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Pauper Cube: Drafting Tips, Tricks, and Archetypes

Pauper? What does poverty have to do with Magic? If you’re new to Magic, you might not know what Pauper is. Those who know of Pauper are asking, “Why are you writing about Pauper? Isn’t that format dead?” Well, Wizards of the Coast (WOTC) no long supports MTGO Daily Events for Pauper (editor’s note: This…

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Pimp My Deck: Commander 2014 – Built from Scratch (featuring Bosh, Iron Golem)

Hey, guys, sorry for the long hiatus. Between the holidays and the Fate Reforge release, I haven’t had much time to do any research for this series.  But here I am, back again to bring you some Commander goodies. I won’t be including price ranges for the upgrades (it simply takes too much time for something…

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Privileged Perspective 15: Challenging Perspectives

Confession: I wasn’t 100 percent sold on the name of this column when I started. I liked “Privileged Position,” but I think someone else is already using it. Privileged Perspective sounds like a Magic card name, and maybe some day it will be, but I’m worried the name doesn’t make a whole lot of sense if you…

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Conjured Currency #51: From the Helvault

Have you missed out on some of the “most formidable winged warriors to ever grace the game”? Do you have an Angel-themed EDH deck? Are you trying to collect one copy of every Angel to ever be printed? If the answer to any of the above questions is “maybe,” “I guess,” or “not really,” you…

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Commanding Opinion: Ghoulcaller Gisa

Ghoulcaller Gisa is definitely the better of the two zombie masters. To recap what she does: Ghoulcaller Gisa 3BB Legendary Creature – Human Wizard B, tap, Sacrifice another creature: Put X 2/2 black Zombie creature tokens onto the battlefield, where X is the sacrificed creature’s power. 3/4 I’m also a fan of her flavor text;…

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PT Fate Reforged: 18 Match Points (6-4) or Better, By the Numbers

Based on comments from my previous article, I would like to take a more in-depth approach to Pro Tour Fate Reforged. Covering only the top eight leaves out many of other archetypes that were present over the weekend. This time, I’m going to look at all the players who earned at least 18 match points (a 6-4…

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Tiny Leaders: Tips for Getting Ahead in Baby Commander

For those unaware, Tiny Leaders, which I affectionately call “Baby Commander,” is a variant of the Commander format. One still plays a singleton deck with a legendary creature acting as commander. The most significant differences are its banned and restricted list, its deck size limit (50 instead of 100), and one huge caveat: all cards must have…

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Privileged Perspective 14: Loser

Magic casts a pretty wide net. I’ve met a lot of different people playing this game, with various work and education backgrounds. Magic finance, on the other hand, seems to largely attract those who have some sort of economics or business background (or like to think they do!). Perhaps this is why my perspective is…

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Conjured Currency #50: Artificial Spikes

Pro Tour Fate Reforged happened. While I know it was just last week, I don’t really want to talk about it. Well, I’m probably still going to talk about it, but I don’t want to do an identical analysis to what’s already out there. There will be several other articles out there for you to read that recap…

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Casually Infinite – About the MTGO Closed Beta with Chris Kiritz, MTGO Business Manager

In early December, Wizards of the Coast posted that it will be moving forward with leagues on Magic Online and began testing them during December in the closed beta environment. Along with this, the company posted the link to sign up for the closed beta. If you haven’t applied for it yet, you should do so here….

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Weekend Magic: 2/6-2/8 (PT Fate Reforged Edition)

Hey, guys, I’ve got some sweet Modern action to cover this week based on the results that have come in from Pro Tour Fate Reforged. Let’s take a look at the standings, what cards were featured in some of the best-performing decks, and if there are any undervalued pieces left after all the spikes and…

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The Zoo is Dead, Long Live The Zoo!

After falling short of top eight at a Modern IQ/PPTQ that I played in recently, I was itching to play some more Magic. Luckily, SCG Philly was right around the corner. I was still up in the air about what I should play for the Sunday Premier IQs: either Constellation in Standard or some form of Zoo in…

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Privileged Perspective 13: Beginning to Look to the Future

Sometimes it is difficult to get the writing process started, and other times the words flow out as if someone else already did everything for me. There are weeks, like this one, where I have fragments of the piece I wish to assemble, but they are adrift of each other and devoid of interlocking context….

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Friday Night Brainstorm: Dissecting FKK Drafting

FKK (Fate Reforged – Khans of Tarkir – Khans of Tarkir) drafting has been quite a joy for me the past couple of weeks. I’ve drafted the format quite a bit and learned a lot about it along the way. It isn’t an easy format, though, so I’ve dissected it down to share my understanding of…

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Conjured Currency #49: Rent-a-Car(d)

Throughout the first few weeks of a set’s release, there is one single question that every single well-known financier is asked to no end. While the exact words might vary each time, and the specific card in question will differ, there’s few general models to this tricky question: There are common pieces of information in…

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Brewing With Fate Reforged

Welcome back for Brewing With <i>Fate Reforged</i>! Unfortunately, this set didn’t lend itself to a lot of diversity for me, but hopefully you’ll enjoy the lists I did come up with. Also, I must apologize for my lack of content lately—I did not do quite as well as I had hoped at Pro Tour Khans…

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Weekend Magic: 1/30-2/1

Last weekend brought us some Legacy action with Star City Games: Indianapolis, along with side events for Standard and Modern. Let’s see how the weekend turned out after the [card]Treasure Cruise[/card] banning. Star City Games: Indianapolis – Legacy Open (Indianapolis, IN) Decklists Deck Finish Player Deck Finish Player Sultai Delver 1st Jim Davis U/W Control…

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Financial Five: Fate Reforged

With each new set it seems like retailers are getting better at pre-pricing cards to fit card hype and demand. I look past the chase rares/mythics and find the diamonds in the rough. Below are five cards I think are worth investing in. [card]Alesha, Who Smiles at Death[/card]($2) The list of “bring-backable” creatures seems be…

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Privileged Perspective 12 – The Real PP12

Okay, so last week was a long one, as well as the start of my first meta-series. Today is going to basically be an extended edition of Quick Hits, where we touch on a bunch of different stuff at once (this hides the frequent loss of focus that comes with running WoW1 in the background)….

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Conjured Currency #47: I Bought a Collection—Now What?

Welcome back, everyone. I hope you all managed to make a bit of money off of [card]Golgari Grave-troll[/card], [card]Worldgorger Dragon[/card], and the other cards that jumped all over the place last weekend. While I did write about the Modern changes to the banned and restricted list last week and what they meant, articles like that…

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Commanding Opinon: Stitcher Geralf

As per WUBRG order, I’ll be talking about [card]Stitcher Geralf[/card] before talking about [card]Ghoulcaller Gisa[/card]. Be forewarned, however: this is not a strictly competitive deck. If you want a competitive mono-blue deck, play [card]Azami, Lady of Scrolls[/card] or [card]Teferi, Mage of Zhalfir[/card]. This deck will be focusing more on the flavor aspect of stitching zombies together…

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Weekend Magic: 1/23-1/25

With a new Standard set and recent Modern and Legacy bannings  and unbannings, this weekend is sure to bring attention to several cards that were previously flying under the radar. We’ll also see old decks coming back again. Let’s take a look at Star City Games: DC to see what the outcome of it all was….

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Collectibles: Why Magic is One of the Best and Nintendo is One of the Worst

As far as collectibles go, Wizards of the Coast has one of the best systems in place in the gaming industry to support its customers. This position may sound weird, given all the cries for reprints and the soaring costs of eternal formats, but Magic has one of the greatest distribution methods and most finely tuned…

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Privileged Perspective 12 – Facilitating Value

When I first accepted my prestigious and highly paid position here at Brainstorm Brewery, this article was one of the ones on my mind. So much so that I have taken several months to ruminate over some of my points. This will not be an all-encompassing treatise on Magic finance, but rather the humble beginnings of…

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Conjured Currency #46: A Modern Modern Format

One of the downsides of my writing deadline being Tuesday evening is that my articles can’t go up until Thursday morning. In a world where a new influx of information causes prices to spike hundreds of percentage points in a matter of hours, a two-day delay is less than helpful for in-the-moment action. This past Monday, Wizards…

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