Select

Please settle a debate. I was playing in the semi finals of a Type Two tournament in game three against Elf and Nail. I am playing Affinity with Thirst for Knowledge and Thoughtcast. Should I have kept the following?

As promised, I rolled a d4 to pick a Fifth Dawn preconstructed deck (if this isn’t compelling enough of an image, let’s say I pulled four snails from my garden and had a race across the driveway… my son, he loves snails). The winner of this little experiment is…

Mike Flores speaking about tempo wrote “[m]uch as you would like, you can’t quite put your finger on it… but you sure know it when you see it.” Mike is more perceptive than he probably realizes. The difficulty in identifying tempo is that it has an effect that is different from what it is.

No, I am not going to give you sample lists for all of the basic decks you can expect in the upcoming MD5. You can find those in anybody else’s article anywhere else. I wouldn’t be making the decks myself anyway (and if I were, I don’t know what use they would be to you for testing purposes). Instead, I am going to fast track you to the pinnacle of MD5 Inevitability.

As I started thinking about the spirit of this endeavor of mine, I started to realize there were some rules I could follow to force me to go slow and generally enjoy the experience of evolving a preconstructed deck. Then I realized these weren’t”rules” so much as”guidelines.” Rules would suggest I don’t intend to break them, but I think each of these guidelines, especially two through four, I may seriously challenge during this process.

An emperor can have the best deck, with all the appropriate cards, but he will be hard-pressed to win if his flankers have divergent strategies to the ones required to improve team play. In short, a flanker’s role is to give the Emperor more resources (called”love” in game parlance) so he can, in turn, grant his flankers more lands and so on.

The Great Potato is this week’s guest host. Please join Mike as he takes on this saucy subject: What do you think about Magic-Blogs?

In this article, I’m going to explore some of the psychology of winning and losing, and explain why being a boxer isn’t necessarily what you want to be in order to be successful at Magic. I’ll also look at how some Pro Tour notables like Brian Kibler and Mike Long deal with losing, include some details of my recent trips to U.S. Nationals and Origins, and relay a hilarious anecdote that is sure to embarrass Brian David Marshall, Randy Buehler, Alan Comer, or Scott Johns.

Alright Ken, let’s hear it… What’s your favorite color in Magic?

The beta is over, and now JMS is back in action with version 1.0 of his daily discussion with the Magic world. Here is what you can expect to see in the near future.

Do you think the masses are making good choices when they are choosing 9th Edition?

I’ve put in a lot of time drafting this past year, and have become better at it than I’ve ever been. How likely am I to stay a good drafter when we change blocks?

Once or twice a year, I try to answer some of my fan mail and/or death threats in a column. This serves two purposes. First, I get to share some of the answers to the more common questions that get sent my way. Second, I get another quick, cheap column. Then, everyone’s happy. Or at least, I’m happy. Really, in the end, that’s all the counts.