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I have no clue why people are talking excitingly about Planar Guide. It shifts creatures for a turn. So? You get to Fog for four mana. Or maybe kill a token or two. Maybe abuse a 187 effect here and there, or flip over a morph creature. Dodge a Wrath effect. Still, considering that this cleric is all of a mighty 1/1 and requires a lot of mana kept open to use it, it just doesn’t thrill me that much. Break the Guide and prove me wrong.

Chicago is one of the few cities to which I can go where it’s colder than home. Lisa and I blew into the Windy City for the ’03 installment of the Pro Tour on the tail of the arctic wind. Fortunately, the weather was the only low point of the weekend, and we stayed inside enough to not have to worry about it.

In my past articles, I’ve talked a lot about preparation for tournaments. This week I’m going to do something a little different. I’m going to focus on all the elements of a Magic tournament that don’t involve playing. Let me tell you how a pro shuffles, how he prevents deck registration errors – and above all, the common methods that people use to cheat innocent victims and how to counteract them.

(Editor’s note: I believe that this article is a”must read” for ANYONE interested in tournament Magic. As such, I have decided to repost it in case anyone missed it on Friday. Enjoy! – Pete)

At StarCityGames, we’re always making advances in writing technology. In order to speed up the writing process, we’ve already created the Fill-In-The-Blank Set Review and the Fill-In-The-Blank Tourney Report… But alas, our forums are still filled with angry people. People who have to spend a half-hour at work condensing their venom and vitriol into words. What if we could give you that time back?

By the time you read this, Extended season will be over – at least for sanctioned play. But casual players can keep playing Extended decks all they want, so I’m going to look at several of the tier one and tier 1.5 decks from this Extended season with a view towards modifying them for multiplayer games.

No one minds more readable card names. Bigger cart art is something we’d all like to see. Key information being more visible? I can’t complain. The problem is that when all these little, sensible changes came together, we got nicer little trees, but lost the entire forest.

The heart of the deck, Gravity Sphere, is one of those cards that bring out the rules lawyer in everyone – especially when I get the creature combos going and destroy everything else around! Plus, I answer mail from my fans.

While a face up Skirk Commando usually means that either Sparksmith is ready to go or you have something to make the Commando unblockable, it has no single card advantage. Battering Craghorn, on the other hand, can step in quite nicely on turn 4 and stop the bleeding. Drop a face up Craghorn, and the beats just stop.

The real reason Skirk is better than Craghorn is that people just don’t block that much nowadays. From my experience, I’d say about 65% of the time or so I’m able to get a Skirk through… And looking ahead, Legions offers absolutely zero reasons to block a face down creature.

If I’m just going to”deal” with the problem, then I’m going to use Urza’s Saga Rewinds, thereby keeping most of my deck”old school.” In this way, Wizards will be losing my Eighth Edition money; however, there’s no real impact here because most players with cards from older sets tend to use those rather than their non-foily white-bordered editions. So the money Wizards”loses” from me wouldn’t actually be theirs anyway.