There is a way for card dealers to find out what cards are in a pack. Some people might know about it already, but for those who don’t, never buy a single pack except in a store. People who sell cards online might chose the packs out of the box that have the good cards, sell the rest online, and make a profin off of it. Dealers who sell packs at events or on the street are even more likely to do this. If you do want to buy packs online, you can only be sure it’s safe if it’s a website that corresponds to an actual store. If any store takes the good packs, and gets caught, they could probably be reported. Stores are most likely safe. Also, packs at the prerelease or release party will probably be fine, no matter where they’re from. If you do want to buy packs from online stores, buy them from sealed boxes. Either buy a fat pack, a booster box, singles, a tournament pack (if you can find one for the set), or in the store. Fat packs and booster boxes are sealed, so they will be fine. Singles are singles, and there’s nothing to do to them. Packs in stores should be fine, but unless you’ve seen the booster box unsealed, there’s no guarentee. If you do find your store owner cheating, contact Wizards. The worst of the worst will take the good packs and use them in booster drafts, while giving everyone else bad packs. If anyone cheats in a tournament, they can definatly get in big trouble. If you suspect someone of cheating, either in a tournament or a store owner selling packs, contact Wizards. (Note: This does not mean that if you never get a mythic rare, it’s cheating. You only have a 1/8 chance of getting a mythic, so if each individual booster doesn’t have a mythic, it’s probably just bad luck. If you almost always get terrible rares, and you always buy packs from the same person, you might be onto something. Especially if you then buy a fat pack or boosters from someone else and you get good luck)

There are a few things that you must know if you want to teach someone how to play. Following this advice will make it more likely that that person will like the game and start playing.

1. Give (or lend) the person your best deck. If the person wins, he’ll be more likely to want to get into the game becasue he can beat people who have been playing for a while.

2. Keep it simple. Teach him as few rules as possible while making sure he understands everything. Teaching rules as they come up might be a good idea. If you try to tell someone what each and every ability word means, he’ll probably think “This game is way too complicated. I’m not getting into this!” Get more complex slowly. It took me 2 years to understand most of the rules, and I still come across rules questions often. It happens to everyone. If you really don’t know, you can ask a judge or ask on MTG Salvation.

3. On the other hand, if he asks, tell him. (Would you want to be taught a game where nobody answers questions you have on the rules?)

4. Try not to use a deck with counterspells when playing your first game. (Meaning cards that counter spells, not the card counterspell) Let him learn that later, after he is already interested. I wouldn’t want to play a game in which every time I tried to do anything important, someone said “Nope! I’m not letting you do that!” I would get very annoyed at that game and probably not play it. Counterspells are important parts of a game, though, so maybe after he’s into the game, start using decks that have a few counterspells, and then step it up so he knows that it is possible to go against some decks that won’t let you do much of anything.

5. Don’t use an annoying deck until you are sure he likes the game. If you do, he will probably quit.

6. Let him win a few games every once in a while if you are much better than him. Nobody wants to play a game they can’t ever win. Depending on the person, adjust the amount of times you win. If it’s someone who will quit with the slightest annoyance, let him win often. Of course, that type of person will probably be out of the game soon anyway, but you know what I mean.

7. IF POSSIBLE, BUY HIM CARDS! This can mean packs, intro packs, duel decks, etc… The more cards he’s given, the less he needs to buy. The more cards he has, the more he can make his deck whatever he wants it to be.

8. DO NOT bring him to a tournament until you are confident that he will do very well or doesn’t mind losing. This means any booster draft, any sealed deck compitetion, and any constructed tournament. Play practice games of the type. Buy him six boosters (Or tell him to buy six boosters) and tell him to make a deck out of the cards in them. If it’s a good enough deck, bring him to the next prerelease. Some people, like me, don’t mind losing. Those people can go to tournaments much earlier than people who do mind losing. They probably will lose, but if it doesn’t bother them there’s no problem. (I usually do terribly in tournaments)

I its Zach agian (finally) my computor has been acting wierd latly and I have not been able to post it just gave me a white page whenever I trided to loggin and would sometimes give me a “Blue screen of death”. But I can post finally!

Well here it goes Calvin and I went to a booster draft last saterday and I opend up crap for my 3 boosters calvin opend up decent stuff. He always gets the great opens WHEN WERE AT A TORTEMENT I for one get crap… (also I have been trying to get a Nicol bolas and Elspeth knight errent for my plainswalker deck) So afterwords when we are going home his dad wants to buy a new comic book (I forgot name Its about after batman dies and what happens to him) I told calvin if they were selling packs here (comic book store) and they here less than $4 I would but one. Thinking that oh if it was like $3.50 or $2.50 and they ended up being $3.75 so I buy one because I might as well their were three packs left A left one a middle one and a right one. In a line of three like this :

______
| [][][] |
——– Calvin took the middle one (I wanted it) and I think he opened his 5th master transmuter which isnt that bad… If he ever used a deck with artifacts in them. I pick the one off to the right. I didnt open the pack untill we got out of the store and what do you know ITS A NICOL BOLAS! Im extreamlly happen and now all I need is Elspeth and I’ll have all of the plainswalkers!

Later calvin comes over to my house and we play 10 magic games give or take and every time one of us had 8 mana (enough to play nicol bolas) the other would quit…Ok calvin would quit because I always got the mana. So we quit like 9/10 of thoughs games becuse we wanted to be the first one to play nicol bolas. =)

Now skipping to tommorow (sunday) and my cusins come over .(compleatly buchered cusins…and buchered) The younger one plays magic with us we “teach him” and he just plays the cards If the mana cost can be played. We played a three way game and I got nicol bolas first!!!!!!!! Then after we messud up my cusin (he was using one of my best decks) Calvin desamated my nicol bolas and two other plainswalker I had I think they were Jace and guruuk the green one can never spell his name. Later calvin got out his nicol bolas and I deceded hes not going to win so I play my sharken vol and I destroy his Nicol Bolas by dealing it elevin damage by taking over his hellkite overlord and pumping it up =).

The end of the game was not so spectacular I was killed because my cusin when he played his stuffy doll (With an enchantment giving it flying) chose me so calvin attacked with his hellkite and killed me. Then they had a draw… My cusin got out what the deck was made for had only 4 cards (all were becon of tommorows) and took turn after turn but he couldn’t deal any damage because his creatures were too small and he couldn’t deck calvin so it ended up being a tie!

It is looking more and more like this will NOT be a limited edition as first thought. Here’s the box that the deck will come in:

Well, we now know that Akroma, Angel of Wrath will be in it. That was a very easy guess, though. I’m not surprised at all. I’m also not surprised that the other card is Lord of the Pit.

This is a display box holding 6 copies of the duel decks:
 

The website might have experienced some downtime yesterday, and the post I wrote yesterday definatly disappeared. This is because www.dragonguardian.com is now on a new server. This server is better than the old server because it is deticated. I don’t have a low bandwidth cap like I did on the old server. The bad part about that is that there was some downtime yesterday, which is no big deal. The good part is that now I can post the previews as they come out again. Conflux was the first time I previewed cards by releasing the downloadable file, and becasue it was previews month there was a large spike in visitors. Becasue of that, I used much more bandwidth space than I had. Before the switch, I wouldn’t have tried that again. Now I know how much bandwidth it takes, and I have that much, so I can keep giving you the up to date file for Alara Reborn as the information gets updated. (I have already prepared the file in MSE. I will be ready to start adding in cards as soon as previews start.) Posting should return to its normal rate right away with an update on Duel Decks: Divine vs. Demonic. This post is also kind of a test post. I’m not sure if images will work or not, so I’m going to try to post some images and see if it works. If not, I’ll have to fix that.

From an URL:

From my home computer:

This didn’t work. WordPress is unable to download images from my computer for some reason. This could cause a problem, but I can still post about the duel decks, becasue that will be an image from a website.

Today there have been tons of changes announced to the structure of core sets that will take affect when 11th Ed. comes out.
1. Core sets now come out once each year, not once every other year.
2. Core sets are not all reprints anymore. They are 50/50 reprints and new cards.
3. 11th Ed. isn’t actually called 11th Ed. It’s called Magic: the Gathering 2010. The core set that comes out in 2010 will be called Magic: the Gathering 2011. This is a little annoying because we go from 10th edition to Magic: 2010, but it’s not a big deal.
4. There will now be prerelease and launch party events for core sets.
5. Limited events at tournaments will now sometimes draft the newest core set.
6. Standard will rotate as normal this year, but from now on only rotates in October. MtG: 2010 will be standard legal until the day the “Lights” set comes out. (First set of 2010-2011 block) This means that for a period of 3 months each year, there will be 2 core sets legal in standard.
7. Mythics are now in core sets. 5 of the 15 mythics are reprints of Lorwyn planeswalkers. There are 4 other mythic reprints, and 6 new mythics.

There have been 11 spoiled cards, of which 7 of them have the full image and 4 are planeswlakers that we don’t have the new image for.

3 New Cards

1: Silence

2: Capricious Efreet

3: Wall of Frost

4 Reprints
1: Birds of Paradise

2: Jace Beleren

3: Serra Angel

4: Black Knight

Luck seems to play into this game, sometimes as much or more than skill. A random pick off the top of the library can win you the game (Nicol Bolas, Planeswalker) while a random pick off your opponent’s library can change the tide of the game completly. (Cruel Ultimatum) There are some games where you need that one last land to win. If it’s on top you win. If not, you lose. I seem to have very bad luck as far as pulling what I need off the top of the deck, or pulling a random combo out of thin air that nobody has seen before.

Everyone at some point has bought and cracked a random booster pack. I seem to get lucky more often than not. I get good ($10+) raress, but not mythics. Zach usually gets nothing. (Although yesterday he opened a Nicol Bolas from a single pack.) I got 3 Path to Exiles out of around 20 packs, and Zach got none in the same number. Answer in the poll or in a comment, how is your luck? (For some reason, you need to click the post to be able to see the poll. You can also vote in the sidebar.)

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It looks like WOTC is trying to sneak something past us. They’ve hidden 5 symbols:

around their website that link to a page that says they’re running a scavenger hunt. If you find all 5 planeswalkers and write down the names on the printable page and bring it in to a participating  store (here’s the list), you will get a blue spindown counter:

4 of the 5 planeswlakers are from the Lorwyn block, and the other is from the Shards of Alara block. If you want the names of the planeswalkers, leave me a comment or an email at czmtgblog@gmail.com. To see the comments, click on the post title and scrol down to the bottom of the post.

New packs came out at a few selective stores. They are 6 random cards RANDOM cards. you could get 6 mythic rares or 6 basic lands but the most common are 4 commons, 2 uncommons or 5 commons and 1 rare or 3 commons 2 uncommons and 1 basic land/foil. They cost $2 per pack. I would just seggest buying a normal pack because you know you get a rare buy you could get lucky and open 6 foil nicol bolase’s

This is a short post, because there are not many colorless cards in Conflux that can easily be used. But, there is one card that I will show you that is not worthless, and only costs two blue mana to pull off. (If you’re here from a Google search or came to this post’s page directly, instead of the main page, and you only see this post and not the other parts, here’s part 1: white, part 2: blue, the correction, part 3: black, part 4: red, part 5: Green, and part 6: Multicolored)

This card is considered to be a horrible card, but with Master Transmuter you can draw 3 cards at the beginning of your draw step for only 2 blue mana. The card is this:

On its own, it will give your oppopnent 2 extra cards before you get any. But, with our friend Master Transmuter, you can easily cheat it into play during your opponent’s turn and back out of play after your draw step.

A combo's best firend

Have a Master Transmuter in play and able to tap. Have in play any artifact you don’t need. During your opponent’s turn, after the draw step, return the artifact to your hand in exchange for Font of Mythos. During your untap step, Master Transmuter will untap as usual. During your draw step, draw 3 cards. After the draw step, pay one blue mana and tap Master Transmuter again to return Font of Mythos to your hand in exchange, hopefully, for some big artifact creature. (HINT: Inkwell Leviathan in standard, Darksteel Colossus in anything else)

Unfortunatly, unless you have a second transmuter or some way to untap the first one, you will have to wait a turn before you can repeat this. Fortunatly, you will only have one blue mana tapped, and you will have a big creature and 2 extra cards.