http://www.mtgfanatic.com/articlesIncludes articles pertaining to limited play such as booster draft and sealed deck.Copyright 2001 - 2013 MtgFanatic.com. All rights reserved.For our last week playing only with Gatecrash, attendance was quite good. We drafted and played three rounds of Swiss with nine players. The results were a little strange and so were the top two decks. A perfect way to say goodbye to Gatecrash booster drafts.http://www.mtgfanatic.com/Articles/ViewArticle.aspx?ID=208927Wed, 15 May 2013 00:04:28 GMTIs there anything better than playing with Magic cards for the first time? I had a great time playing in Dragon’s Maze prerelease events on Saturday in my hometown of Coppell, Texas, and on Sunday in nearby Grapevine. There were pros and cons associated with the way Wizards of the Coast designed the events, and some of these issues affected some people’s fun, but in the end, all must be forgiven. Magic’s newest expansion is super fun to play with!http://www.mtgfanatic.com/Articles/ViewArticle.aspx?ID=208776Mon, 13 May 2013 04:53:24 GMTThe best thing that you can do, when a new Magic set comes out, is play with it. While our minds see the new cards and immediately think about which cards can help our constructed decks, the quickest way to get experience with the new cards is by playing in limited formats like sealed deck. Hopefully you got a chance to play sealed deck at a prerelease event in your corner of the world. If you have a few booster packs that you’re about to crack open anyway, why not get a little play out of them at the same time. DC-10 has become a time-honored way to experiment with the functionality of all the cards in a new set in the fastest possible way. It’s possible you’ve read one of my other DC-10 articles, I do one just about every time a new set comes out because I happen to be the world’s leading proponent on the format.http://www.mtgfanatic.com/Articles/ViewArticle.aspx?ID=208775Mon, 13 May 2013 04:26:35 GMTJust when I thought my teammates had run out of interest in Gatecrash draft, we get another healthy table of seven drafters tonight.http://www.mtgfanatic.com/Articles/ViewArticle.aspx?ID=208167Thu, 02 May 2013 21:16:31 GMTIt’s finally time to get our hands on Dragon’s Maze! Prerelease events begin Friday night at midnight. More of us will see Dragon’s Maze for the first time on Saturday. For me, it’ll be Saturday afternoon at Roll2Play in Coppell, Texas. Me and up to fifty-nine of my closest friends.http://www.mtgfanatic.com/Articles/ViewArticle.aspx?ID=207790Fri, 26 Apr 2013 15:25:13 GMTAfter two bad weeks with four men and five men, respectively, the weekly draft gets back on its feet with a decent seven player table. We even manage to get a 3v3 team draft afterwards.http://www.mtgfanatic.com/Articles/ViewArticle.aspx?ID=207656Wed, 24 Apr 2013 14:19:13 GMTWe only had four players last week and we don’t do much better this week with five. This time, however, we get a little creative. Joe Klopchic told me that in Florida they were publicizing a booster draft competition using both Gatecrash and Return to Ravnica. If this were a regular block, current booster drafts would already contain both sets. It would be, in order of packs opened, Gatecrash then Return to Ravnica then another Return to Ravnica. This block is different. RTR and GTC are each big sets. In order to make these two sets play together fairly in booster draft, the guys in Florida have envisioned drafting four booster packs instead of three. We’re short this week, so why not try Return/Gatecrash draft?http://www.mtgfanatic.com/Articles/ViewArticle.aspx?ID=207292Wed, 17 Apr 2013 01:58:52 GMTI battled bravely in the Modern PTQ in Austin a week ago, and bravely went down in flames 2-2. I had no intentions of playing the following weekend. I was invited to judge at a PTQ in Wichita, Kansas, on March 16th, but declined. I might want to play in Wichita because I did so well in Austin (without winning the whole thing) that I needed the Wichita PTQ to give me one more chance. At the other end of the scale, I thought that if I washed out big time in Austin, like an 0-2 washout, that I would want the Wichita PTQ a week later to get me back on my feet. Neither happened, I finished 2-2 in Austin with a Modern deck that I believe was just a handful of cards from being exactly the right deck for the day. Then I heard there was an online PTQ that started at one in the afternoon (local time) on Sunday. A SEALED DECK PTQ. For me, that’s just too good to pass up. One last chance to qualify for the San Diego PT that I can participate in without endless hours in a car.http://www.mtgfanatic.com/Articles/ViewArticle.aspx?ID=206948Wed, 10 Apr 2013 02:45:42 GMTThe Gatecrash booster draft bandwagon hit a bump this week. Only four people show up for tonight’s meeting. That doesn’t sound too bad, right? Four people isn’t like a no-show or anything? Yes, it kind of is. Four people COUNTING Jeff Zandi and Lawson Zandi, people who reside at the Guildhall and who receive their mail there. Even with only four players, we managed to have some fun drafting Gatecrash and playing a small round-robin tournament with all the rares and foils from the draft going to the single round-robin winner. We have more than a month to go before Dragon’s Maze arrives. It’s too soon for dudes to be bailing out on Gatecrash.http://www.mtgfanatic.com/Articles/ViewArticle.aspx?ID=206866Mon, 08 Apr 2013 20:57:36 GMTAfter several weeks of eight-man drafts, we come up one player short this week and draft with seven. Interest in drafting Gatecrash remains high, although the drafts have begun to get a little predictable. Even with just seven tonight, we manage to keep six players together for a 3v3 team draft after the main event is finished. Even with two drafts tonight, we finish fairly early.http://www.mtgfanatic.com/Articles/ViewArticle.aspx?ID=206424Mon, 01 Apr 2013 22:53:12 GMTThe team is enjoying nice turnouts on Tuesday nights lately. Tonight we have another perfect draft table with eight players. Kind of. A ninth player shows up about three picks into the eight man draft. We think about starting over with nine players, but opt to simply continue with the hope that we will get a six man team draft afterward that the late player can participate in. It all worked out, we had a great eight man draft and a very good team draft afterward. For the second week in a row, the fourteen-year-old is pressed into service for late night drafting on a school night. That’s just how this gamer-dad rolls.http://www.mtgfanatic.com/Articles/ViewArticle.aspx?ID=206059Mon, 25 Mar 2013 23:23:22 GMTNine players this week. You know what that means… the guys never want to play the extra round of Swiss that you really need in order to have every one-loss record advance to the final four. So, as usual, someone with a 2-1 record will get eliminated by tiebreaks. I hope it’s not me! The good news is that for a change, we have enough players left over from the Swiss draft to play a six man team draft. All I have to do is let the thirteen year old stay up late on a school night…http://www.mtgfanatic.com/Articles/ViewArticle.aspx?ID=205423Sat, 16 Mar 2013 15:17:03 GMTIn the latest of my quarterly DC-10 articles, about a month ago, I told you guys that I felt like I had barely scratched the surface of Gatecrash with respect to the crazy little format called DC-10. At the end of the article I hinted that I was rushing off to play a little more DC-10 with Gatecrash using, ahem, a few MORE packs than in my original study. I used eight packs for that brief examination of Gatecrash DC-10. Since then, I have dived in a little deeper. One hundred and twenty-eight packs deeper. A booster box of Gatecrash contains thirty-six packs. I battled with 128 packs. That’s slightly over three boxes, half a case of Gatecrash! What will I learn, if anything, from this highly speculative venture? Let’s find out together.http://www.mtgfanatic.com/Articles/ViewArticle.aspx?ID=205213Wed, 13 Mar 2013 01:56:47 GMTWe don’t often have EXACTLY eight players for a booster draft. Eight is the “most pure” number for booster draft and, as luck would have it, that’s precisely the number we have this week. The two decks that reach the finals could not possibly be more different. I think you’ll find both decks interesting for completely different reasons.http://www.mtgfanatic.com/Articles/ViewArticle.aspx?ID=204823Fri, 08 Mar 2013 00:08:45 GMTNine players tonight for our Gatecrash booster draft. Both decks that survived the three rounds of Swiss and won their semifinals playoff rounds are interesting in different ways. One features all-out aggressiveness, the other is a cleverly built midrange deck that can change gears and do a lot of different things.http://www.mtgfanatic.com/Articles/ViewArticle.aspx?ID=204618Tue, 05 Mar 2013 02:10:04 GMTThe second week of Gatecrash drafts in the Guildhall is almost as good as the first. We have ten players ready to go around seven o’clock, so we go with a single big Gatecrash booster draft with four Swiss rounds cutting to our usual final four. The extra round of Swiss stifles enthusiasm for a late-night team draft even when an eleventh player shows up midway through the first draft’s rounds. Still, everyone is excited to be drafting Gatecrash. I would say most people’s opinions of the set, as far as limited is concerned, are higher than they were a week ago.http://www.mtgfanatic.com/Articles/ViewArticle.aspx?ID=204366Fri, 01 Mar 2013 13:15:24 GMTToday I’m diverging from the Commander-y goodness that I’d normally present here on MTGFanatic with a series of Gatecrash sealed pools, their construction, and some insights into Magic’s most recent limited environment.http://www.mtgfanatic.com/Articles/ViewArticle.aspx?ID=203377Sat, 16 Feb 2013 18:59:38 GMTIt’s official, the Texas Guildmages are psyched about Gatecrash! Tonight we have sixteen players, a very rare occurance that hasn’t happened in more than a year. When we come close to this number, like with twelve or fourteen players, we send six players downstairs to play a team draft at the dining room table while the rest of us play a Swiss draft upstairs. It almost looked like something similar would happen tonight, we were about to start with six players downstairs and nine players upstairs when a sixteenth player showed up. Now we had a perfectly sized eight man booster draft upstairs and another eight man draft downstairs. After these two drafts, there was enough interested players to run a THIRD eight man draft.\http://www.mtgfanatic.com/Articles/ViewArticle.aspx?ID=202971Mon, 11 Feb 2013 22:47:31 GMT]Today, as the sun rose across this great land, and even earlier, at midnight in many locations, sales began for Gatecrash. Return to Ravnica rocked our world four months ago and Gatecrash holds at least some of the same promise, the same hope for greatness. The first way that most players are able to experience a new set is through limited formats, like last weekend’s prerelease tournaments. At my local store, just down the street from my home, a nice little shop called Roll2Play, we are playing MORE sealed deck tonight. We run sealed deck (for just $20) on the first Friday night of each month for Friday Night Magic.http://www.mtgfanatic.com/Articles/ViewArticle.aspx?ID=202621Wed, 06 Feb 2013 23:02:03 GMTFor the last Tuesday night before the Gatecrash prerelease weekend we have eight players interested in drafting Return to Ravnica one last time.http://www.mtgfanatic.com/Articles/ViewArticle.aspx?ID=202268Sat, 02 Feb 2013 17:49:10 GMTThe new year got off to a good start at my house. Despite whatever hangovers they may have been enduring, a bunch of the guys came over on Tuesday the first of January for the regular team meeting. We talked about the upcoming Modern PTQ season, we drafted Return to Ravnica, we talked about girls. The usual. Then we did something out of the ordinary. We team drafted Magic’s first-ever set, Limited Edition Beta.http://www.mtgfanatic.com/Articles/ViewArticle.aspx?ID=201970Tue, 29 Jan 2013 22:58:50 GMTWe have exactly eight players tonight. You can’t do better than that for a booster draft. I’m also thankful to see this many guys still interested in Return to Ravnica draft with Gatecrash looming just two weeks ahead.http://www.mtgfanatic.com/Articles/ViewArticle.aspx?ID=201602Fri, 25 Jan 2013 02:35:50 GMTIt was hard to know how many people would show up on New Year’s Day to play Magic, but I hoped there would be enough to draft. All afternoon long, players texted me asking if we were having the practice tonight. Mais oui! Nine players showed up, enough for a nice Return to Ravnica booster draft. After the nine player Swiss draft, we did something a little out of the ordinary. Six players remained for a team rotisserie draft of Limited Edition Beta. I built a Beta set last month for a Full Set Highlander deck and the guys decided they wanted to draft it. There will be another entire article this week with all the details from the Beta draft, but I have included the six Beta rotisserie draft decks that the two teams ended up with.http://www.mtgfanatic.com/Articles/ViewArticle.aspx?ID=200428Thu, 10 Jan 2013 00:47:49 GMTWe draft almost every week at our Texas Guildmage team meetings. In 2012 we met forty-seven times and drafted with seven or more players twenty-nine times producing fifty-eight finalists. A few years ago, I decided it would be fun to know which of the two finalists’ decks from the weekly Swiss draft was actually better. Along with playing a match with the finalists’ decks from each weekly meeting, I go one step further and save all the finalists’ decks for an entire month. Now I play a little tournament with all four, six, eight or even ten decks to determine a monthly winner. This year, I have kicked it up one incredibly bizarre notch. I have pitted the twelve monthly winners from 2012 against each other in combat.http://www.mtgfanatic.com/Articles/ViewArticle.aspx?ID=200422Wed, 09 Jan 2013 23:08:43 GMTYou’ve picked a good week to check out the weekly proceedings for the Texas Guildmages. Tonight’s meeting has a real party atmosphere. Several members from many years ago stopped by tonight to have some fun. We are also celebrating both the first-ever Tuesday night appearance of Terrence Jackson and the 300th appearance of Guildmage Mark Hendrickson. We also completed the voting for our annual Guildmage of the Year awards. There was punch and pie. Rather, there was a giant sheet cake commemorating Mark’s achievement in longevity and a crockpot full of amazing hot chocolate concocted by my bride of nineteen years, Willa Zandi. Oh, and we also booster drafted with thirteen players. You wouldn’t believe how good about half the decks were!http://www.mtgfanatic.com/Articles/ViewArticle.aspx?ID=199155Sat, 22 Dec 2012 23:39:07 GMTIt’s a Christmas miracle, my Magic dreams have finally come true, I’m drafting with Magic’s most famous cards of all time. I’m drafting Limited Edition Beta with my Fanatic pal George Colby. A normal booster draft requires each player to have three booster packs. With Limited Edition Beta, the cost for two players to booster draft is a little over four thousand dollars. So… plan B it is!http://www.mtgfanatic.com/Articles/ViewArticle.aspx?ID=199075Fri, 21 Dec 2012 14:25:51 GMTNine players tonight and a nice card pool for our draft including an Angel and Jace and a FOIL Epic Experiment. Too bad we elect to only play three rounds of Swiss. Three rounds is the correct number for eight players before cutting to a top four, but with nine players, someone with a 2-1 record is going to get screwed. We also have some team business to do tonight and the next two Tuesdays as well. We’re voting for Guildmage of the Year for three different years including the current one, 1999 and 2006. You can read all about it closer to the bottom of this week’s journal entry.http://www.mtgfanatic.com/Articles/ViewArticle.aspx?ID=198763Mon, 17 Dec 2012 17:23:37 GMTWintertime, December especially, has always been a season that brings back warm feelings of Magic cheer for me. It was in December 2003, right after the release of Mirrodin, that I first got the urge to get back into game. And yet nine years after throwing my lot back into this game I am still embarrassingly ignorant of limited formats.http://www.mtgfanatic.com/Articles/ViewArticle.aspx?ID=198639Sun, 16 Dec 2012 13:53:09 GMTSeven players tonight, a perfectly good number for a booster draft. Around here, six players means we split up randomly into two teams of three, but seven players always calls for a regular booster draft with three Swiss rounds cutting to a top four. Contrary to what my old preacher used to think, Magic: the Gathering does not involve actual sorcery. Still… there’s something about randomly seating players around a table. The sound of everyone cracking their first booster at the same time has been known to cause a last-minute drafter to magically appear at the front door. No such luck tonight, though.http://www.mtgfanatic.com/Articles/ViewArticle.aspx?ID=198081Sat, 08 Dec 2012 20:21:29 GMTA nice size group of players show up tonight, all in their chairs by just a little after seven o’clock. Eleven is the highest number of players that we will run in a single booster draft, these days, and eleven is how many we have. If a twelfth person had shown up, we would have broken out into two six man team drafts. With eleven, we put all the chairs around the upstairs eight-foot-long table in the Guildhall and get to work. We played four rounds of Swiss before cutting to a four man playoff. There were A LOT of rares, mythics and foils in the prize pool. That’s the best thing about an eleven man draft.http://www.mtgfanatic.com/Articles/ViewArticle.aspx?ID=197333Thu, 29 Nov 2012 21:39:40 GMTFor the first time since we all returned to Ravnica a month ago, we are short of players on Tuesday night. There are only six of us tonight, still good enough for a three-versus-three team draft. We randomly assembled ourselves around the draft table and battled. Two hours later, we were looking for something else to do when I suggested that we look at some sealed deck pools in advance of the Austin PTQ on November 17th.http://www.mtgfanatic.com/Articles/ViewArticle.aspx?ID=197251Wed, 28 Nov 2012 21:16:31 GMTReturn to Ravnica has been around for a month and the reviews are good. The set has been universally hailed for cards like Abrupt Decay, Detention Sphere and Supreme Judgment that jump right into multiple constructed formats. Everyone likes shock lands being reprinted. Everyone likes the way the set plays in limited formats. That’s what I’m here to talk about today.http://www.mtgfanatic.com/Articles/ViewArticle.aspx?ID=196636Tue, 20 Nov 2012 22:50:21 GMTOn Saturday morning, I directed my half-snoozing teenager into the backseat of the Scion xB and drove north in the predawn dark to Oklahoma City for a sealed deck Pro Tour Qualifier. Three hours later, we arrived at the Elks Lodge where the tournament was being held. A year ago, it would have been me running the event. I sort of miss doing that, it’s fun putting on the tournament and handing out the prizes and putting the money in your pocket at the end of the day. This year, I’m back in player mode and happy to sleep an hour later and to have a chance to compete at a high level again. I miss the pay from running events, but not the headaches.http://www.mtgfanatic.com/Articles/ViewArticle.aspx?ID=196209Thu, 15 Nov 2012 18:55:00 GMTA perfect table of eight for tonight’s booster draft. Is there anything more beautiful than having exactly eight? The draft seemed to go fine, but I would have to say the two best decks to emerge from the fun were a little on the ridiculous side. Not necessarily ridiculously good. Just ridiculous.http://www.mtgfanatic.com/Articles/ViewArticle.aspx?ID=195832Mon, 12 Nov 2012 01:18:49 GMTEven with teammates harping on me to play only sealed deck release events on Magic Online this week, I managed to get in a few booster drafts as well. Here is one of the drafts that I thought you might find interesting. One or two Tuesdays ago, Taylor Webb impressed me with a blue/white draft deck featuring multiple copies of Stealer of Secrets and multiple copies of Ethereal Armor. I decided to “steal” that idea in this online booster draft, detailed below.http://www.mtgfanatic.com/Articles/ViewArticle.aspx?ID=195218Mon, 05 Nov 2012 19:25:23 GMTWhen a new set comes out, I do all the same stuff you do: I read the spoiler as soon as it comes out, I try to dominate a prerelease event, I open all my booster packs onto my bed and roll around in the cards. Then I do something almost nobody else does. I play a bunch of games of DC-10 with the new set.http://www.mtgfanatic.com/Articles/ViewArticle.aspx?ID=195066Sat, 03 Nov 2012 21:37:18 GMTIt’s a very nice crowd tonight in the Guildhall. We have a dozen players soon after seven o’clock. This means we split up into two six-man team drafts. After the team drafts are done, there are nine players interested in drafting again. This late draft is the one that is the focus of this week’s article.http://www.mtgfanatic.com/Articles/ViewArticle.aspx?ID=194959Fri, 02 Nov 2012 21:23:50 GMTReturn to Ravnica is obviously the most exciting expansion in a few years. I’ve been flying under radar for a little while, but I’ve still been playing Magic. Mostly limited. I have some ideas about the new set that I’d like to share with all the Fanatic fanatics.http://www.mtgfanatic.com/Articles/ViewArticle.aspx?ID=194868Thu, 01 Nov 2012 18:44:32 GMTNot much interest in Magic tonight, for some reason. This is insane, of course, since Return to Ravnica is barely two weeks old. Maybe everyone blew their limited wad on the sealed deck PTQ this past Saturday in Plano. There were a lot of people there, somewhere upwards of 130. There are a lot of regulars missing tonight, and there are a few people here that we don’t see very often. [/p] http://www.mtgfanatic.com/Articles/ViewArticle.aspx?ID=194162Thu, 25 Oct 2012 13:04:02 GMTThe presidential election is still a few weeks away, but for Return to Ravnica, the results are already in. Everyone loves the new set. Weekly attendance worries have disappeared, at least for a while. We have eight players around the table just minutes after seven o’clock. This week, in advance of a local sealed Pro Tour Qualifier, a few members of the team have suggested that we make tonight’s tournament sealed deck instead of the usual booster draft. It seems like everyone agrees. It’s only after we are busy building our decks that Joe Klopchic notices that one person isn’t building a deck. More about that later. As it turns out, we play our little sealed deck tournament with just seven players.http://www.mtgfanatic.com/Articles/ViewArticle.aspx?ID=193515Fri, 19 Oct 2012 15:43:51 GMTThe new set couldn’t have gotten here at a better time. Recently, there has been a real weariness among the few teammates that have been coming over on Tuesdays. A weariness borne of drafting Magic 2013 too many times, and a weariness of playing in a mostly-empty Guildhall week after week. Team interest in Magic in general had been falling precipitously. Then Return to Ravnica arrives, and it’s like 2007 all over again.http://www.mtgfanatic.com/Articles/ViewArticle.aspx?ID=192637Thu, 11 Oct 2012 20:45:20 GMTOn Saturday, I played in a pair of Return to Ravnica prerelease tournaments. The first one was Saturday morning at Comic Book Craze in Garland, Texas. The second was Saturday night at Area 51 in Grapevine. The two events were separated by twenty-something miles, but the differences don’t stop there.http://www.mtgfanatic.com/Articles/ViewArticle.aspx?ID=192129Sun, 07 Oct 2012 11:17:50 GMTWant some tips for your Return to Ravnica prerelease deck? I’ve got some ideas that might help you. I’m not talking about the rares… figuring out whether you have a bomb rare in your sealed deck pool is not very difficult. The hard part is deciding which commons to play, they are the cards that will fill out your deck and they are the cards that will ultimately decide whether or not you win packs. Of course, judging the usefulness of cards before actually playing with them is a tricky proposition at best. Still, I’m taking a shot, evaluating all the commons in Return to Ravnica from the perspective of the prerelease sealed deck. Yesterday I broke down the white, blue and black. Today I will get at the rest of the set.http://www.mtgfanatic.com/Articles/ViewArticle.aspx?ID=191193Sat, 29 Sep 2012 04:30:13 GMTRavnica is back! Seven years ago, Ravnica became one of my favorite blocks of all time for sealed deck and booster draft. Ravnica Sealed even sent me to Pro Tour Prague in 2006. I’m just itching to jump into one or two prerelease events on Saturday, but before that happens, here’s my take on the cards that will matter most from the new set on Saturday, the commons.http://www.mtgfanatic.com/Articles/ViewArticle.aspx?ID=191093Thu, 27 Sep 2012 20:41:21 GMTMagic 2013’s fifteen minutes of fame are passed, according to the men of the Texas Guildmages. Last week’s meeting was cancelled due to a lack of interest. This week, things are a little better, but not much. We draft M13 with five players and play Round Robin style.http://www.mtgfanatic.com/Articles/ViewArticle.aspx?ID=190303Sun, 16 Sep 2012 11:37:17 GMTHere’s the scenario. A new set arrives on Magic Online. Naturally, I want a playset so that I can play whatever decks I want in the future. The problem is, I only have one booster box, just thirty-six online packs of Magic 2013. I could rip them open, hope for the best, and then start trading like crazy. Or, I could go into the booster draft room, roll up my sleeves and draft a playset of Magic 2013.http://www.mtgfanatic.com/Articles/ViewArticle.aspx?ID=189692Sat, 08 Sep 2012 22:58:13 GMTNo hope for an eight man draft this week, but we do have six players ready to go a little after seven o’clock. A seventh man shows up too late for the first team draft but is able to play in a second team draft. This week, I’ll show you how the decks turned out in the first three-versus-three team draft of the night.http://www.mtgfanatic.com/Articles/ViewArticle.aspx?ID=188949Sat, 01 Sep 2012 13:46:51 GMTEight players tonight, the perfect number! I am always happy to have more than eight people show up on Tuesday night, but eight is the perfect number for draft. A month into Magic 2013 booster draft, we are still enjoying the new core set.http://www.mtgfanatic.com/Articles/ViewArticle.aspx?ID=187063Wed, 15 Aug 2012 17:59:30 GMTMagic 2013 booster drafts started on Magic Online a few days ago in the release events room. I have started another assault on the dream of drafting an entire playset of a set using only thirty-six boosters, one box’s worth. This is the eighth draft of the series.http://www.mtgfanatic.com/Articles/ViewArticle.aspx?ID=186235Thu, 09 Aug 2012 14:49:27 GMTWe quickly put together seven players around the table in the Guildhall tonight. We waited and hoped an eighth person would show up but it didn’t happen. Contentedly, we drafted with seven players and played a three-round Swiss tournament. We managed a six man team draft after the Swiss draft was over, and we even managed to practice a little Standard in advance of this weekend’s PTQ in Fort Worth.http://www.mtgfanatic.com/Articles/ViewArticle.aspx?ID=185428Tue, 31 Jul 2012 17:49:41 GMTAfter a weekend of prerelease events, some friends and I had a chance to draft with the set for the first time. Core sets are not known for being good for booster draft. They have, however, improved in that regard ever since Wizards of the Coast made so many changes three years ago with Magic 2010. Now that Magic’s base set includes completely new cards, it is a much more interesting sandbox to explore. Still, potential draft decks don’t exactly jump out at you when you look at the list of cards in Magic 2013. In the world we just finished drafting, the world of Innistrad and Dark Ascension and Avacyn Restored, there were lots of ready-made directions in which to move. You could be Zombies, you could be Werewolves. In Avacyn Restored you could be white or white/blue flyers or you could try to be the guy that gets all of the black cards. Diving into my first M13 draft I had no idea what to go for.http://www.mtgfanatic.com/Articles/ViewArticle.aspx?ID=184632Tue, 24 Jul 2012 10:47:27 GMTTuesdays following a prerelease weekend are usually well-attended. We had eight players sitting around the Guildhall table ready to draft Magic 2013 shortly after seven o’clock. Unfortunately, we had to wait about half an hour for a ninth drafter. We might not have waited so long, but the guy we were waiting for is a long-lost Texas Guildmage that we very rarely see. He finally arrived and we drafted M13 with nine players. We had a nice three-versus-three team draft afterwards with three old-timey Guildmages against three current ones. All that and more in this installment of the Journal of the Texas Guildmages.http://www.mtgfanatic.com/Articles/ViewArticle.aspx?ID=184046Thu, 19 Jul 2012 03:10:58 GMTFor players that prefer limited to constructed, like yours truly, the arrival of every new set is like New Year’s Eve. Out with the old and in with the new. Avacyn Restored booster draft was so abhorrent to one of my friends that he ended a 122 week attendance streak to avoid drafting it. Will Magic 2013 be the breath of fresh air that drafters are hoping for, or will my man Eric Jones see his shadow and scamper back into his hole for another six weeks? We won’t know the answer until the next meeting of the Texas Guildmages. In the meantime, I want to pit the new versus the old in a little thing I like to call DC-10 Challenge.http://www.mtgfanatic.com/Articles/ViewArticle.aspx?ID=183672Mon, 16 Jul 2012 01:52:37 GMTA few days ago I shared my crazy plan to draft an entire playset of Avacyn Restored on Magic Online using thirty-six online booster packs, a virtual booster box. I would play only in 4322 booster drafts. No, not four-thousand and twenty-two booster drafts, I mean the online draft queue that pays out four boosters to the winner, three to second place and two boosters each to third and fourth. That means all you have to do is win your first match to win two boosters. Winning two booster packs greatly decreases the risk of drafting every rare you see. Oh, yeah, I need to remind you about that crucial detail. You have to draft EVERY rare and mythic rare until you have a playset of four.http://www.mtgfanatic.com/Articles/ViewArticle.aspx?ID=182690Sat, 07 Jul 2012 21:36:38 GMTLast Saturday afternoon, still stinging from a bad 0-2 outing with Frites at the Standard PTQ in Little Rock, I found myself back in the 8-4 draft room on Magic Online. This draft took place on the couch of none other than Neil Reeves, the draft king of Magic back in the day. Neil shared some insights during the draft and helped me quite a bit. Here’s what happened.http://www.mtgfanatic.com/Articles/ViewArticle.aspx?ID=182431Thu, 05 Jul 2012 03:21:10 GMTI have this “box” of Avacyn Restored booster packs on Magic Online. I could rip them open and see what I get. I would have 540 Magic cards, including 36 rares/mythic rares with the possibility of one or two foil rares or mythics. What if we could do better? Maybe A LOT better. What if we could draft an entire playset of Avacyn Restored on Magic Online for the cost of thirty-six online boosters and two tickets per draft? I know, it sounds crazy. But how do you know until you try?http://www.mtgfanatic.com/Articles/ViewArticle.aspx?ID=182249Tue, 03 Jul 2012 03:25:37 GMTWe very quickly assembled seven players tonight by shortly after the seven o’clock hour. We dutifully waited another fifteen minutes in case an eighth player decided to show. Then we waded directly into a Swiss rounds draft with seven players. While we were playing our first round, Fort Worth’s own Ben Quasnitschka texted me. He has been threatening to make a Tuesday night appearance for a few weeks. I text him back telling him that we are in the middle of our Swiss draft already but that we will make sure he can draft in a three-versus-three player team draft when he gets here. Ben responds in the affirmative. Ben arrives during the third and last Swiss round of our seven man draft. He patiently looks on as we play the semi final matches to decide which two players will be splitting up the treasure tonight. I don’t remember what was in the prizes tonight but I remember it being pretty decent.http://www.mtgfanatic.com/Articles/ViewArticle.aspx?ID=182095Sun, 01 Jul 2012 20:43:28 GMTMy hopes weren’t necessarily all that high for filling our table for an eight man draft tonight. Last week’s poor turnout made me think that Summer was scattering the Tuesday night crowd. Then eight people suddenly showed up. If there’s one thing I’ve learned, you don’t question miracles. Just make sure to reveal them to your opponent before you put them in your hand.http://www.mtgfanatic.com/Articles/ViewArticle.aspx?ID=181591Mon, 25 Jun 2012 23:09:12 GMTZanman brings us pick-by-pick analysis of a recent MTG:Online Booster Draft he played in.http://www.mtgfanatic.com/Articles/ViewArticle.aspx?ID=181269Thu, 21 Jun 2012 22:27:41 GMTRecently I was considering what tap I should have the young lady pour from while at my local tavern and it hit me: I like draft when it comes to beer, but not so much when it comes to Magic. Well, the reason is simple, I have tasted many flavors of beer over my lifetime and have thus become familiar with what types of draft beer I like, yet since I have not played many Magic drafts I simply don’t have enough experience in the format to actually judge it or appreciate it for what it is within the hobby. Taste-testing beer is a form a research, and so I figured I should probably do some research into booster draft so that I could better appreciate, and hopefully enjoy, the format more in the future. Maybe I’d even win a match eventually.http://www.mtgfanatic.com/Articles/ViewArticle.aspx?ID=181147Wed, 20 Jun 2012 13:24:36 GMTSummer has officially begun, taking some of our regular players elsewhere this week. I called some people earlier today checking to see if they were coming. My everyday teammate, Lawson, is out of the picture, staying for a week in Austin with his grandmother. I called people to try and make sure we would have at least eight for tonight’s draft. No such luck. Jib Zaidi and Jon Toone, two dudes that can often be counted on to bring an extra player with them, were both no-gos. Each had a previous engagement and would not be drafting tonight. Robbie Dojo texted me that he would not be attending. I nearly called off the meeting. I’m glad I didn’t. We had five players sitting around the Guildhall table shortly after seven. Joe Klopchic worked the phones until he found a player that could join us so that we could AT LEAST have a six man draft. He rushed out the door to go pick up this player and bring him here. That’s commitment. Joe was rewarded with a draft set.http://www.mtgfanatic.com/Articles/ViewArticle.aspx?ID=181126Wed, 20 Jun 2012 07:43:15 GMTThere were six people around the table at just a few minutes after seven, ready to smash some three-versus-three team drafts. I encouraged the small gathering to wait until at least 7:15 in case someone else wanted to show up. At 7:17 we are three picks into our first packs when Jib and his brother show up. We did the best we could to put the toothpaste from our first packs back into the tube. We randomly inserted the two players into the draft and, just like that, we had a real eight man draft.http://www.mtgfanatic.com/Articles/ViewArticle.aspx?ID=180070Fri, 08 Jun 2012 17:47:33 GMTFrom what I’ve seen in all my Avacyn Restored booster drafts, online and off, casual and serious, black is the least popular color. There’s a reason for this. The black cards are harder to play and more situational than their white counterparts. With Avacyn Restored, I compare black and white more than any other two colors because I feel the flavor of the set, the very theme of the set, seems to pit these two enemy colors directly against each other. Black is also considered thinner in good cards than other colors, particularly in commons and especially in creatures. This means that by staying open-minded towards ebony you can make a good deck even when you don’t get as many of your favorites from some other color.http://www.mtgfanatic.com/Articles/ViewArticle.aspx?ID=179788Tue, 05 Jun 2012 18:41:51 GMTDon’t you hate being slotted? People start to think they know all about you because of some minor character flaw they have detected in you. Hey, there goes a fat kid in a Green Lantern t-shirt, bet he’s going into that game store to buy Magic cards. Hey, I bet Zanman’s gonna beat us down with some wacky article about DC-10. Okay, sometimes stereotypes are true…http://www.mtgfanatic.com/Articles/ViewArticle.aspx?ID=179441Sat, 02 Jun 2012 12:43:36 GMTLast week I showed you a series of games played pitting an entire set of Innistrad against an entire set of Avacyn Restored. The name I have coined for this fun format is Full Set Highlander. Avacyn Restored had a hard time drawing the right colors for its spells. This is a constant challenge in Full Set Highlander, but it seemed to be MORE of a problem for Avacyn Restored. This week I have a whole new fun way to play these two large sets against each other.http://www.mtgfanatic.com/Articles/ViewArticle.aspx?ID=179339Fri, 01 Jun 2012 14:51:16 GMTTry as we might to get eight players each week, we fell short this week and felt lucky to have seven players ready to go sometime between seven and seven-thirty on Tuesday night. This draft has everything, some interesting decks, some good matches and unprecedented controversy. But you’ll have to read further to learn about that. We also managed a three-versus-three team draft after the Swiss draft, thanks to the late night arrival of Jon Toone.http://www.mtgfanatic.com/Articles/ViewArticle.aspx?ID=179233Thu, 31 May 2012 17:21:51 GMTAfter making an effort to get more people to show up this week, I was proud to see nine players sitting around the draft table this evening. We had a very nice Avacyn Restored booster draft and, because of nine players, played a fourth round of Swiss before cutting to the top four. The extra hour of Swiss took enough wind out of everyone’s sails that we didn’t manage a team draft afterward. That’s okay, it was still a big improvement from last week, a meeting that didn’t even rate an official journal entry.http://www.mtgfanatic.com/Articles/ViewArticle.aspx?ID=178839Mon, 28 May 2012 13:00:25 GMTDrafting with the new set at last! A couple of regulars are missing this week and we have to make do with just seven players. This is fine, of course, and we had a good first draft with the new set. We didn’t have enough players after the Swiss draft to get a team draft up and running. Luckily, Perfect Gamer brought his draft cube with him, so look out for some cube draft talk later in this week’s journal entry.http://www.mtgfanatic.com/Articles/ViewArticle.aspx?ID=177301Sun, 13 May 2012 22:46:14 GMTThis just in, not that many people are honestly interested in drafting Dark Ascension the week before the Avacyn Restored prerelease. Our guys are always ready to make lemonade out of lemons, so we make the most of the six players assembled tonight. First, we played a three-versus-three team draft. Then, when our youngest player was forced by the clock to turn in for the night, the remaining five of us played another draft. We played round-robin and hoped we wouldn’t have a three way tie for first place, as can often happen. No problem, one player stood apart and crushed all of his opponents in this five man draft. The decks for this adventure were better than you would expect, and I’m sharing all the details on this last week of Dark Ascension draft being a thing.http://www.mtgfanatic.com/Articles/ViewArticle.aspx?ID=176157Wed, 02 May 2012 22:54:42 GMTEight drafters tonight, the perfect number. Michael Taggart has moved to Euless from Fort Worth recently, and he says he’s prepared to make the Guildhall his regular Tuesday night thing. Where has that kid’s head been at for, I don’t know… the past 750 Tuesdays? Yes, tonight is our team’s statistically notable seven hundred and fiftieth meeting. I did a few things to make the evening a little special. Nothing as over the top as we do every other year for our 100th meeting anniversaries, but still special. I got a cake. I ordered pizza. Most importantly, I didn’t tell anyone about it ahead of time. For this particular night, I didn’t want anyone coming over just because I was serving punch and pie.http://www.mtgfanatic.com/Articles/ViewArticle.aspx?ID=175343Tue, 24 Apr 2012 20:28:52 GMTThe evening started awkwardly enough. It was around six-thirty, it’s possible that people would start showing up at any moment. The boy that lives in my house was in the back driveway shooting hoops. I was taking my chances that I could spend a little quality time in the, ahem, reading room before any guests arrived. Sure enough, there was a knock on the front door, and then the sound of someone letting themselves in and calling out to me. I called back but who knows if whoever it was could hear me through the walls from upstairs. I heard grownup-size feet plodding up the stairs. This person was talking but I couldn’t recognize the voice. I completed my task and washed my hands and face. Then I opened the door of the bathroom and my jaw dropped. You would have thought I was seeing a ghost. Hunter S. Burton, alive and in the flesh!http://www.mtgfanatic.com/Articles/ViewArticle.aspx?ID=175069Sat, 21 Apr 2012 21:31:27 GMTTen players this week. Our first draft this size since November. We had a few guys show up we haven’t seen in the Guildhall in years, and even an old-time Magic player making his first-ever appearance. The ten man draft went fine, there were only a few complaints about the need to play a fourth round of Swiss in order to cut to our traditional top four. Is Magic a sport best left to the young? The youngest kid in the room made the final four for the second week in a row…http://www.mtgfanatic.com/Articles/ViewArticle.aspx?ID=174168Wed, 11 Apr 2012 21:58:27 GMTOkay, let’s make it three in a row. Three weeks with exactly seven for the booster draft. I’m the optimistic type, so I’d like to offer than seven is just barely less than the best number of drafters… eight. It’s interesting that it hasn’t been the exact same seven players each week. That means that, sooner or later, two of the less consistent attendees are going to show up on the SAME NIGHT.http://www.mtgfanatic.com/Articles/ViewArticle.aspx?ID=172962Fri, 30 Mar 2012 20:36:15 GMTFor the second week in a row, the Magic number is seven. And this week’s seven player lineup is a little different from last week’s. Oh, well, you still get a pretty good Swiss draft with seven. In a lot of ways, seven is better than nine. With nine or ten, you either have an awkward fourth Swiss round or else you risk cutting someone’s head off, leaving a 2-1 finisher out of the final four. Eight is the best, obviously, but seven is okay, too.http://www.mtgfanatic.com/Articles/ViewArticle.aspx?ID=171960Tue, 20 Mar 2012 22:35:07 GMTSeven people assembled around the draft table in the Guildhall around seven o’clock. We dragged our feet for half an hour hoping an eighth player would show up. While we waited, and in between rounds of the draft, a significant amount of Modern practice occurred, I’m happy to say. But the primary story on Tuesday nights is booster draft, and we had a good one tonight.http://www.mtgfanatic.com/Articles/ViewArticle.aspx?ID=171427Wed, 14 Mar 2012 23:13:28 GMTIt didn’t look like much at straight up seven o’clock, just four of us sitting around wondering why no one loves Magic as much as we do. Suddenly, four more dudes pushed their way through the front door and, just like that, instant eight man Dark Ascension draft.http://www.mtgfanatic.com/Articles/ViewArticle.aspx?ID=170648Tue, 06 Mar 2012 22:52:57 GMTIt’s the age old question: Who would win in a fight? Who’s dad is tougher, yours or mine? If you grew up on the mean streets like I did (not really) you know the only way to solve a problem like this is with FISTS. You can’t talk it out, you can’t figure it out on paper. This isn’t something you can solve with a binding United Nations resolution. You have to fight it out.http://www.mtgfanatic.com/Articles/ViewArticle.aspx?ID=170140Thu, 01 Mar 2012 21:26:33 GMTFor the first time since Dark Ascension arrived, we have a proper draft in the Guildhall. Not perfect, but proper nevertheless. Nine players sit around the table for tonight’s draft, including one Tuesday night first-timer. There were four good decks in the playoff after three rounds of Swiss, and both finalists’ decks are deserving of a look.http://www.mtgfanatic.com/Articles/ViewArticle.aspx?ID=169965Tue, 28 Feb 2012 23:09:13 GMTHistorically, Valentine’s Day has been just another day at the office for America’s hard-working Magic players. Still, we only manage to get five players around the Guildhall table for tonight’s meeting. My wife is obviously super cool with Magic. She’s allowed grimy gamers to invade her home every Tuesday for the past, well, 742 weeks, give or take. I didn’t want to take any chances, though… Just to make sure the house was a safe, cootie-free zone for my Magic pals that are currently “without woman,” I put my wife on an airplane for Costa Rica in the middle of the afternoon.http://www.mtgfanatic.com/Articles/ViewArticle.aspx?ID=169270Tue, 21 Feb 2012 22:46:20 GMTCan’t explain it, but we only scrounged up six players tonight. We played a three versus three team draft, but it wasn’t much to talk about. My team got ca-rushed 5-1. Then, with my twelve-year-old out of the picture for a second draft, we drafted with five players and played a round robin tournament. I’ve listed all five of the decks from the round robin tournament. I’m sure attendance will be better next week.http://www.mtgfanatic.com/Articles/ViewArticle.aspx?ID=168628Wed, 15 Feb 2012 20:44:37 GMTI’m the same as you. When I got my first Dark Ascension packs, not the ones for my prerelease sealed deck, I’m talking about the packs that I WON with my prerelease sealed deck, I didn’t need to save these packs for future booster drafts. These prize packs were mine to do with as I pleased, so I did the same thing that you would do… I opened the packs! Since no one was watching, I took a whiff; I like the smell of new cards just the same as you. The next thing I did, however, was probably different than what you would do. I played DC-10 with eight of my first Dark Ascension packs.http://www.mtgfanatic.com/Articles/ViewArticle.aspx?ID=168298Sun, 12 Feb 2012 20:26:30 GMTLast week I began sharing an exploration of eight Innistrad sealed decks I have kept together over the past four months. Some of these decks were played in Pro Tour Qualifiers, some were simply decks we built from boosters at home for testing. These eight decks were culled from dozens of Innistrad sealed decks that my friends and I have been playing with.http://www.mtgfanatic.com/Articles/ViewArticle.aspx?ID=167419Sat, 04 Feb 2012 01:46:53 GMTDark Ascension is finally upon us. This means my long-promised Budget Cube Project (BCP) for Dark Ascension AND Innistrad is finally here too. I've had a few opportunities to play around with DKA in Limited already, and I think I've got a pretty good handle on what The BCP needs. Maybe you'll get some ideas for your own Cube as well.http://www.mtgfanatic.com/Articles/ViewArticle.aspx?ID=167414Sat, 04 Feb 2012 00:05:51 GMTSeven players show up tonight for the last all-Innistrad booster draft in the Guildhall. Everyone is excited about this weekend’s prerelease events for Dark Ascension. Having seen the whole spoiler, some of the guys don’t think the new set has much to offer constructed and they complain that they might not want to acquire many of the cards. I, on the other hand, care more about sealed deck and booster draft. From what I’ve seen from the new set, it’s going to make Innistrad limited events even more interested. In the meantime, it’s seven players for triple Innistrad booster draft tonight with no significant interest for a 3v3 team draft afterward.http://www.mtgfanatic.com/Articles/ViewArticle.aspx?ID=167274Thu, 02 Feb 2012 17:31:31 GMTAfter four months of booster drafts and sealed decks with only Innistrad, the Magic world looks forward to this weekend’s prerelease events for Dark Ascension. In these last days before the arrival of the new set, let’s you and I take one or two last looks at Innistrad sealed. I have Innistrad sealed decks that I have been holding onto and testing with for months. As the PTQ season for Honolulu came and went, I held onto the decks I played in three such PTQs as well as one of Perfect Gamer Eric Jones.http://www.mtgfanatic.com/Articles/ViewArticle.aspx?ID=166689Sat, 28 Jan 2012 03:31:57 GMTAnother perfect table of eight drafters tonight, and right on time. It says a lot about the quality of Innistrad, at least for limited play, that our team has remained as enthusiastic about drafting Innistrad as we were when the set first arrived. Not that we aren’t excited about next week’s release of Dark Ascension. We are. Still, in the meantime, we battle tonight with just Innistrad with exactly eight players. After three rounds of Swiss and the final four matches over, seven of us remained wanting to play a team draft. No one was willing to drop out and let the other six draft. After some debate, we simply took turns rolling a twenty-sided, the lowest roller would sit out. I rolled first and got an eight. My roll remained the lowest until Eric, the last roller, got a five and bid us goodnight.http://www.mtgfanatic.com/Articles/ViewArticle.aspx?ID=166410Tue, 24 Jan 2012 21:10:13 GMTWhen you’re putting a booster draft together, you can’t do better than eight players in their seats and ready to go at straight up seven o’clock. We actually waited a little while to start, just in case there were stragglers, but we really wanted to draft with exactly eight and we were all happy that it ended up that way. A few hours into the draft, a ninth player did appear. He hoped that there would be some kind of a second draft. It turns out nobody wanted to go home. Only Lawson, the seventh grader, was forced out of the second draft since his dad reminded him that he had school the next morning. Our late arrival stepped into the twelve-year-old’s spot and whattaya know… eight players for a second draft.http://www.mtgfanatic.com/Articles/ViewArticle.aspx?ID=165805Tue, 17 Jan 2012 22:34:45 GMTNine players show up tonight, and all before seven p.m. We get started right away and draft Innistrad with nine players playing three rounds of Swiss cutting to a top four. Yup, a 2-1 finisher fails to make the cut, that’s the price of playing three rounds of Swiss with nine players instead of four rounds. After the draft, no one wants to go home, but no one wants to play another full-sized draft, so two guys sit out and we play a randomly-teamed 3v3 draft. A very good night, and most of us are headed to Grand Prix Austin this weekend. A Grand Prix just three and a half hours down the road!http://www.mtgfanatic.com/Articles/ViewArticle.aspx?ID=165191Tue, 10 Jan 2012 17:07:28 GMTI’m admittedly obsessed with limited. I have played a dozen different limited formats invented by others over the years, Sealed Deck and Booster Draft are the two most famous, obviously. I also have invented at least a dozen others. Today, as the holidays wind down, I want to suggest another one.http://www.mtgfanatic.com/Articles/ViewArticle.aspx?ID=164830Thu, 05 Jan 2012 23:47:39 GMTWe have ten players for the last team meeting in December and a very good Innistrad booster draft. Guildmage of the Year voting comes to a close and our team salutes the troops with the official end of the Iraq war.http://www.mtgfanatic.com/Articles/ViewArticle.aspx?ID=164128Wed, 28 Dec 2011 02:54:41 GMTIt’s a holiday miracle! Tonight, we have the perfect number of players, eight, for an Innistrad booster draft. The table is chock-full of talent as well. Taylor Webb, Texas Guildmage number thirty-four, makes a rare appearance. After the draft I’ll tell you more about our team’s December tradition of voting for Guildmage of the Year and I’ll even run down the entire team roster.http://www.mtgfanatic.com/Articles/ViewArticle.aspx?ID=163792Fri, 23 Dec 2011 22:29:02 GMTEight articles, 16277 words, and 360 cards later, The Budget Cube Project has reached its epic conclusion. I'm sending this phase of the project off in style with an article full of final prices, analysis, deck lists, and information on how to draft this Cube online.http://www.mtgfanatic.com/Articles/ViewArticle.aspx?ID=163788Fri, 23 Dec 2011 20:47:00 GMTI've covered all the colors and multicolor cards, now let's see how artifacts look once they're ran through the budget machine. This week proved to be more difficult than expected and forced me to change some of my initial plans. Read why inside.http://www.mtgfanatic.com/Articles/ViewArticle.aspx?ID=163386Tue, 20 Dec 2011 01:41:33 GMTAfter a long day that included eight sealed deck Swiss rounds, a booster draft, and three more rounds with his draft deck, local player Jimmy Spears won a plane ticket to Pro Tour Honolulu. For Jimmy, it was the perfect end to a long day, top-decking the only card in his library that would win game three over Fanatic’s own Eric “Perfect Gamer” Jones in the finals. http://www.mtgfanatic.com/Articles/ViewArticle.aspx?ID=163205Sun, 18 Dec 2011 11:51:30 GMTThe Budget Cube Project is back in business after a brief Innistrad-related hiatus. This week, we dive into the wild and wacky world of multicolor cards.http://www.mtgfanatic.com/Articles/ViewArticle.aspx?ID=163201Sun, 18 Dec 2011 11:17:15 GMTWe draft with seven this week, but it’s a table full of hot shots and old friends as we start December with a bang. Hunter Burton is in the house with his undivided attention on the cards for a change! The winning decks look pretty good this week as well. After you read about this week’s draft, if you’re still awake, I will regale you with what happened when I played the six winning decks from November against each other. All that and we started our annual Guildmage of the Year voting as well.http://www.mtgfanatic.com/Articles/ViewArticle.aspx?ID=163116Sat, 17 Dec 2011 01:44:33 GMTIn the history of Magic: the Gathering, which block of expansion sets is the best? Not your favorite, not my favorite, but the actual best? I’ve been interested in this question for many years. In one way, the question seems less than useful, mainly because it’s easy to think that such a question could never have an objective answer. It starts with knowing EXACTLY what question you are asking. http://www.mtgfanatic.com/Articles/ViewArticle.aspx?ID=162580Sun, 11 Dec 2011 00:45:22 GMTThis is the fourth Innistrad draft for which Eric has recorded the details while playing on Magic Online.http://www.mtgfanatic.com/Articles/ViewArticle.aspx?ID=161934Sun, 04 Dec 2011 01:43:23 GMTThe highlights begin with Eric Jones’ 100th Tuesday night appearance IN A ROW. This is completely unprecedented. The previous record for consecutive appearances was in the sixties. They say that half of life is SHOWING UP. Eric’s commitment to, and love of, the game is amazing. One of our very favorite players, Andy Van Zandt, made an appearance tonight. This true Fort Worth kid currently lives in New York with his girlfriend, a school teacher.http://www.mtgfanatic.com/Articles/ViewArticle.aspx?ID=161545Tue, 29 Nov 2011 22:15:47 GMTThis is actually my fourth Innistrad draft on Magic Online, but the third was pretty terrible, as I tried to force a black/red Vampire deck and it got blown out in the first round, partially to poor draws, but also because I wasn’t able to draft a lot of removal or cheap vampires. The deck basically missed on all fronts. The good news is, I think I got it out of my system.http://www.mtgfanatic.com/Articles/ViewArticle.aspx?ID=161225Sat, 26 Nov 2011 11:46:14 GMTAttendance was good this week, we had eight players by seven o’clock with Hunter Burton still on the way. It should have been our best draft in November, but the results show that it may have been our worst. The decks were very strange. Some of it was my fault. I was red and white throughout the first pack, then violently moved to black when I opened Bloodgift Demon. My three-colored deck never worked out and I never got Bloodgift Demon into play. That’s my fault, but wait until you see what bubbled to the top of this strange draft. After the nine man draft we played a team draft with six players. Between the two drafts we opened a ridiculous THREE Snapcaster Mages of which none ended up with the Zanman!http://www.mtgfanatic.com/Articles/ViewArticle.aspx?ID=160928Tue, 22 Nov 2011 21:41:06 GMTThere was an Innistrad sealed deck Pro Tour Qualifier in my neighborhood last Saturday. Unfortunately, I didn’t get to play in the tournament because it was my job to run the event and serve as head judge. Service, they say, is its own reward, and I do enjoy running tournaments and helping other people have a good time with Magic. In order to get a little extra enjoyment out of this particular tournament, I decided to study the sealed deck registration sheets. The PTQ I used for this study was one held on November 5th in Fort Worth, Texas. There were 199 players in the tournament requiring eight rounds of Swiss play. The statistics below are taken from the sixty-one decks that finished with a winning record. http://www.mtgfanatic.com/Articles/ViewArticle.aspx?ID=160829Mon, 21 Nov 2011 21:30:33 GMTPerfect Gamer is a nickname that I put on Eric Jones some time ago. Because he really is the perfect gamer. He excels at all kinds of complex game theory, but what interests me most is his skill in Magic limited formats. He catches on to new limited formats faster and better than anyone else I know. I’m very happy that my teammate and friend chooses to share his booster draft insights exclusively on MTG Fanatic. http://www.mtgfanatic.com/Articles/ViewArticle.aspx?ID=160822Mon, 21 Nov 2011 20:24:38 GMTPerfect Gamer is a nickname that I put on Eric Jones some time ago. Because he really is the perfect gamer. He excels at all kinds of complex game theory, but what interests me most is his skill in Magic limited formats. He catches on to new limited formats faster and better than anyone else I know. I’m very happy that my teammate and friend chooses to share his booster draft insights exclusively on MTG Fanatic.http://www.mtgfanatic.com/Articles/ViewArticle.aspx?ID=160269Mon, 14 Nov 2011 22:47:51 GMTI thought more people would show up tonight with a local Innistrad sealed deck PTQ only a few days away. Instead, we draft again with just seven players. I’m happy enough with the results of our seven man drafts. Playing with one less than eight hasn’t seemed to skew our drafts in any direction, although eight players is always better than seven for draft.http://www.mtgfanatic.com/Articles/ViewArticle.aspx?ID=159910Thu, 10 Nov 2011 22:00:34 GMTI went a little crazy this time. As is my habit on Magic Online, I approach the 4322 draft queue with the following plan: draft as many rares as possible while still drafting a good enough deck to win the first round. When this plan works out, I feel like I am able to draft a bunch of rares (the goal is at least more than three) and still recover two of the three online booster packs used for the draft.http://www.mtgfanatic.com/Articles/ViewArticle.aspx?ID=159707Tue, 08 Nov 2011 23:31:08 GMTHere is a recent Magic Online draft in which I had success. When Innistrad first arrived, I felt my friends, and unfortunately too many of my opponents, had a much better handle on Innistrad limited formats that I did. Luckily for me, Innistrad has finally arrived on Magic Online, a place where I have the opportunity to catch up with other players. I’m feeling better about Innistrad limited in general and Innistrad booster draft in particular. I hope my observations can help you make your own drafts better.http://www.mtgfanatic.com/Articles/ViewArticle.aspx?ID=159526Sun, 06 Nov 2011 18:59:44 GMTIt’s a wonderful thing when fall comes to the Southwest. The one hundred degree days end, your neighbor’s lawn quits catching on fire, and Standard rotates out an old block and rotates in a new one. In comes Innistrad, marking the end of Zendikar for good old Standard. As usual, the annual State Championship tournaments provide the first real tests of the all-new Standard format. This year certainly did not disappoint me with the variety of decks battling for the top position. A favorite clearly emerged. On behalf of my Premier Tournament Organizer, the legendary Edward Fox of AussieFox Events, me and fellow level two judge Eric Jones ran the State Champs events in Wichita, Kansas and Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. Each event’s finals featured the same matchup. For me, the State Championships came down to a story of two decks and a tale of two cities.http://www.mtgfanatic.com/Articles/ViewArticle.aspx?ID=159272Fri, 04 Nov 2011 00:28:26 GMTAttendance was a little scary this week. It was 6:44 pm before anyone showed up. We had only six until a seventh player showed up around 7:20 pm. We drafted with seven and played three rounds of Swiss cutting to a top four. We were not able to assemble enough interest for a second draft. Here’s what happened in our seven man draft.http://www.mtgfanatic.com/Articles/ViewArticle.aspx?ID=159145Thu, 03 Nov 2011 00:45:10 GMTThis week we had nine players ready to go just minutes after seven o’clock. After playing three Swiss rounds and a round of playoffs there were still six players interested in drafting a second time. We randomly split ourselves into teams and drafted 3v3. My team got crushed 1-5. It was a good night all around and I sense we’re getting a better bead on drafting Innistrad.http://www.mtgfanatic.com/Articles/ViewArticle.aspx?ID=158286Tue, 25 Oct 2011 15:50:45 GMTThere has been plenty of electronic ink spilled here on MTG Fanatic regarding Magic’s newest expansion set Innistrad. Messrs Wrigley and Meidinger have broken down the set and reviewed some cards individually and tried some of the cards in some new decks. David Croom has weighed in on Innistrad’s effect on Legacy. We’ve seen how the Texas Guildmages have approached the set for booster draft and I’ve shared my sealed deck experiences so far with Innistrad. That must be just about everything you can do with this new set. But not so fast! There are yet mysteries to be revealed in Innistrad, mysteries that can only be teased out of the new set one way… Innistrad DC-10 showdown.http://www.mtgfanatic.com/Articles/ViewArticle.aspx?ID=158201Mon, 24 Oct 2011 22:50:59 GMTMe and some of my Guildmage teammates traveled to San Antonio last Saturday for an Innistrad sealed deck PTQ. We had high hopes for success. All four of us in the car had previously won such an event multiple times in the past. There were 155 players from all over the state of Texas including a lot of great players.http://www.mtgfanatic.com/Articles/ViewArticle.aspx?ID=157455Mon, 17 Oct 2011 22:21:22 GMTHaibing Hu is on a roll. The Binger, as he’s known by his friends, is good in all Magic formats, but likes limited best of all. Hu finished in the top eight of U.S. Nationals this year behind a 6-0 draft performance and some good play with a tweaked version of Gerry Thompson’s Caw Blade deck. In the top eight at Nationals, Haibing defeated Owen Turtenwald before falling to eventual champion Ali Aintrazi in the semi finals. Still, Haibing went home with a sweet trophy and a spot on the national team for this year’s World Championship.http://www.mtgfanatic.com/Articles/ViewArticle.aspx?ID=157018Thu, 13 Oct 2011 23:59:24 GMTAround here, there is lots of interest in drafting Innistrad. We were starting an eight man draft and had just opened our first packs when a ninth player showed up. We stopped and fit him in. Just as we picked up our packs again, a tenth player showed up. There was grumbling, but in the end we drafted with ten players and played four rounds of Swiss cutting to a top four.http://www.mtgfanatic.com/Articles/ViewArticle.aspx?ID=156736Tue, 11 Oct 2011 19:08:14 GMTThree other Texas Guildmages and I are hitting the road for an Innistrad sealed deck Pro Tour Qualifier this weekend in San Antonio. I love limited, and I’m excited to play sealed deck for a chance to go to Pro Tour Honolulu next year. I’ve won four limited PTQs in my playing career (along with three constructed ones) and subsequently attended four limited Pro Tours. All four were before the current PT format that includes both draft and constructed. I know how to win a sealed deck PTQ, and I know how dependent you are on the quality of your randomly assigned card pools. My biggest problem is a lack of experience with Innistrad. I was out of commission during the weekend of the prerelease and have only drafted the new set a couple of times. More importantly, I just haven’t played a single match of sealed deck with Innistrad. What I do have are booster packs, so let’s open up six, just like at the PTQ on Saturday, and see what the card pool looks like.http://www.mtgfanatic.com/Articles/ViewArticle.aspx?ID=156260Fri, 07 Oct 2011 16:50:39 GMTAs you would expect, there was plenty of excitement tonight. Fourteen players showed up ready to draft Innistrad. Here’s what we learned from our first eight man booster draft with the new set.http://www.mtgfanatic.com/Articles/ViewArticle.aspx?ID=155923Tue, 04 Oct 2011 23:51:28 GMTIt looked like we might be stuck with just seven players tonight when, happily, an eighth guy that doesn’t show up that often… showed up. We were happy to have an eight man draft. Everyone is excited about drafting Innistrad week after next. In the meantime, we have found M12 draft remarkably entertaining and competitive.http://www.mtgfanatic.com/Articles/ViewArticle.aspx?ID=155050Wed, 28 Sep 2011 00:07:43 GMTOn the eve of Innistrad’s prerelease, it only seems fitting to explore the color that Magic most often associates with horror, demons, and things that go bump in the night: Black.http://www.mtgfanatic.com/Articles/ViewArticle.aspx?ID=154508Fri, 23 Sep 2011 20:02:12 GMTSealed deck is not just for prereleases. In just a few weeks, Pro Tour Qualifiers for next year’s Pro Tour Honolulu will feature Innistrad sealed deck. In the meantime, there are a few Grand Prix Trials using Magic 2012 sealed deck in order to qualify for byes at Grand Prix San Diego. That being said, it can be hard to find a competitive sealed deck environment in which to hone your skills. The format is expensive to play and attracts fewer players. Luckily for me, I have a very good store in my area that features TWO Friday Night Magic events each week.http://www.mtgfanatic.com/Articles/ViewArticle.aspx?ID=154453Fri, 23 Sep 2011 00:17:01 GMTWelcome back to week three of the Budget Cube Project. This week, red turns up the Budget’ Cube’s thermostat with its signature mix of aggressive creatures and burn spells.http://www.mtgfanatic.com/Articles/ViewArticle.aspx?ID=153799Fri, 16 Sep 2011 21:41:27 GMTAnother week, another color. This time, the Budget Cube Project will cover everyone’s favorite color for mana acceleration and excellent fatties: green.http://www.mtgfanatic.com/Articles/ViewArticle.aspx?ID=153368Tue, 13 Sep 2011 00:38:54 GMTExactly eight tonight in the Guildhall. It’s a good group and the draft shows it producing at least three or four pretty interesting decks. I’m going to tell you all about the best two.http://www.mtgfanatic.com/Articles/ViewArticle.aspx?ID=153027Fri, 09 Sep 2011 22:27:43 GMTWelcome to week two of the Budget Cube Project, and the first week of actual card choices. White is my favorite color in my cube (aka Dexter’s Cube), and early indications show that this budget cube may be no different.http://www.mtgfanatic.com/Articles/ViewArticle.aspx?ID=152259Sun, 04 Sep 2011 12:14:49 GMTA friend of mine recently put together a Scars Block rotisserie draft. He got together a set of all the commons and uncommons from all three sets; Scars of Mirrodin, Mirrodin Besieged and New Phyrexia. He then made proxies of all the rares and mythics. In the end we had virtually every card in the set to draft out. We drafted in order first through eighth and then eighth through first. This process was repeated, so players one and eight always got two picks at once. I ended up picking fourth.http://www.mtgfanatic.com/Articles/ViewArticle.aspx?ID=151987Fri, 02 Sep 2011 00:35:52 GMTWelcome to the 718th weekly meeting of the Texas Guildmages. For fifteen years we’ve been meeting at my house just northwest of Dallas. Over time, the faces change but the desire to have fun and keep improving at the game we love continues.http://www.mtgfanatic.com/Articles/ViewArticle.aspx?ID=151633Mon, 29 Aug 2011 21:34:58 GMTThere have been a lot of Magic 2012 drafts at the house this summer, and we’ve opened just under two cases in a little more than a month. I decided I wanted to open a box just for myself. Of course, I would never simply rip packs open when I have a twelve year old who is always good to go for some sort of limited game.http://www.mtgfanatic.com/Articles/ViewArticle.aspx?ID=151631Mon, 29 Aug 2011 21:24:18 GMTCube is undoubtedly one of the most fun Magic: the Gathering formats in existence. This modified draft format is characterized by some of the best cards in the game, which are often some of the most expensive... but not always. Is it possible to build a fun, powerful cube on a budget without diving into Pauper? Let's find out.http://www.mtgfanatic.com/Articles/ViewArticle.aspx?ID=151216Fri, 26 Aug 2011 16:42:10 GMTWelcome to the 717th weekly meeting of the Texas Guildmages. For fifteen years we’ve been meeting at my house just northwest of Dallas. Over time, the faces change but the desire to have fun and keep improving at the game we love continues.http://www.mtgfanatic.com/Articles/ViewArticle.aspx?ID=150643Tue, 23 Aug 2011 01:54:19 GMTWelcome to the 716th weekly meeting of the Texas Guildmages. For fifteen years we’ve been meeting at my house just northwest of Dallas. Over time, the faces change but the desire to have fun and keep improving at the game we love continues.http://www.mtgfanatic.com/Articles/ViewArticle.aspx?ID=150137Thu, 18 Aug 2011 22:25:17 GMTWelcome to the 715th weekly meeting of the Texas Guildmages. For fifteen years we’ve been meeting at my house just northwest of Dallas. Over time, the faces change but the desire to have fun and keep improving at the game we love continues.http://www.mtgfanatic.com/Articles/ViewArticle.aspx?ID=149987Wed, 17 Aug 2011 16:33:07 GMTI had some success at an FNM recently playing sealed deck using Magic 2012. I’m interested in all kinds of limited play. Although I booster draft a lot more than I play sealed deck, I think sealed deck experiences are quite valuable in helping me to understand the interaction of cards from the all-new Magic 2012. M12 has just arrived on Magic Online and I hope to use my cardboard experiences with the set to give me an edge online.http://www.mtgfanatic.com/Articles/ViewArticle.aspx?ID=148880Mon, 08 Aug 2011 21:12:17 GMTWhat follows is the longest article in the history of MTG Fanatic and possibly any other Magic website. In this case, bigger does NOT necessarily mean better. Readers are cautioned that the following article is insane and inane in both its subject matter and length. Attempting to digest this largely-pointless tome of an article in its entirety could result in you either deciding that there is no god, or possibly that there IS one, depending on whichever you would find more chilling. Did I mention the article is very long? To some people, this article might even seem a little TOO long. Some complain this article is as long as a book. I submit that this fanciful bit of writing is merely half the length of the first Harry Potter novel. This article is long enough that you shouldn’t try to pull it up on a smart phone. Maybe a Kindle…http://www.mtgfanatic.com/Articles/ViewArticle.aspx?ID=148740Sun, 07 Aug 2011 20:03:25 GMTEric Jones is a Pro Tour veteran and a level two DCI judge. He is also a good friend of mine. I gave him the nickname “Perfect Gamer” both to honor his great skill and as a slight jab for his trademark smarmy attitude. Eric is very talented at booster draft and other limited formats. He has a keen understanding of what makes a good draft deck. He shares his draft experiences exclusively here on MTG Fanatichttp://www.mtgfanatic.com/Articles/ViewArticle.aspx?ID=148377Thu, 04 Aug 2011 18:45:16 GMTWelcome to the 714th weekly meeting of the Texas Guildmages. For fifteen years we’ve been meeting at my house just northwest of Dallas. Over time, the faces change but the desire to have fun and keep improving at the game we love continues.http://www.mtgfanatic.com/Articles/ViewArticle.aspx?ID=148165Wed, 03 Aug 2011 00:17:47 GMTEric Jones is a Pro Tour veteran and a level two DCI judge. He is also a good friend of mine. I gave him the nickname “Perfect Gamer” both to honor his great skill and as a slight jab for his trademark smarmy attitude. Eric is very talented at booster draft and other limited formats. He has a keen understanding of what makes a good draft deck. He shares his draft experiences exclusively here on MTG Fanatichttp://www.mtgfanatic.com/Articles/ViewArticle.aspx?ID=147985Mon, 01 Aug 2011 18:14:15 GMTWelcome to the 713th weekly meeting of the Texas Guildmages. For fifteen years we’ve been meeting at my house just northwest of Dallas. Over time, the faces change but the desire to have fun and keep improving at the game we love continues.http://www.mtgfanatic.com/Articles/ViewArticle.aspx?ID=147021Mon, 25 Jul 2011 01:50:40 GMTThe collection of cards in Standard have been through a lot together. There have been highs and lows. There have been thousands (consequently millions) of points of damage dealt by Valakut. There have been a million pieces of equipment acquired and deployed by Stoneforge Mystic. We have welcomed the largest colorless creatures of all time from Rise of the Eldrazi, we’ve watched the rising power of Planeswalkers. After all that this group of cards has been through together, they are joined this week by a bunch of newbies. Magic 2012 arrives in stores this week.http://www.mtgfanatic.com/Articles/ViewArticle.aspx?ID=146636Thu, 21 Jul 2011 17:51:12 GMTWelcome to the 711th weekly meeting of the Texas Guildmages. For fifteen years we’ve been meeting at my house just northwest of Dallas. Over time, the faces change but the desire to have fun and keep improving at the game we love continues.http://www.mtgfanatic.com/Articles/ViewArticle.aspx?ID=145286Wed, 13 Jul 2011 02:21:10 GMTHaibing Hu is a draft expert. Hu has been playing Magic since 1996, more seriously since 2000. He has played in five Pro Tour events, made day two in three of them, and finished in the money twice. DrWho, as Haibing is known on Magic Online, details his draft experiences exclusively here on MTG Fanatic.http://www.mtgfanatic.com/Articles/ViewArticle.aspx?ID=144212Sat, 02 Jul 2011 22:58:34 GMTNow I can very safely say I have done over 1000 drafts. Does that sound like a lot? Nearly 300 sanctioned with a 76% win percentage, well over 300 online, at least 400 nonsanctioned I can easily account for. I have some experience. Recently I’ve been talking a little more about drafting strategy, and I was asked an interesting question; “How do you know when to splash?”http://www.mtgfanatic.com/Articles/ViewArticle.aspx?ID=144124Fri, 01 Jul 2011 23:26:01 GMTWelcome to the 710th weekly meeting of the Texas Guildmages. For fifteen years we’ve been meeting at my house just northwest of Dallas. Over time, the faces change but the desire to have fun and keep improving at the game we love continues.http://www.mtgfanatic.com/Articles/ViewArticle.aspx?ID=144122Fri, 01 Jul 2011 23:04:18 GMTEric Jones is a Pro Tour veteran and a level two DCI judge. He is also a good friend of mine. I gave him the nickname “Perfect Gamer” both to honor his great skill and as a slight jab for his trademark smarmy attitude. Eric is very talented at booster draft and other limited formats. He has a keen understanding of what makes a good draft deck. He shares his draft experiences exclusively here on MTG Fanatichttp://www.mtgfanatic.com/Articles/ViewArticle.aspx?ID=143994Thu, 30 Jun 2011 14:00:06 GMTWelcome to the 709th weekly meeting of the Texas Guildmages. For fifteen years we’ve been meeting at my house just northwest of Dallas. Over time, the faces change but the desire to have fun and keep improving at the game we love continues.http://www.mtgfanatic.com/Articles/ViewArticle.aspx?ID=143411Sat, 25 Jun 2011 13:07:48 GMTIn preparation for this Saturday’s sealed deck Grand Prix in Kansas City, I put seven sealed deck card pools in front of seven of my friends. I picked guys that are good at limited. There are several goals for this exercise. I wanted to see a group of players building different sealed deck pools to see their individual approaches to the format. For my eighth pool, I used a sealed deck that won a Grand Prix Trial for Kansas City, built and played by Kevin Wilkins. Some of the sealed pools are exceptional, some are fairly stinky. Part one featured the details of the four quarterfinal matches as well as the complete card pool lists of the fifth through eighth place decks. In today’s installment I cover the semi final matches, the final match and the breakdown of the top four card pools.http://www.mtgfanatic.com/Articles/ViewArticle.aspx?ID=142795Mon, 20 Jun 2011 21:39:37 GMTIn preparation for this Saturday’s sealed deck Grand Prix in Kansas City, I put seven sealed deck card pools in front of seven of my friends. I picked guys that are good at limited. There are several goals for this exercise. I wanted to see a group of players building different sealed deck pools to see their individual approaches to the format. For my eighth pool, I used a sealed deck that won a Grand Prix Trial for Kansas City, built and played by Kevin Wilkins. Some of the sealed pools are exceptional, some are fairly stinky. Then, of course, I wanted to pit the decks against each other.http://www.mtgfanatic.com/Articles/ViewArticle.aspx?ID=142360Thu, 16 Jun 2011 18:26:08 GMTWelcome to the 707th weekly meeting of the Texas Guildmages. For fifteen years we’ve been meeting at my house just northwest of Dallas. Over time, the faces change but the desire to have fun and keep improving at the game we love continues.http://www.mtgfanatic.com/Articles/ViewArticle.aspx?ID=141715Fri, 10 Jun 2011 22:11:59 GMTWelcome to the 706th weekly meeting of the Texas Guildmages. For fifteen years we’ve been meeting at my house just northwest of Dallas. Over time, the faces change but the desire to have fun and keep improving at the game we love continues.http://www.mtgfanatic.com/Articles/ViewArticle.aspx?ID=141140Sun, 05 Jun 2011 20:03:20 GMTWelcome to the 705th weekly meeting of the Texas Guildmages. For fifteen years we’ve been meeting at my house just northwest of Dallas. Over time, the faces change but the desire to have fun and keep improving at the game we love continues.http://www.mtgfanatic.com/Articles/ViewArticle.aspx?ID=140318Sun, 29 May 2011 13:23:59 GMTI miss triple drafts. I’m the weird guy that likes drafting with three packs of a small expansion. I figure out a way to do it every time a new set comes out. There are several goals, and they’re the same whether I’m drafting with real, live pieces of cardboard or on Magic Online.http://www.mtgfanatic.com/Articles/ViewArticle.aspx?ID=139490Sun, 22 May 2011 23:38:47 GMTWelcome to the 704th weekly meeting of the Texas Guildmages. For fifteen years we’ve been meeting at my house just northwest of Dallas. Over time, the faces change but the desire to have fun and keep improving at the game we love continues.http://www.mtgfanatic.com/Articles/ViewArticle.aspx?ID=139383Sun, 22 May 2011 01:19:00 GMTWelcome to the 703rd weekly meeting of the Texas Guildmages. For fifteen years we’ve been meeting at my house just northwest of Dallas. Over time, the faces change but the desire to have fun and keep improving at the game we love continues.http://www.mtgfanatic.com/Articles/ViewArticle.aspx?ID=137961Thu, 12 May 2011 01:40:45 GMTNow I love a rare or a mythic rare as much as the next guy, but when it comes to the sealed decks we will be playing at the prerelease events and the booster drafts that will soon follow, commons are where the rubber really meets the road. Commons define limited formats because they are the cards that we encounter the most. When a set first arrives, knowing what commons to take advantage of is just about the most important piece of intelligence you can have.http://www.mtgfanatic.com/Articles/ViewArticle.aspx?ID=137255Fri, 06 May 2011 21:43:37 GMTLet’s cover some key cards to look forward to in New Phyrexia. “The Artificer” has reviewed certain cards for their use in constructed play, but I want to focus on what to build with at the prerelease tournaments. At the MBS prerelease I pointed out strong cards, and what side is best to take. I went undefeated twice, so I hope I can do it again for those of you who want to take home those epic prizes at the prerelease. Most of my MBS collection came from those prizes and from what I ripped at the prereleases for my sealed decks, so read carefully.http://www.mtgfanatic.com/Articles/ViewArticle.aspx?ID=137159Fri, 06 May 2011 00:36:46 GMTWelcome to the 702nd weekly meeting of the Texas Guildmages. For fifteen years we’ve been meeting at my house just northwest of Dallas. Over time, the faces change but the desire to have fun and keep improving at the game we love continues.http://www.mtgfanatic.com/Articles/ViewArticle.aspx?ID=137017Wed, 04 May 2011 20:38:04 GMTWhile everyone is making plans for a weekend of magic heading to GPTs and PTQs, I'm taking it easy planning on a nice weekend playing all the pinball I want at the Texas Pinball Festival in Grapevine. And since I have no deck to build or test, on to the draft.http://www.mtgfanatic.com/Articles/ViewArticle.aspx?ID=136845Tue, 03 May 2011 15:22:32 GMTWelcome to the 701st weekly meeting of the Texas Guildmages. For fifteen years we’ve been meeting at my house just northwest of Dallas. Over time, the faces change but the desire to have fun and keep improving at the game we love continues.http://www.mtgfanatic.com/Articles/ViewArticle.aspx?ID=136382Fri, 29 Apr 2011 15:13:51 GMTWelcome to the 699th weekly meeting of the Texas Guildmages. For almost fifteen years we’ve been meeting at my house just northwest of Dallas. Over time, the faces change but the desire to have fun and keep improving at the game we love continues.http://www.mtgfanatic.com/Articles/ViewArticle.aspx?ID=135108Mon, 18 Apr 2011 18:28:29 GMTEric Jones is a Pro Tour veteran and a level two DCI judge. I gave him the nickname “Perfect Gamer” both to honor his great skill and as a slight jab for his occasionally smarmy attitude. Eric is very talented at booster draft and other limited formats. He has a keen understanding of what makes a good draft deck. He shares his draft experiences exclusively here on MTGFanatichttp://www.mtgfanatic.com/Articles/ViewArticle.aspx?ID=132958Thu, 31 Mar 2011 20:48:44 GMTWelcome to the 698th weekly meeting of the Texas Guildmages. For almost fifteen years we’ve been meeting at my house just northwest of Dallas. Over time, the faces change but the desire to have fun and keep improving at the game we love continues.http://www.mtgfanatic.com/Articles/ViewArticle.aspx?ID=131923Thu, 24 Mar 2011 17:34:31 GMTWelcome to the 696th weekly meeting of the Texas Guildmages. For almost fifteen years we’ve been meeting at my house just northwest of Dallas. Over time, the faces change but the desire to have fun and keep improving at the game we love continues.http://www.mtgfanatic.com/Articles/ViewArticle.aspx?ID=130653Mon, 14 Mar 2011 21:03:45 GMTWelcome to the 694th weekly meeting of the Texas Guildmages. For almost fifteen years we’ve been meeting at my house just northwest of Dallas. Over time, the faces change but the desire to have fun and keep improving at the game we love continues.http://www.mtgfanatic.com/Articles/ViewArticle.aspx?ID=129635Mon, 07 Mar 2011 13:09:43 GMTThis continues my three part comprehensive review of Mirrodin Besieged. I will review the green and black cards in this installment. There are quite a few very interesting cards for constructed among these colors as well as for limited.http://www.mtgfanatic.com/Articles/ViewArticle.aspx?ID=127329Fri, 18 Feb 2011 22:20:49 GMTI just got home from a Denver GPT. There were only eight players and I won. I took my level two judge test in Denver, and have family and friends in the area, so I’m interested in going up there for the GP. I normally work as a judge at GPs, so this will be only my second one to play in. I judged at the last GP Denver in 2008. My only other GP to play in was in Atlanta a few months ago. I had three byes off my rating and I managed to finish in the top sixty-four.http://www.mtgfanatic.com/Articles/ViewArticle.aspx?ID=127328Fri, 18 Feb 2011 22:00:03 GMTWelcome to the 693rd weekly meeting of the Texas Guildmages. For almost fifteen years we’ve been meeting at my house just northwest of Dallas. Over time, the faces change but the desire to have fun and keep improving at the game we love continues.http://www.mtgfanatic.com/Articles/ViewArticle.aspx?ID=127326Fri, 18 Feb 2011 21:39:17 GMTWelcome to the 692nd weekly meeting of the Texas Guildmages. For almost fifteen years we’ve been meeting at my house just northwest of Dallas. Over time, the faces change but the desire to have fun and keep improving at the game we love continues.http://www.mtgfanatic.com/Articles/ViewArticle.aspx?ID=127092Wed, 16 Feb 2011 23:41:37 GMTEric Jones is a Pro Tour veteran and a level two DCI judge. I gave him the nickname “Perfect Gamer” both to honor his great skill and as a slight jab for his occasionally smarmy attitude. Eric is very talented at booster draft and other limited formats. He has a keen understanding of what makes a good draft deck. He shares his draft experiences exclusively here on MTG Fanatichttp://www.mtgfanatic.com/Articles/ViewArticle.aspx?ID=127090Wed, 16 Feb 2011 23:25:31 GMTThis is the first of a series reviewing each and every card in the new set. Furthermore, I will rank the cards in each color. The prerelease events were only a week ago, so there hasn’t been much time to play with the cards, but here’s what I think based on my own experiences. If these reviews tend to skew towards limited play, the reason is that most of these cards will never be used in constructed but all of them will have to be considered for their potential in limited formats this year.http://www.mtgfanatic.com/Articles/ViewArticle.aspx?ID=125611Sun, 06 Feb 2011 12:28:32 GMTSuper Bowl Sunday is a day for celebrating America’s favorite violent sport. But as a football fan with an intellectual side, I proudly present Super Bowl Sealed Deck. This amusing little format may not help any of us develop new brain cells, but it’s a lot healthier than a concussion. I always believe that you can always learn something from any Magic format, no matter how arcane or silly. The main thing I’ve learned from this exercise is what a goofball I am when it comes to Magic and NFL football.http://www.mtgfanatic.com/Articles/ViewArticle.aspx?ID=125435Fri, 04 Feb 2011 19:56:29 GMTWelcome to the 691st weekly meeting of the Texas Guildmages. For almost fifteen years we’ve been meeting at my house just northwest of Dallas. Over time, the faces change but the desire to have fun and keep improving at the game we love continues.http://www.mtgfanatic.com/Articles/ViewArticle.aspx?ID=125244Wed, 02 Feb 2011 22:04:43 GMTEric Jones presents us with a recent Magic Online draft of Scars of Mirrodinhttp://www.mtgfanatic.com/Articles/ViewArticle.aspx?ID=124875Mon, 31 Jan 2011 14:17:59 GMTMagic’s newest expansion set is on its way to a store near you, and for lovers of sealed deck and booster draft, Mirrodin Besieged changes everything. The first expansion for Scars of Mirrodin, or the fourth expansion of 2003’s Mirrodin if you like, has limited players scrambling in three significantly different directions. I want to explore the changes in three different limited formats and also share some of my first impressions of the new cards.http://www.mtgfanatic.com/Articles/ViewArticle.aspx?ID=124536Fri, 28 Jan 2011 13:40:20 GMTMirrodin Besieged arrives this weekend in prerelease events all across the land. The new set will continue the theme begun in Scars of Mirrodin: choosing sides. Before we move on to the new world of Mirrodin Besieged, here is a fun new way to play sealed deck for two players. Let’s call this new sealed game Faction Sealed. I know this is the week of looking at the coming set and speculating about the new cards, but try to keep an open mind. This is a fun sealed game that will play even better next week when we can mix Mirrodin Besieged with Scars.http://www.mtgfanatic.com/Articles/ViewArticle.aspx?ID=124376Thu, 27 Jan 2011 15:02:35 GMTWelcome to the 688th weekly meeting of the Texas Guildmages. For almost fifteen years we’ve been meeting at my house just northwest of Dallas. Over time, the faces change but the desire to have fun and keep improving at the game we love continues. We actually had eight players in the room for awhile, but one guy couldn’t stay long enough for a whole draft, so we ended up going with seven players. We also managed to have a six man team draft after the regular draft.http://www.mtgfanatic.com/Articles/ViewArticle.aspx?ID=122742Fri, 14 Jan 2011 14:39:22 GMTWelcome to the 687th weekly meeting of the Texas Guildmages. For almost fifteen years we’ve been meeting at my house just northwest of Dallas. Over time, the faces change but the desire to have fun and keep improving at the game we love continues. Tuesday night attendance is often sketchy during the holidays. People are traveling or partying or who knows what. We were very happy to have nine people for our booster draft tonight.http://www.mtgfanatic.com/Articles/ViewArticle.aspx?ID=122029Sun, 09 Jan 2011 00:03:30 GMTIt’s a Christmas miracle! We managed to gather enough players to play a proper draft. In this week’s installment I cover the details from that draft as well as the results of our Guildmage of the Year voting.http://www.mtgfanatic.com/Articles/ViewArticle.aspx?ID=121212Mon, 03 Jan 2011 03:42:33 GMTMost people will tell you that you have to get “the goods” in order to finish in the top eight of a sealed deck tournament. I’m not going to disagree. What I want to think about is what exactly kind of “goods” do I realistically need to get? In order to figure that out, I’m looking at all the sealed decks that managed to take their players to the top eight in the three Pro Tour Qualifiers that I ran this past season.http://www.mtgfanatic.com/Articles/ViewArticle.aspx?ID=119458Sun, 19 Dec 2010 10:50:03 GMTI’m waiting with baited breath for the Extended PTQ season to start so that I can play (and write about) more powerful decks than the dregs currently available in Standard, but until then, we still have to deal with the end of the Sealed PTQ season. I have been playing tons and tons of 8-4 drafts on Magic Online lately, as well as the occasional sealed PTQ online and in real life. I have come to realize two things about this limited format: draft is the nut high, and sealed is the nut low.http://www.mtgfanatic.com/Articles/ViewArticle.aspx?ID=118012Tue, 07 Dec 2010 22:52:22 GMTWelcome to the 683rd weekly meeting of the Texas Guildmages. For almost fifteen years we’ve been meeting at my house just northwest of Dallas. Over time, the faces change but the desire to have fun and keep improving at the game we love continues.http://www.mtgfanatic.com/Articles/ViewArticle.aspx?ID=117975Tue, 07 Dec 2010 16:49:22 GMTEric Jones takes us through a Magic Online draft of Scars of Mirrodin.http://www.mtgfanatic.com/Articles/ViewArticle.aspx?ID=117602Sun, 05 Dec 2010 14:18:49 GMTEric is a Pro Tour veteran and level II DCI judge that I have been playing with for years. He has gained the nickname Perfect Gamer around the Guildhall and beyond because of his systematically complete approach to every game he plays.http://www.mtgfanatic.com/Articles/ViewArticle.aspx?ID=115817Fri, 19 Nov 2010 17:10:15 GMTWelcome to the 681th weekly meeting of the Texas Guildmages. For almost fifteen years we’ve been meeting at my house just northwest of Dallas. Over time, the faces change but the desire to have fun and keep improving at the game we love continues.http://www.mtgfanatic.com/Articles/ViewArticle.aspx?ID=115809Fri, 19 Nov 2010 16:10:54 GMTWelcome to the 679th weekly meeting of the Texas Guildmages. For almost fifteen years we’ve been meeting at my house just northwest of Dallas. Over time, the faces change but the desire to have fun and keep improving at the game we love continues.http://www.mtgfanatic.com/Articles/ViewArticle.aspx?ID=114903Fri, 12 Nov 2010 13:12:09 GMTHaibing Hu is a skilled booster drafter and a Pro Tour veteran. Haibing shares his drafting expertise here on MTG Fanatic. Haibing is called DrWho on Magic Online.http://www.mtgfanatic.com/Articles/ViewArticle.aspx?ID=114125Sat, 06 Nov 2010 13:42:28 GMTI’m back! Sorry it’s been a while since I’ve written anything, but I’ve had a lot going on for the past couple of months and not a whole lot of time for Magic. It didn’t help that the previous format was M11 limited, which didn’t inspire me to write at all. Scars of Mirrodin is a very different beast, and I’m completely in love with it. Part of the reason is that Scars limited heavily favors the better players. It’s an incredibly complex set, with its best part being that mana problems are considerably less common. This is due to having decks that are primarily “brown,” and the added effect of having mana Myrs. Having fewer mana issues overall means less games will be decided by mulligans and more games won by player skill.http://www.mtgfanatic.com/Articles/ViewArticle.aspx?ID=112858Thu, 28 Oct 2010 15:42:40 GMTWelcome to the 676th weekly meeting of the Texas Guildmages. For almost fifteen years we’ve been meeting at my house just northwest of Dallas. Over time, the faces change but the desire to have fun and keep improving at the game we love continues.http://www.mtgfanatic.com/Articles/ViewArticle.aspx?ID=112857Thu, 28 Oct 2010 15:41:16 GMTWelcome to the 675th weekly meeting of the Texas Guildmages. For almost fifteen years we’ve been meeting at my house just northwest of Dallas. Over time, the faces change but the desire to have fun and keep improving at the game we love continues. Everyone is thrilled with Scars of Mirrodin. We get off two eight man drafts tonight, a rare and entirely welcome occasion. The first eight man booster draft is detailed in this article. The details of the second eight man draft will be detailed in next week’s Journal entry.http://www.mtgfanatic.com/Articles/ViewArticle.aspx?ID=112251Fri, 22 Oct 2010 14:47:03 GMTMid-terms are finished, my first part of the Great Designer Search has been submitted, and Majoring in Magic is back! Last time, I began discussing drafts and some of the basic theories behind them. This week, I’m going to depart from the drafting aspect of drafts to discuss some of the perceptions and ideas behind drafting.http://www.mtgfanatic.com/Articles/ViewArticle.aspx?ID=111427Thu, 14 Oct 2010 11:36:58 GMTScars of Mirrodin is finally here! Sort of. The set won’t be on sale in stores until Friday, October 1st, but Eric and I each scored two boxes of boosters by working at the regional prerelease event in Houston with the lovely Sheila Weissman. We have plenty of boosters to get the party started tonight. Everyone is excited about drafting the new set and we fill up the Guildhall with fifteen players tonight.http://www.mtgfanatic.com/Articles/ViewArticle.aspx?ID=110990Sat, 09 Oct 2010 22:32:20 GMTDC-10 is a quirky sort of limited way to play Magic that is very fun and occasionally intellectually stimulating. Just kidding, it’s just for fun. The story goes that this game was invented by two dudes flying on a DC-10 aircraft on their way to some big Magic tournament or other. Each player opens a booster pack and shuffles the contents without looking at them. Players begin with no cards in their hand. The player who plays first IS allowed to draw a card on the first turn of the game. There are different rules controlling how much mana is available to you, but you can generally count on playing whatever card you happen to draw. http://www.mtgfanatic.com/Articles/ViewArticle.aspx?ID=110805Thu, 07 Oct 2010 14:12:13 GMTIn the first part of this article, Haibing Hu reviewed the white, blue, black and red cards from Scars of Mirrodin. In this installment, the Binger completes his review of this exciting new set.http://www.mtgfanatic.com/Articles/ViewArticle.aspx?ID=110715Wed, 06 Oct 2010 18:31:18 GMTHot on the heels of this past weekend’s prerelease action, Haibing Hu presents a complete and comprehensive review of Scars of Mirrodin. Hu, a very skilled limited and Pro Tour veteran, assesses each and every card in the new set against a ten point scale described here. Enjoy!http://www.mtgfanatic.com/Articles/ViewArticle.aspx?ID=110377Sat, 02 Oct 2010 23:17:09 GMTIn players’ minds, Sealed Deck is the least skill intensive format because they believe it mostly comes down to the pool of cards you open. You have seen bad players opening bombs and doing well, and you’ve had your fair share of bad pools that didn’t allow you to win a single match. However, Sealed Deck is far more than just opening good cards. http://www.mtgfanatic.com/Articles/ViewArticle.aspx?ID=110055Tue, 28 Sep 2010 21:09:25 GMTAs of the time of the writing of this article, the entire set for Scars of Mirrodin has just been spoiled. After going through the spoiler, I figured I’d go over the colors and their themes that stand out to me for draft/sealed with the new set. As I have yet to play with the set until the prerelease gets here this weekend, I will of course attach the caveat that my ruminations are purely from a theoretical standpoint at this time, and my views will of course probably change as more archetypes emerge that I can’t see just quite yet. Let’s go!http://www.mtgfanatic.com/Articles/ViewArticle.aspx?ID=110016Tue, 28 Sep 2010 14:40:04 GMTWelcome to the 665th weekly meeting of the Texas Guildmages. A nice big group of twelve in the Guildhall tonight. We decide to have two six man team drafts. After that, we have enough players for an eight man draft. Everyone is still interested in drafting Magic 2011. Well, ALMOST everyone… http://www.mtgfanatic.com/Articles/ViewArticle.aspx?ID=106154Tue, 03 Aug 2010 00:47:24 GMTWelcome to the 664th weekly meeting of the Texas Guildmages. Everyone is still excited about drafting Magic 2011. At least, the seven people who joined me and the boy are excited about it. We played a nine man draft as well as a 3v3 team draft. We also talked about 2011 and what might happen at this weekend’s PTQ in San Antonio. Some details of this discussion appears below.http://www.mtgfanatic.com/Articles/ViewArticle.aspx?ID=105538Sat, 24 Jul 2010 01:10:17 GMTWelcome to the 663rd weekly meeting of the Texas Guildmages. We have a good turn out for the third straight week. The big news this week is the arrival of Magic 2011. Even though the new set is not on sale until Friday, enough of us collected some prize packs from the prerelease events to booster draft tonight.http://www.mtgfanatic.com/Articles/ViewArticle.aspx?ID=105315Tue, 20 Jul 2010 15:43:55 GMTThis past weekend I managed to take a short break from Magic Online, just long enough to play at my local shop’s M11 Prerelease. I had a blast! I really enjoyed the couple of events that I got to play with this set. It feels a lot like M10 did, but more skill intensive and with less clunky cards. I can’t wait for the set to go live on MODO. http://www.mtgfanatic.com/Articles/ViewArticle.aspx?ID=105116Sat, 17 Jul 2010 12:00:19 GMTA long time ago, two Pro Tour players were fighting boredom on a long airplane flight. They figured out a fun way to play Magic that doesn’t need a lot of time or table space. Each player opened a booster pack and shuffled the contents. This interesting quicky format was dubbed “DC-10” and some weirdos still play it. People like me!http://www.mtgfanatic.com/Articles/ViewArticle.aspx?ID=105043Thu, 15 Jul 2010 18:20:05 GMTWelcome to the 662nd weekly meeting of the Texas Guildmages. We have a good turn out for the second straight week. Coincidentally, my wife makes brownies for everyone for the second straight week. Last week we were celebrating Taylor Webb’s addition to the team as well as his birthday. Today is MY birthday. How old am I? Too old to be spending this much time on Magic: the Gathering!http://www.mtgfanatic.com/Articles/ViewArticle.aspx?ID=104728Sat, 10 Jul 2010 00:30:58 GMTLimited expert Haibing Hu is back with more Rise of the Eldrazi booster draft analysis as he battles in the 8-4 draft queue on Magic Online.http://www.mtgfanatic.com/Articles/ViewArticle.aspx?ID=104303Fri, 02 Jul 2010 02:08:00 GMTWelcome to the 661st weekly meeting of the Texas Guildmages. After a very cozy five man hen party last week, it was really good to have a full draft table this week. A little too full for some people, we ran it with ten players.http://www.mtgfanatic.com/Articles/ViewArticle.aspx?ID=104252Thu, 01 Jul 2010 01:11:32 GMTLimited expert Haibing Hu is back with more Rise of the Eldrazi booster draft analysis as he battles in the 8-4 draft queue on Magic Online.http://www.mtgfanatic.com/Articles/ViewArticle.aspx?ID=103330Wed, 16 Jun 2010 17:30:09 GMTWelcome to the 658th weekly meeting of the Texas Guildmages. We had a big crowd last week, so I was expecting more of the same tonight. Instead, we had exactly eight players. Truth is, eight is the number we are always targeting. More is better, obviously, but eight is how many we want to see. Fun fact, eight is the average attendance across all 658 meetings. We have a table full of really good drafters tonight. After the eight man draft we played a 3v3 team draft.http://www.mtgfanatic.com/Articles/ViewArticle.aspx?ID=103307Wed, 16 Jun 2010 11:38:46 GMTA new pick-by-pick Rise of the Eldrazi draft from limited expert Haibing Hu!http://www.mtgfanatic.com/Articles/ViewArticle.aspx?ID=103190Mon, 14 Jun 2010 11:35:34 GMTWelcome to the 657th weekly meeting of the Texas Guildmages. We have a big crowd tonight and we play two booster drafts, the first with ten players and the second with nine. I didn’t publish a report for last week’s meeting because we didn’t get enough players to do anything more than team draft.http://www.mtgfanatic.com/Articles/ViewArticle.aspx?ID=102788Sat, 05 Jun 2010 23:54:41 GMTA new pick-by-pick Rise of the Eldrazi draft from limited expert Haibing Hu!http://www.mtgfanatic.com/Articles/ViewArticle.aspx?ID=102725Fri, 04 Jun 2010 16:13:21 GMTA new pick-by-pick Rise of the Eldrazi draft from limited expert Haibing Hu!http://www.mtgfanatic.com/Articles/ViewArticle.aspx?ID=102503Mon, 31 May 2010 22:28:45 GMTWelcome to the 655th weekly meeting of the Texas Guildmages. We have a good crowd tonight and get off a very hot ten player Rise of the Eldrazi booster draft.http://www.mtgfanatic.com/Articles/ViewArticle.aspx?ID=102056Mon, 24 May 2010 23:15:07 GMTA new pick-by-pick Rise of the Eldrazi draft from limited expert Haibing Hu!http://www.mtgfanatic.com/Articles/ViewArticle.aspx?ID=101982Sun, 23 May 2010 20:54:34 GMTA new pick-by-pick Rise of the Eldrazi draft from limited expert Haibing Hu!http://www.mtgfanatic.com/Articles/ViewArticle.aspx?ID=101819Thu, 20 May 2010 22:49:09 GMTWelcome to the 653rd weekly meeting of the Texas Guildmages. We only get eight guys this week, six official Guildmage, one junior Guildmage and one Nagi Hassan. We do have a good Rise of the Eldrazi booster draft followed by a four man team draft.http://www.mtgfanatic.com/Articles/ViewArticle.aspx?ID=101168Wed, 12 May 2010 11:04:10 GMTHey folks, It’s me again and I’m just as slow to get my article in as ever due to a major injury (I’m fine now, thanks for asking :) ) and, as usual, I’ve been finding time to work some Magic into my life. It is the limited portion of this new environment that we’re going to explore today and I’m more pumped about this set in draft than I have ever been about a set. Here’s why:http://www.mtgfanatic.com/Articles/ViewArticle.aspx?ID=101125Tue, 11 May 2010 20:47:31 GMTAfter three weeks and about twelve drafts, I have a better feel for the format now. The common lists are in pick order for the most part. I’ll list the top five commons in each color and some of the interesting cards. For the uncommons and rares I’ll list the cards in roughly the correct pick order, not that it really matters for rares.http://www.mtgfanatic.com/Articles/ViewArticle.aspx?ID=100994Mon, 10 May 2010 13:14:11 GMTLongtime friend, teammate and draft king Neil Reeves came down to the Guildhall for a mini-vaca. We ripped a lot of Eldrazi packs playing sealed deck against each other. We drafted with the rest of the Guildmages on Tuesday night a couple of times. After immersing himself in the new set for a few days, J.T. Money shared his observations about ten commons from Eldrazi that he is down with.http://www.mtgfanatic.com/Articles/ViewArticle.aspx?ID=100770Thu, 06 May 2010 18:55:49 GMTWelcome to the 652nd weekly meeting of the Texas Guildmages. Eleven players is a nice attendance, but considering that we just started drafting Rise of the Eldrazi, I expected an even bigger number. We ran one nine man draft followed by a 3v3 team draft.http://www.mtgfanatic.com/Articles/ViewArticle.aspx?ID=100760Thu, 06 May 2010 16:36:57 GMTDrWho, as Haibing is known on Magic Online, details his draft experiences each week exclusively on MTGFanatic. While the cardboard world is now drafting Rise of the Eldrazi, digital drafters must continue to draft Zendikar and Worldwake.http://www.mtgfanatic.com/Articles/ViewArticle.aspx?ID=100373Sat, 01 May 2010 16:18:15 GMTWelcome to the 651st weekly meeting of the Texas Guildmages. We have a big crowd tonight, as anticipated. Everyone is excited about Rise of the Eldrazi. Most everyone played in a prerelease event of one type or another over the weekend. Only a few people have managed to play in an Eldrazi booster draft already.http://www.mtgfanatic.com/Articles/ViewArticle.aspx?ID=100196Wed, 28 Apr 2010 17:42:28 GMTI’m reviewing the cards in the new set on a scale from one to ten. More specifically, I am covering the black, red and green cards. Last week, I covered the colorless Eldrazi cards, the lands and artifacts, the one multicolored card as well as the white and the blue cards. http://www.mtgfanatic.com/Articles/ViewArticle.aspx?ID=100044Mon, 26 Apr 2010 16:45:05 GMTAfter having played with some of the new cards at the prerelease and seeing the full spoiler, I thought I would spend this time to take a look at a draft archetype that many old school drafters will recognize as U/W Skies. This archetype seems especially strong in this new format, as evasion is pretty hard for those walls to deal with. I’ll go over each card in white and blue that I feel fit into this aggro archetype, and explain how I would draft them if I were going this route in a draft.http://www.mtgfanatic.com/Articles/ViewArticle.aspx?ID=99987Sun, 25 Apr 2010 21:10:10 GMTIt is always exciting to find out how a new set, like Rise of the Eldrazi, plays in sealed deck and booster draft. These formats are the first ways most of us experience a new set. The prerelease weekend (and subsequent release weekend) are witness to one very important and irrevocable fact: Rise of Eldrazi plays completely differently than Zendikar and Worldwake. Like a hundred and eighty degrees different. http://www.mtgfanatic.com/Articles/ViewArticle.aspx?ID=99818Thu, 22 Apr 2010 22:11:10 GMTPrerelease weekend is always a lot of fun, and this time was no exception. I played in a total of three sealed events and one draft, and I managed to do it all with just under nine hours of sleep for the entire weekend. Let’s just say that staying awake at work on Monday was pretty difficult. The weekend began with the midnight event at Heroes Collectibles...http://www.mtgfanatic.com/Articles/ViewArticle.aspx?ID=99813Thu, 22 Apr 2010 19:12:59 GMTI’m reviewing the cards in the new set on a scale from one to ten. Here’s the basic breakdown. In this part one of two, I will cover the colorless Eldrazi cards, the lands and artifacts, the one multicolored card as well as the white and the blue cards. Part Two will cover the remaining three colors.http://www.mtgfanatic.com/Articles/ViewArticle.aspx?ID=99772Thu, 22 Apr 2010 00:40:28 GMTHaibing Hu gives us a detailed look into a recent Zendikar/Zendikar/Worldwake draft.http://www.mtgfanatic.com/Articles/ViewArticle.aspx?ID=99656Tue, 20 Apr 2010 01:14:58 GMTWelcome to the 649th weekly meeting of the Texas Guildmages. People are very tired of the world of Zendikar drafting. Maybe there’s a little Magic fatigue around here in general. At any rate, we had a very small meeting with just five players. We ended up playing a pair of 2v2 drafts. In this article, however, I am also playing catch up after not reporting the past three meetings. In two of those previous meetings we had quality drafts of eight and ten players each. The top decks from one of those drafts is detailed later as well as the play-by-play of a match between those decks.http://www.mtgfanatic.com/Articles/ViewArticle.aspx?ID=99370Wed, 14 Apr 2010 00:11:22 GMTHaibing Hu gives us a pick-by-pick analysis of a recent Magic Online Draft. http://www.mtgfanatic.com/Articles/ViewArticle.aspx?ID=99321Tue, 13 Apr 2010 08:19:43 GMTWelcome to the 645th weekly meeting of the Texas Guildmages. We drafted just one time with eight players tonight. Attendance has been very good, overall, for the past year. I have to remind myself of this fact when I catch myself complaining about ONLY having eight players on a night like tonight. Not to go all stats-geek on you, but we had 591 players at 49 meetings in 2009, a big increase from 405 players at 52 meetings in 2008 and 409 players at 48 meetings in 2007. High five!http://www.mtgfanatic.com/Articles/ViewArticle.aspx?ID=98093Thu, 25 Mar 2010 18:01:28 GMTWelcome to the 644th weekly meeting of the Texas Guildmages. We drafted just one time with eleven players, admittedly an unusual and awkward number. http://www.mtgfanatic.com/Articles/ViewArticle.aspx?ID=96881Wed, 10 Mar 2010 23:34:42 GMTWelcome to the 643rd weekly meeting of the Texas Guildmages. We had nine players tonight, a little on the small side but still enough for a proper eight man booster draft.http://www.mtgfanatic.com/Articles/ViewArticle.aspx?ID=96852Wed, 10 Mar 2010 16:49:10 GMTWelcome to the 642nd weekly meeting of the Texas Guildmages. Tonight’s role call includes fifteen players. We drafted Zendikar/Zendikar/Worldwake twice, first with ten players and then later with nine players. http://www.mtgfanatic.com/Articles/ViewArticle.aspx?ID=96014Sat, 27 Feb 2010 22:57:42 GMTWelcome to the 641st weekly meeting of the Texas Guildmages. Tonight’s role call included a cozy eight players. We drafted Zendikar/Zendikar/Worldwake one time and everyone went their separate ways before ten o’clock.http://www.mtgfanatic.com/Articles/ViewArticle.aspx?ID=95397Sat, 20 Feb 2010 12:05:03 GMTWelcome to the 640th weekly meeting of the Texas Guildmages. Tonight’s role call totaled sixteen players all chomping at the bit to draft Worldwake. We drafted twice. Our first draft included eight players and we had ten players for our second.http://www.mtgfanatic.com/Articles/ViewArticle.aspx?ID=95236Thu, 18 Feb 2010 07:15:07 GMTPlayers wake up today to a world of new possibilities with Worldwake. Magic: the Gathering’s latest expansion premiered in prerelease events this past weekend, and just like you, I’m interested in finding out what’s good and what’s bad.http://www.mtgfanatic.com/Articles/ViewArticle.aspx?ID=94311Sun, 07 Feb 2010 12:08:12 GMTWelcome to the 639th weekly meeting of the Texas Guildmages. Tonight’s role call totaled nine players including our hottest current commodity Mister Hunter Burton. We managed to play our first EIGHT man booster draft in a few weeks. We had some laughs speculating about Worldwake and its effect on the rest of the extended season and we watched Eric Jones build things with Magic cubes.http://www.mtgfanatic.com/Articles/ViewArticle.aspx?ID=94155Fri, 05 Feb 2010 16:45:38 GMTIn Zendikar draft the most consistent way strong decks are drafted involves picking the strongest card out of your first pack. Then, if it wasn’t a Trusty Machete or Eldrazi Monument, you should pick the strongest card out of the same color for the next several packs. After that, if your first color dries up you want to choose whichever color is most open for your other color.http://www.mtgfanatic.com/Articles/ViewArticle.aspx?ID=93578Fri, 29 Jan 2010 12:50:25 GMTWelcome to the 638th weekly meeting of the Texas Guildmages. Attendance is good again this week with eleven players. We get another ten man Zendikar draft off followed by a 3v3 team draft. There’s no extended tech or Worldwake information in this article, but both topics remain of great interest to the team.http://www.mtgfanatic.com/Articles/ViewArticle.aspx?ID=93411Tue, 26 Jan 2010 17:27:34 GMTMy name is Zach Karthauser. I first started playing Magic in the summer of 1997 and started playing in local tournaments before Christmas that year. After about a year I got serious about improving my game and after having played for close to three years I won my first PTQ and packed my bags for PT Chicago in 2000. http://www.mtgfanatic.com/Articles/ViewArticle.aspx?ID=93128Fri, 22 Jan 2010 18:05:19 GMTWelcome to the 637th weekly meeting of the Texas Guildmages. Attendance is even higher than last week, and we manage to get off two 3v3 team drafts and a lengthy ten man booster draft as well. I break down the two best decks of the ten man draft and also share some play-by-play of a series of games played with those two decks.http://www.mtgfanatic.com/Articles/ViewArticle.aspx?ID=92990Wed, 20 Jan 2010 23:28:40 GMTWelcome to the 636th weekly meeting of the Texas Guildmages. Attendance was back up this week. We had twelve players by 7:30 and no late arrivers. We ended up playing three different Zendikar drafts, all were 3v3 team drafts.http://www.mtgfanatic.com/Articles/ViewArticle.aspx?ID=92678Sun, 17 Jan 2010 20:02:46 GMTWelcome to the 635th weekly meeting of the Texas Guildmages. Meeting 635 took place on Tuesday, December 29th in the Guildhall, the upstairs loft of my home in Coppell, Texas. http://www.mtgfanatic.com/Articles/ViewArticle.aspx?ID=92677Sun, 17 Jan 2010 19:29:59 GMTThe holidays are upon us in a big way, and holiday time has always meant two things to me. First, you reminisce about the events of the almost-finished year. Second, you get to set your work or school responsibilities aside and just PLAY a little bit. Today we’re going for fun. Serious competitive formats are out, at least until we light a few more candles or finish off the Christmas cookies. Fun is in. http://www.mtgfanatic.com/Articles/ViewArticle.aspx?ID=91054Sun, 27 Dec 2009 00:17:39 GMTA lot of players don’t care for Zendikar limited formats. Yet Zendikar sealed and booster draft are completely relevant formats right now, as Magic players find themselves cruising toward the end of a sealed deck/booster draft qualifying season for the San Diego Pro Tour coming in February. Still, there are a lot of haters. I like Zendikar limited formats a great deal, actually. I am going to talk about Zendikar sealed and booster draft, the pros as well as the cons.http://www.mtgfanatic.com/Articles/ViewArticle.aspx?ID=88152Mon, 30 Nov 2009 02:26:40 GMTRead all about it!http://www.mtgfanatic.com/Articles/ViewArticle.aspx?ID=76810Sun, 24 May 2009 01:02:16 GMT