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Would you rather be killed while:
A) Sitting on a Toilet?
B) Standing downstairs and having a toilet fall on your head?
C) Neither.

Oh yeah, and Tel-Jilad Archers too.

Let’s envision a world where there is no such definition as luck and everyone understands and accepts the natural randomness of Magic. The local area hosts ten Magic players with skill levels that should assure a regular seat in the top 8 of any given PTQ that hosts approximately sixty people. If one were to trend the performance of these individuals over the course of several PTQs, the number of appearances of each individual in the top 8 should be approximately equal, with the occasional debut of a less talented player.

Compare this with what you see in your local community. You’ve ascertained ten players to be of top 8 caliber. However, only four of those ten seem to follow your assessment and regularly star in the top 8. The other six are only special guests. What differentiates these two groups of players if it isn’t skill?

Rainbow Stairwell is a format for a sixty-card deck. It can be built in a variety of ways, but the rules are similar. The main premise of the deck is that you have to use cards with a converted casting cost 1-6, one card of each cost in each color and artifacts. Gold cards are therefore disallowed.

So, for example, for your one drop, you could play Unsummon, Giant Growth, Mon’s Goblin Raiders, Dark Ritual, Healing Salve, and Soul Net as your six cards. It doesn’t matter how much mana is of that color, just the total converted casting cost. So a card like Silvos, Rogue Elemental, with its three Green in the casting cost, is just as good for your Green Six spot as Sulam Djinn, with its one Green. Six cards of each color plus artifacts, running from a cost of one through six. There are, as always, additional rules…

This is the best color in the set folks. There isn’t another color that is close. White and Red are close to each other, and are the two colors that follow behind Green, but power level-wise they are closer to Black than they are to this mightiest of colors. Before I delve into this dilemma I’d like to analyze why Green is the best color. When you look at the top three commons in Green: Fangren Hunter, Deconstruct, and Tel-Jilad Archers, it may not be clear how they are better than the three best commons in the other colors…

I like the simplicity of Red. For a lot of cards in this article you will notice very short write ups, simply because there is nothing complicated about the card. Normally it burns something, or it repeatedly turns sideways until either it or your opponent is dead. Not that this is a bad thing of course. The bad thing about Red is that it contains a large number of great cards, but also a large amount of rubbish. Look down the list to Anaba Shaman and see how quickly the quality drops off after that.

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Geordie Tait is a little misguided when it comes to rating rares and uncommons as Tier 1 or Tier 2. First, as I covered in the forums of his article on colored rares, his rare appraisals are a little off. More importantly, he seems to be a member of the Loxodon Warhammer cult. He claims that Loxodon Warhammer is head and shoulders above the other most powerful uncommons like Grab the Reins, Icy Manipulator, and Crystal Shard.

Well let me tell you, kids: the Hammer is not the End-all Be-all. It’s a piece of equipment that costs three and three more each time you move it onto something. I’m not arguing that it’s not retarded; what I am arguing is that it isn’t appreciably better than the other insane uncommons, and perhaps not better at all. Man does it pain me to say this, but here it goes… I think Kai was right (eye roll) and Crystal Shard is better than the Hammer. There, I’ve said it.

Welcome to Tim’s extended AIM conversation he recorded between Golden Girl Bea Arthur and somebody else. What, you think he’s joking this time? Guess you’ll have to read and find out.

I’ll be honest – I have not had all that much success with this archetype, even with ridiculous card quality in my U/B decks. I’ve had Crystal Shard/Skeleton Shard/Looming Hoverguard/Betrayal of Flesh times two and still lost because the opponent played an artifact that I could not deal with effectively. U/B has lots and lots of synergy available within the archetype’s cardpool, but the lack of any true removal for artifacts cripples the potential of the deck before it even begins. That said, I still think it’s an archetype that the best players can have success with and I’ll tell you why…

I missed the boat with this build, I really did. Lumengrid Warden? Lumengrid Sentinel? What was I playing at? I figured that the 1/3 guys would slow my opponent down a little to enable me to get to the late game, where my Mirror Golem, Vorrac and Grab the Reins would rule supreme! So how in the world did I make the Top 8?

Bannings, The Twiddle Desire Godbook, and a guide to German Nightlife, all in the latest edition of the StarCityGames.com Digest!