Redirect and Rakdos’s Return (it doesn’t work except in multiplayer)

Ouch! Nobody wants to be at the wrong end of a LARGE Rakdos’s Return, so try not to let it resolve targeting you! Jason and Eddie are playing in a two player game. Jason casts targeting Eddie, and laughs. Eddie casts , declaring that Rakdos’s Return will be targeting Jason instead. After Eddie gets down […]

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Blood Scrivener and Miracles – It has to really be the first card.

Miracle states it only applies to the FIRST card you draw each turn. Really, the first one. Whenever Magic involves drawing cards, it’s actually done as individual actions, so when it says to draw 3, it means “draw 1, draw 1, draw 1” in principal. Hence, you have to reveal each of them when is […]

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Responding to Deathrite Shaman with Snapcaster Mage

Ahhh, the classic “Me firs- NO ME FIRST!” scenario in Magic. Remember folks, those who respond last, get to resolve first; a concept that NONE of the people in busy lines seem to grasp at my local amusement park. Following that principal in Magic, Deathrite Shaman’s ability states that, “Hey, pay {B} and tap me, […]

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Stony Silence and Artifact Lands

To finish out this week’s Modern flair, let’s talk about a deck called Robots (or back in my crotchety days, “Affinity”). It uses lots of artifacts to make your opponent and his life total very sad. The Legacy version (and the original Standard version) made delightful use of the artifact lands like and pulling double […]

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Blood Moon and Dryad Arbor

Modern Madness continues, if you hadn’t caught onto this week’s theme. Since the manabases in Modern can get greedy with their shocks and fetches and other color-providing wonder, is a common sideboard hate card to punish those greedy manabases. A whole board of colorfixing goodness, turned into nearly worthless Mountains for the low low price […]

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Tournament Tuesday: Dark Confidant at Competitive REL

As expected, Modern Masters has created quite a stir, and we’re looking at GP Las Vegas in just a couple of weeks, where Modern Masters sealed will be the format. On top of that, there’s plenty of people drafting their MM boxes right now, and a lot of people looking to get into the format […]

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Melira and Inkmoth Nexus

Infect! Quite the polarizing mechanic in most areas, it was either considered laughably bad or stupidly broken depending on who you were talking to. It’s gained some traction lately with eggs-in-one-basket rush decks, especially in Modern, and it’s possible you might run into a Pod deck running and you want to know how it interacts […]

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