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,…
Greetings once again! My faithful readers will remember an article of mine posted over a month ago: The original Trading. In it, I forecast that I might write another article about more broad topics than my personal endeavors in trading. Well, here I am, ready to write. Recently, Sean Erik Ponce wrote an article about…
StarCityCCG’s lovely and talented editor (and my dear friend since 1958) has asked me to write a Judge column. He even dreamt up a catchy name for it (although I dropped that icky "The"). The idea is for ME, who knows lots of stuff about the rules, to educate YOU, who hear "The Stack" and…
Last time, we focused on what other players might try to do to you. Today, we’ll talk about your own behavior at a sanctioned tournament. You can go a long way to helping your own cause, both with the other players and the tournament staff. We DCI reps will do our best to help you…
Welcome, fellow readers, to another installment of Weapons of Mass Distraction. I got jealous of everyone else having column names, so I’m going back to my old column name. In this episode: Where did the folks at Wizards learn to count?; If Wizards is making the -Men Movie TCG, can we call Magneto’s little toy…
My ride was due to arrive in less than an hour. I didn’t know exactly where the tournament was. I hadn’t slept, and I’d gone out partying the night before. Definitely not the wisest way to prepare for a PTQ. The night before had started well enough. A collection of people were heading to a…
: A tired old joke will shortly be arriving in Paragraph Three. Felicitous greetings to you my desirous readership on this th’occasion of my [wait a sec … one .. two … three … (long pause)] something-th article for StarCityCCG; and to celebrate this auspicious moment, sit yourself down and have a cup of tea…
For those of you who joined me for my last article (Rising Waters in MBC), you can plainly see how dominant that deck has been in the first week of qualifiers for Pro Tour: Chicago. It has qualified a good amount of people the first two weeks of this season, and the number of people…
Thanks to all who entered Break this Card: for your submissions, and your patience. I’ve tried to give much more detail on this one, to reward everyone’s understanding. Before jumping into the official submissions, I do want to highlight a wonderful idea, based on Masques Block format, that was suggested by Rui Oliveira and his…
One of the skills I’m certain I will never acquire is the minor prescience needed to foresee what decks people will be playing at a given tournament. I had thought, pie-eyed fool that I may be, that the Masques Block Constructed field would be wide open, what with the addition of a new set and…
