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All Magic Has a Price – #2 – Supporting the Local Card Shop

All Magic Has a Price   J. Graves Tampa, FL Let me know your thoughts at [email protected] Follow @jwgravesFL   Supporting the Local Card Shop Intro Thanks for all the wonderful feedback on the first issue of All Magic Has a Price. I appreciate each comment. Toward the end of this article, I will talk…

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Andrew Colman – Serum Visions: #MTGOpocalypse

Last week we started from the absolute basics, but this time we are going to jump to the furthest reaches of craft beer, the extreme eisbeer beer movement. As I said previously, all of the posts from now on will be inspired by the MTG community, and I would be remiss to look past the…

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The Recession

Author’s Foreword Due to the news of Premier Events returning to MTGO, the main premise of the article, that the MTGO market may not yet be at its bottom, has become outdated. Certain parts of the article have been rewritten to fit with the new information. However, I feel that the thrust of the article, that…

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Marc DeArmond – Casually Infinite: Introduction

Did you say Infinite? I did say infinite. By this I mean playing MTGO without having to constantly visit the store or purchase tickets from vendors. My form of infinite isn’t being able to draft back to back all night, dual queue, or even playing a queue every day. I am infinite by earning my…

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DJ Johnson – A Smartphone is Only as Smart as its User

Hello everyone, and welcome to a new article series here on BrainstormBrewery.com. My name is Douglas (DJ) Johnson, and I’m here to aid the Brew Crew in the never-ending goal of helping you squeeze monetary value out of this card game that we all know and love. Seeing as I’m the new kid on the…

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Sander van der Zee – Setting Your Goals

This week’s article is going a little bit off the beaten path. For the past two articles I’ve written solely about the practical applications of Magic finance. This week is going to be a little different. I want to share with you an important subject in Magic finance, but also the rest of our lives,…

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Caleb Gothberg – Getting L.U.C.K.Y: Luck- Labor Under Correct Knowledge

I got my start with Magic: The Gathering back in Worldwake. Many readers have probably been playing way longer than I have. I had a friend that was pretty cool and he had a group of nerd friends that would come over and play Magic for hours at a time. Finally, I got curious enough…

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Andrew Colman – The Puzzle Box: White Section

The opposite of a profound truth may very well be another profound truth. – Niels Bohr I have to be honest, I voted for the $400 version of this cube. The vote came very close between $200 and $400 and I was hoping that if I just gave it another day things might turn out…

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MTGO Zero – The Cost of Doing Nothing

Welcome back, loyal readers! You guys are doing a pretty bad job of laughing at me. What We Learned Last Week Last week the MODO powers that be announced that in the wake of a few events that crashed in the middle of gameplay and one of those crashes affecting someone whose opinion they care…

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How to Sideboard and Win with Selesnya Aggro

Welcome back disciples of Vitu-Ghazi! Today we are going to take an in-depth look into sideboarding strategies with the green/white deck that I played at the SCG open. If you haven’t read my previous article where I broke down all of the card choices for the deck, you can find it here. I also want…

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Matt Crocker – Brave New World

“All right then,” said the savage defiantly, “I’m claiming the right to be unhappy.” On A Comedown When Brian Kibler first started ranting about the November MOCS crashing, many Magic Online regulars rolled their eyes. We already knew that MTGO was a terrible piece of software: multiple MOCSs have crashed, PTQs die on a frequent…

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Anthony Capece – Modeling Uncertainty in MTGO (How Much Do You Trust Worth?)

There was a pretty significant change to MTGO last week. Wizards shut down all daily, premier, PTQ, and MOCS events indefinitely. Where there is change there is uncertainty, and where there is uncertainty there is opportunity. We’re all on the same page here – we want to take advantage if card prices drop. Unlike most…

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J. Graves – All Magic Has a Price

All Magic Has a Price   J. Graves Tampa, FL Let me know your thoughts at [email protected] Follow @jwgravesFL   Early in 1994, a not-so-young version of myself saw a set of friends playing an odd card game at his job. I can still remember asking them, “What’s this?” This is probably the most expensive…

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Jim Casale – Long-Term Plans: Choosing a Commander

Just when it looked like our commander deck might be guilded, the shard/wedge monster came up and delivered the finishing upper cut. Before we start looking at some sweet Commanders, I want to take a step back and address a comment made regarding part one of the series. Mark wrote that he preferred three-color decks…

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Raymond Perez, Jr. – Stories of the Grinder

I am a huge fan of articles that talk about things outside of decklists and tournament reports. While these types of articles are a good way to find a deck to sling at FNM or a PTQ or what have you, I also like to read about real-life events and how they affect people. People…

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Andrew Colman – Serum Visions: Grain to Glass

Welcome back to Serum Visions. I’ll waste as little time as possible getting into the meat of the topic of how beer is made, but first I need to talk a little bit about why it is important to know. The more you know about something the more appreciation you can have for it. After…

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Jeff Hoogland – A Brief Overview of the Legacy Format

Legacy is my favorite format in Magic (followed closely by Modern). The deep card pool, complex interactions, powerful card selection, and aggressively-costed staples make the format highly skill intensive. I feel more in control of the outcome of a match of Legacy than I do in any other format. I can count on one hand…

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Anthony Capece – Rare is the New Uncommon

I’d like to discuss the rise in price of Modern staples over the past few years and why I believe that more recently printed Modern staples – [card]Deathrite Shaman[/card] and [card]Thoughtseize[/card], for example – might actually be traps. Let’s start here: “Past performance does not indicate future results.” It’s one of those nuggets of investing…

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Enmou Gao – Inventory Turnover

Inventory Turnover One of the topics that is often discussed in MTG is liquidity. Liquidity is the degree to which an asset or security can be bought or sold in the market without affecting the asset price. All things equal, it is better to speculate on cards that have higher liquidity because more liquid cards…

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Andrew Colman – The Puzzle Box: A New Take on Starting a Cube

Here we are again with an introduction to a new series. If you didn’t read my last article, allow me to introduce myself. My name is Andrew Colman, and I live in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, just a few hours north of the North Dakota border. If you did read it, you’ll know a bit more…

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Jason Alt – The MTGO Zero Gets Online

The MTGO Zero Gets Online Wassup, adoring public? We’re now two installments deep on this crazy project and this week I went through the process of getting everything set up so we can go to town on some MODO finance. Before I start mentally spending my millions, I decided to make sure I had everything…

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(Almost) Getting There With Scion of Vitu-Ghazi – Open Top 4

Welcome Brew Crew. First some introductions, my name is Ryan Archer and I am a member of Team RIW. I’ve been playing Magic for a long time, but recently focused on my goal of making the Pro Tour. When Dragon’s Maze was released, it introduced some of my favorite Standard cards: [card]Advent of the Wurm[/card]…

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Jim Casale – Long-Term Plans

In this corner, the greenest merfolk to ever walk into an arena, weighing in at 2UUGG, standing a measly 1/1 before coming in to play, [card]Prime Speaker Zegana[/card]! And in the challenger’s corner, the weirdest wizard you’ve ever met, weighing in at a whopping 4UR, and standing an impressive 2/4, [card]Melek, Izzet Paragon[/card]! Ready? Fight!…

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Enmou Gao – Intro to Speculation

The Intro: So it looks like I’m keeping my position after blundering on a key term in my last article and asking Jason to eat a shoe. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, let’s keep it that way :) A short belated introduction, my name is Tim Enmou Gao and I graduated last…

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Serum Visions – An Introduction

Hello everyone and thanks for being here with me today. I’d like to start by introducing myself, to let you know a little bit about who I am, where I come from, and why it is that the great guys at Brainstorm Brewery think I might have something worth saying to y’all. My name is…

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