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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!

Everybody and their brother wants to draft Dampen.dec these days because… well, because it’s both powerful and stylish. But what happens when you don’t get the Dampen Thoughts that make the deck work? Is there a way to draft this type of deck and still win without the namesake card? Nick shares his thoughts today on how to keep winning even when you are a hopeless Dampen.dec addict like he is.

It is very dangerous to point at a card and say, “That card won me that game; therefore, it should be in my deck.” There’s always more to the story than whether or not the card was good in one particular game or in one particular match. Even Feast of Worms can win games under the right circumstances.
That’s why this concept of negative context analysis is so tough to come to grips with. You improve your deck only very slightly when you realize that a good-in-general card should really be replaced by a jankier card that fits your deck better. If a certain “good” card wins you five out of ten playtest games, you’ll probably never stop to think whether a different card would have won you six out of ten.

We’ve finally done it. With the new year, we’ve now made a daily article besides Ask the Judge a regular feature on StarCityGames.com. This will be a rotating post filled by a number of our Featured Writers over the course of the year designed to give you a glimpse into their daily Magical thoughts. The first installment of this new feature will be manned for the next few weeks by none other than the quirky, entertaining, and most excellent Adam Grydehoj!

It’s not every day that you win a Grand Prix, so Pelcak has decided to grace our site with another one of his wonderful reports. How did :B make it through Day 1 with a 7-1 record, setting them up for an undefeated Day 2? Details are inside!