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AuthorMark Young

Mark Young has had a love/hate relationship with the game of Magic ever since the Beta release. He can occasionally be seen in a top 8 in the Mid-Atlantic region, including at the 2005 Virginia State Championships.

The Beautiful Struggle – The Extended Perfect TEPS Primer

You don’t play TEPS because it beats every deck. You play it because it puts pressure on every deck. Most keepable hands win very early in the game, so by playing TEPS you force every opponent to win or find an answer in five turns or less. Also, you have a Burning Wish package such that even if the opponent should come up with something, you can find a bullet to deal with it. Many PTQ decks, and a great many more PTQ players, operate much worse under that kind of pressure.

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The Beautiful Struggle – Spoilers, The Big Picture, and Why Zvi Is Smarter Than You

In a recent Mark Rosewater column, MaRo revealed that Zvi Mowshowitz – who worked on the development team for Planar Chaos – was vehemently against the printing of a Black four-mana board-sweeper that you may be familiar with. Mark looks at Zvi’s reasoning behind such a belief, and posits his own theories into the wisdom, or folly, behind such a move.

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SCG Daily – Starting Out on Magic Online, Part 4

Thanks for reading this week … and a special thank-you to those readers who already have been on MTGO awhile. A lot of this week’s material may have seemed way too simplistic to you, but if you kept reading, I appreciate it.

Now, to questions…

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SCG Daily: Starting Out on Magic Online, Part 3

I decided one day out of my Daily series should be dedicated to the “Trading Post” icon on your MTGO homepage. Trading has not been a big part of my MTGO experience so far, but at some point it probably will have to be, if I ever want to play Constructed. Plus, it’s probably a big part of your experience, since I’m pretty lucky to have the job that I do.

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SCG Daily – Starting Out on Magic Online, Part 2

Yesterday’s pace of five drafts in one day, with only two prize packs to show for it, suggested that I would go bankrupt long before I would go infinite. So I decided to purchase twelve packs each of Time Spiral and Ninth Edition (the two draft formats whose queues I saw fill up most often) and make them last as long as I could…

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SCG Daily – Starting Out on Magic Online, Part 1

This week’s series is pretty much explained by the title: I recently gained access to Magic Online for the first time, and I kept track of what I did while I was just getting started, with the hope that it might be of some use to the folks out there…

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The Beautiful Struggle: On Discipline

Mark does something out-of-character in this article… he admits that Flores was right. Sure, it takes a lot out of him, but the words come out eventually. This excellent article tackles the concept of discipline in Magic, and covers a number of helpful tips that can improve our games, whatever the level of our current play. If you’re serious about improvement, then this article is unmissable.

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The Beautiful Struggle: Interview With a Champion

States didn’t go so well for me this year; just your standard 2-2 drop filled with your standard play errors and your standard deckbuilding mistakes. Some interesting stuff did happen which caused me to re-assess my mental game, and I may write about that at a later point, but for now I bet you’d like to hear about someone doing well at States. Thank goodness for Sean Vandover.

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The Beautiful Struggle: Building a Better Urzatron

Get ready for Magic the Gathering Champs!

The Champs articles keep on coming! This time it’s the turn of Mark Young. He takes us through the evolution of Urzatron decks, in both U/R and U/W, and even offers up a R/W build for those crazy enough to run with the Boros Legion… The Standard metagame promises to be extremely diverse. Are the defining decks of the format available in this article? Read on to find out!

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The Beautiful Struggle: No Sleep ‘Til Brooklyn

Mark brings us the sights, sounds, and smells from the Neutral Ground prerelease, including a whopping five Sealed pools for us to build. Looking for some tips for your approaching PTQs? Look no further!

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The Beautiful Struggle: Return to the Rakdos Studio

In a ten-game set against a Simic Sky Swallower-based Urzatron deck, the deck lost only one game, in which the Tron deck drew a large number of Urza lands to power up a giant Demonfire. In the other games, it was almost impossible for the control deck to deal with both one-drops, instant-speed burn spells, and the overwhelming Genju of the Spires…

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The Beautiful Struggle: Fun With Vintage 2

The dealer flipped over a king on the river, and that was how my bankroll excluded any other card game but Magic on the Saturday afternoon of Labor Day weekend. A local store was holding a 10-proxy Vintage tournament and promised a Mana Drain as the prize if 16 people showed up…

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SCG Daily – Attack of the Week of Lists, Part 5

Mark rounds off his Week of Lists with a look back at the articles that have particularly pulled his chain. He presents his very own Top 10 Non-Tournament Report Articles… have you read them all?

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Attack of the Week of Lists, Part 4, Now With Special Bonus List!

For the fourth entry in his entertaining Week of Lists, Mark blatanty steals Tim Aten’s schtick. You want the lowdown on the Team Names from Pro Tour Chraleston? You got it!

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SCG Daily – Attack of the Week of Lists, Part 3

Mark continues his Week of Lists with a rundown of the “Top 10 Cards I Wanted to Open Last Weekend,” a homage to RGD Limited Champs players everywhere. If you were praying for Cloaks but opened Jokes, then come share Mark’s pain…

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