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AuthorBennie Smith

Bennie Smith began playing Magic in 1994 and started writing about it shortly after. A Virginia State Champion, he enjoys few things better than winning at tournaments with home brews. Commander is one of those things. He loved the format so much he literally wrote the book on it: The Complete Commander.

You Lika The Juice? – Sprouting Husk Gets Medieval on the Metagame

The StarCityGames.com $5,000 Standard open Comes to Philadelphia!
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.

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You Lika The Juice? – Locked in with Meadowlark!

States is coming!
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…

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You Lika The Juice? – New Standard, Same As The Old One

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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.

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You Lika The Juice? – EDH With Teysa, and the StarCityGames.com $5K Standard Open

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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…

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You Lika The Juice? – Joy: Welcome to the Crypti-pocalypse…

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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.

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You Lika The Juice? – Shard Candy

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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!

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You Lika The Juice? – The Shards Prerelease

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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?

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You Lika The Juice? – Devouring Shards of Alara

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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.

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You Lika The Juice? – The Nucklavee Deck

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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.

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You Lika The Juice? – How Magic Got Its States Groove Back

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Thursday, September 11th – States has always been my favorite tournament. It was a “big” tournament that didn’t feed anything else, so it drew many more casual players than the PTQs and Regionals tournaments, and it had a nice, laid-back flavor even as people tried hard to win the bragging rights of State Champion.

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You Lika the Juice? – Tricksy Elves!

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Thursday, September 4th – When we left off last week, I was trying to make some last minute adjustments to my Black Doran deck. Intellectually, I liked the deckbuild… it was certainly chock full of strong cards with a couple of surprises. Yet there was something missing there; I didn’t have that giddy, crush-like feeling I’ve had playing my Saffi or Dredge decks.

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You Lika The Juice? – PTQ Panic Time

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Wednesday, August 27th – I’ve been kicking around Necroskitter quite a bit lately, and I have to admit he’s much more impressive with a Doran in the house. Bulkowski’s got some seriously good quality creatures here with Fulminator Mage, Colossus, and Cloudthresher… Firespouts, Soul Snuffers, and Incremental Blight gives some serious creature-sweeper power.

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You Lika The Juice? – Mixed Bag of Hall of Fame, Kelpie, and Sealed

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Wednesday, August 20th – Last week I mentioned the “deck tech” from GP: Denver featuring Conley Woods’ Kelpie deck. I found it really exciting since I’d been kicking around the idea that River Kelpie hadn’t been getting the respect it deserved as a card advantage engine, not only just for Persist cards and Makeshift Mannequin, but the also the new Retrace mechanic.

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You Lika The Juice? – Uncryptic

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Wednesday, August 13th – You know, for all the complaining that I and other people have regarding Block and how Faeries is too good and such, if you look at it from a bigger scale the problem isn’t really Faeries per se. It’s a certain four-mana Blue instant…

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You Lika The Juice? – Time, Love, Life

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Wednesday, August 6th – Apologies in advance for those of you looking for the typical Bennie-romp through some fun Magic topic. This week is not going to be one of those. I debated begging off this week, but… despite the many roles I play in Life, at heart I’m a writer, and writing is often how I make sense of things, how I connect with the world, how I cope…

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