AuthorSean McKeown

Sean McKeown is renowned for his ability to take existing archetypes and improve them. His articles often end up influencing constructed metagames from States and Regionals to the Pro Tour itself.

Magical Hack – Affinity in Extended: Welcoming Our Robotic Overlords

Read Sean McKeown every Friday... at StarCityGames.com!
Friday, February 20th – What a difference a week can make. One set’s rotation into the lineup has had at least some minimal effect, but just the usual ebb and flow of the metagame has its own startling effects. When last we saw a solid week’s results on the PTQ season, Faeries were pretty much everywhere… But now? Faeries were pretty much everywhere

Magical Hack – Watching The Fallout

Richmond, Virginia hosts the first StarCityGames.com $5,000 Standard Open of 2009!
Friday, February 13th – With the recent release of Conflux into the fray, we’re beginning to see changes coming along because of the recent additions. While I’ve been pretty focused on Extended as a format of interest of late, Standard has caught my eye once again…

Magical Hack – Extended In Flux

Read Sean McKeown every Friday... at StarCityGames.com!
Friday, February 6th – Extended is a world of high power and maximizing the bang for your buck; card synergy is important and we are reminded of the good old bad old days of Magic, where anything that cost you four or more mana had better win you the game right there if you want to even consider including it.

Magical Hack – Enter The Maelstrom

Read Sean McKeown every Friday... at StarCityGames.com!
Friday, January 30th – The Conflux prerelease is tomorrow, and with it comes our first taste of Shards-Conflux Limited. But before that first taste tomorrow, we can take advantage of the fact that this set has been quite effectively spoiled well ahead of the game, with the complete set known about a week or so before the pre-release and the names of all the cards “common knowledge” for practically months.

Magical Hack – Escape From LA!

Read Sean McKeown every Friday... at StarCityGames.com!
Friday, January 23rd – With the rise of Faerie Wizards in the metagame, regardless of whose list you’re rocking it with (American or Japanese) it’s easy to note that it has been shaping the metagame around it. Faeries takes a bite out of Elves, stifling that deck choice near to irrelevance at the PTQs we’ve seen so far, and has a reasonable matchup against Zoo as well, so new innovations were necessary to escape the tricksy Wizard tribe and their previously-irrelevant lair at the Riptide Laboratory.

Magical Hack – Pondering Ponder

Buy, Sell and Trade with StarCityGames.com at Grand Prix Los Angeles!
Friday, January 16th – You don’t have to twist my arm very hard at all to convince me to play the best Blue control deck of the format, especially when the best version of the best deck is still under debate and you can escape from Mirror Match Hell by facing competing archetypes against each other.

Magical Hack – Fae-r and Loathing In Extended

Buy, Sell and Trade with StarCityGames.com at Grand Prix Los Angeles!
Friday, January 9th – With two articles in a row dedicated to a pet-deck strategy of delving into The Rock in Extended, I feel as if I’ve wasted enough of my readership’s time on a strategy that will in all likelihood prove to be second-rate. While I’m content to still play with the deck and test it in the meantime, hearing about it is not going to get anyone else the kind of insight that playing with it is getting me… so to discuss Extended, I’d rather move on to different pastures.

Magical Hack – Rocking Out in Extended

Buy, Sell and Trade with StarCityGames.com at Grand Prix Los Angeles!
Friday, January 2nd – Last week, we had a look at a new spin on an old favorite, looking to update the Rock for modern Extended. While everyone is looking at Faeries or Zoo or Elves as their deck of choice, I was curious to see how Extended looked from the perspective of the fair-to-a-fault Black/Green deck.

Magical Hack – Extended Tomfoolery

Buy, Sell and Trade with StarCityGames.com at Grand Prix Los Angeles!
Friday, December 26th – With Worlds behind us, and an official confirmation that there are no bannings to the format that will be appearing before the start of the PTQ season, we now know everything there is to see about the format and can start working with the underpinnings of Extended in order to work out decks for the PTQ season.

Magical Hack – The Day After The Earth Stood Still

Buy, Sell and Trade with StarCityGames.com at Grand Prix Los Angeles!
Friday, December 19th – While there are some few PTQs left featuring Sealed Deck and Draft as their key component, getting an advanced look at the upcoming Extended format is the attraction of the hour, as we ponder whether there will be a banning or if everything we need to know about the next PTQ format is already right in front of us.

Magical Hack – One Day At Worlds

Read Sean McKeown every week... at StarCityGames.com!
Tuesday, December 16th – As I’m writing this, we’ve seen one day of play at Worlds, perhaps the most interesting day for those who like to follow Standard for Friday Night Magic and other local tournaments. We certainly expect the third day of play, focusing on Extended, to have a metagame-shaping impact… either it’ll prove that Elves are at an acceptable power level in the current Extended metagame, or Wizards will break some Elf kneecaps until they do.

Magical Hack – Static Versus Dynamic

Read Sean McKeown every Friday... at StarCityGames.com!
Friday, December 5th – As we come into the StarCityGames.com $5000 Weekend in Philadelphia, and the World Championships the following week, we are looking at two Constructed formats of relevance and the powerful question of whether these formats are static or dynamic.

Magical Hack – Greed

Read Sean McKeown every Friday... at StarCityGames.com!
Friday, November 28th – I’ve heard a few glum opinions on Shards of Alara Limited, such as that you need a Dragon and a Planeswalker in your Sealed Deck if you want to make the Top 8, but the fact remains that there is a lot you can do without stupid rares in your deck, and maximizing your card pool is going to be key to success in this format.

Magical Hack – States In A Nutshell

The StarCityGames.com $5,000 Standard open Comes to Philadelphia!
Friday, November 21st – With results beginning to trickle in, a solid idea of what happened at States is beginning to form our impressions of what we can expect at Worlds in a few weeks. While there is little enough on the PTQ-level front for Standard, there are events like the upcoming StarCityGames.com $5000 Standard Open in Philadelphia at the start of December, and there’s always Friday Night Magic.

Magical Hack – A Return To Limited

Read Sean McKeown every Friday... at StarCityGames.com!
Friday, November 14th – With States out of the way, there is little reason for the interested tournament mage not to focus entirely on Shards of Alara Limited. While Standard is certainly of interest for anyone looking at Worlds, there is nothing demanding our attention in quite the way that Shards Limited ought to. My personal States story is a heartbreaker, and not in the way that gets people laughing on the forums about how I’m terrible-with-illusions-of-grandeur.