Want to make a casual Magic player go "Huh?". Just say "State-based effect". You might as well have aliens crawling out of your belly. But I’m here, Sigourney Weaver-like, to banish that all away. State-based effects (SBEs) are a special set of rules that are applied whenever a player is going to receive priority, prior…
I read an item in Newsweek recently that quoted a guy running for town council in Southwest Ranches, Florida: "I would really appreciate if people didn’t vote for me." Why on earth would he say this? Well, it turns out he’s a fireman, and three years away from retirement (and, I assume, significant pension and…
In the parallel universe that I used to live in, was a truly killer card. Here’s what I had to say about at the time when it came out: ": Okay, I , then I . Now I . Is there anything left on the board? Say, my big flying Dragon is? Great! Not the…
– Draw a card. Play all the cards in your hand that you can. Attack. Done. – main phase and Tim you for one. – this guy, attack you. – , make 3 tokens, tap ’em for stuff…and I keep ’em forever. Yes, the fun days. End of turn – what’s that? The stack –…
This week there’ll be no irreverent nonsense, no puns or bad jokes, because I need to share my predicament with you: My wife hates Magic: The Gathering Not in a "fire and brimstone" or "choose between me or it"-type way, but it’s getting close. She plays other games, but has never found any particular appeal…
That’s right, I’m offering a completely unique contest. did just such a thing, and his article has remained on the front page for ages. It’s become a staple of StarCityCCG. I wonder if the editor himself might have something to do with that . . . Nevertheless, I have decided to run a mini contest…
First off: I never claimed I was all that sexy, although Cathy Nicoloff has taken to posting my stuff on Meridian Magic as "2 Sexy Meddish" on occasion. While I seriously doubt that I can truly be put in the same class as George Clooney, in the greater scheme of things, it’s far better to…
Well, I claimed last week that I was going to talk about MBC combo decks, and I will … sort of. The reason I shifted the focus this week was because I just read article on NeutralGround.net, where he lambasted the PTQ-playing public for being little guppies and playing "Follow the Leader" when it came…
My pre-tournament preparation always leaves me feeling like a pile of stale garbage. This has everything to do with the fact that I refuse to sleep more than four hours beforehand. The one time I violated this rule was the Nemesis prerelease, and only then because I was comatose. I ended up sleeping eighteen hours,…
On July 9, 1999, Charles "Tuna" Hwa over at the Dojo made a mistake. (Really. I’m not being self-effacing; told me this himself.) Mike told him to post a little ditty on multiplayer black life drain in the casual section, maybe somewhere toward the top. Whether Tuna was seeking to stage a coup, or just…
Nothing gets my bile rising like a good thing gone bad. Not since Zardoz have I had such a self-contradictory movie experience. To be sure, that was a lot more extreme. It’s hard to top spending thirty minutes trying to suffocate yourself with a pillow in hopes of ending prematurely a film that you proclaim…
I hinted in my last article that I’d been working on a couple of MBC decks, namely Counter-Burn and Counter-Rebel. The Counter-Burn deck is a block version of my Type II deck, and isn’t working too well at the moment. I’m not sure I’ve got the levels of counterspells and burn spells quite right. Not…
Well, it has been a long time since my last article. Once again my life has been insanely busy and I haven’t been motivated by a topic enough to stay up all night writing about it. I had planned on writing a synopsis of my trip to Nationals, but I didn’t think the material would…
I admit it. I’m jealous. Everyone else on this crazy site (and Mindripper, and Neutral Ground, and everywhere else) has joined up with some sort of Team for Magic. And once again, I feel like I’m in high school, watching all the cool guys separate off into their own separate gangs while I am left…
If absence makes the heart grow fonder, I guess I must be your favorite writer by now. I want to apologize to you all for the lack of columns lately, and offer up some lame excuses… er, I mean reasons for my time away. The good news is, it’s not Asheron’s Call. In a word,…
