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Drafting to Win, and Black/Red in Standard

Jeroen, the current Battle Royale champion, takes a break from ruling the budget MTGO metagame in order to answer some reader-posed questions on a number of formats. Champs is officially over, so the tide turns towards Time Spiral Limited. With a pre-Kobe record of 11-1 in Time Spiral draft, Jeroen shares his drafting strategies in perfect time for the online release. He also shares his views on color complaints post-Ravnica, and has a few things to say on Standard too…

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The Champs Experience: 2006 Edition

John tells the epic tale of his preparation and performance at his local Champs tournament. As usual, he worked hard… and as usual, his story is full of highs and lows, all chronicled in the expected acerbic Rizzo style. If you’ve not read Rizzo before, this is the perfect time to try. If you’re already a fan… enjoy!

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Magic Online Musings: This Week on MTGO #37 – Pineapple

Read The Blisterguy... every Wednesday at StarCityGames.com!

Blisterguy returns with a photo-packed round-up of the MTGO metagame. With patches updating the game left and right, there have been a few problems this week… and blisterguy responds with his trademarked grace and humor.

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The Magic Show #14 – Top 8’ing Champs 2006

Evan took a deck that succeeded at the StarCityGames.com $1500 tournament, and piloted it all the way to the Top 8 of his local Champs! Today he shares the video rundown of his deck-choice, and presents the video of his play from the tournament itself!

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The Quest For Level Five #2 – Doing Badly at Grand Prix: Athens

New Hall of Fame inductee Raphael Levy continues his excellent Magic Lifestyle series with a retrospective analysis of his subpar performance at GP: Athens. He presents his Sealed cardpool and draft decks (and choices), and peppers the narrative with sights, sounds and smells from behind the Pro Tour curtain. The qualifiers for Geneva are in full swing… can Raph help you take the Blue Envelope?

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Cashing In with Meandeck Gifts

Stephen follows up his excellent Puzzle article from yesterday with an in-depth look at a recent tournament he attended… with winning results. He shares detailed play-by-play data from each game, and has the decklists from each opponent too! All this, plus his views on Split Second cards in Magic’s most broken format…

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From Right Field: Limbo Party with Hermes Conrad

Read Chris Romeo... every Tuesday at StarCityGames.com!
I’m going to take this week to look at a couple of silly decks that actually seem to do pretty well in testing, and one of the decks that we used in our gauntlet. It’s a deck that no one in our group took to States, which I think was a big mistake. Someone should have tried it, since it was whipping pretty much everything in testing…

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Angry About Green

In the context of Magic, you can’t just sit around and constantly complain about the same old thing. The rate of change in this game is such that any change that’s enacted now won’t see the light of day for two years, apparently. Invasion Block was a travesty for balanced design, one that heralded the end of Blue’s reign of terror, and its immediate follow-up was Odyssey Block.

Whoops.

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Tribal Bible #9 – Shaun of the Dead – the Bare Bones of why This Deck Sucks

There happens to be three major types of undead legal in Tribal Standard right now. I felt that the coincidence there was too great to pass up, and so I write this mere hours before October 31st to bring you what may well be the first Tribal Standard decks to discuss with Time Spiral enabled, and hopefully a bit of holiday spirit (pun intended, because I can).

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This Girl at the NY State Championships

Paul, along with various other Magic stalwarts in the NY area, audibled at the last minute before last weekend’s major tournament. Instead of the tried and tested U/G lists, they ran something a little more… angelic. While Paul himself did not scale the heights to the top tables, another familiar name did just that… read about his triumph – and get that all-important decklist – right here!

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The Weekly Shift Sift: Who’s The Boss?

Read The Ferrett... every Monday at StarCityGames.com!Normally, I would leap at the chance to play Time Spiral Sealed with a friend, especially if it cost me no money whatsoever. But this was no normal game of cards — this was a game with my boss, Pete Hoefling, owner and CEO of StarCityGames.com. And the winner would decide the fate of all mankind.

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Ten Games of Magic I’ve Lost, and How They’ll Help You Win

Patrick “The Innovator” Chapin takes a brief break from creating metagame-shifting decklists, and instead delves deep into his Magical past in order to share some of the lessons learnt from various defeats through the ages. Part history lesson, part gameplay tips, all told with a healthy dose of Chapin humor. Believe me, you’ll not look at Lego in the same light again…

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Gifts: The Puzzling

A lot of recent Vintage debate has centered on the true nature of skill in Magic’s most broken format. Today’s excellent article sees Stephen, an undisputed Vintage powerhouse, lay down a number of intricate puzzles resolving around the combo applications of Gifts Ungiven. Looking to break your brain on this fine Monday morning? Then this is the article for you…

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Throwing Down The Gauntlet: Extended Overview

For those who want an early jump on Extended season, now is one of the best time to start thinking about general archetypes to prepare for, and even specific decks in broad terms. Figuring out the general points the field may share is a great way to at least narrow the deck choices from a good fifteen or so. Besides it’s never too early to start testing against the “classic” decks like Tog, Boros Deck Wins, and U/G Desire.

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Yawgmoth’s Whimsy #155: The Second Coming of Fifth Edition

Rob McKenzie, a fellow judge, commented that Time Spiral was Fifth Edition all over again. It’s the kind of random discussion judges have while waiting and watching, but the thought kept recurring. We spent the rest of the tournament coming up with similarities. There are a lot. When I got home, I dug up a 5E list and saw even more. Now, I like Time Spiral and I never really liked 5E, but the two sets do feel similar…

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