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This Week in Magic #4

By Trick Jarrett ⋅ November 20, 2009 ⋅ Post a comment ⋅

Hello folks and wel­come to another round up of great arti­cles and blog posts from around the Magic meta­verse. It was requested that I pro­vide a list of the sites I trawl look­ing for nuggets of awe­some­ness, I append that list at the end so scroll on down if that is what you’re look­ing for.

Mon­day, 11/16/09

• Wizards.com — Announc­ing: Rise of the Eldrazi — Sim­ply so that we can stop hop­ing the set name is dif­fer­ent, I was over­joyed that the set was released.
• AffinityForIslands.com — <a target=“_blank” href=“http://affinityforislands.wordpress.com/2009/11/16/power-vs-consistency/””>Power vs Consistency — An excel­lent explo­ration into the topic about the trade off between power and con­sis­tency in decks.

Tues­day, 11/17/09

• ManaNation.com — Magic’s Next Year — Trick looks over the upcom­ing sets, the unan­nounced block, and spec­u­lates on some of the things com­ing in Magic’s future.
• ManaNation.com — Ben’s Smash into the Red Zone — A very fun EDH deck and arti­cle by Ben McDole.
• StarCityGames.com — The Long Wind­ing Road Legacy Metagame Analy­sis — With so much atten­tion show­ered on Stan­dard, Legacy can be a nice change of pace and this is an excel­lent overview of a store’s Legacy event Metagame.
• BlackBorder.com — Stan­dard Roundup — By Joel Calafell, he gives an excel­lent overview of the metagame for Stan­dard (pre-Worlds)
• Gwafa’s Bazaar — Accepted Value — I enjoyed the brief dis­cus­sion about the ethics of a trade and the value of cards.
• MTG Metagame — The Begin­ning — Tricks of the Trade — Another fun human interest-ish story about one player’s entry into Magic, his plan set­ting, and going ‘infi’

Wednes­day, 11/18/09

• ManaNation.com — Magic : the Class­room — Test­ing Prep — Dan explains what he does with his stu­dents to sup­port lim­ited play on a very tight budget.
• ManaNation.com — Can Vam­pires Com­pete in the Cur­rent Stan­dard? — A guest arti­cle sub­mit­ted to us, I liked this arti­cle for its take and per­spec­tive as well as the final list it provided.
• StarCityGames.com — The Kitchen Table — Yet more sto­ries from the Three King­doms — I didn’t do any­thing with Three King­doms when it came out, so I greatly enjoyed this look into the inspi­ra­tion and his­tory behind it.
• theStarkingtonPost.com — Quiet Spec­u­la­tion 12 — Kelly takes a look at an inter­est­ing Stan­dard deck that has been mak­ing the rounds, though admit­tedly it didn’t make a show­ing at Worlds.

Thurs­day, 11/19/09

• ManaNation.com — Catch­ing Light­ning in a Bot­tle — Kelly dis­cusses how you can fol­low tour­na­ments and uti­lize that knowl­edge to bet­ter invest in Magic cards.
• ManaNation.com — Off the Beaten Path — Three Pyro­mancers — Sam explores three alter­na­tive Stan­dard decks around Pyro­mancer Ascension.
• Wizards.com — Worlds 2009 Round 3: Wise, Mise, or Oth­er­wise — I greatly enjoyed this match report as it included the ban­ter between Matej Zatlkaj and Kai Budde.
• Wizards.com — Level Up — A fun post on the cov­er­age blog that looked at the Pros and how they needed to per­form to attain the next Pro player level for 2010.

Fri­day, 11/20/09

• ManaNation.com — Draft­ing with JBoots Zendikar #5 — Jon Boutin is com­pet­ing in Rome at Worlds but he still found time to send us this draft video series.
• Wizards.com — Look Out, R&D! It’s a Trap! — Matt Place shares some insight from R&D about what they face and what traps they avoid.

Now, onto the list. All in all I scan nearly 30 web­sites either via reg­u­lar vis­its or using RSS feeds. Then I col­lect the week’s arti­cles I enjoy, find enlight­en­ing, or inter­est­ing in my book­marks to later be assem­bled into this post. Some­times posts don’t stand up to the sec­ond view­ing and so get cut as I write the arti­cle, though not often.

Arti­cle Sites:

• Wizards.com
• ManaNation.com
• StarCityGames.com
• ChannelFireball.com
• TCGPlayer.com
• MTGSalvation.com
• Blackborder.com
• PureMTGO.com

Blogs:

• 5 Color Control.com
• Casual­Magic
• MTG Rares
• Five with Flores.com
• MTG Color Pie
• Magic Malaysia.com
• Mis­ter Orange Productions
• QuietSpeculation.com
• theStarkingtonPost.com
• GatheringMagic.com
• Show us your Noobs
• Magic Lampoon.com
• Planeswalker Strong­hold
• Affin­ity for Islands.com
• Gwafa Hazid
• MTG Metagame
• Oth­er­woldly Journey
• Wrong Way Go Back.com
• The Jitte.com
• MTG Drafter.com
• MTG Realm
• Death mark
• Dragon Guardian.com
• Cube Drafting.com
• DCI Family.org

You will note that Pod­casts are not listed here, that’s because the truth is I rarely have time to lis­ten or watch other pod­casts. I do my best but noth­ing is reg­u­lar enough I feel con­fi­dent in list­ing here. I’m work­ing on it :)

– Trick

Trick Jarrett is the host and founder of ManaNation.com, he writes, edits, covers, and spoils Magic for a living. Playing it whenever he can manage to find the time. He is engaged to a lovely woman who refuses to learn Magic, and they have a cute cocker-spaniel puppy who is all too eager to play Magic.

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