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Something I notice time and time again is that Magic communities, much like high school, have a special social structure and many different cliques. A community divided is in much worse shape than one that’s unified. This, unfortunately, will never change. This alone is unhealthy, but it’s worsened further by plain ole’ simple bad manners. A new generation of players comes to replace the old guard, and with them come naivety, immaturity, and crass adolescents.

It’s Worlds – I wasn’t expecting to go, but somehow I made Top 8 at Barcelona and suddenly I’m invited to everything. A lot of my deck was proxies since I knew I could buy the cards I needed onsite. I actually had (or traded for) the rares, but I couldn’t find copies of some of the non-rare cards, like Merchant Scroll, and no one ever carries around cards like that in their trade binders. Thankfully, I knew what Merchant Scroll did. It was a Sorcery, it cost 1U, and it fetched two different kinds of Blue spells that aren’t creatures. That can only leave Instants and Sorceries, right?

Nothing is better than stories about one player dominating a Magic group with a card that no one played. After the domination begins, however, everyone starts including it in their decks. When that happens, it’s like casual group evolution right before your eyes. And here are thirty overlooked cards that might just dominate your kitchen table, if given the right chance.

While waiting for the tournament to begin, my mate Bill Johnston asked which Betrayers common I would most like to open, suggesting it might be Waxmane Baku. Although I hadn’t really thought about this question I said Gnarled Mass without hesitation. I’m not saying that it’s the best common in Betrayers, but Gnarled Mass is just the one that works best for me. So how did I fare at the PTQ with two of Bob Gnarly in my deck? Check inside, friends, check inside.

I’m continuing my exploration of the more unusual Magic Online formats. Last time I talked about the highly addictive Singleton format. This week I want to look at a specialized Singleton format — Rainbow Stairwell.

When Ted asked me to take a shot at the SCG Daily column, I wondered what I could write about. Then it occurred to me – as the one of the oldest writers on the site as well as a usetabee, I’d write about my war stories. Just imagine me as an even older man (tricky, but possible), sitting on the porch, smoking a pipe and telling you about “the big one” while all the kids (that’s you readers) sit there hoping I’ll finally doze off so you can go play video games.

Those of you familiar with Magic history may remember the Brothers’ War between Mishra and Urza, the two most powerful artificers on Dominaria. But those of you familiar with StarCityGames.com writers will know of the brothers’ war we’re having: Matthew Lubich and his brother Andrew. Both of them have written consistently-entertaining entries for the weekly Casual Challenge, and this week they went head-to-head.

Matthew wrote an excellent primer on the rules for lockdown decks (even if his deck was a little on the underpowered side this time around), whereas his brother came up with one of the most creative kill methods I think I’ve ever seen. The problem is, Andrew’s won before, and Matthew hasn’t. Who to choose?

In the end, I decided to split it evenly, lest I cause fistfights at the Lubich household. Matthew wins this week’s $20 prize, in the sincere hopes that both brothers will keep writing!

And next week’s challenge?

Theme Decks.

That’s right, folks — we want to see the most powerful (and, more importantly, playable) deck you can build around a non-Magic theme. Whether that’s an Edgar Allen Poe deck or a deck related exclusively to emo bands, we want to see your crazy theme deck — and more importantly, how to play a pile of cards that have nothing in common except for flavor. So write it up and send it to Mail us at https://sales.starcitygames.com/contactus/contactform.php?emailid=2, and you could win $20!

Today the Bleiweiss has turned in an article so packed with “stuff” that it’s difficult to describe all of it in a concise blurb. Try this on for size: 9th Edition and Ravnica Speculations, the short and long-term past and future of FNM prizes, the cards that absolutely NEED to be made into Judge promos and how the judges got the shaft last time, the coolest proposed GenCon Vintage Championships prizes of all time, and so much more! This will be the water cooler article for your friends for the rest of the week, so you’re going to want to read it.

This weekend, Martin attended three PTQs and won all of them utilizing the power of Takeno’s Cavalry enchanted with Kumano’s Blessing. Okay, maybe that’s not quite true, but he did attend one and he may have had to play against Takeno’s Calvary in round 6 where the winner of the match would make the Top 8.

Over the past few years, I’ve become increasingly frustrated by the cost of Magic boosters. I remember when the MSRP was only $2.69 – a very long time ago, to be sure, but now it’s climbed by an entire dollar. That’s a lot of money for a single booster, don’t you think? Thankfully, SCG thinks so, too. If it wasn’t for SCG, I don’t think I would still buy packs anymore. I’ve recently begun to see how the rise in the price of Magic has affected my local gaming community – and I’ve heard some cries on the forums lamenting similar stories about how their gaming stores are closing down, relocating, or are not planning on renewing their Magic inventory. I found this somewhat disheartening – so I talked with a few people that I knew and wanted to find out why this was happening.

In Limited, Green seems to be the odd man out. Red and Black have always offered drafters valuable removal, while White and Blue packed flyers, but Green tended to shuffle its feet and look morosely down on its collection of ground-pounders and mana acceleration. There are exceptions, as when Green suddenly found itself as the new top dog at killing off artifacts right in the middle of the artifact block, but more often it suffers from general anemia in the fields that drafters care about. Even though it was carrying its own weight in triple-Champions draft, it’s certainly fallen back into disfavor for the Champions-Champions-Betrayers environment.

I love deck building, and I love playing Constructed duels. I find it much more rewarding than leagues and drafts, so I am trying out the various MTGO constructed formats. That said, I still have very few Constructed-worthy cards, and my online Type Two and Extended decks cannot compete with Vedalken Shackles in Standard, or Vial Affinity in Extended. However, I can build decks that are competitive in other formats, especially singleton.