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A long time ago, Mike Flores wrote what is, perhaps, one of the most influential articles ever written -“Who’s the Beatdown?” where Mike said that all decks played either Beatdown or Control, and if you assign your deck the wrong role in a match, you will lose. Multiplayer is a different environment, so I tried to look at multiplayer from a Beatdown and Control angle and see how it applied. As it turned out, there’s Beatdown, Control… And a third, equally important, role your deck must learn to play.

When you mention you play Magic, what people think – if they think anything at all – is an instant stereotype of a gamer: Reclusive and not inclined to be a positive force in his community, and most likely with poor personal hygiene and no experience talking to girls. Me? I hate this stereotype. I want it gone. When people hear”I play Magic,” I want them to think of it like they would think of”I’m on the math team” or”I play chess” – respectable, intellectually challenging, perhaps nerdy… But not a sign of hopeless removal from reality. So how can we combat this image?

Wait. Upwelling might not have any major impact on 5-Color? Yeah, I suppose that you’re right; Upwelling only gives you more of what you have, not other colors of mana. True – there are a lot of Disenchant effects running around because of the possibility of combo. Yeah – it does take a few turns to work well, thus giving your opponent a chance to find disruption. True – Abeyance would be a bad predecessor to Orim’s Thunder. All right; Upwelling will probably see play then, but only for as long as it takes for people to calm down and the hype to end.

I love Team Limited. In my opinion, it’s the best format in the game – and I don’t feel that way just because my team has won a Pro Tour and Grand Prix in the format (though I’m sure that has swayed my opinion a bit). Today, I’m going to give you the absolute basics on what to look for in players (Hint: The strongers players you can find might not be the best idea), how to prepare, and how to prepare for the big day.

So what are my opinions of the set, from what I saw (which, based on five rounds, wasn’t much)? I’m not sure. It’s keeping with the Timmy-ness we’ve come to expect from OnBC. But unless Mirrodin keeps with the trend of overpriced creature removal, underpowered hand denial, and neutered counterspells, I don’t know how good most of these cards will be in the full Standard environment.

Any”full spoiler appraisal” information you read anywhere about Scourge Limited will be purely speculative for a few weeks – and while it may help you generate a few ideas about the cards, it will be inconclusive and in some cases quite misleading. And no matter how much you complain, OOL is going to be the format on Magic Online for over a month still, so this is still quite relevant – so let me finish up my Legions review and discuss what notably wrong choices I made in earlier articles.

My original desire to write came from the joy I felt in reading other people’s articles, but I’d never had a meaningful discussion with other people about their writing. All I knew was the BS that roiled about in my head until it became sentences on the screen; what other people went through was a mystery. So I asked the four best writers in the business what they did, and I compiled a Hall of Fame for the best Magic writers everm complete with today’s best writers who haven’t quite made it yet and the writers who’d make it if they wrote more often.

One of the funniest stories from the prerelease was the plight of my fellow Sarnia player Jean-Marc Babin, who, after a strong showing at the Saturday event, stumbled through a disastrous Sunday prerelease that saw him get pounded twice early on and in back-to-back games. After the offending round, he simply walked up to me shaking his head and showing me his scoresheet. The numbers reflected the steady march of his own life total towards zero. The commentary was chilling and succinct:
“Game 1 – Forgotten Ancient turn 4.”
“Game 2 – Forgotten Ancient turn 4.”

As good as the preview art was, I really did not see any card that really struck me as artistically outstanding. Almost all the art seemed at least competent, if not good or even above average, but nothing I saw knocked my socks off. Still, I might as well show you the cards I played with, right?

You will have heard a lot talk about the metagame if you follow Constructed strategy articles – especially lately in the context of Regionals. In fact, the metagame is one of the favorite topics of discussion for Magic theorists, tournament players, and people who want to sound like they are in the know… But what exactly is it? Not many people can actually give a satisfactory definition of the word, and will just mutter something about tier 1 decks and leave it at that. Instead, why not read this helpful introduction?

Three Team CMU members headed down to the prerelease this weekend to kick some butt and take some names… And the three of them all submitted fine reports and reviews to make a very special day at StarCityGames.com. Paul uses his prerelease experience to tell you what cards are better than he thought, why you don’t need to worry about the loss of life from Zombie Cutthroat, and a little-known step in combat that just might be more relevant now thanks to Wing Shards.

This is an account of Day 1 of the two-day extravaganza that was the Pittsburgh Scourge Prerelease – and for those of you who didn’t get to one, a look at a few of the new cards in real play. For those of you who did get to a Prerelease, this may offer some insights about cards you didn’t see (there were plenty I didn’t) or just another perspective. Plus, you get to see the other half of Jeremy’s deck!