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I’ve been playing a lot of Tenth Edition Release Events on Magic Online lately, for a lot of reasons. In part it’s because I do most of my Constructed work online these days, and thus I’ll need the cards; in part because I love the format and hate drafting Time Spiral block; and in part because I’ve done pretty well in them, especially if you count events that crashed after I was able to draw into Top 8.

In my opinion, some silver-bordered cards are self-banned. My personal rule is to eschew cards that are too powerful in order to get a laugh. Mox Lotus may be funny when you see it in a pack, but it is far from hilarious when you see it kill you and everybody else at the table reliably via the use of cards like Tinker. Someone who tries to abuse the broken cards in the silver sets is not playing with the spirit of the silver sets.

If you regularly follow some of the columnists who are also DCI judges, or read the “behind the scenes” coverage of pro tours, you’ve probably heard about Elder Dragon Highlander, a format that is quite popular for judges to run casually after hours on the Pro Tour. Right now I have zero interest in Time Spiral Block Constructed, and little interest in Standard. So I decided to set up a multiplayer game at our local game shop on Sept 1st… and just to make it interesting, I’m making it Elder Dragon Highlander!

I love casual players. I was one for five years before I played in my first tournament. But I want to swear up and down for as long as it takes to get my point across that the Pro community is not composed of a bunch of evil, selfish bastards lurking in the wings to steal casual players’ lunch money. By and large they’re tolerant, nice, fun, good people who love the game every bit as much as any kitchen table squad I’ve ever seen. Don’t let the one rules-lawyer you always run into at PTQs ruin your taste of tournament players more broadly. There’s a reason he’s still playing at PTQs and trying to win his games unfairly, believe me

A year ago, Wizards launched Dreamblades minis game at GenCon with a $50,000 tournament, and a full schedule of big dollar events. This year it held the $50,000 World championships at GenCon, but also announced that Wizards was ending support for organized play. Since Dreamblade was based on the same model that drives Magic, what does that say about Magic the Gathering?

This weekend I attended the first PTQ in Northern California of the season, because it literally wasn’t even scheduled until recently. To get the obvious out of the way, I lost. I went 3-0 then 0-2, drop, because I was so annoyed after round 5 that I most likely would’ve just played like garbage the next two rounds anyway. I played W/G Aggro heavily metagamed against U/G and Pickles. I’d been working on it for the past few weeks, tweaking for the expected metagame…

Over the next two weeks, Rich Hagon takes a long hard look at the shape of the Magic year ahead. This week, bold predictions abound, including all the formats and locations for PTQs and PTs alike, plucked God-like from the air, and an insight into the new world of four-expansion Magic. Plus the best accountancy joke in the world

Eighteen games, all of which ended in horrific face-beatings. And here’s where the sadomasochism kicks in: Honestly, I wanted to know how bad it could get. How long could I endure playing with this same set of cards before the universe broke down and handed me a win? It was Tenth Edition — would I go zero-for-ten on Tenth? The writer in me went, “Wow, that’s a pretty good title,” even as the player in me cringed….