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Hulk Smash! – Dissected

I have dissected a variety of Hulk Smash builds – fifteen total – looking for the trends in winning cards. This actually worked out a lot smoother than when I did the same thing to Keeper, because Psychatog is a card which invites much less flexibility to a deck that uses it, whereas Keeper is nothing but metagame customization. The first thing I did was amass a set of thirty-eight cards (and one sideboard card) that were played in all fifteen builds available from my metagame summaries of the last six months.

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From Right Field: Dr. Romeo’s 100% All-Natural, Unadulterated, Feel-Good, Have-Fun Regionals Recipe

This week isn’t about a deck or that final sideboard card (although Black decks really need Echoing Decay for use against Soldier, Goblin, and Insect tokens). No, this is about being ready for The Regionals Experience.

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Ask Ken, 04/26/2004

A draft scenario which I haven’t seen discussed a lot is when the best three cards in your first booster are of the same color. What do you do if you get Molder Slug, Deconstruct, and Fangren Hunter in your first pack?

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Il Neige en Mai – Mono-White Control for Regionals

I’ll make my introduction short here. I have a 1900 rating that is steadily climbing. I’ve played in three JSS tournaments this season, making two second-place finishes and a third-place finish. Don’t worry – I’m not about to present another awful”rogue” deck, but rather a guide to playing the best deck in Standard, for your Regionals encounter.

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Two Guidos, an Asian, and $1500 Big Ones

Judging by the title, you’d probably guess that the two Guidos held someone up for $1500 bucks using an Asian as a hostage. This is what happened (more or less), when John Fiorillo, Dave Chung, and I took the amateur prize at Grand Prix: DC this past weekend as “The Chicken Sandwiches.”

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The Philosophy of Fire

So why, you may ask, in an article called The Philosophy of Fire, are we talking about archaic deck archetypes and focusing on a card that is restricted in every conceivable format? The reason is that Necropotece gives the average player the most concrete understanding of the interaction between cards and life of any archetype or mechanism. The Philosophy of Fire will do the exact same thing, but instead of trading life for cards from your own deck, it speaks about the relationship of trading cards for your opponent’s life. Specifically, the goal will be to translate a hand into a dead man.

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The Black Perspective: Shenanigans in our Nation’s Capital *2nd*

A friend of mine convinced me to go out on a blind date a little while back. The girl turned out to be an ex-girlfriend who was still upset about the fact that I dated her sister for a little while shortly after we split up. I was cursed at for a while then I had a cup of Mountain Dew thrown at me (in the middle of the student center mind you). Despite all of that, I can still say that prior to GP: D.C., that experience still ranks higher than all previous team events I’ve played in.

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MMD Drafter’s Guide – White

I knew I had to take a break after the awful experience that was GP: Columbus, so I did. Then I started drafting again. Then I started winning again. And then…after a good while to collect my thoughts on the format, I started writing again. The result will be, hopefully, a series of pick order/card analysis articles about MMD draft. If you think this irrelevant with Fifth Dawn on the horizon, I can only say in my defense that if you play on Magic Online, you won’t be seeing Fifth Dawn in your lifetime. Better make arrangements to freeze your head like Ted Williams.

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I Hate This Place: Common Misconceptions About Type 1 From Type 1 Players

The problem here is that the deck is woefully underpowered. Think of some the most explosive opening draws that you can think of for decks like Tog, Keeper, Slaver, or combo. They’ve got lots of different hand combinations that win the game that turn, either literally or figuratively. Landstill really can’t hope for much outside of turn 1 Ancestral Recall or Balance, which would generate probably only around four-for-two card advantage.

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Overrating the Underrated

Class is almost out for the year, and I’ve had more time to start playing regular Magic again, so I thought I’d take some time today and share some of my ideas on some”terrible” cards that I think are actually good, as well as one of my favorite archetypes in the format. Tim Aten did a nice article last week on some of the underrated Darksteel cards, so I’ll try not to overlap anything with what he said, and I do have some goodies of my own.

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Ask Ken, 04/23/2004

So do I need bellow at my opponent”Any Responses To My Pump” twenty times when playing Tog, or”No Responses To The End Of Your Main Phase, Are We In Your Attack/End Phase Yet?”, or is there a cleaner, quicker way that doesn’t allow your opponent to jump through a loophole?

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East Coast Vintage Championship – Top 8 Decklists!

Congratulations to Marc Perez for winning the East Coast Vintage Championship! Here is Marc’s winning decklist, along with the decklists for the rest of the top eight! Enjoy!

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Ask Ken, 04/22/2004

Today’s question will be answered by Guest Columnist Antonino De Rosa.

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Inside the Metagame: Regionals 2004 – Red Green Landkill

This week, I want to talk about a deck that is a part of the metagame, but I have been constantly advising you against it in just about every one of my past metagame articles. Even though I put the beats on this deck, I still think it is important to talk about for the sake of a more complete understanding of the metagame. That, and it isn’t actually as bad as I let on.

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How To Run A Type One Tournament

What I’m going to do in this article is canvass the rules for running a Type One tournament: what you should do, what you must do, and what you should avoid. In the process, I’m going to argue for what may seem to be a pretty radical position in terms of how to run one. I haven’t spent time on these subjects before because they are bristling with controversy…

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