CategoryMagic The Gathering

Speculations on the New Standard

This week michaelj puts on his fortune teller garb and peers into the future in an attempt to divine what the Standard format will look like come next Tuesday. In addition to showing you not one, but two new decks that may already have broken the upcoming Type Two season, he prognosticates on all the scenarios from the March 1st Banning announcement, and tells you just what each of them will mean to your upcoming Friday Nights, Regionals, and Nationals tournaments.

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Multiplayer Combo Week: The Winner, And Next Week’s Challenge!

Last week’s Multiplayer Combo Challenge was a success, getting an astounding twelve people to share their thoughts on the greatest multiplayer blowout decks. So the question on everybody’s lips is: What’s next week’s challenge?

The Top Five Multiplayer Creatures.



Of course, as always, there’s a catch. Given the Kokusho-packed articles from last week, Kokusho may not be on your list. Remember, articles that simply give the five cards along with a one-paragraph description probably will not win; we want decks to go with the creatures, and a good idea of what sorts of players/strategies these creatures do well against. Pick your five favorites – but back it up with anecdotes, strategy, and above all, fun! The winner gets $20 in cold hard cash!



The winner of last week’s contest? Well, there were a lot of fine entries, but in the end Chris Franson won for “The Best Multiplayer Combo?” It wasn’t the most entertaining deck out there – Staff of Dominance-based decks are depressingly alike – but Chris not only did a fine job of explaining both his decks, but provided an alternate build and discussed other cards that could be used. And that’s the sort of thing we like to reward!

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You CAN Play Type I #147 – Betraying Kamigawa, Part III: Instants, Sorceries and Land

As Oscar wraps up his Vintage Betrayers set review today, he begins to despair at the quality of cards in the new set. Is there nothing playable in Vintage coming out of this middle set, ow will the Instants, Sorceries, and Lands provide a hidden gem that we’ll be talking about in the years to come?

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The Top 10 Over and Underrated Cards in Champions of Kamigawa

Rich Hoaen is the secret Limited Assassin, stacking up result after result with hardly a word written or said about his outstanding skills. By starting a regular column here at StarCityGames.com, this loveable Canadian is out to change all that, delivering his insightful Limited commentary gleaned from hundreds of drafts straight to our readers. Today Rich takes a peak at the Top 10 Over and Underrated cards in Champions – valuations that will stay true even with Betrayers of Kamigawa now in the mix.

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Red Deck Wins 2005

With the speed that PTQ players are tweaking their combo, beatdown, and control decks these days, it may look like Red Deck Wins has been left in the dust – a relic of the early days of the season when players had yet to properly prepare for the Red menace. Thankfully, notes Dan, Red deck designers are not above a few innovations themselves and today Dan provides a look at a few tweaks you can add to your Red Deck to stay ahead of the combo curve.

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Blog Fanatic: Silky Smooth

In one of the most amusing Blog Fanatic installments yet, Ben tackles some of the weightier issues in our game, like how to hate your arch-rival out of the metagame, and the proper way to teach your teammates how to catch cheaters in the act!

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Betrayers of Kamigawa Limited Review – Red

Usually when a new set comes out it’s pretty clear which color came out on top with all of the new goodies. This time it didn’t seem so clear at first, but after playing a bit, I think I have the answer to the question: Which color got the biggest boost from Betrayers?
My vote goes to Red, and this week I’ll tell you why.

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SCG Daily – Blog Fanatic: Mister Nice

Who is the mysterious Mr. Nice and what powers does he have over the game of Magic? How did Mr. Nice help Ben overcome his arch-nemsis, Vinny “The Pimp” Falcone? And just what about all those Millions of Unusual Small Creatures Lurking Everywhere? The only way to find the answers to these questions is to tune into today’s Blog Fanatic!

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Weak Among the Strong: Winning More

Today Chad puts forth yet another seminal piece of Magic theory explaining why winning is obviously good, but “Winning More” is clearly not. If you want to improve your deck construction skills, this is the place to start.

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Treasonous Frogs: Kappa in a Blender, Post-Betrayers

Dave takes a second look at his updated version of the speedy Standard deck known as “Frog in a Blender”, this time with added Betrayers cards. As if that wasn’t good enough, he also includes a Block Constructed version of the deck and tells the story of his losing ways at the Betrayers of Kamigawa Prerelease.

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Sealed Revealed II: Card Pool Two

Our favorite Scouser continues his journey of Limited improvement today with a considerably more difficult card pool than he opened on Monday. Which colors does Craig end up in and which ones do you think he should have chosen? State your opinion in our forums.

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The Beautiful Struggle: Super Vision

With a new Standard environment on the horizon and Extended season in full bloom, Mark takes a step back from the tournament scene to review the various forms of strategic superiority and where they come from.

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Filling The Romeo Void: Budget Decks For Multiplayer!

I’ve been playing a lot of multiplayer Magic lately…with college students. You know what that means if you’re a working stiff like me? You get to see supposedly-grown “men” cry like four-year-olds when you pull out your $300, forty-eight rare Sneak Attack deck.

“That’s no fair!” they cry dejectedly. “You can afford all those good cards, while all of us combined only own a tenth what you have!” So I then showed them that I can win without rare-filled decks… And so can you!

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Red Rockin’ the PTQ Scene

What’s a boy to play in a diverse environment rife with aggro-control strategies? At first Terry wasn’t sure, but then he honed in on the idea of playing his favorite card ever in the environment (Eternal Witness), and soon found himself developing a Red Rock deck designed to bash the PTQ field to bits. In this detailed Primer, Terry gives you all the details you need to know in order to take this deck to a PTQ and do well.

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The Interactive Extended Tournament Report

I’ve been thinking for a while about how to improve tournament reports and make them more useful for the people reading them, and I’ve decided that what I’m going to try doing is a more interactive style of report. For each of the crucial decisions during the tournament which decided how I got on, I’ll explain the situation and then ask you what you would have done in this situation, before explaining what I did and what I should have done. If there’s anything that you want more information about, then just post in the forums and I’ll do my best to reply.

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