A few months ago I wrote an article entitled “Finding Holes in Standard,” which became a personal benchmark for my understanding of a format. If I can write that article for a given format, it means I understand the format fairly well. Unfortunately,
Something AJ Sacher said recently really set me off. Now, for those of you who know AJ or read his wonderful stuff, you probably realize that his specific quote could probably be any combination of words he has ever uttered. Still, you will probably be su
Ever since I started understanding how the game of Magic works, sideboarding always interested me. It was a dynamic part of how a match played out, but most people didn’t give it much attention. Even though players would be experienced in how every firs
GP Madrid Report, Part 1 *25th*
Hello everyone!
When I booked my trip to the GPs, I had to choose between spending the time between tournaments in San Diego or in Madrid. It is generally tough for me to decide, because the US is cheaper and everything
Evil will always triumph.. because good is dumb. That was the tone that rainy March evening as Robby from MTGColorPie and I cracked open the latest Duel Decks. Anxious and excited to be holding the cards days before anyone else on the planet, we decided
In Magic, understanding your position in relation to others is vital. Every tournament you enter is a battle. As "The Art of War" taught us, knowing yourself and your enemy is a key to emerging as a victor.
Live Video Coverage of TCGplayer.com $5K Series - Los Angeles will be streaming on Sunday, March 21st! TCGplayer.com is partnering with GGSlive to bring you live video coverage, right from the event floor!
Today we examine the cards not online that are on the Vintage Restricted list or Legacy Banned list. You know, the cards that are actually brokenly good and win games and stuff. Today, it's all about the Classic, baby!
Friday, March 19th - Today, I want to tackle a subject broader than just Magic: the Gathering. I want to discuss Gamer Communities at large. As such, this article, while useful for Magic players, is also aimed at other genres of gamers. As such, it assum
Friday, March 19th - If you have been paying attention to the recent StarCityGames.com Open Series events in Richmond and Indianapolis, you know that attendance records are being broken left and right. Jared has some exciting announcements about new poli
Friday, March 19th - As a preview for the upcoming release of his Next Level Magic paperback, Patrick Chapin discusses understanding signals in draft. Enjoy!
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Friday, March 19th - Cedric Phillips rocked to the StarCityGames.com Indianapolis Open weekend with White Weenie, Charbelcher, and high hopes. While he posted creditable performances acr
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Friday, March 19th - Earlier this week, Antoine Ruel brought us the lowdown on the Blue/White perspective of the UW versus Naya Standard matchup. Today, Manuel Bucher rounds out the matc
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Friday, March 19th - At Grand Prix: Kuala Lumpur, Brian Kibler ran with an exciting update to the Blue/White Control strategy, eschewing countermagic for a strong mana package and powerf
Friday, March 19th - It seems a simple thing to say, but the fact is that 2227 souls gathered to play Grand Prix: Madrid 2010. This was 266 players more (13.6%) than the previous record, Grand Prix: Paris 2009, and this is a record that will surely be h
Friday, March 19th - Hello everybody, and welcome to another edition of the Magic Show. This week we've got some big news: Not only do we know the name of the Fall block, codenamed "Lights," but we've got the most important decision regarding the Wizards
Friday, March 19th - While I guess there are some writers who write simply for their own enjoyment, I suspect most writers are like me—we write to create a shared experience with our readers and hopefully elicit dialogue on topics that interest us. Re
Believe it or not kids, I was not always good at Magic. Or, at least, not as good as I am now (which I will allow some variance on). But while my success has been a recent occurrence, my love for the home brews is anything but. I unfortunately only ...
Hey folks, and welcome back to Tolarian Academy, the rules column that keeps on giving. Giving me nightmares, that is. I spent a few months without putting pen to paper, which made sense for me given that I had to spend time doing other things, but I ..
Magic's October 2010 large set, code-named "Lights," is called Scars of Mirrodin. This set will release October 1, 2010, and will trigger a new rotation of sets in the Standard format.
Last time I talked about how I wanted to show off Open the Vaults in all of its glory. Now is the time, complete with sideboarding starategies and as many play tips as you can handle.
[This year's] premium cards will be produced and distributed as specified. Thereafter, Wizards of the Coast will not print any physical, reserved-list card in a tournament-legal version, either in premium or non-premium form.
A historic look at the dreaded "WHITE WEENIE" within the pauper format. Including many versions of the decks incarnations over the years and a card by card breakdown with funny pictures to boot!
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Thursday, March 18th - While Jund is the best deck in the format, the metagame has its fair share of pretenders to the throne. The two most popular second-string choices – UW Control a
Thursday, March 18th - There were some requests last week for some in-depth walkthroughs of actual games with Legacy Dredge. Instead of scripting game states myself, I have some reports for the last two tournaments I played in. I won the first tournament
Thursday, March 18th - From 105th all the way up to Simon Goertzen in first, find out who was getting their first shot at fame, who was clinging on to Pro status, who was taking their chances, who had the awesome decks, and who Rich still has no clue abo
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Thursday, March 18th - Adrian Sullivan has been a strong supporter of Mono-Red in Standard for many a month. In today’s Sullivan Library, he discusses the latest evolution to the deck,
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Thursday, March 18th - Playing to win at PTQ level has a number of unwritten "rules." One such rule is that when you’re mathematically out of Top 8 contention, you drop from the tourna
Thursday, March 18th - A few weeks ago, some judges on a podcast – JudgeCast - answered an interesting question about triggers. They were not exactly wrong, but they did not look at the question carefully enough. They missed something – something b
Mono-White in Standard
Hi all,
My name is William Cavaglieri and I’m a gamer from Italy (I guess that’s what I am, since I work in testing for a videogame company). As a Magic player, I’m a Constructed “specialist” with the unfortunate habit t
Working as I do at the interface of biology and computation, I have a strong interest in the idea of classification.
Biology is rife with fuzzy areas. You can start by defining life and work from there. Is a cat alive? Sure. Is a bacterium alive? Sure, e
First thing's first, I need to address an issue with my deck from last week. Apparently you can’t [card]Scapeshift[/card] into a [card]Vesuva[/card] and have Vesuva copy a land you're Scapeshifting into play, so apologies to every one of my opponents a
What's the point in playing a deck if it has a bad matchup against the best deck in the format? I would say I've gotten it to a 60/40 matchup if you board correctly. Here's my latest build and board...
3/17/10 - Like I've mentioned on previous circumstances, I'm really liking the new turn Magic has made regarding underused creature types. In other words, creature types that haven't been seen in years are seeing the light of day again! Of course, it's st
3/16/10 - Objective: Design a 60 card, no sideboard, deck centered around 4 copies of Ruin Ghost. The deck type doesn't matter. What matters is that you make this the coolest deck possible while following the rules of the contest. Think originality, cool
Due to popular demand I revisit the Legacy format in order to help prepare you for it's online appearance. This time around we take a look at some of the less popular or rogue decks in the format in an article with more decks then you can handle.
Wednesday, March 17th - Grand Prix: Kuala Lumpur is the kind of event I used to resent: a Constructed tournament with a format different that that of the current PTQ season. What I used to dislike is the extra time required to learn a new format, decide
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Wednesday, March 17th - Hall of Famer Olivier Ruel takes us through an 8-4 draft queue on Magic Online. He shares some comprehensive thoughts about both the picks and the games, and talk
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Wednesday, March 17th - With Standard operating under a strict Jund regime, a number of strategies have arisen to combat this tricolor behemoth. Marijn Lybaert ran Green/White at Pro Tou
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Wednesday, March 17th - With Jund proving to be a perennial player in the current Standard metagame, news of its demise has been greatly overstated. To combat the Cascading menace, Zvi M
Wednesday, March 17th - In this week’s edition of MTGCast, the guys discuss the Rise of the Eldrazi spoilers, Corey Haim, foil Bloodbraid Elves, Grand Prix: Kuala Lumpur, and more!
Wednesday, March 17th - Hello folks, and welcome to an article 329 entries in the making. For almost a decade, I’ve been talking about this deck in my column, and it’s time to show it off. Without hesitation, here is my uber deck: Abe’s Deck of H
Wednesday, March 17th - Last Friday, I packed my bags and headed out on the open road for Indianapolis, for yet another StarCityGames.com Open weekend. I’ll admit that I was slightly more excited for the Legacy Open on Sunday (because Legacy is awesome
Hello readers! Just as in my Grand Prix Oakland article, today I’ll mainly be focusing on the Extended decks I think are the best or close enough to be worth playing, with a few knocks on decks you shouldn’t. After all, I got a bunch right the last ti
This is like a Rock deck with all the benefits of Dark Confidant and Knight of the Reliquary, but with sick blue cards, like Sower, and Clique, and Jace, as well as a Stoneforger Mystic and a Thopter Foundry package.
For the debut of TCGplayer's walkthroughs, I am playing an updated version of the UW control deck that I wrote about last week. These updates provide a lot more control over the current metagame...
