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E-mails, forum posts, and private messages in my StarCityGames.com mailbox provide me with some of my best inspiration. For example, one person recently asked me, in so many words, “Why do you hate Block Constructed with only two sets?” Because the Block’s not done yet. Sure, the Pros get to play a tourney with the two-set Block, but us regular folks don’t. So why should I waste time on the decks? Especially when the third set becomes legal on May 20th, and I have about ten million Standard decks to work on?

What happens with me at every release tournament is that I face The Choice. Do I go with the good build, the one that I know will do well because it’s packed with the 90% of the same damn cards I’ve been running at every event for the past three months…. Or do I go with the new and potentially weaker build that is stuffed with 40% of the new and crazy?

This week’s puzzle deals with another card game – Mao. Mao is my favorite game that is played with a standard deck of 52 playing cards, but the nifty part is that the rules of the game are not explained up front to the players. In that vein, the rules for this puzzle are also left ambiguous. I have confidence that you will figure everything out, though. And this time, there’s a prize on the line… so good luck!

I promised last week that I’d look into Future Sight additions for Standard and its impact on Block Constructed play, so we’ll be starting with an analysis of where Future Sight fits in with the existing Standard format and what promising new cards might spawn as-yet-unseen archetypes on their strength alone. Future Sight has a lot of cards that fit into a particular theme or niche, and a lot of different niches to fill, so we’ll look at each of those niches in turn and expand upon where you can go with that to build upon the new cards’ strengths.

Hello everybody, and welcome to another edition of the Magic Show. This week we’re going to take a look at what’s new, what’s hot, and the lessons you could learn from players better than yourself. Along the way we’ll take a look at the absurdity of in-jokes and the wackiness that is Vintage Ichorid.