William Spaniel recently wrote about all things rogue, which is a subject both near and dear to my heart, not to mention a controversial lightning rod-type-thing in the community. Rarely can a subject so seemingly benign arouse either ardent support or complete fury. Today I’ll take a hard look at some of the benefits of being rogue and see where Spaniel and I disagree.
This week I’m going to tell you how to draft everything. Yes, everything. To start things off, I’ll give you the best colors and strategies for every core set draft since Alpha/Beta/Unlimited.
It is getting harder to find new topics that are worth writing about – and, more importantly, give me an excuse to play a lot of Magic. I think I’ve found one, though: I want to see how useful testing in the casual rooms on MTGO can be. Specifically, I want to compare the Casual Play Constructed room, the Tournament Practice room and actual MTGO tournaments with each other, and with real life.
Teddy Card Game scours an entire year of content to bring you the very best of StarCityGames.com in 2005. What articles and writers walk away with the hardware? Who will win the awards that include fan votes? What special announcement does the Managing Editor make at the end of the article? The answers to all these questions and more are just a click away.
Ben had originally planned on writing an issues article today, but found himself dissatisfied with the current state of discussions about Mirage Limited and was suddenly consumed by the need to write. The result is a 41-page monster guide to drafting Mirage, required reading for anyone looking to draft this set!
We don’t know exactly what this deck is that Mike is writing about this week, but it’s certainly not a FLORES deck. I mean, this deck includes cards like Enduring Ideal and Confiscate and Faith’s Fetters and… say it ain’t so, Mike. Say it ain’t so! Has Flores turned casual, or is this really some deviously competitive deck that you all should run right out and start playing? You make the call!
In case you missed it, Gabriel Nassif has been posting results again. He finished 12th at Pro Tour: Los Angeles and 12th again at Grand Prix: Lille recently. Today he covers his deckbuilding hits and misses and discusses just how close he was to breaking the Legacy format with Solitary Confinement.
Man oh man. Just a few months ago, Wizards of the Coast was doing a bang-up job with Promotional foil cards. The Judge foils were fantastic, players raved about Friday Night Magic foils, and players were being mailed Psychatogs left and right. In just a few months, the entire program took a dive off a steep cliff. What happened? Read today’s article to find out what’s wrong in the world of Promotional Foils.
A thoughtful and learned look back on Lapille’s first Grand Prix Top 8 experience.
You didn’t see his name at the top of the standings, but Zac Hill attended Grand Prix: Charlotte with his crew and learned more than a few important lessons along the way.
For a while now, I’ve thought it to be fun and profitable to make predictions and look back on how right or wrong you are. Seeing as how I have this magnificent bully pulpit here at StarCityGames, I thought that this year I’d come out and share my predictions with you. As an added bonus, you get to see how well I did in a few predictions last year and an overall analysis of, well, what went down in 2005.
Depression is a fact of life for many players, and quite a few don’t even know they have it. Everyone from the top pros down to the most casual can be afflicted with this disease. It’s an unfortunate truth that people who have a propensity for this kind of recreation and/or lifestyle seem to also have an extra susceptibility to this illness. The hope is to raise awareness of the symptoms of the disease, and the strategies for beating it.
Wizards of the Coast has been making a push to make the Pro Tour more appealing to the average player. They’ve replaced monetary awards with travel vouchers, booked several Pro Tours in highly desirable travel locations (the Louvre, Prague, Hawaii), and began the Magic Hall of Fame. These innovations have been coupled with popular changes to the Pro Tour itself, but have these tactics worked to pull the non-Pro player into the world of the pro? Not as much as Wizards would have liked. Today, Ben unveils a modification to the Pro Tour designed to have huge appeal to Magic audiences around the world, not just the hyper-competitive PTQ players.
I keep having success drafting Blue/Black decks online. I guess milling is not sexy enough compared to hasty fliers, Saproling generators or graveyard recursion. Anyway, here’s a draft article for the masses, for those of you keeping your winter nights warm with the magic of Ravnica draft.
Chris is on Christmas vacation, but luckily little Billy Horowitz is here to tell you about his “Ewww, Groz” deck.
