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The Beautiful Struggle: Weird Science for CCB Draft

Funny things start happening after you get a few drafts under your belt with a new set. New avenues seem available. It’s easy to convince yourself that you are privy to the real tech, that some cards which everyone else thinks are crap are super-playable, and other heavily-hyped cards seem not so good. It’s too early to say whether every strange draft idea I have seen in the CCB format will prove itself worthy. But there are a couple of decks that I have drafted, or seen drafted, that really fascinate me and have proven to be at least playable if not good. This article is dedicated to those new draft ideas including one I like to call… Ninjank!

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Gifts Ungiven Belcher Control – The Primer-Type Thing

Those of you who are familiar with our Power 9 Event Coverage probably know all about the infamous Brass Man, a player adept at deckbuilding, amusing one-liners, and utterly smashing Stephen Menendian(s). For those of you who have not heard of this colorful character of Vintage, follow along today as he introduces his very saucy version of Gifts Ungiven Control that uses Goblin Charbelcher and Mana Severance as a combo win condition. If any of this sounds confusing or counter-intuitive, this excellent article is just a click away, prepared to explain the whole thing.

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Vintage Decks To Beat – March 2005

The Star City Power Nine Tournament Series!

With Syracuse in the books, the eyes of the Vintage community now turn to the next Star City “Power Nine” tournament in Chicago! Can Kevin Cron successfully defend his Syracuse title? Will new archetypes emerge in the wake of the Trinisphere restriction? Can anyone stop Team Mean Deck? These questions, and more, will be answered at the 3rd stop in the 2005 Star City “Power Nine” Tournament Series; Chicago! Make plans to attend!

In the meantime, check out the Vintage Decks To Beat for March 2005!

[Sat, April 16th – SCG P9 Chicago!]

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Religious Right or Liberal Left?

Sometimes, the most seemingly-trivial things can affect the strategy of your games. And when you’re playing Emperor or Two-Headed Giant, there’s one subtle fact which can affect deckbuilding in very interesting ways.

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SCG Daily – A Deck a Day: Abe’s Deck of Happiness and Joy, v 3.0

Welcome back comrades! Gather ’round, for thy daily dosage of deck hath returned! Verily, our good captain Ted of the Knutsons hath summoned me for another round of writing, and my heart warms so follow along as I update my favorite deck of all time.

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Multi-Colored Control – An Introduction and Metagaming the Deck

I’ve been on the forefront of 4-color Control’s design for years now. Over those years, I had slipped into the habit of tweaking the deck to survive, popularizing it, letting it get invalidated (either by hate or a substantial environment shift), then again tweaking the deck to survive. That is, until I felt that the format was too broken for it to even consider. Thankfully I don’t think today’s environment is too broken, and I have a new build to show you that has tested very well.

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Deconstructing U/W in Betrayers Limited Part 2 – The Betrayers Pick Order

When Ken messaged me last week to tell me he thought he had written one of his best Limited articles ever, I was skeptical. He’s been semi-retired for some time, so I didn’t know what to expect. Friday’s article proved his case however, and part 2 just continues it by delivering the complete common-through-rares pick order for Betrayers in this powerful archetype.

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Making Up Your Mind

If you’ve been reading sites like this for a while, you may have noticed that there are a lot of articles out there regarding the ever-elusive concept of “getting better at Magic.” Me? I’m here to promote good play the best way I know how: bad play – more specifically, pointing out opportunities for bad play. You may recall reading somewhere that, for each gamestate, there is only one correct play and everything else is a mistake. Well, I’m personally quite familiar with everything else. I have, at some point, bungled a game in pretty much any way you can imagine. It’s not that I’m a particularly bad player – I like to think I’m actually fairly decent – but if you play long enough and aren’t careful, it’s inevitable.

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The Magic Jerk – Nosce Te Ipsum

The most interesting matches of my season so far came back to back at last week’s PTQ in Milford. I was playing Aluren, and my first opponent was Jonathan Ward of Team MYR. We were both 3-0 at this point and he begins the game with something like Duress, Birds of Paradise, Cabal Therapy and I assume he’s playing Rock, so I Cabal Therapy him back on Vampiric Tutor. He shows me a hand of Worship, and Academy Rector. What the hell? If your PTQ season has gone at all like mine, I’m sure you’ve had more than a few of these strange moments and can share my pain.

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God, I Hate These Guys! My Invitational Ballot

When Scott Johns sent me the list of names on the Magic Writers Invitational, I winced. Never before had I seen such a wretched hive of scum and villainy. After much deliberation and more than a few shots of tequila, I finally settled on the five least repugnant invitees. Which five did I choose and what dirt do I dish on them? Find out inside!

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Randy Buehler Rides Again!

This past weekend Randy played in his first tournament since 1999… and won. Even better was that it was an unsanctioned 12-Proxy Vintage event with a Black Lotus as the grand prize. We sent our crack reporter JP Meyer off to a secret resort on the island of Maui (also known as “R&D’s Winter Home”) to ask Randy about his tournament experience, what deck he played, how R&D looks at Vintage and his thoughts on the format as a whole.

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Top 5 Multiplayer Creatures Week: The Winner, And Next Week’s Challenge!

This week’s challenge brought out a bunch of the old’ standbys: Akroma, Angel of Wrath, Seedborn Muse, Avatar of Woe, Soul Warden. But who took the $20 prize for the week for listing their picks for the Top 5 multiplayer creatures?

That would be Stephen Davis, for his phenomenally-amusing The Tenth Annual Tolarian Academy Awards. Stephen wins the sawbuck because he took a dry format and spiced it up with a lot of humor and a smidge of strategy!

So what’s next week’s challenge? Well, this is a little tougher, since it’s a new casual format that doesn’t have quite the following that multiplayer does… but it’s fun as heck. How does access to infinite mana sound? The next week’s challenge is:

Type 4: Limited Infinity.

If you want an overview of the rules, check Stephen Menendian’s excellent article. If you don’t want an overview of the rules, write an article and send it in to Mail us at https://sales.starcitygames.com/contactus/contactform.php?emailid=2! You could win $20!

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Wherefore Art Thou Quirion Dryad?

The quest to inherit the title of “sickest ever” dot deck.

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Deconstructing U/W in Betrayers Limited Part 1

Throughout time two draft archetypes have risen above the rest in terms of power and consistency. Those are mono-Black and Blue/White. If you default to one of these archetypes without knowing exactly what is in the set, you can’t go too wrong. Sure it may cause you to pick a Harsh Deceiver earlier than it should be picked, but by following the guidelines of sets past, you should be able to draft a competitive deck. In this article I am going to discuss the drafting of Blue/White in Champions/Champions/Betrayers (CCB)from the commons right up to the rares, with a pick order for every card on the list.

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From Right Field: The Absolutely-Positively-Guaranteed-to-Make-You-Somebody’s-Hero Deck

Imagine it. You sit down across from your opponent. You roll the die and win. You shake hands. You mulligan to six. Your opponent’s feeling good about that. And you win before he even gets a chance to draw the card on his first turn. In Standard. You’re a legend. Not a Legend. You’re awfully close, though. You’d be my hero, anyway. And a lot of other folks’, too. Today I’m going to give you your very own guide to becoming a hero.

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