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Trading Manlands for Moxen: The Saga of Standstill

Steve Menendian sits down at the table and tells me that he has tested the Fish matchup a lot and is shaky about it, though he feels he can pull it out. I didn’t have the heart to tell him I wasn’t playing Fish, and as Carl von Clausewitz says in his military philosophy, don’t stop your opponent when they are making mistakes! He plays a typical strong opening hand with plenty of mana acceleration. Steve drops a fat artifact which gets Annulled and then follows up with Mindslaver later, which hits Mana Drain, accelerating me into a Disk. At this point, Steve has the epiphany that I am not playing the little Blue men, but it’s too late…

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Ask Ken, 03/15/2004

What is your take on the Nick Eisel situation back from Grand Prix: Boston? Do you think he cheated or was he just in the wrong place at the wrong time?

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Nothing Productive

The great Rob Hahn once claimed that the entirety of the Magic universe, all the games played, all the packs sold, the Pro Tour, and everything else, hinged on one thing for their existence: the friendships that Magic creates and fosters. If you think about it, Rob’s claim makes a lot of sense. How else can you explain staying up until all hours”playtesting” a”matchup” where both you and your partner know the outcome? You might learn something, you might not… oftentimes, it’s really just an excuse to hang out and have some beers.

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The Decks of Steve

One day, an idea occurred to me. Why don’t I write about the decks my friend Steve ends up playing? They are almost uniformly rogue or less-played ideas that many of StarCityGames’ readers, in my mind, would probably love to comment on. This is a feedback welcome article, and any part of this series that follows will also be open to feedback. Good reader ideas will go into Steve’s decks and then I’ll report back to you on how he does with them.

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Ask Ken, 03/12/2004

“In an MMD booster draft this past Saturday at a local gaming store, I was faced with the following possible first picks: foil Crystal Shard, Grab the Reins, Spikeshot Goblin, or Glissa Sunseeker. The pack was quite possibly the best pack of Mirrodin I’ve ever seen, and I had no idea what to pick.” Plus the Good Man of the Week, all in the latest edition of Ask Ken.

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Ask Ken, 03/11/2004

What dirt can you tell us about the rift in YMG regarding a tech leak during PT New Orleans?

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Yawgmoth’s Whimsy #93: Scrap Metal

I can’t talk about the other decks I’ve been testing that are crushing the R/G and MWC decks, but I can talk about Ravager Affinity. Card by card, and color by color. I should warn you that I’m going to be heretical in parts of this article. For one thing, I’m going to argue that Blue does not belong in Ravager Affinity.

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A Stronger, More Loving World: How Psychatog Has Influenced Type 1 Control

Like Steve Menendian wrote last week, Tog has completely changed around how the metagame in Type 1 needs to be viewed. This week, Knut’s asked me to look at how Type 1 would change without Tog. In terms of how the metagame would be changed, it’s pretty obvious. I’m going to focus on the various lessons that Tog has taught to Type 1 deckbuilders.

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Three Casual Decks with a Psychic Twist

After a week of reading articles about Type Two decks or block ideas along with the occasional store tournament, it feels really nice to play with a different sort of deck – the type that defies typical tournament conventions. If you are looking for a deck to play casually that seems to run on a different axis than most, allow me to present three personal creations of mine that I have found to be a lot of fun.

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Inside the Metagame: Goblin Bidding

If anyone is interested in playing Goblins – first off, I hate you. Yeah that’s right, I hate you. Why? No, it isn’t because I’m some sort of nutty rogue deckbuilding elitist. It is not because you are a netdecker and netdecking is the devil. Those are all filthy lies distributed by the press. No, I hate because you are going to smash my face in. Over and over.

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Ask Ken, 03/10/2004

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?

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From Right Field: Dirty, Pretty, Vial Things

When I first saw the official spoiler for Darksteel, it didn’t take me long to find a card that excited me. In fact, I couldn’t stand up for several minutes after I first saw it. Kinda like seeing Laetitia Casta for the first time. It didn’t take long to find a card because the very first card alphabetically did it for me. Aether Vial is a damned sexy beast, if you ask me, and today we’re going to see if we can break it.

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Ask Ken, 03/09/2004

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!

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February Type One Metagame Breakdown

Just as I opened the year, so I’m now exploring the most prominent, large tournament results of February Type One. January was filled with”atomic” (Bazaar and Workshop) aggro, and now we’ll see a rebound of other categories, most notably control in the form of Hulk Smash.

[East Coast Vintage Championship Coming To Grand Prix Washington, D.C.!]

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Bringing Portal into your Casual Game, Part II: The Cards

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.

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