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I don’t know about you, but I’ve always wanted to get the behind the scenes of what happens before a Pro Tour and examine the contributing factors to both team and player success. Since I knew I was going to attend New Orleans well ahead of time, I figured I’d start chatting with various pros in the month leading up to the tournament, in order to see how their testing was progressing. I wanted to find out what decks they thought looked good (or bad) ahead of time, examine their predicted metagame, then look at what they ended up playing, and analyze what went right or wrong and contributed most strongly to their success.

Ken has bestowed upon me the honor of being the newest debater in the Dilemma series. I now have the ability to rip apart his draft pick orders in the public eye. Normally, I save this sort of thing for my friends and close companions, but I suppose the world should be granted this wonderful opportunity as well…. And I was shocked when I heard Ken’s original pick order of Leonin Den-Guard, Skyhunter Cub, and Arrest. I immediately proposed Arrest, Cub, Den-Guard if forced to choose only among those three – but I think that the Skyhunter Patrol is also better than the Den-Guard.

Mike is going to try and tell you about how great the Cub is. He is right – the Cub is fantastic, but the Guard edges it out in my mind for several reasons. If you are drafting these cards, you are hoping for the nuts Bonesplitter draw. In the nuts Bonesplitter draw Den-Guard is simply better. It is the same clock, only it gives you a 4/4 blocker while you are attacking for four. Not tapping to attack has been an underrated ability for years now. It is a form of implied card advantage, since in essence you get to use the same card twice.

As many of you no doubt know, as both editor and webmaster I’ve been nearly overwhelmed by workload, working regular sixty-hour weeks in an attempt to keep up with the flow of articles and technical issues. Thankfully, Pete decided to hire an extra person for the job as managing editor in order to handle the day-to-day articles while I took on more wide-scale tasks. And that managing editor is….

My first two Mirrodin drafts took place at the top table after going 7-1 on Day One at Grand Prix: Kansas City. I made a lot of mistakes in those drafts, but I also learned a lot in the process. I just scratched my way up the steep part of the learning curve, so the path is still fresh in my mind. Those of you who are more advanced will be able to get a little out of this article – but it’s really intended for the players who are still trying to figure this draft format out.

As I’m sure all or most of you are aware, www.MagicTheGathering.com is once again allowing we, the Magic players, to design a Magic card of our very own! What we’ve got so far looks really good; all we’re missing is a flavor text. And as anyone who’s looked in on my”The Real Story Behind…” series knows… I’m a big fan of flavor texts!

When I first saw that Annul was coming back, I was a little worried that it might actually be good this time around. Thankfully, though, my fears have been partially assuaged as the card is simply too unreliable. The problem with Annul is that none of us want to be stuck with it in our hand. This leads to the usual eagerness to cast it, and often on the first decent artifact that goes on the stack. This is obviously a big problem with the card, as anybody with a brain is going to cast their worst spells first if at all possible. If you sit on Annul too long, they’ll just beat you with the garbage creatures that you didn’t counter and you can sit and look at the artwork all day while it goes to waste in your hand.