Explaining Rogue Decks: Jack Benny is dead. And I MISS him. But I’m not going to demand that you listen to him. For those of you who don’t know Jack, at one point he was bigger than Jerry Seinfeld. Bigger than "Friends." But technology crept into his veins like a slow-acting poison, leeched all of…
Pro Tour Chicago has come and gone. Combined, all the CMU guys brought home a whopping $875, broken down like this: – $0 Andrew Johnson – $0 Andrew Cuneo – $0 – $875 I can’t say we didn’t get what we deserved. Our playtesting regimen was not very good. I made a gauntlet of fourteen…
Wednesday, Dec 5. I got home at two a.m. on Tuesday night/Wednesday morning after playing way too much Magic at CMU. Stupidly, I logged on to check my mail… and found sixty-three messages. Oh man. I did write that damned "respond to email with haste, chief" diatribe, didn’t I? At about 4:20 a.m., I hit…
Chicago was the next stop on my marathon of Magic events. I’d been to three different countries in the previous weeks, traveling to Sydney, Australia, Florence, Italy, and Dallas, TX in search of that elusive win. I was in search of Pro Tour points and prize money, of course, but mostly I was after the…
Late Sunday night I cruised on over to the Sideboard to see how Chicago shook out, and saw that the evil * crushed the dreams of PT Rookies this year; Kai isn’t exactly an unknown player using Chicago to launch himself into the spotlight, like Bob Maher and in past years. So much for that…
Back from a Sideboard reporting gig in Chicago, I have a lot I want to share with you all. First, you should check out my early "lessons learned" piece on the Sideboard (they’ve been kind enough to feature it on the front, so just go to www.sideboard.com). Then, if you like, you could go read…
The universe has been putting itself to extremes for me. Usually it contents itself with making things awful, which lets me counteract whatever misery I suffer by telling the world at large. One of the benefits of this column has been that it provides exactly the forum I need, letting me dole out on you,…
This weekend was a special weekend for me – no, I didn’t qualify for PT Chicago; it was the weekend of the Bath Annual Invitational event. (Although I have been reading the live coverage on the Sideboard, and articles are definitely my favourites on there. Â Pop by and check them out.) In January 2000, Paul…
The results are in! This weekend saw the culmination of Pro Tour: Chicago, the tournament that I had most hoped to attend. Alas, it was not to be; the closest I came to fame was finishing third in the Qualifier. Okay, the mandatory "my fifteen minutes of fame" moment is over with. The results are…
It came, it went, and conquered. And I watched the whole thing from very close in. The DCI is developing what’s called the Judge/Reporter program. There’s too little space on stage for a Judge and a reporter, so the idea is to combine the roles. There are few people qualified and fewer consistently available. At…
There were some things that I meant to talk about in my last article, which explored black as a possible metagame call in the current standard environment that I didn’t get to. Basically it is this… THERE IS NO DARK RITUAL IN INVASION! This probably means that there will not be any more of this…
Thanks to the plethora of people who have been e-mailing me to add their names to the petition to start a Senior Super Series of some sort. Keep those e-mails coming (although I have a few logistical problems to work out, which I’ll save for another column). But on to the matter at hand. The…
You hear the term all the time: the Magic Community. But what is it, exactly? I’m not going to treat you as children and pretend like you don’t know. However, I am going to give you something to think about. The following article was written by : "Andrew Cuneo is a credit to this great…
I guess my preparation for the Extended season started as soon as the Kentucky State Championships were over. I had the Master’s decklists everywhere I went, and was busy trying to figure out what the best decks could be. I thought Trix would be tough, and Trade Survival would be everywhere. I did, however, want…
[Andrew Cuneo did the right thing. And still won. Read about it here: http://www.wizards.com/sideboard/article.asp? x=MASTERSCHI009010fm3gw There has been some discussion on the Star City mailing list that he might have done "the right thing" only because whatever he was using as a bird token was shaped in a manner that could lead to confusion about…
