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Commanding Opinion: Toshiro Umezawa

Sorry for having not written anything in quite a while. I’ve been very, very busy with work and family life, so I’m going to be making some edits to guest posts I received a while back and reposting them on here so people can still enjoy them. This was originally a guest post from when I…

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Why Infect?

Why Infect? Well to start off, I think Infect is currently one of the best decks in Modern and is in my opinion the best aggressive deck in the format at the moment. Bogles, Zoo, and Affinity can all struggle against [card]Lingering Souls[/card]. While each deck has the necessary tools to defeat those pesky spirit…

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Privileged Perspective 19 – The Blind Side

Have you ever watched kids play football? I remember hating it at recess; one kid would be “quarterback” and basically every play was a Hail Mary downfield. I would typically take one step across the line of scrimmage and appeal to the kid with the ball that if he just handed off to me, I’d…

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Weekend Magic: 3/27-3/29

Last weekend Star City Games brought us two major events: the Invitational and SCG Richmond. The Invitational featured Standard and Legacy action while Richmond featured Standard as the main event with a side of Modern and Legacy. Let’s take a look and see how Dragons of Tarkir has shaken up the format. Star City Games…

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Quick Hit: Premier IQ Spotlighting

I was looking through the StarCity Games Premier Invitational Qualifier decklists from the Richmond Open and I came across a Zoo list played by Jeff Szablak to an eighth-place finish that looks really interesting to me. Jeff Szablak 8th Place SCG Premier IQ [Deck title=Jeff Szablak Zoo] [creatures] 4 Knight of the Reliquary 4 Loxodon…

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Important Announcement Regarding Tap N’ Sac Podcast

Brainstorm Brewery is excited to add Tap N Sac to the offerings on the site. For the details of this announcement, check out TNS’s explanation below. Dear listeners of Tap N Sac Podcast, both new and long-time: I am more than excited to announce that Tap N Sac Podcast, a podcast worth fetching for, will now…

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Kitchen Table Magic: Brewing Dragons – Ojutai Advantage

Hello. My name is Dave, and I am a Magiholic. [Editor’s note: Hi, Dave!] At almost 40 years old, I still collect and play with Magic cards. My relationship with Magic began over 20 years ago in high school, but I kicked it for four years, dumping all my Alpha and Beta cards in a…

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Analyzing and Deck Building: Featuring Outpost Siege

A common question people ask is: “How do I build a deck?”  It’s easy to say just get one from the internet and play it tons of times to become proficient, but some people really just have a passion for making a deck themselves.  In my opinion, iterative deckbuilding is the best way to build…

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Brewing with Dragons of Tarkir

Welcome back for Brewing with Dragons of Tarkir! Today, I’ll go over eleven lists that I’ve come up with using some of the new cards from Dragons of Tarkir. These decks won’t have fully formed sideboards, since I don’t have time to test them all or complete knowledge of the metagame (the one exception being…

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It’s Time to Tuck the Rules Committee

This week, the EDH Rules Committee announced a change to the format that set my Twitter, Reddit, and Facebook feeds abuzz: players are no longer able to deal with pesky enemy commanders by shuffling them into the opponent’s deck. Any time an ability would cause a commander to return to a player’s hand or be…

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Identity Crisis

Hey, everyone, it’s been awhile. For the past few months, I’ve been having an identity crisis with Modern. As the writer of half a dozen articles on Zoo for this very website, saying that I’m considering not playing Zoo now sounds like insanity, but I feel like I have settled down with the deck. I know…

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Commander Spotlight: Eight Great Ways to End a Game of Commander

Most people who love Commander love it because you can play all sorts of wacky cards and sweet theme decks that you can’t play in Standard.  But unfortunately, sometimes this leads to huge board stalls where nobody wants to attack anybody and the game drags on for two hours or more. To combat this, let’s go over…

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Weekend Magic: 3/13-3/15

Last weekend brought us Star City Games Dallas, which featured Standard as the main event with a side of Modern and Legacy. Let’s take a look at the results while also bearing in mind that Standard will yet again be shaken up by Dragons of Tarkir in just another week. We’ve got the full spoiler…

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Privileged Perspective 18 – DTK Preview Edition!

Sarkhan arose, wearily. He edged closer to the edge of the ravine, gazing into it with strain and apprehension. Ugin sprung to life from within the chasm, letting loose a cacophonous din that seemed to rend the very heavens. “What?” Sarkhan becked in reply, his voice coarse. Again, Ugin roared. Sarkhan seemed to this time take his meaning,…

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Conjured Currency #54: Draguncommons!

Welcome back, to another wonderful Thursday of learning how to make some spare change off of the card game known as Magic: The Gathering. During these next couple of weeks, there are going to be a lot of financial set reviews popping up. Should you sell this cool new mythic rare? Is $3 the correct…

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Weekend Magic: 3/6-3/8

WOTC and Star City Games teamed up to host Grand Prix Miami this past weekend, which will further add to the Standard results we’ve been seeing since Fate Reforged was released. However, we also need to keep in mind that Dragons of Tarkir is right around corner and that Standard again is due for another…

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Forced Fruition Reforged: Road to GP Vegas

On May 30, 2015, we’ll all be gathered magically at the Las Vegas Convention Center to play Modern Masters 2015. Until then, I’ll be spending my weekends playing Magic at local Preliminary Pro Tour Qualifiers (PPTQs) and Grand Prix Trials (GPTs) to reach the critical mass of Planeswalker Points needed for a round-one GP bye. Over this time,…

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Privileged Perspective 17 – Last Week and the Future

So last week’s article happened. The feedback that I got was mostly reticent confusion, which is how I imagine most test audiences walked out of advance screenings of Donnie Darko. Let’s address the problems with last week’s article: I started an experiment that I knew could not be quantified within my typical writing window (my…

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Conjured Currency #53: TCGplayer Tour!

Let me preface this by saying I was not paid by TCGplayer to write this article. I’m just a longtime buyer of cards from the website, and have had a seller account for a little over two years (although I don’t use it nearly as much as I probably should). If you’ve been reading my…

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The Wealth Effect

Magic financiers typically point to the growth of the playerbase as the primary driver of rising card prices in recent years. Rising card prices, in turn, have been the primary driver of Magic finance. Without new money pouring in, speculating on Magic cards would largely be a zero-sum game closer to gambling than investing. The…

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Weekend Magic: 2/27-3/1

This week brought us Star City Games: Baltimore, where Modern was the featured format with a side of Standard and Legacy. Let’s dive into the results to see what innovations were showcased this weekend. Star City Games: Baltimore – Modern Open (Baltimore, MD – USA) Decklists Deck Finish Player Deck Finish Player Sultai 1st Gerard…

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Casually Infinite – Manifest and Other Troubled Mechanics of Magic‘s Past

I’ve kept no secret about the fact that I’m not impressed with manifest as a mechanic. To me, it fits in with a number of previous unimpressive “feel bad” mechanics. As a featured new keyword in a set, it has a number of issues similar to other troubled mechanics such as tribute, cipher, and curses….

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Privileged Perspective 16 – Once More Unto The Breach

So today we are going to do something that we have never done before, and could theoretically never do again. Thanks to a conflux of semi-recent events, driven primarily by the new foreign card market, I am about to sign up for TCGplayer—and you’re going to go through it with me! Obviously this experiment is going…

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Conjured Currency #52: Wizards Has Never Done That!

Welcome back, everyone who still reads my articles (or are just starting to read my articles!). I’d like to start out this week by clearing up a misconception that many people have about what I (and other Magic financiers) do in the community. I do not own a [card]Crystal Ball[/card]. Well, I probably do somewhere…

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Weekend Magic: 2/20-2/22

This certainly wasn’t a weekend to miss. Two grands prix, along with Star City Games Open Series in Los Angeles, means there is a ton of information for us to digest. Let’s dig in and see the results. Grand Prix: Memphis (Memphis, TN – USA) Format – Standard Top 8 Decklists Jack Fogle took down…

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