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From Right Field: Lickety Split’s A Series of Unfortunate Decks: The Sickly Sweet Sequel

Can you make a good version of all-common White Weenie for the Standard environment? How about mono-Red Land Destruction? Chris finishes his “all commons all the time” stint with a couple of new decks that earn mixed results.

Making the Leap From Magic Online to Pro Tour Star

Until last year, Terry Soh was just a kid from Malaysia who couldn’t get a draft in his home country. Now he’s a bonafide Pro Tour star, with two Grand Prix Top 8s, a National Team slot, and two Pro Tour Top 8s to his name. How did this leap occur? Terry thinks you can do the exact same thing he did, and he’s willing to give you the steps necessary to accomplish just that.

10 Extended Decks in 10 Days – Everything You Wanted to Know About Sex With Squids But Were Afraid To Ask

Cephalid Breakfast very nearly won a Grand Prix last weekend, so you can be absolutely certain it will be played at upcoming PTQs. Bennie Smith takes the deck to the numbers and looks at all of the matchup data for the deck against every deck played in Pro Tour: Columbus to see where the strengths and weaknesses lie. If you plan to play Extended this season, this is information you must have.

Mining the Crystal Quarry: Betrayers of Combo-Gawa

Looking for cool new card interactions in the new set? Well, John’s read Bennie Smith’s article and come up with a heaping helping of fresh new Betrayer-ready combos! How about a combo that provides an infinitely-large creature, or infinite life, or infinite life loss, or infinite mana, all by swapping a single kill card….

Death and Despair Plus the Other Stuff: Black, Artifacts, and Colorless Cards in Betrayers

Rick completes his excellent Constructed set review today with what many people feel is the strongest color in Betrayers: Black. What cards will be keepers in Standard and Block Constructed? Have a look.

SCG Daily – Doctor Mox’s Guide to Extended, Pt 2

If you listen to the forums, it appears that Doctor Mox is everyone’s new favorite writer, but who is this masked man, and why does he keep talking about his Volkswagon? Bah, none of that matters, since today the Doc is back to bring you another amusing-yet-useful look at the current Extended format.

Papal Bull: It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year

There’s a lot of contention regarding what should and shouldn’t be on the Vintage restricted list. Wizards took five cards off the restricted list in Vintage during 2004: Fork, Braingeyser, Stroke of Genius, Doomsday, and Earthcraft. To pretty much everyone, these cards were considered undegenerate and could be unrestricted with a reasonable amount of safety. While there are occasional tweaks when a new B&R list comes out, usually nothing is changed. Still, every quarter there is usually a firestorm of debate regarding changes to the list. Since it’s going to be March soon, it seemed like a good time stoke the fires of Vintage debate once more with an article…

A Serious Casual Problem

The one thing that everyone seems to agree upon, me included, is that the casual side of StarCityGames.com has dropped off over the past couple of years. So where do we start improving? That’s where I need your help.

[Submit your casual articles here!]

Betrayers of Five-Color

Set reviews often come across as boring because writers include way too many cards in their review: “Come one, come all, to the Giant Set-a-Thon where Mega Magic Reviews are held! You’ll hold onto your seats as I count through every single card, no matter how obviously useless or powerful! Rar!” Instead of listing every card, and then saying how much it sucks in Five-Color compared to previous cards, I’ll just skip the bad ones altogether to bring you only the noteworthy Betrayer cards of Five-Color.

Vote For Me in 2005!

Magic: the Gathering Invitational
It’s election time again, Magic style. Now is the time of year where Magic fans everywhere get to vote their favorite players into the Magic: the Gathering Invitational. Well this year, we decided to give all players on the ballot equal time on our front page. From now until the end of the Invitational voting process, StarCityGames.com will run advertisements from any pro on the ballot (but only from those pros), explaining in 1000 words or less why they should get your vote. Tell your friends to help their case simply by submitting their advertisement to Mail us at https://sales.starcitygames.com/contactus/contactform.php?emailid=2 and we will do the rest.

Today’s candidate? Dutch Bear Jeroen Remie.

SCG Daily – Doctor Mox’s Guide to Extended, Pt 1

Not strictly funny, nor full-blown strategy, Doctor Mox uncomfortably straddles the fence between both. Today your Magical Problem Practitioner provides a guide to the Extended format that’s accessible by all players competitive to casual.

Clerical Errors – A Pro Tour Nagoya Report *11th*

Rich Hoaen is one of the best young Limited players in the world, having made 1 Top 8 appearance and 3 Top 16s in his last four Limited Pro Tours. Today Rich tells the story of his latest Pro Tour exploits, and StarCityGames.com is happy to welcome him to our growing staff of excellent writers.

Legacy: The Combo Winter That Never Was

With all the broken cards available to the Legacy format, one might figure that combo decks would be dominating the young format. Not so, says Kevin Binswanger, and here he takes an in-depth look at the contenders to the Legacy Combo crown and tries to figure out why they aren’t doing quite as well as some players might have predicted.

SCG Daily – Introducing Doctor Mox, The Magical Problem Physician

Doctor Mox is one of our Featured Writers in disguise. Used only for his stint on SCG Daily, Doctor Mox is designed to help players and tackle some of Magic’s great conundrums in a humorous way. Today’s problem: How to improve you game.

My First Time – A Pro Tour Nagoya Report *2nd*

In this incredibly frank and enlightening tournament report, Anton Jonsson details how he started the Pro Tour 9-0, was almost knocked out of Top 8 contention five rounds later, and then rallied to find himself in a Pro Tour final for the first time ever. Limited players take heed, Jonsson has made back-to-back-to-back Pro Tour Top 8s in forty-card formats, and at this point has to be considered one of the greatest Limited Magic players of all time.