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Ninth Edition, Standard, And You

The Eighth- to Ninth-edition rotation will be upon us soon, with the new cards tournament legal on August 20th. That is the week after US Nationals – after that event, Standard will be played with a new base set. The sheer number of cards rotating is huge; 162 of the cards now in Eighth Edition won’t survive the rotation, if the spoilers floating around the net are to be believed. Basic lands aside, that means that half the set is leaving. What’s that going to do to Standard’s heavy hitters?

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Kamigawa Block And The Death Of Green

Jamie discusses the issue of Magic Online account sharing, the future of post-Rotation Green, and discusses how his latest creation fared at a Kamigawa Block Constructed tournament!

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Magical Hack: Kamigawa Block, The Early Weeks

The first few weeks of a Block Constructed PTQ season are usually very interesting to watch, especially as the cards from the third set start to permeate the decks from the Pro Tour prior to the third expansion. This time around, we have progressed quite a bit on some of our archetypes of old, with at least one new “good deck” coming out of the mix thanks to the Saviors of Kamigawa cards. The first new deck is “Black Hand,” the black weenie beatdown with fattie back-up deck that is sporting such Saviors hits as O-Naginata, Hand of Cruelty, and Raving Oni-Slave… and frankly, I think people who play the deck need to make a vital choice as to how to build it.

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SCG Daily: Life’s Ups And Downs

I consider Rune-Tail’s flip trigger to be the easiest of the bunch to accomplish. Magic is stuffed full of tricky ways to gain lots of life. But if Rune-Tail is the easiest Ascendant to flip, then Rune-Tail’s Essence is the least dominating legendary enchantment.

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Darwin At Work: The Evolution Of Fish

Fish has catapulted back into popularity recently, with stronger versions patching the weaknesses of previous Fish decks. Today, we’re going to take a look at WTF and Meandeck Fish to see what sorts of metagames they thrive in, why it’s been so successful lately, and what can be done to stop it.

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The Beautiful Struggle: Fun With Vintage

On Saturday night, I had a rough time at my local poker game. A newcomer had arrived, and he looked like easy pickings. He was drunk as a skunk, slurring his speech and absolutely reeking of alcohol. He literally did not even know the difference between the terms “check” and “call”….
Yet I simply could not beat the guy. Time and again he would call me down and show down a better hand. When I left the game, I was pretty angry – until I realized that karma must have been paying me back. After all, earlier that day I had played in my second Vintage tournament, and somehow managed a Top 4 finish out of thirty or so people.

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5-Color Green: The Draft Walkthrough

A couple of weeks ago, I did a drafting guide for the 5-Color Green archetype in Champions/Betrayers/Saviors. This week, I want to provide you with an actual Walkthrough, along with plenty of commentary that should help anyone trying to learn how to draft the deck better…. because there’s an important lesson in today’s draft on not compromising your mana base.

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Ask Zvi, Part II

Zvi answers more of your questions in this final installment, including “Are there killer combos in formats that are never discovered?”, “What’s the best combo in Standard that doesn’t involve a nine-mana sorcery?”, and “Will your love of combo inadvertently push the combo archetypes when you’re working for Wizards R&D?” Plus, the question that Zvi couldn’t answer!

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SCG Daily: A Worthy Sacrifice

There’s a lot going on with Kuon’s flip trigger, and all of it is pretty challenging from a deckbuilding perspective. The most obvious step in flipping Kuon is killing at least three creatures. That’s no easy feat – though black has some built-in answers with the likes of Barter in Blood, Hideous Laughter, Echoing Decay, Death Cloud, and Kagemaro, First to Suffer. Here’s the trick, though: I don’t want Kuon himself to die. So how do we break a creature-killer in what has to be a creature-heavy deck?

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Five Months to Tweak Five Ideas: Preparing For The Legacy Grand Prix

Steven Menendian was correct when he argued that some may incorrectly believe Legacy to be “Extended with dual lands and Force of Will.” That’s simply not true. True, it’s not uncommon for Extended decks to make viable ports to Legacy, but that means nothing. Legacy truly is very different than Extended, and there’s almost limitless potential in a largely unexplored format… so let’s start tossing around some ideas.

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SCG Daily: Inverting Dragons

As the person who named the Ascendants (yes, I’m proud of my creative writer gig), I’d like to point out that Homura is the first and currently only card with “Human” in its name. Unfortunately, Homura’s creature type matters even less than Erayo’s. No Monk lords exist, and there’s currently debate in R&D whether Humans will ever have a lord of some kind. But fortunately, Homura has another ability that’s a little more enticing…

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Ask Zvi, Part I

Zvi asked for questions… and man, did you flood him! Zvi answers questions on just about every topic around, from “How do you become a better player?” to “How far should R&D push the design envelope?” to “Why did Netrunner fail?” to “How dangerous is Blue, anyway?”

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Lessons From London

London was no Barcelona. I didn’t expect it to be, since before my Top 8 in Barcelona I’d had plenty of practice and knew the format cold. I had tested every card, knew what I wanted to draft, and knew where I disagreed with other players and was happy to have them go the other way. Champions/Betrayers/Saviors is a different format, and I knew I was behind the curve. Presented for your edification are some of the lessons I learned – the hard way, sadly – at Pro Tour: London.

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Magic: The Intangibles

I think of Magic as a battle of percentages. The easiest place we can see the percentages that define who wins what games is in deck matchups themselves, where Mind’s Desire is too quick for StOmpY and Tooth and Nail can outlast the average Mono-Blue Control… But the matchups themselves are not the only places where this math tocks and ticks; it just so happens that these are the only percentages that most Internet articles typically address. But there are other percentages in Magic, and you might just learn that deck matchups are not even necessarily the most important.

“One of your best articles ever Flores. I have bookmarked this article for re-reading before every tournament.” – JWakefield

“Amazing stuff Flores. I really feel as if I bettered myself by reading this article. Premium just paid for itself for the 2,341st time.” – misterorange

“This is one of the classics folks.” – cupofjoe

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SCG Daily #1: Four Spells In A Turn, Five Colors To Break It

I looooove card cycles. Love ’em. I also love deck brainstorming, pushing myself to think of ways to use a quirky card. Put these two things together, and you have a wonderful way for me to spend the next five days. Here’s how it’s going to work: I pick a card cycle from Saviors of Kamigawa that I think has potential for capital-F Fun. Then, each day this week I’ll focus on one card of the cycle and brainstorm Standard deck ideas. So, um, guess which cycle I started out with?

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