Monday, May 25th – Alara Block Constructed is largely an unexplored country, but it’s very important for a few upcoming events like Pro Tour: Honolulu and the MOL Season II Championships. Today we will look at a few deck ideas, as well as a few of my top cards (around which the best decks should be built).
Friday, May 22nd – The following are passages from “Next Level Magic,” Patrick Chapin’s Strategy Guide that is being released as an e-book, here on StarCityGames.com, at the end of the month. Each week this month, there will be an excerpt from the book for your enjoyment. This week: How to Use Bottom-Up Thinking to Improve Deck Building and Qualify.
Friday, May 22nd – For the U.S., the Regionals Championships are in the books. For me personally, it’s been an exhausting couple of weeks between the Star City double-PTQ weekend and then Regionals the following week. I characterize myself as a “casually competitive†player, who mostly just likes to have fun with Magic, but who likes to step up and compete when PTQs, Regionals, and States comes around.
Friday, May 22nd – All of the buzz on the few days leading up to Regionals was somehow about Turbo-Fog. A Japanese Regionals tournament was won by a deck that confidently played 4x Holy Day, and the imagination of players everywhere was seemingly throwing off all sorts of sparks.
Friday, May 22nd – Hello everybody, and welcome to another edition of the Magic Show. This week we’re going to take a look back at Regionals 2009 — How I scrubbed right out, the awesome new decks revealed from all across the country, and how I redeemed myself by Top 8ing the PTQ the next day. Let’s go!
Thursday, May 21st – At the end of the first day of Grand Prix: Vancouver, head judge Seamus Campbell told the staff that a total of two Slow Play penalties had been handed out. He then asked us “how many do you think there should have been?†to which someone responded “a lot more.â€
Thursday, May 21st – For most of the Magic-playing world, last weekend was all about Regionals. For a few of us unlucky ones who could not attend, we had the Alara Reborn prerelease on MTGO. The player response was surprising. I expected a few events to fire – but my best guess was somewhere between 75 and 150. We blew that out of the water.
Thursday, May 21st – It was two days before Regionals, and I still wasn’t sure what to play. I had been testing Chapin’s 5CB deck and liked how it felt, although I was thinking about removing the Cryptic Commands (sacrilege!), and I was also talking with Adam Prosak about his merfolk deck. Then I got this text from Max McCall: “Check your Facebook. Bill Stark has a Fog deck he claims is insane.â€
Thursday, May 21st – I was talking with Anna a few days ago about a big part of my Magic game that bothers me: I get really sloppy when I’m winning. She was interested to note, she said, that almost never was a guy fully on top of his game when he played against a girl…
Wednesday, May 20th – Tom and Conley are here this week to bring you a whole bunch of news along with discussion of Standard, Regionals (including Turbo Fog, with a surprising showing of Five-Color Control in face of the BW / GW Token surge) and more.
Wednesday, May 20th – Today I want to bring you one of those cuisinart articles where I have a bunch of topics to discuss. Most of these won’t take up too much time, but I wanted to get a chance to talk about a variety of things. Not every topic can be something massive or grand or article-length. Therefore, let’s take a quick tour through casual land, and see what we can find.
Wednesday, May 20th – In the past seven days, The Starkington Post (Bill Stark’s daily Magic blog) has brought us talk on Turbo Fog, a visitor’s guide to Barcelona, the new trailer from Duels of the Planeswalkers, and much more!
Wednesday, May 20th – It seems like every writer this week is writing about Regionals, and I’m no different. We’ll see tournament reports, deck lists, bad beats, and lucksack wins. We’ll hear of bad matchups that were won, easy games that were punted, and everything in between. But not here. This is my Regionals story. Buckle in; I tend to drive a little fast.
Tuesday, May 19th – ‘Blimey Harry, yer a wizard.’ Yes, it’s yet more groundbreaking journalistic action from Rich as he takes you into a world of Hogwarts, Hermione, and Harry, with a look at the Harry Potter TCG. Why? Because it turns out you can learn a lot about Magic from playing (gasp) something else. Lessons from Elsewhere. In this case – Scunthorpe.
Tuesday, May 19th – The date: Thursday night. The setting: My dining room. Six Magic players are sitting around a large wooden table, testing out decks, playing Magic, trying to finalize their decisions before Saturday’s Regional Championships. Five of them have a very real idea of the deck they are playing. One does not.
