AuthorBen Goodman

I would say that this article will be different from your normal Magical Hack, but I don’t think it will be. You’re going to hear the same kind of stories that you always do when you come to a site like this one. But my perspective is different than what it once was – since the last time I’ve written, I’ve fallen off the face of the earth, completely reorganized and relocated my life, sold off my physical and digital collections, quit the game for six months, and returned again in the everlasting hunt for a healthy yet time-consuming hobby. Seeing as I’m writing this at 1:22am, you might have guessed that I haven’t been successful at the healthy part.

At least I can say I help up my part of the bargain the last time I went through this. Unfortunately, the other Ben resorted to babbling buffoonery bereft of brainpower and proved that he was the weaker half of the Ben squad. No more, I say. From here on out, I will only follow in the footsteps of Papa Knut, patron saint of correct choices and dashing good looks. And Papa Knut spoke unto me and said:

“You are doing Nantuko Husk. That is all.”

And the heavens shook with his words.

This week’s Selecting 10th Edition has become more than the face-off between Warhammer and Plate… as Knut licks his Baloth-related wounds, a Ridiculous Hat steps to the… erm… plate, elevating the contest into a Battle of the Bens! Which Ben will be victorious? Read on to find out!

It’s time for the last installment of my daily column, and I think that it went fairly well. I will miss writing it… As for now, I’m going to talk about a deck that is legal in the current Standard format. Some dashing young upstarts played it at Pro Tour Honolulu, but the history of it has been lost to the sands of time… until now.

Today, I don’t think one particular anecdote will cover the extent of this lesson, so I’m going to tell two. That and bad beat anecdotes tend to be rather short due to the nature of said beats. It’s hard for one to write an article’s worth of amusing anecdote when one is out of the tournament in 3 rounds.

Today I’m going to talk about the hardest lesson that I’ve ever learned from Magic. The tournament I’m about to describe was a failure before I even sat down for my first match, and the events that happened therein had a large effect on the American magic landscape…

The tournament we’re going to cover here today is not necessarily a total failure – I finished in the prizes, I had a winning record, and I was one win away from qualifying. That one potential win and the lack of results thereof, though, is the crux of this article. In that sort of situation, one loss can offset an entire tournament’s worth of wins. The lesson today is one that will hopefully help change some of your tournament near-wins to tournament wins.

I’ve elected to take SCG Daily this week to further my plans of literary domination, and to continue revealing how much of an awful player I am. As you can see from the title of the article, I’ve gotten some of the best lessons I’ve learned in this game from horrible tournament failures, and I can’t think of any better way to be a helpful writer than to tell you what not to do. So listen up, kids, and don’t be like Ben.