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Salt the Fields! Making White Not Suck

White’s most often reiterated themes have been lifegain, enchantment kill, protection-from, and sucking. If a card says”Counter target spell”, you could be pretty sure it’s Blue. If it says”pay X life to do something”, it’s probably Black. Is it a creature which produces mana? Most likely it’s a Green elf-type card. Does it blow things up good? Red. What themes are White? White has the lowest incidence of”look at this card and figure out what color it’s from” of any color in Magic. I take that back – chances are if the cards are bad en masse, they are easily White cards.

Thankfully, I’ve got some ideas on how to fix things…

The Mirrodin Equipment Dilemma: Viridian Longbow!

I remembered the Tempest pre-release where Aaron Forsythe’s opponent was bitterly complaining about being mana screwed. When I asked him how many lands he was playing, he replied that he had thirteen lands and two Lotus Petals. I remember chuckling about that afterwards since everyone knew that you had to play at least seventeen land in Limited.
Now, I was that noob from the Tempest pre-release playing fourteen lands in decks that seemed as if they needed at least sixteen lands

The Obligatory Type I Darksteel Review

Furnace Dragon

Call me crazy, but I really like the idea of running this in the sideboard of TnT for use against other Workshop decks. My reasoning is that it isn’t very expensive because of affinity, and because its ability makes it completely impossible for them to try to play around it with Goblin Welder to keep permanents they like in play. Of course, I’m probably horribly wrong here, since they’re probably better off just running Artifact Mutation or whatever, but this does only take up one sideboard slot.

The Dilemma Dilemma: One Day or Two?

Every time I put up a Dilemma article these days, the forums quake with outraged readers. Typically, their complaints are about how the Dilemma articles are split into multiple days, and how they hate waiting those extra 24 hours to have the other half of the debate appear.”Things didn’t used to be this way,” they cry,”so why are you punishing us now?”

Finding the Sharp Edge of Darksteel

Maybe you played in the prerelease. Maybe you’ve been following the spoiler on www.mtgnews.com; maybe you’ve read the official spoiler on Wizards’ Darksteel page. At any rate, you’ve got a brand new set of cards to digest, process, and evaluate for Constructed play. While I appreciate the folks who do a complete, card-by-card evaluation of the set, I’d instead like to share my thoughts on what I think is the cream of the crop, the sharp edge of Darksteel. That’s what we’re all really interested in anyway, right?

What The Hell Happened To Me? JoeyBags’ Odyssey

Want to know where Joey Bags disappeared to for the last month? How about his thoughts on the current Extended? Or maybe how he qualified for Pro Tour: Kobe with a”bad Rock deck,” and why he chose to play it? All of this and more is just a click away…

Adultery and Other Mistakes

There are mistakes, and there are… other things. There are errors so horrid the word”mistake” cannot adequately convey the depths of poor judgement required evoking them. These are errors so vast they cannot be fully understood by mortals. These are sublime events. When such monstrosities are identified, one does not call them”mistakes.” There is another word reserved for these tragedies.

Blunders. These things are called blunders. This is what a blunder looks like.

Matchup Series: Psychatog Vs. Tools ‘N Tubbies

In the course of the games I have pulled from testing, I’ll explain how the”Who’s the Beatdown” articles written by Flores and Mowshowitz pieces tie into this matchup, and I’ll explain how this matchup plays out, and the ways in which the both decks struggle to win. I’ll conclude with an examination of potential changes both decks may decide on, in order to improve the matchup.

From Right Field: Cheating = Stealing

Let’s say that a cheater makes the top 8 by winning a match that s/he shouldn’t have won. What if it was top four? What if it was the finals? In each case, depending on the prize structure at your place, that person has stolen from someone. Plain and simple. Stealing. That person cheated to get something s/he wouldn’t have gotten if s/he had played fair and square. It got taken away from someone who (hopefully) didn’t cheat. Heck, even if the cheater didn’t make the prize level, but knocked out someone who should have made it, they stole from that person.

The problem is that cheating is more rampant than even the most cynical of us would like to believe.

Why Ben Bleiweiss is Wrong About White

So Ben Bleiweiss thinks White is in the crapper, that it has been maligned by Wizards and given the shaft in its mechanics. According to him, White is the worst color of every format, the victim of ruthless undermining from within and generally anemic in every way. He goes about examining the claims that Randy Buehler made in a February 2003 article concerning what White would and would not be doing in the future, and concludes, based on examination of the current Standard format, that the promised”goods” have not been delivered. As I understand it, there are a number of people who agree with Mr. Bleiweiss, but I’m not one of them. Want to know why? Good, you’re in the right place.

DNA: Mind’s Desire for the Masses

After months of tuning, I’ve created a Mind’s Desire deck that works consistently, doesn’t fold to artifact hate, holds its own against creatures, and authors some awe-inspiring synergy that’s left more than a few onlookers mesmerized. It’s also the most fun deck I’ve ever played and uses a bunch of cards that have been deemed useless, too slow, or unplayable for the format. Oh and lest I forget – it’s competitive with most of the top decks in Standard.

Shall I continue?

18,000 Words: Poker Face’s Guide to Everything Constructed, Darksteel Edition

I’m tired of people giving diluted, hackneyed set reviews every time there’s a new release. A lot of players try rating cards in both Limited and Constructed, but it ends up diluting their valuations. Others attempt to rate each and every card in the set. My approach is more holistic: I have no ratings at all. Instead, I’m going to talk about the cards that will see Constructed play (sorry guys, no Limited strategy here), or that have potential to see Constructed play in the not-too-distant future. I’m gonna throw out some thoughts and ideas, and I’d like to hear what you have to say about these cards!

18,000 Words: Poker Face’s Guide to Everything Constructed, Darksteel Edition Part 2

The Buzz: If you thought Chalice of the Void changed Type I, you ain’t seen nothing yet. Chalice of the Void for zero stops your opponent from playing Moxen. Chalice for one stops most budget decks. Trinisphere literally shuts down the entire format, if you get it into play on the first turn. It’s a Nether Void for one, two or three, depending how much spells would have cost to begin with. It’s easily dropable on the first turn, thanks to Mishra’s Workshop. This is the single most important Type I card to see print in years, and it will single-handedly change the way decks must be built – plus it could finally get Mishra’s Workshop and Dark Ritual restricted (or re-restricted, as the case may be).

The Prerelease Survival Guide, Darksteel Edition

Now, the important things to look out for are the horrible, nasty, tricksey tricks that your opponents may spring upon thee in an attempt to send you into the X-1 bracket. First, I’ll list the combat tricks. Remember, I refuse to acknowledge the existence of rares, because you won’t see them nearly as often as you will the following commons and uncommons.