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Blog Elemental – Rogue Drafting

My Limited rating on Magic Online bounces steadily between 1650 and 1700 for two reasons. The first is obviously skill level. I draft once or twice per month, so I never really accumulate enough practice to gain what you might call expertise. The second reason for my anemic rating is that, just like in Constructed, I have a tendency to, shall we say, experiment. Sometimes -okay, often – I see a deck forming that just… might… maybe possibly… work out, and I lunge for it.

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You CAN Play Type I #137 – Back to Basics, Part XIV: Six Beginner’s Delusions You Meet in Heaven

Many of you might wonder why I dwell on cards I don’t think will see play in Type I, even if I end up with a list that rejects all the new cards. While the Johnnies in all of you might not like it, I want to impress the thought process upon the beginners and people like Steve Jarvis. Only after reading his Type I column am I fully reminded why it remains important to write about Eternal Witness for the teenager (or Nationals competitor) who’s at the Prerelease and has a passing interest in Type I.

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Death Is To Being Engrish!

Moving into a radically different metagame format by moving from the States back to Japan, I’ve done fairly well for myself with my Green/White Tooth and Nail variant. In this article, I’ll tell you the history and development of a pet deck that’s fairly competitive, and provide you with an updated decklist for Fifth Dawn. [For those who don’t know him, Eli helps provide coverage of Japanese Grand Prix and Nationals for Sideboard.com. He also attempts to teach English to Japanese students with varying degrees of success.]

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Weak Among the Strong: Are You Kidding Yourself?

Ask someone who just lost a game why they lost and the answers will vary. Manascrew is always popular, as is a bad matchup.”I lost the die roll” comes up a lot on the Pro Tour, especially when environments get particularly degenerate.”He drew more X” is another, whether X is Skullclamp, Disciple of the Vault, lands, burn, creatures, spells or whatever. Occasionally someone who is modest or who just played Kai Budde will say,”I got outplayed.” All of these answers are sometimes true, or at least partly true. But what should get said a lot more often is,”I was kidding myself, and if I hadn’t, I might have been able to win.”

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May Metagame Breakdown

Another diverse, interesting month is behind us, and hopefully a good sign for the summer. If you want to see the most up-to-date information on the Type I metagame before heading into the summer convention season (which officially starts at Origins this weekend), this is the place.

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Blog Elemental — Wood

Every so often I hit on a deck idea that several people actually like. The most dramatic example was a mono-Green controllish deck meant to generate lots and lots of mana to play overcosted bombs. I called the deck Wood or sometimes Fattie Wood, and won a few local tourneys with the thing. My whole group of friends played it at Regionals, as did a guy named Jason Spears who went 7-2. Today I’m going to examine what a current rendition of the deck might look like.

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The Next Level

Last time, I threatened to do something this week that would outline one method for you to reach the elusive Next Level. For the vast bulk of you out there who plug away at tournaments, whether they are local Type II events, Trials, PTQs, or whatever else… this one is for you.

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Fact or Fiction: Answers

Here are the answers to the play scenarios I posed last week, along with some background stuff. If you haven’t read the original article yet, I’ve included the original scenarios along with the answers to make for easier reading. I’m also going to include anything I thought was amusing from people that emailed me responses and / or anything funny from the forums.

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Blog Elemental – Three Shades of Dawn

As I started working through the Red portion of my Fifth Dawn menu, I realized there weren’t a lot of cards on the list. Then I worked through Green and Blue with the same result. So here’s a triple-dose of menu, combining all three colors.

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From Right Field: You’re Sick, You Know That?

Combos abound thanks to Fifth Dawn. Who cares? Skullclamp’s been banned. Who cares? As far as I can tell from what people have been e-mailing me, all anyone cares about is details from my honeymoon. You know what? You’re sick. Truly.

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My Inner Troll: The Musky Taste of Failure

As the matchup analyses show, the deck probably isn’t ready for Tier 1 yet (probably not Tier 4 either), yet in my testing, it did significantly better than I had expected. True, I hadn’t expected much, but the deck’s dainty, little four-card combo was surprisingly easy to assemble and had the advantage of attaining victory with the help of numberless quantities of Bears.

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Blog Elemental – Constructing Preconstructed

I have a running list of ideas I’d like to make into interesting articles, article series, or even a weekly column. The”Magic blog,” unsurprisingly, was on this list, and so is another idea I’m planning to try out when Fifth Dawn reaches Magic Online…

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Fact or Fiction

Below I will outline ten gameplay situations; some of them really happened (fact) and the others I just made up (fiction). You’re supposed to guess which is which. There may or may not be subtle clues to help you with your guesses, so pay careful attention! Furthermore, those that have read my articles in the past will have a definite advantage.

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