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You might notice that Neil had invested in power cards. I had bought mine online in the rec.games.deckmaster.marketplace newsgroup. This was pre-Magic newsgroup days, pre-any website selling Magic singles, and pre-any sort of way of getting cards. The way it worked was this: people would post lists of cards, some with or without a buyout price. You’d send them bids via e-mail, and they would post updates on auction prices 2-3 times a day. If your bid survived for four reposts, you’d win the cards.

In this mall was Electronics Boutique, the only shop in all of Uptown and Downtown New Orleans which sold Magic cards. I remember that I bought a starter and three boosters on my first trip down there; I had budgeted myself $20, and that was as many packs as I could buy with that money. All the packs were Revised, and I remember I opened Northern Paladin, Swords to Plowshares and Wall of Swords, along with Wall of Wood, Craw Wurm, and Living Wall.

Confession #1: I did a naughty thing. I played a whole batch of games without logging the results. I had just done a bunch of writing on my novel and frankly, was a little written out. I wanted to play some Magic as an escape, and I wanted to play the Nuts & Bolts deck without the burden of documenting what happened. I am bad. I am sorry.

I feel my game has improved a lot, but I can’t seem to make it to the next level, namely to the Pro Tour, or even to a PT top 8. I know that luck is only one factor of the game, but it seems to be a factor i can’t overcome. Are Pro players actually luckier than the rest of us, or is there really something else I can do to get past it?

We opened our first sealed decks and found a rather weak card pool in front of us. I actually had a good affinity deck, but JP’s deck was lacking except in the Sword of Fire and Ice department. Tim’s deck made me want to vomit, featuring hits like Big Drossodile and Neurok Hoversail. We also had two Viridian Longbows that almost got into my deck (both), but then we decided that it’d be too greedy, since I had a Trinket Mage to boot.

Everyone remembers how they initially got hooked on”cardboard crack”, and today Ben shares his story of the initial hit from everyone’s favorite addiction.

Today Ken details the risks and rewards of intentional drawing in the later rounds of PTQs.

Overconfidence is a killer. Overconfidence tells me that I can take on that whole biker gang by myself because I just saw a Jet Li movie, or because I stayed at a Holiday Inn Express last night. Overconfidence makes you think that you’re invulnerable, that you can’t be beat. Even when you stink. You know what happens to people like that, doncha? Uh, yeah. They lose. A lot.

I was reading through some old Sideboard Magazines recently and found some awful advice from top Pros about playing Sealed decks. So how do I reconcile this”Pro” advice with my standard methods for playing Sealed? Should I drop all my own assertions and force myself into using their tips, regardless of the consequences? Should I ignore them completely, claiming that they’re a bunch of hacks and I could just as easily be on the Pro Tour and beating these guys out myself – if only I was as lucky as they were? Or should I do as I recommend everyone do when they scour these websites for tidbits of advice from any of the authors?

You may have noticed that every single card in the deck is currently from the Mirrodin block (that is, Mirrodin, Darksteel, or Fifth Dawn). This isn’t hugely surprising since the deck is based around the cog mechanic, a mechanic first seen in Fifth Dawn with most of the usable cogs either in that set or in the form of Mirrodin’s Spellbombs. However, it bugs me that no other Standard-legal cards have thus far made it into the deck. Can it really be true that nothing from Eighth Edition, Onslaught, Legions, or Scourge is worth including?

Hey R&D! Ben has a hot new tip about how to change Magic for the better. It involves…..the Legends Rule!

I understand that some times people make one sided trades in order to get certain cards that they need or especially want, but when you are dealing with kids who do not know any better, should morals come into play?

The previous changes I’ve made to the deck have been about focusing it on the cog theme and away from the weenie-equipment theme. The focusing stage is over. We have ourselves a relatively focused deck, and one that I’ve hopefully shown is capable of playing some incredibly wacky games. Now we move onto testing, swapping various cards in and out to see what I like best given the deck’s focus. This testing stage is where I’ll be trying out a lot of the suggestions in the Forums, discarding most of them but hopefully finding some hidden gems for the deck on my way to a stable decklist.