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Deep Analysis – Capitalizing on a Lack of Playtesting

Read Richard Feldman every Thursday... at StarCityGames.com!
Playtesting in the current Extended metagame is a nightmare task. You sleeve your seventy-five select, and then face ten, twenty, thirty possible gauntlet decks with pedigree and power. It’s so difficult to cover all the bases that the sane player concentrates on those decks he feels likely to make up the upper tier of the field. Today’s Deep Analysis posits the idea that, in order to pick up valuable percentages, it may be wise to run with once-popular fringe strategies. After all, not many folk will have tested the matchup…

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Down And Dirty – Fireworks At Lake Michigan: Three Extended Decks

Read Kyle Sanchez every Thursday... at StarCityGames.com!Constructed Magic is the soup du jour, and it seems that all kids currently love Extended. The PTQs for Pro Tour: Showbiz are well attended, with many a mage searching for that elusive spark to catapult them towards a Blue Envelope. Today’s Down and Dirty sees Kyle bring three decks to the table. Two of them incorporate Morningtide cards, and one was made in collaboration with Luis Scott-Vargas. In fact, it’s a deck template that has a rather proud legacy…

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Drafting With Tiago – LLL #41

Draft With Tiago Chan... every day at StarCityGames.com!
Tiago Chan, Portugal’s Magic dynamo, takes us by the hand and leads us through the choppy waters of a triple-Lorwyn draft on Magic Online. He shares each and every pick, from one to forty-five, and supplies expert commentary on the draft and the games. For more detailed information, visit the forums!

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The Beautiful Struggle – I Guess This Is Goodbye

Read Mark Young every Thursday... at StarCityGames.com!
In his final article for StaCityGames.com, Mark looks back at some of the formative experiences that led him to where he is today, in both Magic and non-Magic terms. He also shares the reasons for his departure. Thanks for all the hard work and great articles, Mark! We’ll miss you!

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The Kitchen Table #216 – Unearthed Arcana

Read Abe Sargent every Thursday... at StarCityGames.com!Bonjour mes amis! I hope you enjoy another spin here on the DJ table of Club Casuelle. I’m DJ Abe, and today we are going to break out with the sequel to the original casual hit of the season, The Magic Role-Playing Game.

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So Many Insane Plays – As Clear As MUD

Read Stephen Menendian every Wednesday... at StarCityGames.com!
The Vintage metagame is currently in flux. While GAT ruled the roost with an iron fist, it seems that other potent strategies are taking up the slack. One such strategy, Workshop Aggro, proves that consistency is at a premium in modern Vintage. So, can an uber-consistent deck like MUD prove potent in the current field? With the hybrid ability to take on multiple roles, Stephen Menendian believes the deck has promise…

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Peebles Primers – Off The Extended Path

Read Benjamin Peebles-Mundy every Wednesday... at StarCityGames.com!
Extended, it seems, is a format in which innovation is possible. Mike Flores, for example, ran a deck that killed with Rith’s Charm and Biorhythm. With so much mana-fixing available, and powerful cards across all colors, the sky is the limit. Beware, however… because that sky could be filled with the harsh glare of a Blood Moon… Can your PTQ weapon of choice weather a plethora of nonbasic land hatred?

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Drafting With Tiago – LLL #40

Draft With Tiago Chan... every day at StarCityGames.com!
Tiago Chan, Portugal’s Magic dynamo, takes us by the hand and leads us through the choppy waters of a triple-Lorwyn draft on Magic Online. He shares each and every pick, from one to forty-five, and supplies expert commentary on the draft and the games. For more detailed information, visit the forums!

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Chatter of the Squirrel – How To Profit From Playtesting

Read Zac Hill every Wednesday... at StarCityGames.com!
When I say that you playtest to figure out how to play, it doesn’t simply mean that you’re preventing yourself from making mistakes. Playtesting also encompasses a broader element of figuring out what it is you’re trying to play for. I don’t mean the prizes or the packs or whatever; I mean what your deck is set up to do, and whether what it does is worth it.

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You Lika The Juice? – Morningtide Glory

Read Bennie Smith every week... at StarCityGames.com!
I have to admit to finding it difficult to focus on anything other than Morningtide right now, so I thought it would be fun to go ahead and get some discussion going with what we know so far. Today, I’m going to talk about cards we know about for sure from the Wizards preview page…

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Tribal Thriftiness #6 – These Giants Have No Steroid Scandal

It’s January, and as has happened every January for forty years, a young man’s thoughts turn to… football. Ah, the playoffs. To celebrate, Dave builds some team-based decks for the NFL’s equivalent of the Littlest Team That Could.

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Sullivan Library – Case Studies in Rigorous Mana

Read Adrian Sullivan every Tuesday... at StarCityGames.com!
Today’s Sullivan Library visits the difficult task of honing one of the most underexamined elements of a deck: the mana. Adrian arms you with the tools you’ll need to bring your already sharp deck into the next level of readiness. Deckbuilders of all stripes have something to learn here. Do you know the three major constraints on mana development? Click here and find out!

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Limited Lessons – Signaling

Read Nick Eisel... at StarCityGames.com!
With mere days until the Morningtide prerelease, Nick Eisel rounds out his Lorwyn-only Limited articles with an insightful piece on signaling. In triple Lorwyn drafts, there are a number of ways to signal intent to your neighbors, and Nick runs us through a bevy of examples from the Drafting With Tiago series. If you’re looking to improve your Limited game, this is the article for you!

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Drafting With Tiago – LLL #39

Draft With Tiago Chan... every day at StarCityGames.com!
Tiago Chan, Portugal’s Magic dynamo, takes us by the hand and leads us through the choppy waters of a triple-Lorwyn draft on Magic Online. He shares each and every pick, from one to forty-five, and supplies expert commentary on the draft and the games. For more detailed information, visit the forums!

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Deconstructing Constructed – The PTQ Field

Read Josh Silvestri every Tuesday... at StarCityGames.com!
Last week I talked about some of the decks that had been doing well online, and shared a few other tidbits on the Extended metagame. I also said I’d go over the PTQ deck results. Now we have all the information for the Week 1 PTQs in hand, we can go over some of the decklists and data. Although there was nothing mind-blowing (unless you count Flores Martyr deck) there was a nice platter of decks across the varying metagames.

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