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AuthorDave Meddish

A former computer game designer, Dave is best known for his deck ideas for Standard and Extended and metagame and deck analyses. And, of course, his fabulous good looks.

The Magic “Senior Tour”

A few weeks ago, I proposed the somewhat novel idea of having Wizards of the Coast start a "Senior Tour": A Pro Tour-type event for those of us "old-timers" in the Magic community (the thirty-and-not-getting-any-younger crowd). We may be very good players, but due to preoccupations like families and jobs, we can’t play as often…

(Force of) Will To Power: To Ban Or Not to Ban

Quick question: what do Trade-Survival, Trix, Pande-Burst, Counter-Sliver, Forbidian, and most of the Fruity Pebbles-spawned cereal variants have in common? . The aforementioned decks are considered among the best Extended decks currently in the format. The only non-rogue Extended decks that don’t run are the -fueled variants, Three-Deuce, Stompy, Secret Force and Sligh – and…

Playing Devil’s Advocate: The State Of Standard After PT: Chicago

Thanks to the plethora of people who have been e-mailing me to add their names to the petition to start a Senior Super Series of some sort. Keep those e-mails coming (although I have a few logistical problems to work out, which I’ll save for another column). But on to the matter at hand. The…

More Of Everything Except Time

If you are hoping for my PTQ: Portland report, sorry – you’re not getting one. I, alas, did not go to Portland to play, due to several reasons, foremost being that my beloved Oregon State Beavers were playing bitter rival Oregon in our annual "Civil War" that Saturday (why "Civil War"? I dunno, maybe because…

Ten Extended Decks To Beat, Part 5: Trade-Survival And Special K

Ten Extended Decks to Beat: Trade-Survival A fairly new archetype, Trade-Survival dominated the Gateway Masters tournament, winning it for William "Baby Huey" Jensen. The deck depends upon getting out an early and using one or two copies of , to start the engine and pulling out the creatures it needs from the deck. is the…

Ten Extended Decks To Beat, Part IV: Counter-Sliver And Forbidian

Ten Extended Decks to Beat: Counter-Sliver Counter-Sliver is another relatively new Extended archetype, arising from the synergy found between the Slivers from Tempest block. The deck is a perfect example of the aggro-control deck: Play out a few threats, start beating down your opponent, and protect your assets with countermagic and spot removal. Chris Senhouse…

Ten Extended Decks to Beat, Part 3: Sligh And Secret Force

Ten Extended Decks to Beat #5: Sligh The Extended variant of Sligh can be traced back to the then-Standard legal Deadguy Red variant run by the "King of Beatdown," . The deck translated well to the Extended format, and was one of the few non-Academy decks that had a chance of winning when and were…

Ten Extended Decks to Beat, Part #2: Trix And Stasis

Ten Extended Decks to Beat #3: Trix Trix has an interesting ancestry, one that can be traced to the number of "cereal" nicknamed decks that it evolved from. First, there was Fruity Pebbles, the R/U/W/B deck that used the // engine to kill an opponent. Later, black was added to the deck to run ,…

Ten Extended Decks To Beat, Part 1: Stompy And Three-Deuce

Ten Extended Decks to Beat #1: Stompy Stompy’s rise to power arrived with the release of and the cheap and powerful and . Running an extremely low mana base and , the deck was packed with the undercosted and overpowered green creatures that could overrun an opponent (literally, since was usually the kill card) by…

A Man’s Got To Know His Limitations: Deckbuilding In The New Standard

I have a dream. Well, I have several, actually, many of which involve some combination of Jeri Ryan, Gillian Anderson and Kathleen Turner (circa 1983). No, I’ve got a different, Magic-related, dream to share. But let’s start with early in my Magic tournament career. When I was just starting out, a typical pre-tournament Friday evening…

The Kavu Are Coming, The Kavu Are Coming: An Invasion Prerelease Report

I had been anxiously awaiting this prerelease, enough so to play a little hooky from work. (Work on a Saturday? Welcome to the computer game industry – I haven’t had a day off in two months.) The teasers over on the Sideboard have been entertaining, and I downloaded and pored over the prerelease spoilers with…

The Star City Expansion

A few weeks ago, I printed some of my ideas for cool Magic cards and asked you, the Star City readers, to send me your ideas for cards you’d like to see print. My mailbox was rapidly stuffed full of suggestions. Some were good, some weird, some would have taken up two text boxes to…

Libel, Magic Journalism, And Chris Benafel

Last Friday, an article was posted at New Wave which gave credence to a rumor that had been floating around since Worlds – that Chris Benafel had colluded with other players to intentionally throw a match during the Team finals portion of the competition. I had heard this rumor and simply did not believe it….

Hindsight Is 20/20 (With Corrective Lenses, At Least)

A few months ago, I compiled my list of what I thought the top ten cards were for Constructed environments, meaning Mercadian block, Standard and Extended. I promised a look back in a few months to see how good my guessing was. Well, guess what, it’s been a few months, so let’s look into Dave’s…

A lot of my ideas simply come from coming across an intere

A lot of my ideas simply come from coming across an interesting word or phrase and building a card around it. That’s how my mind works; yes, I know, I need professional help, one of these days I’ll be able to afford it. Calcification R Enchant Creature Target creature gains +0/+2 and becomes a Wall…