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People always say to get better I need to play with people that are better than me. The thing is no one wants to play with bad players, so how do I get them to play with me?

I have a great idea for a deck for Type Two or Block Constructed. I work on it in my basement laboratory for days. After much churning and bubbling and a few rounds of animal testing I actually test it against a”good” (read internet) decklist and *poof* my deck is trounced horribly. Are there only a finite number of good decks and do the pros think of all of them? Are my good ideas actually terrible because I am a very very bad person? Is netdecking the only way to be competitive in a tournament? Gosh, what’s a guy to do? Help me Obi-Ken Kenobi, you’re my only hope!

Last week, we looked into the issue of adding Portal cards into your casual metagame. A lot of players have historically had questions about allowing cards from non-legal sets into their play circle. However, Wizards of the Coast recently released Oracle rulings for all of the cards from Portal sets. As such, many concerns about Portal have melted away. Today, I have listed the 32 best Portal cards to bring to your casual game.

Everyone is bad. You have heard that a thousand times before, but it is true. Many of you are reading this saying,”I’m not bad, he must just be bad and bitter.” Well I have some bad news for you. You are bad. I mean really bad. You are so bad that you don’t even know how bad you are.

In a recent two-on-two money draft (MMD) my first pack contained Luminous Angel, Fangren Hunter, Pyrite Spellbomb, Silver Myr, Vulshok Battlegear, and Creeping Mold. What do you think best card in the pack, and what would you first pick?

My memories of golden way-back-when are headlined by possibly the most important Magic writer of all time: Robert Hahn.
Rob wrote what was likely the single most influential tournament report of all time. After already having made his name on message boards via Schools of Magic, Robert was already considered by many to be Magic’s premiere writer on the Internet. When he went on to qualify for the Pro Tour – and write a report about that feat – he not only graduated (however briefly) to another level, he taught everyone else the could do so as well. This lone act, this concept that one could transition from great writer to Pro Tour player, single-handedly invented Adrian Sullivan, Jamie Wakefield, Eric Taylor, and a host of others, creating the PTQ information culture that many Magic strategy sites draw from as their bread and butter.

But, like I said, it was with Schools of Magic that Rob originally made his name.

Honestly, I’ve searched and searched for some sort of strategy to write about, but if I haven’t said already, somebody else has. Call it writer’s block if you will, but I really don’t think Darksteel has affected the format as much as many of the sets have in the past. So I guess I’m gonna have to reach into the old file cabinet and pull out one of my old ideas for an article that I never got around to writing since there was always more important things to talk about.

Why do you think that, given the fact that Americans don’t seem to have any sort of monopoly on Magic skill (recent PT Top 8s haven’t seen more than one or two Americans, as opposed to large success from, for example, Italians at Kobe), Team USA continues to be so dominant?

I’m really digging this daily feature thing. I get my mug on the front page everyday and I get to talk about what you want to hear. I still intend to write articles from time to time, but this way, five days a week, I get to go elbow deep into issues you all care about. But enough of my rambling about loving my job, it’s time for some reader mail!

I’ve always been afraid of change. It’s because of this irrational switch-o-phobia that the release of a new set is so consistently a trying time for me. I don’t deal with it well. I tremble, I break out in hives, I make irrational claims like”I invented the untap phase.” It helps me to cope – a little.

Eventually though, I do come to grips with the terrible truth – the fact that the Limited format that I’ve been enjoying for so many blissful months is now a faint memory, no more than an insufficiently stifled fart in the cosmic wind.