Mike Flores is a buffoon. I can say this because I know him better than most of you, and nearly anyone who hangs out with or talks to Flores for an extended period of time will come to this realization. Oh, don’t get me wrong… Flores is brilliant. But he also has innumerable flaws, many of which I will detail here in this very article.
Since Phoenix is a creature, I figure it will win this week’s vote regardless of whatever silly words Ben and I put on the page discussing the merits of each card, but this is a vote the mtg.com readers may get right. For once.
Greetings, and welcome to our new weekly debate series, where the Bleiweiss and I take on one of Magic’s more pressing issues: Selecting 9th Edition.
That’s when current Player of the Year leader Nicolai Herzog perks up and asks,”Have I told you about the time I woke up next to a naked and handcuffed Eivind Nitter?” Here’s the rest of the tale as related to me by Nicolai through e-mail, as I may have been a bit too tipsy to get all the details right. (Yes, I may have thought Nicolai said,”Did I ever tell you about the time I woke up handcuffed to a naked Eivind Nitter?” Slightly different connotation there.)
In this article, I’m going to explore some of the psychology of winning and losing, and explain why being a boxer isn’t necessarily what you want to be in order to be successful at Magic. I’ll also look at how some Pro Tour notables like Brian Kibler and Mike Long deal with losing, include some details of my recent trips to U.S. Nationals and Origins, and relay a hilarious anecdote that is sure to embarrass Brian David Marshall, Randy Buehler, Alan Comer, or Scott Johns.
In today’s installment of The Magic University, I’m going to take a look at card quality, a concept that is inherently understood by most Magic players, but one that is rarely examined in detail. I’m also going to take a look at a couple of the cards from Fifth Dawn that made Ben Bleiweiss say,”I think we may have the new Urza’s Block on our hands.”
Today, I’m going to do some initial analysis of what went down at U.S. and Canadian Regionals. I will also regale you with some of the better stories that came out of my own Regionals experience before shifting gears into the usual (and sorely neglected) Mixed kNuts treatment. But first I get to do something I’ve never done before – I’m going to play chicken little and tell you why I think Skullclamp is likely to get banned.
I was going to call this article”Flores spilled my f***ing deck!” but that seemed petty and childish, so the current title says it all.
What do the Canadian National Champion, the winner of Grand Prix: Columbus, and everyone’s favorite crank Tim Aten have in common? They all lent a helping hand to try and give you a leg up on the competition for Grand Prix: DC and Team Sealed season!
This article contains a Top Ten list, a rant about Team Sealed Qualifiers and the state of Virginia Magic, and a hint about the newest StarCityGames.com Featured Writer. How can you resist?
So I was talking to Mike Flores the other day, and Mike told me,”You know, the great thing about writing Magic Theory is that it immediately rules out all the dumb people from reading your articles.”
I replied,”Well, Mike, the fact that they can’t talk never seems to hinder their ability to type ‘STFU n00b!’ in response to my theory articles.”
Every time I put up a Dilemma article these days, the forums quake with outraged readers. Typically, their complaints are about how the Dilemma articles are split into multiple days, and how they hate waiting those extra 24 hours to have the other half of the debate appear.”Things didn’t used to be this way,” they cry,”so why are you punishing us now?”
