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The concept is very fundamental and doesn’t come into effect until you are drafting a full block – good cases in point being the past two blocks, Odyssey and Onslaught. The idea is that pack two is extremely favorable to one color (or possibly one color combo), and if you force the color and cut it hard enough in pack one, you should be able to reap the rewards of the higher card quality of that color in pack two. But should you try to force a color that ultimately, you may have no control over?

Evidently, two heads are better than one; all your average Joe readers seem to agree on this. What’s better than two heads? If you said three, you’re not”thinking outside the box.” You’re not”ahead of the curve.” A three-headed review would be the next logical progression. But several people may think of that and saturate the market with it, eroding its novelty at record speed. Hence, I present to you… The four-headed Scourge review!

…And proving that great minds think alike, and apparently eight of them think even more alike, Pugg brings along his good friends Gary Wise, Will Brinkman, and Zvi Mowshowitz to help him walk through the most underdrafted cards in the set!

Okay, now, quick poll – how many of you shudder at the suggestion of lifegain as a deck theme? For good reason, lifegain has been ignored as a winning mechanic. Lifegain usually just keeps you from losing, and it has been said before:”Not losing” is very, very different from winning. But why is lifegain bad… And can you ever make effective use of it?

Magic Online behaves in a fundamentally different way when you have a morphed Cutthroat on the table (or Putrid Raptor, or Skirk Volcanist, or Proteus Machine). Even clicking”OK” as fast as possible, a tapped-out Cutthroat player doesn’t come close to the 0.1 seconds that MODO typically takes when you are tapped out; people know this and can play accordingly. In fact, I have. And so have other players. But there is a way around it…

The ultimate goal of this deck is to lock the table down by removing every permanent in play via Tradewind Riders, tying up their mana with Tangle Wire or Mishra’s Helix, or countering every spell they cast – all possible due to Seedborn Muse. It can kill by decking, since you can forgo drawing cards forever with Chronatog in play; by untapping and pinging with Reveka every turn; or by pumping up Avizoas or Chronatogs and attacking when you have cleared all their creatures out of the way. The deck does all of this while giving away perhaps the most crucial resource of all: Your turns!

Death Wish, Golden Wish, and Merchant Scroll should be unrestricted in Magic’s biggest format. Long-Term Plans and Parallel Thoughts should be restricted, while Divine Intervention should be allowed in….

…Or should they? Abe, a member of the voting committee, dissects the effects that these changes would have on 5 and asks for input!

People seemed to generally enjoy the last installment of Blasts from the Past, so here is another trip to yesteryear, with five (well, five and a half) articles ranging from 1997 to 2002 that you probably have not read. Okay, well, if you are an ancient dinosaur like me, or you used to post on Usenet back when your computer had a vacuum tube and the best game machine on earth was an Amiga, you have… But otherwise, these may have slipped under your radar.

Morality and ethics debates aside, there’s only one conscionable way to behave – and that’s properly. Unlike the debate on a casual banned list, ethics and morals are pretty one-sided and black and white… And I think it’s about time I listed the basics of ethical behavior for you all.

Every year at Origins, PES holds a casual tournament for prizes – and this year it’s Creature Feature, a format that is all creatures, no spells… And no nonbasic lands. What does the metagame look like for this oddball format, and how can we break it wide open?

If you plan on playing in all of the grinders, then you need to expect to pay about $20 for the Sealed and about half that for the Constructed matches. All in all, you’re looking at roughly a hundred big ones, plus whatever you need to spend on food. Don’t forget to mention hotel accommodations, parking fees, and gas money. Some people even need to get transportation to and from the airport as well as pay for a plane ticket. One thing I can suggest, though, is to do your homework on how to save money….

Many of our staff members will be attending Origins from Wednesday until Sunday.

During this time, some customers may experience brief delays in receiving their orders. If this is the case, please accept my apologies in advance and know that we are doing our best to process everyone’s order as quickly as possible. If you have any questions, please feel free to contact us and we’ll be happy to help.

StarCityGames.com is proud to be sponsoring Origins 2003! Plan on coming? Visit us at Booth #97!