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The Art of Magical Warfare – Curving Out

If you’re anything like me, the first time you heard the term “Mana Curve” it was either by someone much better than you, or it was on a website. For the longest time I never understood what a good curve really was, or how to build my deck with that mythical “Good Curve.” I would ask the same questions over and over, “What’s the shape of the curve? Is it a bell? An incline? I just don’t understand!” Well I’m here to help you figure out exactly what the mana curve is, so you won’t have to be like me and annoy people with those questions all the time.

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Give Me Back My Format… Or Why You Should Listen To Ben Bleiweiss

As I sit here in my cluttered office writing this article, I risk the wrath of the Type One community I worked to nurture. With this in mind, I’m sure plenty of you will believe my point of view to be flawed, wrong, or off-base. However as I watch the forums around the net ignite, I feel someone should say this: Ben Bleiweiss isn’t as wrong as you’d like to think.

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Winter Restrictions

The restricted list is designed to keep the format as skill intensive as possible, by keeping mindless “I win” cards from polluting the format. Cards like Gush and Burning Wish could make your opponent’s entire game plan irrelevant, because you could win before they got a chance to make any decisions, or just simply overpower them, putting them in a position that no amount of correct decision making could make them succeed.
The hot topic right now in Vintage is the upcoming December restriction announcement. There’s blood boiling on both sides of the issues, and as players it’s our responsibility to tell the DCI exactly what the format needs to remove in order to make skill as important as possible.

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Hell No, Ritual Won’t Go

Should Dark Ritual go? Monday morning Ben Bleiweiss argued yes, but frankly I disagree with him. Yes, Dark Ritual is powerful and can pump out turn 1 wins on the back of Necropotence and Doomsday, but being powerful alone is not a reason to restrict. The entire format is broken, and frankly Type 1 players like it that way. We like doing stupid broken tricks involving Time Walk and Yawgmoth’s Will. Is Dark Ritual warping the format or doing destructive things to Vintage? Does Dark Ritual really do enough to put it on the same list with the Power 9?

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Inquisition, Spanish Style – The Article You Did Not Expect

The new Banned and Restricted list is coming out on Wednesday. What does this have to do with Knut’s article? The answers could surprise you and might change the face of Magic for the next year. If that doesn’t interest you, maybe a picture of the new sunburst foil process from the Japan Juniors Royal Assassin and Slith Firewalker will. Click the article my friends, or you’ll miss out on what may be the most controversial article of the year.

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Type One Skills

Mike Flores wrote an interesting article on degree of difficulty. I found the Flores’ article interesting not because I strongly disagree with him – but because I think the real issue is worth exploring: what skills does Type One test? Vintage is clearly unlike any other format. Nick Eisel once described some in-game analysis contained in one of my articles as “bizarro world.” Rather than compare Type One on a better or worse scale, this article will explore and explain what I think are the critical skills Vintage players must have to be successful.

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Excuse Me, Mrs. Suitcase?

Do you have scads and scads of old cards lying around your house and taking up space? Laura has a few ideas for interesting things to do with them.

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Dynamic Pick Orders in Champions of Kamigawa

The concept before us today is one that has been mentioned several times, but to my knowledge has never been addressed in any kind of in-depth fashion. This concept is dynamic pick orders. Today I’m going to detail my pick orders for the set and then discuss how they change based on what cards are already in your pile.

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Tuning Up Tooth and Nail

What I intend to do with this article is to help you, the average Tooth and Nail player, improve and fine-tune your deck beyond the traditional (or outdated, depending on your perspective) choices that netdecks have to offer. Before I get started with the specifics, though, I feel the need to make one thing perfectly clear: Whatever you do, do not play Cloudposts in your deck.

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Blog Fanatic: Vintage Restricting Vintage

Last week, Stephen Menendian wrote an excellent article about removing several cards from the Vintage restricted list. Much discussion ensued, both on StarCityGames.com and TheManaDrain.com forums. All through the debates about what should or shouldn’t be unrestricted, I saw an underlying question that fuelled the entire debate, but was never spoken out loud: I wrote my article as a response to Stephen’s article, and finally the right questions were asked – though not in the way you might have thought.

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A Casual Look at Unhinged

Unhinged really ramped up the power level from Unglued. In some areas, that additional playability is a really good thing… But some cards are simply sick in terms of power. The problem that I have with this is that is goes against the grain of releasing a casual-only set. Admittedly, these cards aren’t designed to be played in tournaments and sanctioned events…. But despite that, the power level of some of these cards is amazingly high. Take Mox Lotus, for example. A card that makes infinite mana of any color on its own is enormously broken. Sure, that concept is funny for a few minutes, but what casual table really wants it running around?

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This Ain’t No Rock: Fine-Tuning B/G Control in Standard

No other archetype in Standard has the flexibility that B/G Control does. This is both a blessing and a curse: With so many options, finding the optimal configuration for the deck is challenging – but even more than usual, knowing your local metagame is critical. Once you know what you’re up against, it’s simply a matter of adding the proper tools to the deck. This also means that B/G Control is not particularly friendly to net-deckers. There is no universal build, and even the core of the deck leaves a tremendous number of open slots…

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The Long Road Down: From Pro Tour Playa To Golden Ass

Gary Wise gets Unhinged!By 10:30 in the morning of September 2nd, I was certain that I had written my last real article on Magic. It had been almost a year since my column work on Sideboard.com had ceased to be, I was far from in love with Wizards – and I’d just lost the first round of draft day at Worlds, prompting me to become the second of three-hundred-and five players to drop from the tournament. Forty-some Pro Tours and a few hundred articles later, I was done.

…But then came a shocking development.

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