Month: January 2014

The Puzzle Box: Reflections and Updates

Hello, everyone! Welcome back to the Puzzle Box. Today, we’ll be reflecting on the past couple months. When this whole thing got started, I actually had no idea what I was doing and how good this cube would look  in the end. I was afraid that this thing could be a catastrophic failure and my writing…

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Brainstorm Brewery #85 – Jason in Stereo

Brainstorm Brewery doubles down on Jasons as they are joined by real world and MTG Financier Jason (@time_elemental) to talk about Born of the Gods, the 20 tix contest, his finance philosophy and more. Is this set really Dragon’s Maze 2.0? Is Pain Seer the next Bob or the next Blood Scrivener? How many cards…

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Putting GW Scion Through the 20-Game Challenge

Lately, I’ve been a little down on GW’s chances in the new metagame. You may have noticed that recent results show mono-blue and mono-black winning almost ever tournament. Neither of these matchups are great and sometimes these decks can have hands where you just lose. I love GW Scion too much to just quit, however….

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Investing 204 – What is the Value of a Short-Term Pick?

The Dude abides. I don’t have to take this abuse from you, I have hundreds of people dying to abuse me. Well, here’s another nice mess you’ve gotten me into. Congratulations! You have slogged through a sea of numbers to get here. The last couple Investing 200 articles were short but dense. We broke down…

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Casually Infinite – Understanding EV, Part 2

In my last article, I discussed all the parts that play into estimated value (EV). This article is going to have lots of terms and math from the previous article, so if you haven’t read it yet, I’d recommend going back and doing that first. Picking a Queue The math behind picking a queue takes…

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Shifting Metagame

Hello, fellow speculators! Are you all looking forward to the prerelease this weekend? I know I’m not, as Born of the Gods has close to zero implications for Modern. As if it wasn’t bad enough that the prerelease is on Super Bowl weekend. What everyone does care about is the upcoming Modern banned and restricted list…

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The Spike Feed Episode 22 – To Ban or Not to Ban

In this week’s episode we go over Cameron’s recent pursuit of Legacy, discuss some of the new spoiled cards, and speculate wildly about the fate of the banned list for Modern. Thanks for listening! Your hosts: Dustin Gore Cameron McCoy – @Cameron_mccoy Curtis Nower – @CurtisNow Music by Micah Jones

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C(ube) + C(ommander) Magic Factory #2 – Mind Seize Review

Welcome to the second installment of C+C Magic Factory, where we’ll be reviewing the Mind Seize Commander 2013 deck with regards to its impact on the Cube and Commander formats.  So let’s get to it! Here’s a review of the grading system we’ll be using.  The first grade for each card is a Commander grade,…

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Pitt Imps Podcast – #53 – Oops We Messed Up

In this installment of the Pitt Imps we go over the GP in Sacramento as well as the SCG open in Columbus. Lvl 2 Judge Frank Tavern comes in to go over some of the interactions with the new set and mechanics. Will and Ryan had some personal issues so I have Buttercup on to full their…

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Serum Visions: Brewing Methods 101

Welcome back to Serum Visions, everyone! These last couple of weeks have been spoiler season for us. As far as Cube goes, it’s been fairly slow going. [card]Brimaz, King of Oreskos[/card] is a snap auto-include in a cube of any size. Sadly for the Puzzle Box, it’s a bit out of our price range. [card]Courser…

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Brainstorm Brewery #84 – The Greatest Fool of All

We don’t mean to spend so much time talking about Reddit even though so much happened this week that we really feel like we have to. We’ve got spoilers, spoilers, spoilers! The gang talks about more than three cards, but I didn’t want to keep writing “spoilers”. Here’s another spoiler – you only have one…

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All Magic Has a Price #4 – The Big Winner at the Prerelease

True Cost: The lowest amount of real cash needed to acquire a card. All Magic Has a Price   J. Graves Tampa, FL Let me know your thoughts at [email protected] Follow @jwgravesFL   About AMHaP All Magic Has a Price focuses on Magic: The Gathering finance from the player’s point of view. AMHaP discusses the…

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Size Matters

Magic specs are like steaks – the rarer the better. The fewer copies of a card on the market, the bigger payoff if a spec hits. Simple enough. Sometimes, though, the color of the expansion symbol doesn’t tell you everything you need to know about supply. Sometimes you have to consider other factors. A few…

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Standard Commander: Return to Ravnica Analysis

This article is a continued exploration of what a Return to Ravnica/Gatecrash/Dragon’s Maze/M14/Theros Commander format might look like. Previous articles in this series covered basic deck design principles available in the format and what each of the mono-colored decks might contain. When [card]Jarad, Golgari Lich Lord[/card] was spoiled as a set preview in the Izzet…

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A Defense of Star City Games

Hello, and welcome to my very first article here on Brainstorm Brewery. I’d like to start by thanking the staff here and especially Jason for pushing me to finish this article. It’s my goal to write articles that make you think critically about how you are currently conducting your business, and more importantly, to engage…

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PucaPrimer, Part One

So you want to become a PucaTrader. The first and most obvious step in this process is simply registering with the site. Instead of assuming that you, the reader, has registered on a website at some point in the past, I’m going to be very patronizing and walk you through it. After you put “https://pucatrade.com/”…

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Weekend of January 17-19 Review

This weekend I was fortunate enough to attend a Star City Invitational Qualifier event at a local game shop, Spanky’s Card Shop in Kansas City, Missouri.  There were upward of 60 players in attendance and there was a fairly diverse meta-game represented despite the continued success of the mono-colored decks.  One deck in particular put…

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C(ube)+C(ommander) Magic Factory #1 – Power Hungry Review

Welcome to the first installment of C(ube)+C(ommander) Magic Factory, a series specific to these two popular casual formats.  The focus of C+C will be on card selection, strategy, and budgeting.  For the casual player, you will find lists, strategy, and a theme of optimizing on a budget.  For the non-casual player or financier, this series…

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Getting L.U.C.K.Y: Mixing Personal and Magic Finances

What do you do for a living that pays your bills? The answer to that is probably not Magic finance. If it is, great job, dude. For the rest of us out here, we have to work at something else to pay our bills. So make sure that you do that. One of the biggest…

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Pitt Imps Podcast #52 – One Year In…

In this weeks episode of the Pitt Imps we announce a new sponsorship on our 1 year mark as well as some things that are coming down the pipe in the future. We don’t forget to talk a bunch of Modern and quickly go over the SCG event. There was also a ton of news…

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Puzzle Box – The Final Golden Reveal

Hello everyone, and welcome to the Puzzle Box! Here we are. This is it! This is the mutli-colored section of the cube, and it’s the last section to be posted. After today, anyone can come to this website and find a powerful and balanced cube for under $200. This is exciting! I’m just going to…

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A Modern Merfolk Primer from Fish’s Biggest Fan

It’s not a secret to anyone who knows me that I love Merfolk. Or that anyone who may have heard me say anything in passing knows that I love Merfolk. Or that anyone who has ever had a single limited interaction with me knows I love Merfolk. I have a good reason, after all. I’ve…

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Brainstorm Brewery #83 – Gathering of Magi

he cast is celebrating an actual milestone—this marks this point when more episodes were recorded on GatheringMagic than not. To help celebrate, the usual gang of miscreants is joined by GatheringMagic’s Con-tent Manager and Head Honcho Adam Styborski (@the_stybs). With price spikes and new card borders to discuss, the gang gets down to business and…

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Investing 203: Marcel vs. Jason, Round 1

“William has already made us $15k. Cool, you want me to break something else?” “Do you think it will work? It would take a miracle.” “When will then be now? Soon!” Timing is everything in investing. The difference between making 100% and losing 50% can be as little as 24 hours. Being in the right…

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Debunking Foils

That’s right, I’m that guy. Every Magic community has at least one. We generally lurk in your local game shop a few nights a week, poring over the same binders as weeks go by, hoping to glean just one glance of blinding salvation to make up for the piles and piles of nonsense we flip…

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