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Examining the Vintage Metagame – Analysis of The Ultimate Table

For this installment, I have updated the largest table I maintain: the monthly occurrence stats for every card, in terms of how many copies showed up in an average Top 8 for each month. So if you see something like “7.0 Black Lotus” it means that in a typical Top 8 from that month, seven of the decks would include a Black Lotus. Something like “3.0 Great Wall” would indicate that I made an error in the table, which is possible – it’s a big table. Regardless, this article will give you a full analysis of all the card trends for the important cards played at big Vintage tournaments for the past year!

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The Black Perspective: Pro Tour Columbus

Osyp takes a look back at the weekend that was, explaining Affinity’s success, the poor deck choices of Team Togit, and investigating Eugene Harvey’s choices in hand bags (or should we say man-purse?). All this and more on the latest “The Black Perspective”.

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PT Columbus Report *12th*

Do you know what the most successful Extended deck archetype from Pro Tour: Columbus was? No, it wasn’t Affinity, which won the tournament. No, it also wasn’t Reanimator, even though that deck placed the most players in Day 2. In the end, the most successful deck from this past weekend was Scepter-Chant. In this article, Ruud (the coolest Dutchie you’ve never heard of) explains how he ended up playing a deck that runs Lightning Angels out of the sideboard, and recounts the story of his success.

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Ask The Editor, 11/05/2004

Kanoot answers fourteen of your questions today, including the following: Okay, so let’s say my roommate had just recently purchased a Beta Black Lotus. Keeping in mind that this is ENTIRELY hypothetical, what would the moral/ethical ramifications of booby trapping our home to facilitate his early demise be, if my intention was to appropriate his collection in the event of his passing? Do you have any experience with this sort of a dilemma, and if so, what advice could you offer to someone grappling with this paralyzing conundrum?

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The Sublimity of Forgiveness

How does The Man in the Iron Mask, Alexandre Dumas, and the concept of forgiveness tie in with Mono-Blue decks in Standard and the idea that “control decks are hard to play”? Mike has the answers, in an article that will probably turn out to be another landmark in the career of this Magic literary giant.

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Crucible of Worlds is the New Library of Alexandria: Constructing a Coherent Restricted List Policy

So when does a card meet the distortion criteria? That’s one of the primary questions I want to address in this article. It requires a close analysis and a careful look. The critical inquiry is whether a card is “excessively” distorting. This is the problem with Crucible of Worlds. Crucible of the Worlds is not an inherently powerful card, but its presence in Type One is disturbing to many players. Crucible presents an important test case for my proposed framework and to that end I’m going to parse out these arguments for and against restriction in detail.

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Ask the Editor – 11/04/2004

One of your most famous articles featured you performing at a tournament while under the influence of Marijuana. Some years later, as a head of Starcitygames, itself a head of the world of Magic strategy, do you feel this past transgression harbors your site and/or yourself in a negative light? Or do you feel it is easily pawned off under the guise of “experimentation”?

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Papal Bull: Doomsday’s Back —and in Non-hoax Form!

For me, the most exciting of the recent unrestrictions was Doomsday. Doomsday was long regarded as a weak card that was placed on the restricted list to neuter a combo deck that really wasn’t even that good in the first place. Thus Wizards, in their infinite wizdom, finally unrestricted the card. Even today, most people think it is harmless. I’m here to not only tell you “it’s not that simple,” but to demonstrate a few Doomsday decks that definitely don’t suck.

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Swinging With Dead Girls – Pro Tour: Columbus *T8*

Did you ever wonder what it’s like to make your first Pro Tour Top 8 when you’re fifteen years old? Gadiel’s here to tell you, as he gives a blow-by-blow account of this past weekend’s tournament, including how he ended up playing Reanimator and his exchanges of pleasantries with the fine Wizards of the Coast staff.

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Breaking Gifts Ungiven: All Things KCI

With States coming around, I was wracking my brains to come up with something good and rogue to play, in an attempt to start some sort of wacky tradition. However, all my ideas sucked, so I decided to dust off the old Disciple of the Vault that did so well for me last year. I playtested a new build of Krark-Clan Ironworks and it was fun, so I went with it.

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How Type One Became More Accessible And Evolved

As the “spark-plug” who got proxy tournaments started, let me provide some history. Most of you probably won’t remember this period in Vintage history, so let me set the stage. It was late 2000. The global metagame was very loosely defined. Europe had far fewer tournaments than it does today, and there was absolutely nothing in New England, save some sanctioned thing in the bowels of Massachusetts. The biggest Type One spots in the U.S. were the Richmond Comix and the Neutral Ground New York. The format has come a long way since then, and it’s important to understand why.

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Ask The Editor, 11/03/2004

Can you imagine a card Wizards could print that would make Affinity not the pre-eminent deck without narrowing the field of viable decks even further?

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Sullivan Library: Breaking Mirrors in Three States

Cabal Rogue has done it again. Their new R/G deck dominated in every State it was played, and will be one of the dominant Standard decks in the metagame. Adrian Sullivan takes you behind the scenes of how the deck was developed, how to play this new powerhouse, and gives a complete matchup guide. If you are going to play any Standard this fall, you need to read this article.

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Yawgmoth’s Whimsy #115: Lessons Learned at States

State and Provincials has come and gone. It taught some lessons. Some we knew, some are new. Among those we knew – Affinity is still strong, Tooth and base-Green are good, and I can’t play worth sheet. The new lessons – Champions does have cards to add, and Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker is anything but a trash rare.

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