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Weak Among the Strong: Two Down!

Chad tells the tale of how he hopped off the Magic gold course and right back on the Pro Tour for the second time in a row, though in this tale he gets by with a little help from his friends.

Rebirth: The Secret Best Deck

Sexy Rector. Ghoul Burst. Pattern. And most recently Rebirth. The deck has had many names, but none of them seem to stick. Sexy Rector sounds like a bad porno movie title. Phyrexian Ghoul now has to compete with Nantuko Husk. Thanks to Symbiotic Wurm, Saproling Burst isn’t even necessary anymore. The deck finished just outside the Top 32 in Columbus and has been completely under the radar in the prelude to Extended season, so it has a lot of surprise factor. Should you be playing it? Rick Rust thinks so…

SCG Daily – The Golden Age #14: Dirty Old Crypt

It doesn’t matter where I’m heading or how lost I get along the way. I’ll always end up back in Mirage. It’s not just that I like black people on my Magic cards (though, Lord knows, there aren’t many of them outside of Mirage). There’s also the wonderful setting, an environment far-flung from that of traditional fantasy. Sometimes, though, Mirage ignores its keynote mechanics, leaves the Phasing, chimera, and griffins behind. Sometimes, it plays good, old-fashioned, hardscrabble Magic.

From Right Field: Two Heads are Better Than None

What do Heidi Klum, Elle Macpherson, and Two-Headed Dragon have in common? Nothing (we assume) except they all get mentioned in Chris’s article today. One he uses as the impetus for a new fun Standard deck while the other two are just there to root him on – you guess which is which.

The Chronicles of Emperor Draft: Bitten by the Bug & The Emperor’s New Duties

For better or worse, I am now a part of Anthony Alongi’s infamous multiplayer group and it is my duty to host this week. My upbringing has taught me that a good hostess will always have an ample supply of food, drinks and booster packs. With a Sam’s Club right down the street, food and drinks are never an issue. A steady stream of inexpensive booster packs, on the other hand, is another matter entirely. I went upstairs to take stock of my Champions of Kamigawa booster packs only to find my ample supply had dwindled down to twelve. I tried to recall exactly where my once ample supply had disappeared to and it came to me: I think our group has been bit by the Emperor Draft bug.

SCG Daily – The Golden Age #13: Say

When your eyes and my words last met in mutual, pixilated embrace on this very computer monitor, I was teasing you with promises of more the Dark. Well, I am not a politician, and my promises, far from being empty, are quite often brimming with expectation of fulfillment. You’ve already read about the wonders of the Dark’s White and Blue. Today, we’ll take aim at the other colors, jump right into it, and mix our metaphors right from the start by sizing up Red.

The Champions Laser or Dragon Dilemma: Dragon!

I’m not here to argue that dragons are the panacea to save an otherwise completely wretched deck; that’s simply not true. You can’t just play draw-go for the first five turns and win when you thump down your turn 6 Jugan. In an otherwise healthy deck, though, there are few better cards you could ask for than six-mana 5/5 fliers, and a Shock certainly isn’t one of those.

SCG Daily – The Golden Age #12: What You Don’t Know Will Hurt You

The Dark. Of all the sets in Magic, I’m guessing that the least is known about the Dark. I mean, people may mock Homelands, but most players have heard of Autumn Willow and Baron Sengir. Fallen Empires may be as Old School as tube tops, but some idiots are still writing articles about Thrulls and Thallids. Not so with the Dark. Here’s a test: Name a character (he or she need not be a Legend with his or her own card) from the Dark other than Uncle Istvan.

The Champions Laser or Dragon Dilemma: Laser!

Before writing this series, I decided to ask an expert for his advice on how to sail the often treacherous seas of the dilemmas. Ken’s advice to me was very simple, although difficult to follow: “Don’t take the controversial position. You will never live it down.” Great!

Hi! My name is Brian David-Marshall and I take Glacial Ray over Kokusho, the Evening Star.

SCG Daily – The Golden Age #11: Flanking

Flanking, unlike Rampage, is conceptually and theoretically simple. In Mirage Block, there were 17 creatures with Flanking, 13 of which were Knights and two of which were Legendary Creatures that were Knights at heart. As Mike Flores has noted, the majority of flankers are three-mana 2/2s; they’re even more concentrated at a single casting cost than the common Bushido creatures in Champions of Kamigawa. A side effect of this is that it’s difficult to build a Flanking-centric deck without burdening yourself with more three-drops than are attributed to the landlord’s daughter. If, however, Flanking and Bushido creatures are seen together, things become interesting.

Fighting the Red Decks — Mind’s Desire in Extended

I knew that I wanted to play something that wasn’t Red Deck Wins, but was open to the possibility of playing Goblins, for the sole purpose of not wanting to interact with my opponent. I had to do way too much of that during the Block Constructed season playing the Freshmaker deck, and I have to deal with a lot of it in current Standard when I am playing mono-Blue control, so I just wanted to combo someone or attack with thousands of goblins simultaneously, completely oblivious to the opponent’s resources. Unfortunately, nothing struck my fancy other than Oiso’s Blue/Black Mind’s Desire deck, which I shuffled up and played several games against various builds of RDW. The results were not good…

Dusting off the Dinosaurs

In the past year, StarCityGames.com has interviewed him and imitated him both to great degrees of success, but we all know there is only one Jamie Wakefield, and he hasn’t picked up a Magical card in five years… until now. What brought Jamie out of retirement, what deck did he play, and what does the man, the myth, the legend have to say about the state of the game today? It’s all here folks, so what are you waiting for?

The Huge Ask the Editor Blowout Special!

For one day and one day only, Teddy Card Game answers all the questions that he never got to during the normal run of the series (all 24 pages of them). If you’ve ever wondered about Kanoot’s thoughts on… well, just about anything, there’s probably an answer contained within – he even remembered the cheesecake. For those who’ve been clamoring for a little more Ask the Editor, this is your last chance to get in on the action before it disappears… FOREVER!