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That’s when current Player of the Year leader Nicolai Herzog perks up and asks,”Have I told you about the time I woke up next to a naked and handcuffed Eivind Nitter?” Here’s the rest of the tale as related to me by Nicolai through e-mail, as I may have been a bit too tipsy to get all the details right. (Yes, I may have thought Nicolai said,”Did I ever tell you about the time I woke up handcuffed to a naked Eivind Nitter?” Slightly different connotation there.)

For the reporter that’s always on the go, it’s food that makes the world go round.

How much card draw is enough? For sixty-card decks, how much should be card draw (assuming it’s available)? Is there a formula/general rule, or is the only real way to know extensive testing?

Well, it looks like this most recent set of puzzles really gave some of you a run for your money. One of the important lessons to be learned from these puzzles is that the most obvious play is not always the correct play. Keep that in mind next time you have two Shrapnel Blasts in hand and an opponent at ten life.

Normally, for an event like a Pro Tour, more time is spent onsite than traveling thanks to a little invention called the”airplane.” This time, however, was different. I woke up Monday morning (three days before I was supposed to leave for Seattle) with a searing pain in my chest, and my parents took me to the hospital. I found out that I have a recurring case of a pneumo thorax, which is an air bubble in between my lung and ribcage. Yeah, it hurts…

Before I make any other changes to the deck, I want to nudge it closer to cog-tacularity and further away from WW Equip. I fully admit that someone else doing this experiment would do the exact opposite, which is part of the fun.

What’s your biggest Magic tournament accomplishment?

While I did receive quite a bit of criticism in Seattle for my pick articles, I received just as much praise. I think this proves that my often praised, often criticized style of not exactly ordering picks is correct. However, I do think that just randomly ordering them in groups can be misleading. In this article, I will try to more accurately organize them. The pick orders still won’t be exact, but they will be a lot closer than they have been in the past.

Once again it’s time to turn some seemingly impossible board positions into sure wins. A couple of the puzzles this volume focus on a specific aspect of Magic that I know a lot of people (myself included) could use some practice with: knowing your outs. Much like in poker, it is critically important for the competitive Magic player to know exactly which cards in his deck can help him to achieve victory.

Our opponents continue to out-open us, grabbing Form of the Dragon and Forgotten Ancient in Scourge, but it hardly matters. All I want to talk to Tim about is this crazy gamble he called in Legions. Canopy Crawler was the best card in the pack. I’ve taken it over Timberwatch Elf more than once! Not taking it – giving the opponents a chance to hate it – was a clear mistake. Or was it?

Yeah, you may have heard of some of those guys. Two veterans from Your Move Games. Then there’s Billy Postlethwait, who almost became the national champion. I didn’t recognize Mitchell Tamblyn’s name, but when Ted Knutson sat down behind me with his laptop, taking notes on Mitchell’s drafting, I knew that he had to be a pretty hot Limited player too. Needless to say, having only drafted this format twice, this was not the draft pod I was hoping for.

I’m still playing a deck pulled in two directions, but somehow it feels nicer to have put my own stamp on the thing having changed a few cards. Let’s see what happens…

Today’s guest writer is the one, the only, the infamous… Mouth!