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, November 27th – Holidays are great – you get a break from work, you get to hang with family, relax, eat good food, and watch a ball game on the tube. Yet some holidays are also good occasions to reflect on certain things that may get missed in the general rush and scurry of life in the 21st century. Thanksgiving is one of those holidays, where it’s nice to stop and think about what you have to be thankful for.
Thursday, November 20th – Now is the time to try something off the beaten path in Standard. Except for those of you within striking distance of the StarCityGames.com $5000 Standard Open in Philadelphia, the rest of us who might want to shuffle up a Standard deck to play will be going down to the local store for Friday Night Magic.
Thursday, November 13th – Man, after round 2 of Champs this past weekend, I was feeling about as low about Magic as I ever have, basically building on the bad feelings from the $5K and diving through the floor to sub-basement levels. It helped a bit that my second round opponent was a friend of mine, so I took a little consolation that the 2-0 drubbing he gave me might help propel him to a Swiss come-back after losing the first round.
Thursday, November 6th – When last we talked, I spent a good portion of my column ranting about the stale state of Standard. Some readers found the pessimism off-putting, but I hope you’ll forgive me. I am usually a flaming optimist, but even my sunny disposition can get worn down sometimes. I’m not sure if you made it to the bottom of the column, but I did offer a glimmer of hope…
Thursday, October 30th – There’s a brand new “large†expansion to explore, chock full of new cards, themes, and mechanics. There’s also a huge hole that’s usually significant, where the oldest block has rotated out. The maelstrom of new cards rushing in to fill the void of the old cards leaving is normally an exciting time. Only this time… nothing seems to be changing.
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.
Thursday, October 9th – I meandered down to Richmond Comix Friday for FNM and got my Shards of Alara draft on… I thought the actual drafting went really well. First pack I cracked open, looked at the bottom card and saw it was a foil rare Ultimatum… unfortunately, it was Clarion Ultimatum. I moved on and saw another Ultimatum, this one of the Titanic variety. Win the Game for seven mana? Sure, I’ll bite!
Thursday, October 2nd – Sealed Deck is the format I least enjoy of all Magic formats, you have so little control over what you get to play with, you’re really at the mercy of luck with what card pool you get. However, this was a prerelease, and this would let me play with these new cards before I could buy them… sure, why not?
Thursday, September 25th – Since the complete spoiler for Shards of Alara isn’t publicly available as I’m writing this, I’ve decided to forego a set review and instead focus on some of the themes specific Shards bring us with an eye towards Standard. What’s caught my imagination first is the Devour mechanic as offered up by the denizens of Jund, the Black-Red-Green Shard.
Thursday, September 18th – I’ve loved Epochrasite and haven’t had a reason to play it in a long while, and Scarecrone seemed like a good time to do it – if Epochrasite ended up countered or discarded, it’s the perfect creature to pull out of the graveyard with Scarecrone. I also have a warm spot in my heart for Mindless Automaton, another card I was eager to pair up with Scarecrone.
