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Chatter of the Squirrel — Road to Regionals: The Regionals Metagame

Get ready for Magic the Gathering Regionals!
In my experience (I’ve played in I think seven or eight Regionals by now) the tournament is more or less a representative sample of the field, but a few trends tend to take hold. First, people love “cute decks.” It’s hard to explain exactly what I mean by that, but maybe you’ll get what I’m saying. Trendy decks. Decks that are a rage on the Internet but people are trying to keep “hush-hush.” Does Dredge fit that bill? Hell yeah.

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Levelling Up – Identifying and Applying a Game Plan in Limited

Read Tiago Chan every Thursday... at StarCityGames.com!
As a break from the Constructed and Standard madness, Tiago Chan offers up this excellent companion piece to last week’s Identifying and Applying a Game Plan article. Last week he talked about Constructed. This week, it’s the turn of the forty-card game. Limited has a metagame, and archetypes, and in many ways mirrors its sixty-card stablemate. So why not be prepared each time you draft, and identify your game plan?

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Peebles Primers — Road to Regionals: Zoo

Get ready for Magic the Gathering Regionals!
Regionals is mere days away, and by now you should all have chosen your starting sixty. After all, you’re always well-prepared for the big tournaments… right? For those of you who still harbor doubts, Benjamin Peebles-Mundy continues his excellent Primer series. Today is the turn of Craig Jones’s favorite deck, and the aggro option that has fallen from grace of late: Zoo. Does the addition of White give the powerful Gruul beat machine a run for its money? Is it the deck to take you to Nationals? BPM reveals all…

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Tact or Friction — Whining About Decks

Read Talen Lee every Thursday... at StarCityGames.com!
Players in this Standard environment are trying to metagame without obvious foils; besting the big three still leave you with potentially gaping holes in your armor, to some less-popular but nonetheless playable deck. It’s like skirmish, where everyone has a gun and regardless of how good the person who shot you is, if they shot you, you’ve still lost.

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Unlocking Legacy – Looking With Fresh Eyes

With the banning of Flash, the unbanning of Mind over Matter and Replenish, and the release of Future Sight, it is as if Legacy is completely new. This article is simply my observations and conclusions while navigating the new Legacy.

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The Kitchen Table #184 — Building Your First Five, TNG: Volume 2, Creating a Skeleton

Read Abe Sargent every Thursday... at StarCityGames.com!
Last week I rebooted an aging article series of mine called Building Your First Five. In that series, begun over four and a half years ago, I explained the path to building a Five Color deck. Through eventually nine articles and eight volumes, I investigated everything from ante to mulligans to building the best manabase you can. Today I will be continuing the same…

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Ask The Drama — Road To Regionals: Jeroen’s Deck Clinic

Get ready for Magic the Gathering Regionals!
With under a week to Regionals, Jeoren clears out all the Standard questions from his bulging mailbag in this extra-long edition of Ask The Drama! He looks at a number of interesting decks sent in by readers and fans, and gives his opinion on their choices and builds. And who knows, maybe one of these reader-built decks will be the one to pilot you to Nationals!

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Deconstructing Constructed — Road to Regionals: The Regionals Blowout

Get ready for Magic the Gathering Regionals!
It’s that time again. Time for Ted Knutson’s usual metagame breakdown and tho… Oh right, he doesn’t write anymore (insert sad face here). Well, then it’s time for all the Standard players to come out from their holes in the wall and actually buy physical cards. Come out into a world where Project X is actually playable, because a bunch of annoying pop-up screens won’t time you out. Time for the 2007 Regionals preview!

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Removed From Game — Road to Regionals: Standard From Scratch

Get ready for Magic the Gathering Regionals!
Quantum Mechanics, Bolivian Dance, and Standard. Three things Rich Hagon knew nothing about last Wednesday. Join him as he attempts to rectify one of these deficiencies. Yes, soon you’ll know that Bolivian dance repertoire, like other Andean cultures, consists of pre-Colombian dances performed in rural areas during religious and secular community celebrations, as well as the European influenced mestizo dances performed at popular festivals and celebrations of patron saints. Welcome to SupremelyCulturedGamers.com.

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You Lika The Juice? — Last Minute Panic

Read Bennie Smith every Wednesday... at StarCityGames.com!
In today’s You Lika The Juice, Bennie shares his updated Project X deck — now dubbed Project Z. He also brings us a strong cardpool and deck from a Future Sight Release league, and asks us to bring our builds to the forums. And to cap it all off, he tells the tale of his latest phone conversation with… Mark Rosewater!

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The Stats of the JohnnyDraft — How to Track Your Casual Drafts

Hall of Famer Raphael Levy is taking a week off this week, and in his place we have an intriguing article from Paul Jordan. His “The Stats of the JohnnyDraft” series has been well-received thus far… and in today’s article he goes through a step-by-step guide that will enable you to track your own DraftStats in the same way. WARNING: This is a highly technical article, definitely not your usual Magic fare… and thus it may cause your brain to leak out of your ears.

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The Combat Phase — Deep Cleaning

Read Jamie Wakefield every Tuesday... at StarCityGames.com!
Jamie continues his descent into Limited madness with his much-improved, forum-fuelled League decklist. The changes seem to have worked, folks… pat yourselves on the back. He also updates a fun U/G Standard deck designed by our very own Ben Bleiweiss… by taking out the Blue and adding Black. To cap it all off, there’s a heavy dose of Wakefield minutiae, including some heavily edited English Dentist material that I found frankly upsetting.

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Deep Analysis — Road to Regionals: Tuning the Suicide Squad

Get ready for Magic the Gathering Regionals!
Last week, Richard gave us his exciting Orzhova Suicide Squad decklist… and it proved strong enough to qualify one lucky fella for German Nationals! This week’s Road to Regionals sees Richard take the deck through its paces against the most important decks in the metagame, tweaking and collating as he goes. The deck is a contender, of that there’s no doubt. Will it be the one for you? Read Richard’s excellent article and find out!

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From Right Field — Road to Regionals: The Pre-Regionals Column

Get ready for Magic the Gathering Regionals!
Regionals is coming… and Chris is prepared. This year, he’s armed with a funky-looking deck courtesy of a close friend. It’s black, it disrupts, and it beats down. Who knows, maybe it’s the missing tech that you’re clamoring for. If you’re still undecided on your 75 of choice, maybe Chris has the answers.

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The Beautiful Struggle — Road to Regionals: Your Most Important Regionals Lesson

Get ready for Magic the Gathering Regionals!
Frankly, if you haven’t decided on a decklist by now, you probably shouldn’t attend a tournament this weekend. Most people have a pretty good idea about what they’re playing, or (as in my case) they have it narrowed down to a deck or three and they just need to choose. So instead of just ordering you to play Awesome Deck #1, #2, or #3, I offer you the lessons you really need to know for this Saturday…

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