Thursday, June 11th – What a hectic month of judging I’ve had! Since we last chatted, I’ve judged at a Regionals in Cardiff, A GPT, a PTQ and a Regionals in Kent held on consecutive days, a London Regionals, and a local Standard tournament to qualify for the Bath Invitational, not to mention playing weekly at the FNM. You would have thought with all that Magic the last thing I would want to do is write about judging, but far from it!
Thursday, June 11th – Pro Tour: Hawaii is in the books. It was completely amazing. Hawaii is a great location, and the event ran quite well. The format also proved a lot more varied than people first imagined – or maybe feared…
Thursday, June 11th – When we last left our hero, Grand Prix: Seattle had just ended and the quest for a tuned block decklist was in its final legs. To complicate matters, it was the week before finals, and the GP the week prior had left several University final projects uncompleted, meaning they still had to be done before venturing to Hawaii…
Wednesday, June 10th – Pro Tour: Honolulu was this past weekend, with Kazuya Mitamura crowned champion, but representing us all was Conley Woods, who made the Top 4 and brought home $13,000! We are also proud to hear that Duels of the Planeswalkers will be coming out the XBLA on June 17th.
Wednesday, June 10th – In four previous articles, I have taken the Shandalar decks used by your foes and updated them with the two expansion sets that were made for the game, introducing cards from The Dark, Legends, Antiquities, Arabian Nights, Beta and the promo cards. Then, after making some modifications, I also update the deck idea.
Wednesday, June 10th – The topic of this week’s article: Eighteen tips to follow to make you a better Magic player. Eighteen little things that I have done to improve my game, and which can probably improve your game, whatever level you are at.
Wednesday, June 10th – How do you talk about something like this while remaining fully honest? With yourself, with the people who take the time to read you? I ran hot. I played well, but I don€™t want to claim that I attained some newfound mastery. Bloodbraid Elf was clearly the best card in the format, so we played more and better Bloodbraid Elves.
Tuesday, June 9th – The last two weeks were Magic-ful for Dave, who played in a Grand Prix, watched some Magic on TV (sorta), and had some 10th Edition thoughts thanks to Friday Night Magic. And so he presents another column filled with distractions, dissertations, and desserts. That’s right, there’s dessert in there.
Tuesday, June 9th – In the past seven days, The Starkington Post (Bill Stark’s daily Magic blog) has brought us extensive coverage from the Mustache Invitational, a look at the Magic Online Championship Series Block Constructed decks, and more!
Tuesday, June 9th – The Legacy Banned list includes over sixty cards, the longest banned list of any format in Magic. Doug proposes nearly a dozen cards that could and should come off of the Legacy Banned list. Read why Doug considers unbanning cards that few people will play is a worthwhile endeavor and why some cards that used to have a lot of bite are tame by today’s standards. Get the evaluations before the June Banning announcements and weigh in with your opinion as well!
Monday, June 8th – Last week, I discussed the potential advantages you can gain by playing a deck that, despite being a solid performer, is off the “radar†of the majority of players. This advantage can be magnified when you take the core of an existing deck and move it in a different direction, or create a new deck that other players haven’t seen before.
Monday, June 8th – The StarCityGames.com $5000 Standard Open is coming to Atlanta on June 13th (as well as a PTQ on the 14th), and I am here to provide you with some of my thoughts about the current format. I’ve been battling on Magic Online for plenty of hours, bashed a few PTQs, read coverage of the recent Grand Prix tournaments, and feel like the format is shaping up to be awesome
Monday, June 8th – Last week, I discussed Patrick Chapin’s Three Stages of Game Development and how they apply to multiplayer Magic. And today, we’ll discuss how those stages apply to everyone’s favorite topic in multiplayer Magic: politics.
Friday, June 5th – The Origins theme week over at MagictheGathering.com has had me waxing nostalgic of late. I’ve been playing Magic a really long time – since Unlimited and Arabian Nights packs were available for purchase – but I often forget just how disconnected that time is for many of those who play the game now.
Friday, June 5th – Watching the metagame change around Grand Prix: Barcelona, it seemed to me that the biggest shifts were perception rather than reality. We stopped kidding ourselves that Faeries wasn€™t good, for example, now that the metagame had grown more mature and we could prove that the things we were being afraid of just weren€™t as terrifying as we thought.
