AuthorThe Ferrett

Some thoughts on players’ uncanny attraction to terrible cards; if you want to know why everyone says your favorite card totally sucks in Format X, this is the place to learn why.

The first round of OBC tourneys are over – and as expected, Quiet Speculation decks were everywhere. But there were two decks that absolutely smashed Quiet Spec decks…. And don’t you want to know what they are?

America was based on the tenets of free speech – and so was StarCity. From the beginning, StarCity’s tried to be the voice of the community, picking up where the Dojo left off, allowing people of all sorts to have their say. Almost every Magic issue that can be debated has been on StarCity at some point, and the only thing I have to say is:

Boy, you sure are a bunch of whiny bastards.

It’s a very good deck that smashes mono-black, blows through white weenie, and punishes any number of other classic OBC decks… But there’s one matchup it just can’t beat. Why doesn’t it work? All that, and an invite to get together at Origins!

How much would your play improve if you could have Mike Turian sitting over your shoulder during a draft game, explaining what he would have done, which cards he considers suboptimal, and what the right play should have been? Well, one lucky winner will get to have that chance….

Lots of netdecks – in fact, most of them – completely collapse when you bring them out of their duel environment. Let’s find out what sorts of netdecks make the transitions well – and what lessons they teach us about multiplayer deckbuilding.

The fact that our front page now takes less than twenty seconds to load wouldn’t generally considered a triumph. But our database servers are finally going full-speed, and heck if the front page doesn’t load in .88 seconds by my watch! Yee and haw.

Also, anyone wanna scroll down and plug a card into our new”Ask The Virtual Judge” program? Thought so. Try it; it’s way cool.

Oh yeah; do me a favor and check the articles that are further down the page, too. They’re well worth your time.

Unfortunately,
folks, while we’re switching database servers,
the portion of our site that serves up all
the nifty articles and whatnot will be down
until Wednesday – which means that it’ll
probably be more like Thursday, given our
server guy. Until then, feel free to order
from our cart, and accept our sincerest
delays.

The
good news: After all of this is said and
done, the slooooow delays in getting StarCity
to load should be over – and allow us to
move into Phase Two of all the nifty things
we’ll be offering come the end of July.
Huzzah!

SPECIAL
ADDITIONAL NOTE: You may or may not be able
to access old articles at this time, but
I left the links at the top and to the side
active anyway. Feel free to browse; at the
time I wrote this, I could access yesterday’s
updates and the writer archives, but not
the Tech centers. Experiment at your own
risk; remember, we’re in the middle of a
mess. (Sorry about the mess.)

Unfortunately,
folks, while we’re switching database servers,
the portion of our site that serves up all
the nifty articles and whatnot will be down
until Wednesday – which means that it’ll
probably be more like Thursday, given our
server guy. Until then, feel free to order
from our cart, and accept our sincerest
delays.

The
good news: After all of this is said and
done, the slooooow delays in getting StarCity
to load should be over – and allow us to
move into Phase Two of all the nifty things
we’ll be offering come the end of July.
Huzzah!

SPECIAL
ADDITIONAL NOTE: You may or may not be able
to access old articles at this time, but
I left the links at the top and to the side
active anyway. Feel free to browse; at the
time I wrote this, I could access yesterday’s
updates and the writer archives, but not
the Tech centers. Experiment at your own
risk; remember, we’re in the middle of a
mess. (Sorry about the mess.)

Unfortunately,
folks, while we’re switching database servers,
the portion of our site that serves up all
the nifty articles and whatnot will be down
until Wednesday – which means that it’ll
probably be more like Thursday, given our
server guy. Until then, feel free to order
from our cart, and accept our sincerest
delays.

The
good news: After all of this is said and
done, the slooooow delays in getting StarCity
to load should be over – and allow us to
move into Phase Two of all the nifty things
we’ll be offering come the end of July.
Huzzah!

SPECIAL
ADDITIONAL NOTE: You may or may not be able
to access old articles at this time, but
I left the links at the top and to the side
active anyway. Feel free to browse; at the
time I wrote this, I could access yesterday’s
updates and the writer archives, but not
the Tech centers. Experiment at your own
risk; remember, we’re in the middle of a
mess. (Sorry about the mess.)

Unfortunately,
folks, while we’re switching database servers,
the portion of our site that serves up all
the nifty articles and whatnot will be down
until Wednesday – which means that it’ll
probably be more like Thursday, given our
server guy. Until then, feel free to order
from our cart, and accept our sincerest
delays.

The
good news: After all of this is said and
done, the slooooow delays in getting StarCity
to load should be over – and allow us to
move into Phase Two of all the nifty things
we’ll be offering come the end of July.
Huzzah!

SPECIAL
ADDITIONAL NOTE: You may or may not be able
to access old articles at this time, but
I left the links at the top and to the side
active anyway. Feel free to browse; at the
time I wrote this, I could access yesterday’s
updates and the writer archives, but not
the Tech centers. Experiment at your own
risk; remember, we’re in the middle of a
mess. (Sorry about the mess.)

Thanks to a new spam filter on my personal site, a lot of emails are bouncing to my [email protected] address. In the meantime, please send all submissions to Mail us at https://sales.starcitygames.com/contactus/contactform.php?emailid=2, which seems to work.

Sorry for the delay yesterday, folks – StarCity was down thanks to server problems again. That’s why we’re shelling out the shekels to get a separate database server that should improve the speed of articles, the main page, and all the other major goodies we have planned….

And so I ask you, the Magic community, a critical question that has never been answered in Magic before or since: What makes a team win? Help me find one of the core fundamentals of Magic that the Lucky Seven never answered.

Since I’ve recently been promoted to Webmaster of this site as well as editor, I’ll be looking to make some major changes here – and soon. The question is, what do YOU want to see done here to help you play Magic better? Check out the discussion in our forum, and let me know what I can do to help you!