing a Madness deck back when I was an even worse player than I am now, and bashing people with undercosted wurms and Wild Mongrels was good times, provided you were on the cusp of that wave and not forced to deal with the damned thing for the following year. Two years ago we had a shift the week before U.S. Regionals mostly caused by the Dutch, who found that Exalted Angel gave Mirari’s Wake a near bye against almost every other deck in the field, and Mono-Black Control stepped to the forefront as its own power, mashing most of the aggressive decks and control in sight. The question is, what does this year have in store for us?
The answer: More than you might think.
While Saviors is a bit underwhelming, there’s some real power there waiting to be harnessed. By this point everyone and their dog has done a set review, but we have yet to see many heavily tested decks incorporating the new cards. I would not be remotely surprised to see something like Evil Don Lim’s Erayo Lock deck come out of the Northeast Regionals to wreck house, nor would I be surprised to see a Mono-Black Control deck or five crop up in Top 8 listings, and I know for a fact that there will be Rat Deck Wins decks appearing across North America because Ink-Eyes and Persecute are ridiculous as singletons but absolutely deadly in combination. In addition to that, enterprising deckbuilders can start with a Green shell and make practically any deck you can dream of these days, while Gifts Ungiven is still sitting on the Standard sidelines, waiting for someone to put all the proper pieces together to break that tutor in half. [Hint: current 5-Color Green decks ain’t it.]
Players who show up with a tight, unknown decklist will receive a major boost, as the majority of Regionals players will not know how to play against their decks, probably conceding the sideboard wars out of sheer ignorance.
In short, expect to see more unknown decks or familiar-looking decks with unexpected elements than you would normally run across, and also expect these decks to make more runs at the Top 8 than they have in years. Players that have thoroughly tested creations that stray from the beaten path should receive a greater benefit on June 25th than at any Regionals in recent memory. Provided they beat Tooth, Red Decks, and Mono-Green, that is…
4) The Barry Bonds Principle
Mike Flores is a close friend of mine, but from time to time he says things that are confusing or downright wrong. Take for example his stance on Sensei’s Divining Top. Mike thinks the Top is awesome in his Big Red deck (and he’s right), but has derided it continuously in Tooth and Nail decks in Standard. Somehow this doesn’t add up, especially from someone who tries to be theoretically sound in most of what he does.
While driving home from the last Power 9 in Richmond, Jim Ferraiolo and I came up with The Barry Bonds Principle to explain why the Top and cards like it (Brainstorm) are so good. Back in the day, Barry Bonds was a skinny black guy with incredible athleticism who put up excellent numbers for a National League left fielder. Then somewhere along the way (most people point to 1992, with 2001 as the start of the juiced years), Barry went from “excellent player” to one of the greatest hitters of all time. Now some people are going to point to the fact that Barry’s head grew three hat sizes during that time as the reason why he became a ridiculous hitter, and I have to admit that the roidage had something to do with it. However, the real difference in Bonds the Hitter came as a result of a change in philosophy in pitches he would swing at.
Instead of just swinging at strikes, Barry* schooled himself to only swing at “good strikes” or pitches that he knew he could hit and hit hard. He knew that he could connect with bad strikes, but those weren’t as likely to become hits, so he changed the dynamics of the batter-to-pitcher encounter. By only choosing to swing at “his pitch”, Barry put the pressure on pitchers to throw pitches that were not in his best hitting zones but were still strikes. Pitching is freaking hard, and excellent control pitchers are tough to find, particularly in the post-expansion baseball world. From that point forward, Bonds simply wouldn’t swing at balls or bad strikes until there were two strikes in the count. Changing his philosophy resulted in two major benefits for him: The first was that he drew a lot more unintentional walks from pitchers, and the second was that the proportion of balls he hit that went for base hits increased. Both of these made him a much better hitter than he was in his younger days.
Now take the idea of “pitches” for a second and translate that to “cards”. There are two situations where you could apply this sort of principle in Magic to create a desired effect. The first would be to be able to select your opponent’s draws for them from the top 3 cards or so and choose the worst possible card for them to have every time. Unfortunately this concept borders on unfun and has been largely avoided by the good folks at Wizards. The second concept, however, has been used frequently over the years and is now a staple of Vintage, Standard, and Kamigawa Block Constructed. Imagine you could see three times as many cards each turn as your opponent. This would create an inherent advantage for you because you get more chances to find answers to their threats, or find threats they have to answer. This would also smooth your land draws and let you better avoid glutting on land in the mid to late game. By using Sensei’s Divining Top normally, you simply get a preview of the cards that are coming to you and you get some influence on card selection from it, but nothing drastic. Add a few shuffle effects though, and you end up as Barry Bonds.
Perhaps the most interesting part of the concept is that this sort of effect benefits all player, but it benefits the best players the most. By using the Top and shuffle effects (or Brainstorm and shuffle effects, or Thawing Glaciers and…), you are inherently giving yourself more choices, but you are also giving yourself more chances to screw up. Good players will pick the right cards to keep, the right moments to play their shufflers, and end up winning more frequently, at least partly because they saw a lot more cards than their opponents. Bad players still get some benefit as they can still magoo their way into the right cards, but they won’t make as many correct choices along the way and could cost themselves a game or two by shuffling away important stuff before they draw it. In Magic Theory terminology, the Top and cards like it have the ability to drastically improve card impact (different cards have different usefulness at different points in the game – see this article for more info) and improve the consistency of your draws – provided you have the time.
The only real questions when it comes to the Top are “Can your deck effectively abuse it” and “Do I have enough time to diddle with the top of my deck, or should I be doing more productive things like beating down?” I’m not a great player, but in general if I have a chance to see more cards in a match than my opponent, I’m going to take it. The best players and deck designers in the world agreed with this principle for Pro Tour: Philly, have largely come around on the idea in current Standard, and will presumably continue to do so for another year. Provided the environment doesn’t speed up with a new resurgence of aggro decks, then the Top should see a lot of play. Expect to spend a lot of time waiting for your opponents to finish shuffling from now on while they picture themselves hitting homers like Barry Bonds.
*To be fair, Bonds was just applying principles that he learned from some of the best Baseball hitters that came before him, most notably Ted Williams and Tony Gwynn. Williams is still probably a better hitter in my mind (Bonds is ridiculous), but he didn’t have the benefit of many “performance enhancing substances” in his day to boost his slugging percentage. (Please, if you want to argue Ted vs. Barry, send me an e-mail – I don’t want the forums cluttered exclusively with baseball talk when (presumably) there’s so much more this article as to offer.)
3) People Who Think Flores Big Red is Bad Need Better Plans and Playtest Partners
This was one of the more perplexing cases of deck baggery I have run across recently. blisterguy wrote an article last week discussing some of the Invitational decks, and derided Osyp’s deck as “quite the pile,” a conclusion that more than a few people agreed with in the forums. Now, having been on the development team for that deck, I can assure you it is more than merely a pile, and in fact is one of the best decks in the format today. It had one of the best winning percentages of any deck at the Philadelphia LCQ (though with an admittedly small sample size), and Osyp himself discussed just how good the deck was with friends between rounds at the Pro Circuit in New York City.
For the record, that’s Osyp, Flores, McKeown, and Myself FOR Flores Red and blisterguy, Jarrod Bright, and BTape against. Who are you going to trust on that one, eh?
That said, the deck is not simple to play, looks bad on the surface, and could use some tweaks for the Regionals metagame. For starters, it really wants a way to deal with Swords and Jittes either in the board or in the main, and it wants that answer at instant speed. Mike thinks that the Flamebreak + Culling Scales plan should be enough, but I get paranoid about these things and it’s not like people aren’t playing artifacts these days, including one little one-mana artifact (Pithing Needle) that shuts down the best creature in Standard. Considering what I’m going to say about Mono-Blue in a little bit, you can probably cut the Boseijus from the board, and in general tweak things so that you are beating Tooth, Mono-Green, and the Mirror more consistently while sacrificing some of the other matchups. Just be careful about making too many changes to the maindeck, because the build as it currently exists is rather elegant, while untested tweaking will probably make it clumsy instead.
Those who are consistently losing against the field while testing this deck are either playing poorly or are trying to execute the wrong plan. As someone mentioned in the forums previously, this deck really is a Philosophy of Fire deck. Burn folks, absorb some damage, deal with threats that will kill you and get that one last untap step to finish your opponent off. The margin for error is thinner than it is with most decks out there right now, but if you keep these things in mind while playing, it should help you out.
2) The Best Decks Only Come In Christmas Colors
If you ask most folks, aside from Vedalken Shackles, the best cards in the current format are almost exclusively Red, Green or artifacts that couple nicely with Red and Green cards. It is unsurprising then that most of the good decks you will face will sport a large proportion of Red and Green spells, and if you can find efficient hosers for either the colors or the game plans, you stand a much better chance at winning. Sadly, good + efficient hosers against Red and Green are few and far between right now, but check out Peter Jahn article from yesterday if you need more ideas.
1) Troll and Nail is Unquestionably the Deck to Beat
Everyone knew coming into May that Tooth and Nail was the number one deck in Standard. Aided by the banning of Affinity, Tooth and the associated Tron stepped right into the void, replacing artifact lands with power grids and 1/1 monstars with Godzilla-sized mechanical wrecking balls. What we did not expect, however, was that Tooth decks would bring more than one plan of attack to the table. Enter Terry Soh.
The Malaysian Sensation took a friend’s Tooth deck, added a fat Green sideboard, and voila – you have a volatile cocktail that creates serious problems for opposing players from game to game in a match. Not so sure that Tooth will be the Deck to Beat and may be the best deck in the field? Allow me to explain why I’m right.
First of all, the Tooth maindeck has a great gameplan. It now has a solid, consistent mana acceleration suite that lets the deck cast explosive spells as early as turn 4 while providing some reasonable defense against beatdown in the meantime. Once it explodes, it does so with an outstanding disruption package that either steals the opponent’s turn to destroy their hand and board position with their own spells, or wrecks the opponent’s manabase while putting them on a reasonably fast clock. As if that weren’t enough, you also get permanent removal, Regrowth on a stick, and a reusable Brainstorm. All of this is enough that most decks in the environment need to sell out a bit in game 1 just to have a reasonable shot at beating Tooth and few decks today are willing to do so, at least partly because the environment has a lot of diversity.
Then in game 2, everything changes. While opponents are busy bringing in scads of hate from their sideboards to combat the ugliness of the nine-mana sorcery plan, Tooth players get the option of fixing their bad matchups by boarding in Green fat and further disruption of their own. Remember some of the basic axioms of Magic matchups… Big Green decks generally beat little Green decks. Green fat plus acceleration generally overwhelms Red decks, who have to waste multiple spells on each creature, losing card advantage. Troll Ascetic takes those problems and makes them considerably worse – forcing the Red decks to draw Flamebreak if they want to get rid of the obnoxious regenerating twit. What decks will be the second and third most popular next weekend? Mono-Green Aggro and Red decks of various shapes and sizes.
Smart Tooth players at Regionals will keep their sideboard in sleeves and act as if they are boarding in their entire deck every round so that the opponent won’t know which plan is in effect for games 2 and 3. Sitting across the table and trying to figure out which direction your opponent will take should be obnoxious and unfun, particularly when your guess has a 20% effect on your win percentage.
Tooth is the deck to beat, and if your deck can’t handle Tooth reasonably well either pre- or post-sideboard, you should consider playing something else.
The Numbers**
Ah the numbers… After you hit these on the nose for a few years, you start to wonder whether you are simply predicting the metagame or affecting it with what you have to say. I’m no longer certain what is correlation and what is causation with regard to my articles these days, but let me at least say that I am completely unbiased when writing this year. Instead of playing in Regionals, I will be going for the positive EV play and covering a Vs. 10K event next door, watching their players freak out about decks that win consistently on turns 3 and 4. In Magic we call that “Extended.”
While I said Troll and Nail is the deck to beat, the dominance of that deck is far less than we’ve experienced recently and there are still plenty of good decks to choose from. I expect a high degree of diversity of the field and particularly of Top 8 decks that hearkens a return to times when Regionals Top 8s weren’t plagued by Skullclamp-sporting aggro decks. [This is the space where I remind you that I told you Clamp would get banned and Affinity would get banned well before they actually occurred. Or I would do that, if I was a self-aggrandizing jerk who wanted to rub such things in to the naysayers. But I’m not that guy, so nevermind. Where was I?] I think it was either Mark Young or Rick Rust that recently stated that Regionals tends to skew toward aggressive decks, but I’m of the opinion that that’s no longer true. Recent (non-Skullclamp) years have seen a more even split among the player populace between Aggro and Control decks, and this is particularly true when you get to the top tables where players are fighting for Nationals berths. Keep that in mind when looking at the figures below:
Tooth – 15-20%
Mono-Green Aggro – 15%
Red Decks – 15%
Green/x – 7%
Black/Green – 4%
Red/Green – 4%
Rats – 5%
Mono-Blue – 5%
Stone Cold Rogue With Potential – 10%
Bad Decks – 15%
I can hear all the metagamers out there groaning because there are simply too many solid decks to really tweak your sideboard against, but if you aggregate things you get 1 in 5 players running Tooth, 1 in 5 running a Red cards, 50% + running lots of Green cards, and a smattering of other stuff. Tooth may end up slightly underrepresented for its strength just because people are tired of playing the deck, and if that happens expect to see an upswing in the number of Mono-Green players, provided they already have the expensive equipment cards hanging out in their binders or don’t mind shelling out for them.
**Note: As always, everything that I write comes with the caveat that I’m an idiot and could be completely wrong about things this time around. We’re on about day 7 of the sun rising from the East in the morning, so there’s a definite trend towards me being right about the metagame, but there’s no science behind it, and there’s at least a 30% chance I pull a Trainspotting and completely sh** the bed. This is especially true since I’m writing this article about a week and a half before I usually publish it and as I said above, Saviors has more to offer than people seem to realize right now. If that happens and what I said above adversely affects you, I’m sorry.
Other Thoughts of Interest
- Notice the lack of White Weenie listed up there. The Magic Online metagame is almost completely bereft of WW players. This is in spite of the fact that Green cards on there cost you infinite tickets and White cards can be had for a pittance. Green does everything that White Weenie does and does it better, fatter, and with more consistency. That said, there will still be people out there who play it and write me hate mail about it later, but hopefully these players will be running a version with a decent mana base – nine rounds is a long time to pray you pluck what you need each and every game. If you decide Promise of Bunrei is the hots, you may as well play Glorious Anthem while you are at it and think hard about Hokori.
- Pithing Needle feels more and more like Cabal Therapy to me, which sparks a pleasant glow way down in the subcockles region of this lump of coal I call a heart. It allows good players to shut down major parts of every single deck in the field for the cheap price of one-mana, making it imminently maindeck-worthy. Players that have tested a lot for this format should be handsomely rewarded if they decide to play it, especially if their opponents choose to ignore the fact that it exists. The combination of the Needle and Cranial Extraction will also piss of deck designers who crave consistency until Kamigawa Block rotates out, because they will have to further diversify their threat bases to avoid these two hateful and probably maindeckable cards.
- I love Mono-Blue more than most folks, but I’ve said for some time now that you could not pay me enough to play the deck at a major tournament. The whole freaking deck is kept in check not only by Troll Ascetic, Boil, Choke, and to a lesser extent Aether Vial, but now you must add Pithing Needle and Arashi, the Sky Asunder to the list as well. A few brave souls out there will take the gamble and run MUC and some may even succeed, but it will be far, far too risky now for most players to even consider. If you absolutely must play the Blue cards, consider playing them with Green or at least messing with your opponent’s head and getting clever about things like Richard Feldman or the Mono-Blue Tron lists.
- I’ll tell you what deck I’d play next week, but it’s with the caveat that I haven’t playtested as much as I normally do (not actually competing in Regionals this year) and the hope that Jim Ferraiolo will have written about a very saucy Green deck before then so that I don’t have to break it myself.
Hall of Fame Ballot
In case you don’t know what I’m referring to, go here and read this first. Yes, I was one of the fortunate seventy to be chosen for the HoF committee and I’m glad to see that Wizards has chosen to do things right for the Hall – not unlike how I planned to organize the Writer’s HoF before I got too busy working and traveling the world to realistically consider such things anymore. Here’s my list of picks for ballot one with a brief rationale for each name.
Jon Finkel
He’s the Babe Ruth of Magic, and most people who saw him play still consider his skills to be far beyond anyone to come before or since. He still has more PT Top 8s than anyone else, including Kai.
Mike Long
One Pro Tour victory, four more Top 8s, multiple U.S. National teams, and a reputation for running the cheats that will never be salvaged. I feel dirty for making this pick because I like to feel I’m pretty strict about the idea of a Hall of Fame and cheaters, but Long is a legend that continues to affect Magic today, far after his skills and presence in the game eroded.
What gets lost in the lore of Long is just how good he was as a player. His mental game was second to none, and his play skills at that time were almost unbelievable. Even folks that got cheated by him admit Mike was an awesome Magic player, something that gives him just enough credibility to earn my vote. The question is will enough other people overlook the negatives here to put him on the ballot or if voting for Mike makes people feel too icky. Even if he doesn’t make it on the first ballot, there’s a decent chance he’ll make it for vote #2.
Tommi Hovi
Two Pro Tour wins, two more Top 8s, and the man who put Finnish Magic on the map for good. That phrase seems impossible if you step back and actually think about it for a second.
Dave Humpherys
Five Sundays, including two Worlds Top 8s and a Team PT victory. Ninth all time on the money list. Combine that with the fact that up until Nagoya, Dave may have been the most consistent great player in the world in nearly every format and he gets my vote and probably a vote on a lot of other ballots to boot. Da Hump is a metronome of great Magic and has one of the longest stretches of excellence of any player, ever.
#5???
This… this is the tough one. If you go just by stats, Darwin is the frontrunner (hell, the stats say he’s an automagic inclusion), but the knock on Darwin is that no one has seen him make a really good play since New Orleans 2002, while they’ve seen him make a lot of bad ones. Steve O’ had as much talent as anyone but his teammate Jon back in the day, Comer has five Sundays and great deck design qualifications, Dougherty was probably the best deck designer in the world for a while and has five Sundays of his own, and Scott Johns has all that plus a lengthy resume of editorial positions that could give him a boost over the other applicants in the “extra-curricular activities” category. Last but certainly not least, you get Mark Justice, perhaps Magic’s first great star who turned out to be a villain approaching Mike Long status, but four Sunday appearances on his resume prove there was a lot of skill to back that up. Unfortunately his career was a bit shorter than most of the rest of the candidates.
At this point I’m leaning towards Scott “It is SO time to be the man” Johns, but I’m more than willing to listen to arguments for other folks. What does your ballot look like? Who do you think the fifth spot on mine should go to?
The Kitchen Sink
At Pro Circuit: NYC Toby Wachter took me to Curry in a Hurry, the type of curry place where your stomach feels like you’ve been drinking hard liquor the next morning in spite of the fact that you only imbibed food and water the night before. Anyway, while we were there, Bollywood musical numbers were flying past on the huge plasma screen behind Toby’s head and I began to feel rather guilty at the fact that I wasn’t really paying attention to what Toby had to say anymore, as my eyes were instead glued to this woman. Her name is Aishwarya Rai, and I’d seen her before (I tend to keep track of all women voted most beautiful in the world), but never in motion. All I can say is wow, still images do not do her justice.
Does the fact that efro has won a World Series of Poker bracelet mean that the rest of us are actually obligated to play Poker? I can see Magic pros across the world sitting at home reading this and saying “For ****’s sake! If friggin’ efro can do it…” I haven’t touched my accounts November because I simply don’t have the time, but maybe I should fix that.
Look, I don’t know who eonline thinks this is, but you’re not convincing me it’s Lindsay Lohan! I already lived through the original Teri Hatcher incident, and I watched in agony as Jennifer Connelly‘s best bits disappeared into oblivion – I can’t survive too many more of these. For the time being I’m just going to pretend someone cloned Sharon Stone about 20 years ago and this is the result.
I am happy to report that Geordie Tait is still alive and just as bitter and cynical as ever (while being darkly humorous, of course). Not only that, but he’s gotten himself in excellent shape, has a solid wardrobe, and will soon be quite the hit with the ladies, assuming some exist in the cultural wasteland some call Sarnia, Ontario.
What exactly happens to the women that Tom Cruise dumps? It’s like the moment he casts them off, they remember they were so hot they got to sleep with Tom Cruise and suddenly start showing that to the rest of the world again. It happened with Nicole Kidman, and have you seen Penelope Cruz lately? Dear lord, she causes riots. I can’t imagine what the effect will be on Katie Holmes when Tom gets bored with his much younger woman phase… is the world prepared for that sort of hotness?
I confess that I don’t actually understand Shakira’s new video. In fact, I can’t even scratch the surface of the weirdness going on here, but as we all know, that doesn’t really matter.
Jennifer Lopez just celebrated her first wedding anniversary ever, and all I can think of is, “Damn, there went another $5 in an office pool.”
I’ve bagged on Brittany Murphy before, but the fact that she looks so good here almost makes up for the fact that I had to watch The Little Black book on one of my trips to Japan back in February. On second thought, no it doesn’t.
It warms my heart to look at the MLB standings every morning and realize that nearly sixty games into the season, the Yankees are still under .500. On the flip side, the fact that the White Sox are 21 games over .500 at this point in the season causes fear and panic as I await the inevitable collapse of my beloved South Siders. I might be a little more comfortable about the whole thing, but the freaking Minnesota Twins have the third best record in baseball and are in the same division.
After working for a solid month with no days off, I may or may not have gotten totally sloshed in Manhattan the Sunday before Memorial Day. BDM, Tim Willoughby, Evil Don Lim, and Kevin “The Animal” An may or may not have been present to see me get to the point of slurring my speech, and I may or may not have tipped the bartender in yen. Expect more vague details of New York adventures in next week’s article on the super secret SCG Vs site…
Here’s a shout out to all the Wonder Years fans.
I assume you’ve all seen Jessica Alba at the MTV Movie Awards, so this is nothing new, right? Just checking. Alba is probably the Hollywood starlet whose hotness factor fluctuates the most for me. She was so consistently dumb/bad in Dark Angel that it completely turned me off to her (and the series), but then so hot in Sin City that you couldn’t resist her. Last weekend I saw the Fantastic Four trailer and ended up completely confused. Alba is not Sue Storm. According to comic book artists (and particularly Vs. System artists) Sue Storm is supposed to be the hottest brainiac you’ll ever see, and no leap of imagination or amount of acting will let Jessica fulfill more than half that requirement. Oh well. The preview certainly turns Johnny Storm (Chris Evans) into a star and the script seems like it might be decent – I suddenly have some small amount of hope for this movie.
Oh, and Batman Begins will be f***ing awesome. You can quote me on that one.
Watching Brian Kibler table judge a Vs. System match is like getting the entire catalog of acting facial expressions played out live and in living color. If I were playing, I’d just start to make certain plays and watch his facial expressions so that I’d have a guide as to which plays were the right ones. It’s a good thing we don’t have high-level Magic judges who are ex-PT winners – can you imagine the scowls on Kai’s face every time someone made a bad play?
Speaking of Kibler, the erstwhile Dragon Master had an excellent quote I nabbed for the PC blog that he had subsequently deleted because he thought it looked bad. Me, I just think he was being honest about a game that still hasn’t seen a year since it’s first Pro Tour event… can you imagine how bad players and decks were back at PT One? Vs. System players are well ahead of that curve. Anyway, here’s the quote: “The skill level of Vs. System players at the PC is still a little low. I mean, Adam Horvath and I won Pro Tours – there has to be some explanation!”
Check in on the Shooting Stars coverage on Saturday for the inside scoop on how this cool tournament idea came about and what I actually expect from the event itself.
The Obligatory Cheesecake Section – The March of Yawgatog
Being editor of this website is tougher on the ego than it looks because I’m forced to work with brilliance every stinking day. The writers are so good these days that insecurity about my own work would be overwhelming if I actually wrote anything, but there’s only one guy who makes me say, “Wow, that was really clever” every day. Here’s the latest edition of the best of Yawgatog, just one more reason that Premium lets us kick more ass than we ever could have before.
Quotable Quotes
[WonkoSane] Lana Burman anagrams to Anal Bun Ram
[platy] …
[WonkoSane] <3
[platy] i’m gonna go take a shower now
[platy] cause i feel dirty
[mixedknut] I think I’ve finally come to the conclusion
[mixedknut] that in a war of dumb
[mixedknut] Kermit would now handily defeat Sigler
Ferraiolo: um
Ferraiolo: is this kid in the DJ video http://www.keithschofield.com/djformat-video/
Ferraiolo: is that walamies?
[gaijineli] I miss my flight attendants. I have seen the future of airline service, and IT IS NUBILE
[platy] i was gone all weekend – dont do acid is the moral of my weekend
Knutson: quick on the draw today…
Orlove: hehe
Orlove: I was checking the article feedback forum anyway
Orlove: and I saw the new articles were up 🙂
Orlove: seventeen tails!
Orlove: :p
Knutson: not sure why all the foons popped up in McLaughlin’s thread
Knutson: he’s pretty solid when it comes to decks
Orlove: sometimes stuff like that just happens
Orlove: it’s like some secret signal gets sent out
Orlove: “quick, to the ‘fooncave!”
[StrWrsKid] 5:08 badservice joined the game.
[StrWrsKid] 5:08 StrWrsKid joined the game.
[StrWrsKid] 5:08 badservice: Wow.
[StrWrsKid] 5:08 StrWrsKid: Hello and good luck.
[StrWrsKid] 5:08 StrWrsKid chooses to play first.
[StrWrsKid] 5:08 badservice: A celebrity.
[StrWrsKid] …
[StrWrsKid] people are weird
[Wescoe] guess what
[edt] you got a new girlfriend
[Wescoe] better
[edt] you bought a real doll
[platypus] my bf could kick your ass
[Iceblaze_] can I fight him?
[author name="Yawgatog"]Yawgatog[/author] I’d eat his ass.
[author name="Yawgatog"]Yawgatog[/author] Wait, that didn’t sound right AT ALL.
[knutedit] *imagine link to MiseTings forum with naughty language complaining about Wakefield on Premium here*
[knutedit] that’s a hot thread
[pugg_fugg] That site still exists? 🙁
[author name="Yawgatog"]Yawgatog[/author] The suit to remove the feeding tube is tied up in the courts.
[BR4M] hi sbennen
[Kowal] ]:[
[knutgone] there once was a girl
[knutgone] who moved to my high school when I was a senior
[knutgone] she was cute, a little weird
[knutgone] we went out, had lots of mad sex, etc
[knutgone] broke up after 6 weeks
[knutgone] 2 months later I find out she had a Top 10 list of guys she wanted in the school
[knutgone] I was #3
[knutgone] very weird experience
[CrazyCarl] you’ve top 8ed a grand prix in my eyes
[CrazyCarl] and that’s all that matters
[StrWrsKid] was actually redonculous
[StrWrsKid] I i’d myself intentionally OUT of top 8 heh
[StrWrsKid] +$1500 amateur prize kind of deal
[OutlawTMD] oh snap.
[OutlawTMD] im sorry SWK
[StrWrsKid] of course i had to buy ted like a $100 meal :/
[StrWrsKid] wait…
[StrWrsKid] how come EVERYTIME i win, i have to give ted something?!?
[StrWrsKid] in the game of life, Knutson is the rake
[Arakkis] yawg- you are seriously selling avatars for almost 2k tickets?
[author name="Yawgatog"]Yawgatog[/author] yeah sure why not
[author name="Yawgatog"]Yawgatog[/author] You want?
StrWrsKid: whatever happened to that jarrod subway guy? he was everywhere forever…then all of the sudden he was gone, i didnt even notice or care…until now
jeek: I ate him.
StrWrsKid: ah
StrWrsKid: he had very little calories
[Smmenen] well i’m not worried
[Smmenen] kevin has beaten Kai
[Smmenen] at vintage
[Smmenen] and that french guy
[Pharaoh] NAssif?
[Smmenen] yeah
[OMC] I have news
[OMC] for Yawgatog
[author name="Yawgatog"]Yawgatog[/author] Hi OMC.
[OMC] a job has become available for someone with his unique talents
[OMC] particularly
[OMC] photoshoppery
[OMC] and child porn
[OMC] Contact Toronto PD sex crimes unit
StrWrsKid: OMG is it THE fan favorite, TIM ATEN?!?
INV_TimAten: i will see you again irl
INV_TimAten: and i WILL push you down a flight of stairs
[JLStanton] I wish Freeko was here…….the beats would flow if he were
[kyousuke] don’t let his absence stop you from ripping on him
[kyousuke] we don’t refrain from ripping on you while you’re riding a bike up a mountain or whatever it is you do
[Insom-] kuroda is amazingly handsome for a magic player
[knutgone] BDM calls him sinister
[knutgone] he looks like a Bond villain
[gaijineli] I totally disagree with that. He is a charismatic, handsome man.
[knutgone] eli: we all know kuroda you foon
[knutgone] regardless
[Insom-] kuroda is teh sex
[knutgone] his photos from nagoya
[knutgone] make him look very Bondish
[gaijineli] he is on the side of the angels. He wears black like Will Smith wears black.
[knutgone] kaplan declares manlove for Kuroda, film at 11
[Insom-] i need a hug
[gaijineli] I charge one buck for a one over, one under.
[Insom-] do you smell good?
[knutgone] This was a nice one: [gaijineli] I love small children. Carnally.
[gaijineli] I SAID NO SUCH THING
[knutgone] kysk: did he or did he not say that?
[kysk] he totally said it
[knutgone] seeee
[author name="Yawgatog"]Yawgatog[/author] Templating Fun Time!
[author name="Yawgatog"]Yawgatog[/author] Phage avatar |Avatar| Hand size: 7. Life: 15. Pay 1 life: Until end of turn, whenever a creature deals combat damage to you, destroy that creature. / Pay 1 life: Until end of turn, whenever target creature deals combat damage to a creature, destroy that creature. MTGO-A [Not tournament legal.]
[author name="Yawgatog"]Yawgatog[/author] What does the second ability do? 🙂
[pugg_fugg] It destroys that creature.
[author name="Yawgatog"]Yawgatog[/author] Which creature?
[pugg_fugg] That one.
[author name="Yawgatog"]Yawgatog[/author] Can you please identify the creature for the jury?
[pugg_fugg] It’s sitting right over there.
[author name="Yawgatog"]Yawgatog[/author] *gasps*
[pugg_fugg] Objection!
[author name="Yawgatog"]Yawgatog[/author] Overruled!
Mike Turian: wave to your fans!
Knutson: OMC is covering the finals right now
Mike Turian: hehe
Mike Turian: oh yeah
Mike Turian: im messaging him too
Mike Turian: OMC: NO DEAL
Mike Turian: do it!
OMC: To hell with you Mike Turian
Mike Turian: what!
OMC: YOU HEARD ME
Mike Turian: show us your tits!
[StrWrsKid] what’s a spin class?
[platy] its stationary biking
[platy] with weighted wheels
[author name="Yawgatog"]Yawgatog[/author] You’re never going to get anywhere that way.
[platy] dolls for ted?
[knutgone] yep
[knutgone] anatomically correct japanese school girl barbies
[knutgone] complete with used panties in the boxes
[gaijineli] Ted, you know I don’t randomly keep that amount of scratch lying around!
[platy] …I WANT ONE
[platy] I WANT ONE
[platy] I WANT ONE
[Obiah] i lost to a couple elf decks too
[Obiah] which was random
[Obiah] damn that wakefield
[Obiah] i mean really. who the f**k forestwalks?
[_Quentin] yauuuuus
[_Quentin] i just orante kannazachid my opponents jitte
[_Quentin] kah ding!
[_Quentin] dang that felt good
[_Quentin] OUCH
[_Quentin] he just eye of nowhered it 🙁
Knutson: “I am not a role model.”
Knutson: “I am 16-years old”
Knutson: “I just want to win at Magic and chase p*ssy.”
Gadiel: word.
Stanton: the intarweb devours enough of my time as-is 🙂
Knutson: same
Knutson: but more of my time is taken by travel lately
Knutson: Pro Circuit in NYC this weekend
Stanton: yeah, you flit about the country like yoda flies around a sith lord
[wraith985] jrwang@uc**.edu
[KowalLazy] lol, your name is wang
[wraith985] not the most flattering email address in the world
[KowalLazy] it’s like a junior mint, except instead of being minty it’s a penis