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Wednesday, June 3rd – When Riki Hayashi introduced me (and the rest of the Justice League) to all you fine StarCityGames.com readers, he mentioned that I am an asker of questions. Now, to be truthful, I ask lots of questions. I like poking and prodding at the assumptions we hold in the DCI as judges. Now that I have an audience, allow me to poke and prod at the assumptions that we – yes, we, even though I don’t think I’ve played FNM in a year – hold as players. So let me ask you this…

Wednesday, June 3rd – Way back in April of 2005, I wrote Entry Six for the Compendium of Alternate Formats. This was a newly updated version of the Chess Magic format that debuted way back in Duelist #4. The great thing about Chess Magic is that is simply is not like a lot of other formats, so it feels really different…

Wednesday, June 3rd – Grand Prix Seattle was this past weekend, and the winner was Yann Massicard playing Doran. Faeries was popular, and we have a ton of MTGCast hosts in the running, including Stan Bessey of Deck Builders placing 14th, Gavin in 73rd, and Conley 187th.

Tuesday, June 2nd – In the past seven days, The Starkington Post (Bill Stark’s daily Magic blog) has brought us extensive coverage from Grand Prix: Seattle, a look at some cool Magic tattoos, and more!

Tuesday, June 2nd – No time to waste, it’s the preview show for the biggest event of the year so far! While Pro Tour: Kyoto saw Standard action, this time around it’s Block Constructed, so only Shards of Alara, Conflux, and Alara Reborn are legal for play. As to the specifics of the format, they remain deliciously unclear…

Tuesday, June 2nd – Online, the Alara Reborn release events are allowing us to draft Shards / Conflux / Reborn, or triple Reborn. Since we have pros looking at the more normal formats, I decided to take a look at drafting pure gold. What works, what doesn’t, and what happens when you draft a whole lot of a small set (besides seeing visions of Reborn cards as you are falling asleep).

Monday, June 1st – I recently had the pleasure of volunteering to edit Patrick Chapin’s new book, and reading Next Level Magic really illuminated some of the fundamentals of the game for me. I’ve been mulling over about how some of those principles they affect multiplayer Magic, and how the Stages of Magic explain why some of my decks win and others languish in the “loss” pile.

Monday, June 1st – Pre-Seattle, it seemed as if Cascade-Swans was the new “deck to beat,” taking the top slots at a few PTQs, and also GP: Barcelona. After talking with a few friends about the deck at the PTQ in Nashville last week, I had thoroughly decided against playing it myself, and here’s why.

Monday, June 1st – When I was younger, I used to play a lot of basketball. . One of my coaches had a saying that he repeated ad nauseam: “Game spots, game shots!” . If you were spending your time in practice taking shots that you weren’t going to be taking during games, you were wasting everyone’s time, especially your own. The best way to improve your game is to treat practice as the real thing, and develop the skills you need to actually succeed come game time.