AuthorThe Ferrett

Your birthday rolls around, and your mom and wife have no idea what to get for you. Oh, they know you like those Magical cards, but when they walk into a store they’re completely overwhelmed by the sheer number of Magic cards, packs, decks, sleeves, boxes, and plushies available. They have no idea what to buy you… And so you get socks again, not that Dragon you were really longing for.

But what if we told you there was an easy way to tell the world exactly what cards you needed?

Despite the fact that I fully planned to hate Champions, the gameplay was surprisingly palatable. It had a unique feel – that happy feel of equipment ported from Mirrodin, the ridiculous bomb critters of Onslaught but without the generic morph-o-rama dope mana curve, and a reliance on weird burn and enchantments that was uniquely its own. There was no auto-save if you built a crappy mana base, as there had been in Mirrodin’s colorless approach and Onslaught’s 2/2 for three.
I had a bunch of very tense and close races – that feeling that good deckbuilding skills really mattered, which I haven’t had in any set since Invasion.

David Williams just won 3.5 million dollars in the
World Series of Poker in one weekend. Before that, he’d won $40,000 total
over a successful four-year Magic career – which, if you do the math, means
he could have earned more working at a gas station. Given those cold hard
figures, why would any sane pro play Magic?

It took awhile to get your Memnarch and a Seedborn Muse out at the same time – but fortunately, your opponents were wasting their removal on all the wrong targets, and now you’re in the clear. They are helpless. You have counterspells in hand to prevent any Fog effects. It’s difficult to prevent the maniacal cackling gurgling up from the back of your throat, since the game is yours…

…Or it would be. If this were normal Magic.

It’s a Ferrett article… like you need an excuse.

What’s that you say? Flores and Ferrett on the same day? Sacre Bleus! Can it possibly be true? Oh yes indeedy, our cup overfloweth! We’ve drug Ferrett back to add his usual spark and panache to a Magic: Year in Review article. The following is but the tiniest sample of the cheeky, sarcastic goodness that comprises today’s offering:

“After years of consistently proclaiming that TurboLand is the best deck in Extended no matter what the metagame was, Zvi Mowshowitz finally wins a Grand Prix with it. Snowball fights break out in Hell as pigs request flight plans from astonished air traffic controllers.”

As many of you no doubt know, as both editor and webmaster I’ve been nearly overwhelmed by workload, working regular sixty-hour weeks in an attempt to keep up with the flow of articles and technical issues. Thankfully, Pete decided to hire an extra person for the job as managing editor in order to handle the day-to-day articles while I took on more wide-scale tasks. And that managing editor is….

“Man,” said players who knew no better. “Paying $75 to attend Dragon*Con is a rip-off!” But let me tell you, my friends; the cheesecake visible there on all sides during the evening costume shows was enough to strike a man (or woman) pleasantly blind. Thus, we squeezed one eye shut and took pictures.

Warning: If you don’t like pictures of scantily-clad women and men, then stay away. The rest of you will no doubt see that as a strong incentive to click.