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Of course, there are lots of ways to gain card advantage in Abeth Edition, the alternate Core Set that I’ve created. The concept is so important that it should hardly be limited to Blue. Additionally, other colors get sweeping effects or multiple targets: Wrath of God, Wildfire, Shatterstorm, and Tempest of Light are excellent examples. But while White and Red get plenty of sweeping effects, Black and Green get hardly any. To compensate, both get some pure card drawing. Black gets Reprocess (which is hardly used) and Phyrexian Arena, which may be the first balanced Necropotence. Add in Skulltap and Skeletal Scrying and you have a solid amount of card drawing from common to rare.

This week’s winner was a slam dunk, except for one thing: He’d won the contest last week. Thus, I took a much closer look at the other entries; Spencer Bogan’s Breaking Wind was a funny look at a ridiculous deck, whereas Edd Black’s Three Deadly Wins were hysterical wins – but two of them were about wins that involved, well, cheating. Yet when it comes down to it, it’s hard not to give the award to an article with this punchline:

“I used my Scandalmonger to win game one in the last round of a tournament, playing against a legally blind little old lady, who was using an Elf deck she hadn’t seen until that morning.

“She went on to take the match.”

Thus, Sean Coleman wins the prize, making him (I believe) the first person ever to win any SCG article contest back-to-back. So what’s next week’s $20 Casual Challenge?

The Top Three Best Multiplayer Enchantments.

The difficulty? No Pernicious Deed. And remember, we don’t want just three cards; we want to see the decks these enchantments fit neatly into, and show us why they’re so darned spiffy when two or more players are facing you down. Send your best writing into Mail us at https://sales.starcitygames.com/contactus/contactform.php?emailid=2, and you could win $20!

In addition, we’re looking for future Casual Challenge themes. If you’ve got a format you’d like to see highlighted or just have a neat idea you’d like to see other people writing about, let us know in the forums!

In the last three sections, I explained the basic principles I would use to construct an ideal Core set that would be better than what Wizards has done, and then I listed the cards and gave a brief synopsis of each. In these next two installments, I will try to explain and defend some of the more controversial choices, and some of the principles involved in their selection.

Drafting with Pugg this week has been a very good time for all parties involved and the forums have been crackling with energy and feedback about each walkthrough. Of course, most of us keep waiting for the other shoe to drop – for Pugg to draft a really sweet deck for all of us to glory in. And just when you thought it couldn’t get any worse…

With today’s installment, Abe fills us in on the last of the cards in his grand scheme to do Wizards one better by creating a workable Core Set! Now that you have all the cards, you can debate his choices… and tomorrow, he’ll fill you in on his playtesting.

In any 250-card deck, the first issue is getting the mana. In real life 5-Color, dual lands and fetch lands make that easy. Online, the dual lands don’t exist and the fetchlands are out of my price range for now. I don’t own the Cities of Brass, Tendo Ice Bridges, and so forth to help. I will have to make do with commons. That means that I am going to have to play extra forests and play a lot of green mana fixers.

The worst offense yesterday had to be in 303, where I took the Blademane Baku over Genju of the Falls. Forgive me for this transgression. Honestly, when I sat down and typed out that draft, even I felt like calling myself a moron in the forums. I came up with a lame excuse why I passed it, but hey, let’s just pretend I was on both crack and PCP when I did that. Except on June 3rd. That’s my court date.

If you play Magic Online, you are probably aware that the Vanguard release events are starting this week. But which avatars are the best and what decks do they belong in? Star Wars Kid’s got your back on this one, as he reviews the best of the avatars today as well as covering some of the major bugs you should be aware of before you participate in this new format.

Yes this event is real, and Scott Johns, editor of MagictheGathering.com, is here today to clear up some misconceptions about the event and to answer some of the more frequently asked questions he’s seen on the forums.

Today KK shares what he’s been thinking about the Magic world at large, Grand Prix: Detroit, and the concept of banning Umezawa’s Jitte. In Limited.