A few weeks ago, my family and I flew out to Cape Cod for a friend’s wedding. At my parents’ condominium complex, where we stayed, they don’t allow dogs. So Turquoise, our faithful collie-shepherd mix, had to stay at a kennel. Over my wife’s protests, I reserved a "VIP" board for her (the dog, not…
True, I am writing about Invasion. However, if you believe that that simple fact merits returning to Star City’s home page, then your beliefs need to be rearranged just this once. For, this article is most likely unlike any other that you’ll read about Invasion. Anyone who’s been reading my articles knows that I’m very…
OVERTURE (3-4 Time) The respected and the revered Mr. Dariani (Omeed) wrote a fetching twin-set of articles a (good) while ago discussing how to write Magic articles – actually, I think he was a bit more generic than that, but it’s pointless imparting wisdom about transcribing vegetarian recipes to an audience baying for tech, spoilers,…
What a week! It started off with notification that I’ve been invited to Head Judge Grand Prix Dallas (thanks to Jeff Donais for the vote of confidence!) and ended with the Prerelease and Grand Prix Dallas Trial Tournament. I was happy with the number of folks that showed up at our Anchorage event, some from…
You win some, you lose some. This past weekend, I took a rather expensive flight to Porto, Portugal to compete in the first Grand Prix of the new season. Did I expect to win enough money at GP-Porto to cover my travel expenses? Not necessarily. Almost as important as the prize money and, of course,…
I readily confess that I have a tendency to shy away from the concrete in my articles. As a bonus, there is virtually no tangible tech. Nor strategy. Random decklists only accompany the even more random tournament reports. There are many reasons that I chose to write of our game in more abstract terms, but…
“A mechanic last seen in a goofy but fun artifact in Alliances.” – Top Deck We now know that that goofy but fun artifact was . Who would have thought that artifact would have inspired a whole cycle of cards in one of the most anticipated expansions in years? I’ve never been too fond of…
May I have your attention please? Will the real Josh Claytor please stand up? I repeat. Will the real Josh Claytor please stand up? Introduction Late Friday evening, I was online visiting my MIRC channels. While talking with Omeed, a friend came online and asked me if I would like to come to the prerelease…
I had been anxiously awaiting this prerelease, enough so to play a little hooky from work. (Work on a Saturday? Welcome to the computer game industry – I haven’t had a day off in two months.) The teasers over on the Sideboard have been entertaining, and I downloaded and pored over the prerelease spoilers with…
TWO THUMBS DOWN I’m going to start this week off with a little horror story, in the hopes that I will save even one of you from having to endure the fate I did last weekend. My wife is a Highlander fan, and as such, she was very excited about the new movie, which opened…
One of the problems with being a writer is that you can occasionally blow it. Because I’ve heard these phrases time and time again: "Guy wouldn’t let me take back a move. Jerk." "He brought some dumb deck he copied off the ‘net to what WOULD have been a fun tourney and whipped the heck…
My, how I wish it was true. is amazing in multiplayer, really amazing – especially when one deck is pumping out two or three saproling tokens a turn. Hang on – I’m writing about multiplayer! Where’s the strategy? Where’s the Type II deck lists and history? Where’s a few choice words on Invasion? Team PhatBeats…
20. There was no Friggin’ PTQ, damnit! 19. My Universal Net Deck wasn’t ready. 18. Someone had to beat about the head, neck, chest, and breast with discarded Invasion deckboxes at the Prerelease, right? 17. I was answering fan mail. 16. I was hacking computer and inserting random nasty words into every article in his…
Readers from early this year will recall one of my later columns on the Dojo, a piece on New Year’s Resolutions. One of those resolutions was to do more recreational reading. I am happy to report that, while many of my other resolutions have crashed and burned over the past eight months, my determination to…
As far as revelations go, this one is a real kick in the jimmies: Tomorrow is the Invasion Prerelease. Surely the bulk of you realised this before I did. Unlike the more conscientious web-columnists out there, I’ve been trying to perform sophisticated origami on my school timetable in hopes of reorganisation instead of keeping abreast…
