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SCG Daily – Designer’s Journal #4: The Importance of Art

Once we’d decided that Battleground was too good a product not to move forward, we knew that there were a lot of challenges facing us. Most of them had to do with the game itself. We needed to develop three launch armies that would play very differently from each other. We had to make sure that our point-cost system was balanced such that no unit was “too good” or “crappy”. We had to resolve dozens of issues that come up whenever you try to represent constant movement of individuals (albeit individuals in units) in a turn-based system in which the shape of a unit is fixed. One of the biggest challenges, however, had nothing to do with game play. We had to get the art right.

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An Evolving Nemesis: How Do You Beat the New Tooth and Nail?

U.S. Nationals is less than two weeks away. I’d like to write another tournament report and tell you that my deck beats the format. Unfortunately, Regionals didn’t go as planned, so instead I’m going to talk a little bit about the best deck in the format and theorize about how to beat it.

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Talking Vintage Tech with Randy Buehler

This would normally be a Premium article, but we have made this available to all readers of our site. Premium members should consider this a Premium article for the day that everyone else gets to read. Non-Premium members – consider this a sample of what you would see on the Premium side of the site nearly every day. And just to blow your minds, it includes statements like the following: “I’m actually growing to hate Mana Drain. It’s probably the worst card in the deck right now and I sideboard out 3 of them with some regularity.” What deck is Randy Buehler referencing and what other insights does the Director of R&D have for Magic players everywhere? The answer is only a click away.

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The Road To Los Angeles, Week 3: Tight Play and Surprises

Last week I made the semifinals of a PTQ in Cost Mesa, CA, playing a Heartbeat of Spring/Gifts Ungiven deck I worked on with Rob Owen. Being an absolute mastermind when it comes to deck titles, I dubbed this creation Rob.dec. After the results of GP: Minneapolis, I was still convinced the deck was strong enough to qualify with, so I brought it to another PTQ in Mesa, Arizona. What follows is the story of that tournament, the lessons we learned from it, and the latest iteration of the infamous Rob.dec.

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SCG Daily – Designer’s Journal #3: Lessons of the Past

Whether a game is great or not certainly matters – that’s obviously a big source of demand – but it is far from the only consideration in determining whether something is a great product.

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My Five Color Vision

This is what things would look like if Abe ran the Five Color world.

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The Greatest Creature in the World… A Tribute Part 2

Yesterday’s version of this labor of love received a very warm reception from StarCityGames.com readers, and today’s article is arguably even better, including guest spots from Josh Ravitz, Geoffrey Siron, Anton Jonsson, and the one and only Kai Budde.

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The Beautiful Struggle: Clash of The Titans

The word going in to U.S. Regionals was that Tooth and Nail was the best deck in the format, and it certainly posted that kind of result. According to the spiffy Star City deck database, decks identified as Tooth and Nail took first place in 12 Saviors-legal Regionals events, and took a total of 84 Top 8 slots in those events. On the surface, one of Tooth’s worst matchups is supposed to be the speedy Red decks, so I decided to put these two decks to the test and see just how big the advantage for the Red deck is here. With Nationals on the way everywhere, this could provide crucial information about just what deck to choose for the big day.

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5 Fundamental Lessons Of Magic Applied To Vintage

Tired of seeing the atrocities commited by Vintage players everywhere, Josh Silvestri steps to the fore with five simple rules that will help you become better at the game of Magic.

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Designing For Vintage 2: Rotations (and the lack thereof)

As everyone knows, Type 1 is defined as the format in which every card is playable, no matter how old or overpowered. This creates huge hurdles for new cards to overcome, since a card may already exist which is just better than you, but the huge number of possible interactions also open up many unique situations in which a very specific, situational card may find a place if it’s the best (or in some cases, only) way to deal with it.

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Heretic’s Corner – Dealing with the Rating System

The ELO rating system has been adopted by Magic for some time now, for reasons I have yet to understand. I don’t hold that opinion out of some deep-seated frustration borne of not understanding ELO. In fact, I understand it about as well as anyone, as will be made evident throughout this article. It is precisely because I do understand it that I think it is inappropriate for Magic.

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The Snapping Thragg Experiment 4 – Dissecting a Limited Matchup

In the past Nick Eisel has produced some of the most creative and interesting Limited articles around as part of his Snapping Thragg series. That series is back today, as Nick takes a chance to examine one particular matchup in full block Limited at a very detailed level to see which archetype is clearly superior.

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The Greatest Creature in the World… A Tribute Part 1

It’s not often that we get an article that unexpectedly amuses the editor with just how clever and a fun it is, but that’s exactly what this one did. Today Quentin gets in touch with his Pro Tour friends and forces them to talk about their favorite creatures in the game, while explaining exactly why they fell in love. This first article contains snarky segments from Ruud Warmenhoven, Jelger Wiegersman, World Champion Julien Nuijten, and Martin himself and should be a delight for anyone who simply likes to play the game.

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From Right Field: It’s Grrrrrr… Pretty Darn Good

The beats just won’t stop as the inimitable Mr. Romeo keeps plugging away at block, looking for decks off the beaten path that give up their wins more easily than a Grinch gives up an ounce of Christmas joy.

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SCG Daily – Designer’s Journal #2: The Search for a Hit

Yesterday I hinted that we’d come up with a game that was very exciting as a product – much cheaper than other games in its category, with enough rebuy potential to let us (and stores) invest in customers but not so much as to turn off a new gamer.

That game is Battleground: Fantasy Warfare.

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