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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? – Shadows of Standard, Part II

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Wednesday, April 16th – Last week I talked about how I’m totally bored of current Standard, and I’m wanting to make decks for future Standard, the Standard of the upcoming $5K Mega-Magic Weekend tournament that Star City’s holding on May 10th right here in Richmond. To facilitate that, I began going over the cards officially spoiled as chronicled on the Shadowmoor minisite, and I appreciate all the great comments and feedback from you all in the forums.

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You Lika The Juice? – Shadows of Standard, Part I

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Wednesday, April 9th – I can’t help it; now that we’ve started getting serious previews of the upcoming set Shadowmoor, I’m totally bored of current Standard. I want to make decks for future Standard, the Standard of the upcoming $5K Mega-Magic Weekend tournament that Star City’s holding in my backyard on May 10th… Warning: contains spoilers.

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You Lika The Juice? – EDH and Commander

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Wednesday, April 2nd – For the last EDH, I played a rather ridiculously tricky and powerful Experiment Kraj deck, so this time around I wanted to be more or less straightforward. Yes, I had some powerful cards, but I didn’t work in any infinite combo engines. The sickest thing I had going was Kiki-Jiki and either Reveillark or Karmic Guide…

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You Lika The Juice? – MPR: More Honey, Less Vinegar Plzthx

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Wednesday, March 26th – My life is full-tilt boogie busy, but I’ve been making an effort lately to play in more sanctioned tournaments, for all the usual reasons – it’s fun, it helps keep my play skills from atrophying further, and gives me at least semi-relevant stuff to write about. One side benefit I was looking forward to was an increase in the number of Magic Player Reward cards I’d get mailed to me…

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You Lika The Juice? – Can I Get a Witness?

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Wednesday, March 19th – While restocking my trade binder the other day, I ran across a foil Jhoira of the Ghitu, a card that I’ve always found intriguing but had not yet fully tested out her potential. The foil Jhoira looks awesome – her eyes flash and it’s like she’s radiating power!

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You Lika The Juice? – My Limited Skills

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Wednesday, March 12th – Last week I detailed how I drove Adrian Sullivan’s beautiful Ferrari right into the ditch, and afterwards jumped into a draft, in which I did pretty well. I don’t talk about Limited much here because a) I don’t do it often, b) I’m not all that good at it, and c) I have a lot more fun building Constructed decks. Still, I do enjoy the occasional Limited games, so I wanted to let you all know how it went and elicit any advice from those of you out there who are much better at the format than I.

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You Lika the Juice? – Piloting a Ferrari at the PTQ

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Wednesday, March 5th – When last we left our hero – me – he was torn between varieties of mid-range G/B/x decks to play at the Richmond PTQ last Saturday. There was the strong allure of his homebrew Doran deck featuring the quick-kill potential of Tireless Tribe. There were also more stock versions floating around that presumably had more testing behind them and were more reliably “correct” in their build. Should he instead play one of those decks?

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You Lika The Juice? – Pivot to Extended

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Tuesday, February 26th – Today I was supposed to tell you all how I did at the big $5K Star City Standard Open down in Charlotte, North Carolina. With any luck, I would have kicked ass and been featured in the Magic Show making my way to the Top 8. At least, that was the plan…

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You Lika The Juice? – Follow-up on States, and Reveillark

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Wednesday, February 20th – I loved Reveillark the minute I saw it; I love recursion, and I especially love the progress Wizards has made in giving fans of creatures a good number of ways to fight the menace of Wrath of God and Damnation. Saffi Eriksdotter, Deadwood Treefolk, flash creatures, Epochrasite… Reveillark was a potent addition to the suite of creatures that give a lot of resistance to mass removal.

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You Lika The Juice? – Nuking Champs from Orbit

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Wednesday, February 13th – When Wizards made adjustments to the Pro Tour, they made sure to provide plenty of explanation for those who were impacted. There’s exponentially more people impacted by the decision to abandon States! States is wildly popular, and poof! It’s gone. They’re nuking the program from orbit without a word to the very large number of players down here on the ground that are impacted by the decision.

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You Lika The Juice? – Toning Down the Mize In Magic

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One of the new cards from Morningtide I’ve been trying to wrap my brain around is Cream of the Crop. I’ve been spending a lot of time thinking about it because it’s Green, it seems really good, and it’s not a creature. That’s relatively rare in Green.

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You Lika The Juice? – Growing a Treefolk Deck from the Roots Up

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I’ve loved Treefolk since I first read about Treebeard as a teenager entranced with Lord of the Rings. I’m thrilled to see them given lots of attention in Magic finally. There seems to be a critical mass of really good Treefolk cards to warrant investigating whether a competitive tribal deck can be made with them.

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You Lika The Juice? – High on Morningtide!

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It’s amusing the expressions of horror I get from the surprising number of Magic players who view cellophane-wrapped booster box of product as several evenings of draft fodder instead of the wondrous trove of singles treasure that I see. I love cracking those packs, accumulating a small mountain of foil booster wrapping to the side as I stack rares, uncommons, and commons.

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You Lika The Juice? – Morningtide Glory

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I have to admit to finding it difficult to focus on anything other than Morningtide right now, so I thought it would be fun to go ahead and get some discussion going with what we know so far. Today, I’m going to talk about cards we know about for sure from the Wizards preview page…

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You Lika the Juice? – Tireless Siege

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When last I wrote this column, I was undecided what deck to play for the Pro Tour: Hollywood Qualifier I was attending down at the Star City Game Center. I had the “Doran Goodstuff” deck ready to roll; it was already pulled together and awaiting sleeves…

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