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Adam has built a lot of great and goofy decks in his first week on SCG Daily, but the likes of R/B SparkGoat may never, ever be topped.

Extended Season is coming. Soon. Extended season always plays out about the same – the Pro Tour defines the early metagame, a new deck smashes the format, then hated-out decks resurface as the hate disappears. Old archetypes are rediscovered: the Life deck, for example, was played at GP: Las Vegas years ago. The past is relevant – it will define what you will play at the qualifiers. For this series, I will review each Extended season, one article at a time. I will look at the evolution of the metagame and highlight some of the defining decks. Then, since it is me, I’ll also discuss a few interesting decks that floated around

Ken uses his team’s Day 2 appearance at Grand Prix: Chicago as a platform to take a look at the Team Limited format and figure out what parts of the common wisdom are true, and which bits are myth. For exmaple: If you are trying to win a Team PTQ, your energies are much better spent practicing Team Sealed than they are Team Rochester. Always controversial, often insightful, KK brought his A Game with this one.

I love Rampage, but sometimes, pseudo-Rampage is even better. The trouble with plain, workaday Rampage is that it always grants creatures toughness as well as power, and as my Uncle Toby Shandy likes to say, “The only thing better than toughness is power, and the only thing better than power is Rabid Elephant.” Once Rampage was retired as a mechanic, Rampage-like effects flourished. Cards like Spined Sliver, Rabid Wolverines, and Gang of Elk improved upon Rampage by including, essentially, Bushido-when-attacking to the mix. If you want to make the most of the idea, try something like this…

“In order to advance to the midgame with the largest possible advantage, in the early game play as if they have it, until you have the trump.” What does this maxim mean and how can undersatnding it make you a much better Magic player? Only the Magic Jerk knows…

With Dampen Thought-based Limited decks getting talked up a lot these days, the splice mechanic is getting the spotlight thrown on it in a big way. When drafting, as long as you know which cards are useful, the deck practically builds itself. Take the best card for you and pass; when it comes time to build your deck, you have all the pieces in front of you. In Block Constructed, the decisions aren’t quite as easy. With access to whichever cards you want, deciding which to run (and in what quantities) can be just as difficult to figure out as getting the draft version of the deck to come together.

There were only thirteen of them, but their existence stretched from Legends to Mirage. That’s the length of seven sets (two large, five small) if you’re counting. If you opened a pack of Fallen Empires, Homelands, or The Dark, you’d never find one, but the mechanic they presented was a Magic staple nevertheless, a mechanic that found a home in each of the five colors. And of all the retired mechanics of the past, this one has, possibly, had the most influence on the later state of the game. What is this riddle of a mechanic I am talking about? Why it’s …

John takes a look at the Champions winners for multiplayer so that you can get everything situated before you are scrambling to grab the best cards from Betrayers as well.

In the first article in this series, we looked at Sheep, Starfish, and Hippo tokens. Today, we’re going to the other extreme.

Bleiweiss had a hell of a 2004! He was one of the most popular writers on our site, became the most reviled man in the Type One community, and predicted Magic card trends like none other. He’s back to kick off 2005 with a brand new set of predictions for the game we know and love. Which ones will come true and which ones will set off a firestorm of controversy? You’ll have to read the article to find out!