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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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Blog Fanatic: Deck Lists – The Silent Killer

Thousands of players each year receive game and match losses due to imporper deck registration. In today’s installment of Blog Fanatic, Ben looks at what can go wrong while registering your deck list, and what you can do to avoid losing to your own registration mistakes!

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Functional Breakdown of Vintage Cards From Dec-Jan

Phil Stanton’s articles are almost impossible to explain in short blurbs, but they always include numbers, they are always about Vintage, and they always give you crucial information about some part of the Vintage metagame. This time Phil takes a look at the different compositions of card types in Vintage Top 8s, including how many land/mana sources each deck runs, the amount of countermagic and disruption seeing play, and how much potential most Vintage decks have to damage themselves. If I haven’t explained that this article is really really cool then I have failed, but don’t let that stop you from reading this article, as it should be an enormous boon to every Vintage deckbuilder that reads it.

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Sealed Revealed from the Pros

Real Life intruded on Craig Stevenson’s Sealed Revealed run, but we found a ringer to stand in for him. Today Tim takes two of the card pools Craig posted last week and dissects them, explaining which builds he would consider, discarding the chaff and building the best decks from the tools at hand. The Betrayers of Kamigawa prerelease starts on Magic Online today, and Limited PTQs are just around the corner, so if you are looking for some help in figuring out how to build your deck, Tim Aten’s got your back.

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Weak Among the Strong: Bluffing, Imperfect Information and the Myth of the Single Correct Play

What can you say about Chad Ellis’s fundamentals articles? That Chad Ellis is a respected Magic theorist capable of taking complex concepts and making them simple to understand. That Chad is respected by the best theorists and players in the game. That every time you read a Chad Ellis article, you will learn something and become a better player. If that’s not enough, check out the guest appearance from “The Donald” in this exceptional article.

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Blog Fanatic: Me And Zvi And Netrunner Makes Three

Magic is my foremost gaming passion, and it has been an integral part of my life for over a decade. It isn’t the only game I’ve ever tried – I’ll admit that I’ve openly cheated on my one true love with other brazen hussies in the gaming world. Today are some stories about the other collectible card games that I’ve played over the last years of my life.

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The View From the Northeast – My Invitational Ballot

Chad gives the quick and dirty reasons for his Invitational ballot, and some of the people in his Top 5 might just surprise you.

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Archetype Changes in Betrayers Limited

Originally, I wanted to write something about reviewing Betrayers of Kamigawa and all the cards that are going to have an impact on the new format. I knew that my teammates Gadiel and Tim Aten were going to write something about the new set, along with Zvi and many others. Thus I needed to work on something else that was also important that involved Betrayers. What about the different archetypes in Champions block and how they are going to be affected with Betrayers now in? Are there going to be new archetypes? Which archetypes get better? Which ones get worse? All of these questions haven’t really been answered yet, and I’m here today to start doing exactly that.

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