MTG Strategist

This time of year, I tend to reflect on the blessings in my life. Among them is the MTG community. I hope this message is taken with the love that is intended and reaches those who need to hear it. I was born into a large family with all of the problems that large families have. Of my 6 siblings, I am the third. We grew up with very little, but enough. My father was a pipefitter who was almost always getting laid off and my mother worked as an assistant manager at Pizza Hut for a large part of my childhood. At our highest point, we lived on a small farm with my father working steadily. At our lowest, we lived in a tent in a friend’s backyard. My older brothers struggled with alcohol and drugs, and spent time in prison for violent and nonviolent crimes.  I left home when I was 18 to join the military. A year in, my sister, the youngest of the siblings and my best friend growing up, was diagnosed with brain cancer and spent the last year of her life, after losing her sig

Recent events have forced some good changes for the nomination process.  Nominations continue to flow in.  At last count we were approaching 500.  Your enthusiasm for the program is inspiring. I have received many messages in the last week.  Most were of encouragement, and I sincerely appreciate it.  It steels my resolve to craft the awards into something that the community as a whole can enjoy. I have also received advice on who I should promptly remove from the nominee list.  I also appreciate those who took the time to contact me with this information.  It has helped me better define the bounds of these awards. The rules, as stated on the MTGCCA website, defer much of my decision making to the Wizards of the Coast Code of Conduct. ( HERE )   The most pertinent passages are quoted below: -Do not use, post, distribute or link to obscene, pornographic, sexually explicit, graphically or gratuitously violent, derogatory, demeaning, malicious, defamatory, abusive, offensive, ha

Criticism is nothing to hide from.  You do not have to be afraid of someone voicing their opinion.  I have received a lot of criticism over the last few days and many of my friends rushed to see how I was handling it.  Some rushed to add another layer of criticism, and some backed away from me slowly, not wanting to be contaminated by our relationship.  I feel obligated to explain my reaction and my feelings. Before I go any further, I have to give you a little bit of history about myself.  I am not a child by any stretch of the imagination.  I've been a professional member of the military for many years.  I've been all around the world and have seen the type of things that only members of the military are privileged and cursed to see.  I've lived through moments that have shaped who I am as a person and moments that have inspired me to strive for who I want to be.    I've seen this term ' outrage culture ' thrown around as an explanation for why some people

I would like to first sincerely apologize for advertising a nominee who was fired by Star City Games for allegedly sexually harassing women.  My ignorance on the subject was quickly identified, but it was too late to take back any of the additional pain that I caused or could have caused by  irresponsibly throwing out  that name.  To the alleged victims of those acts, please accept my humble apology. This is the second year of this award program, and while I wish that I did not have to learn lessons this way, this event did bring to light a missing piece of this program.  My enthusiasm for getting content creators' names into the public cannot be overshadowed by my responsibility to vet every nominee prior to releasing those names.  Researching individuals by myself for violations of the Wizards of the Coast Code of Conduct is difficult.  And vetting these individuals publicly is not an option due to the possible damage to the integrity of the awards program and the pain that cou

Fires of Invention is my absolute favorite card from Throne of Eldraine.  I've never seen anything like it and I expect it to spur many different builds in multiple formats.  This concept deck is my first build for the card. The beauty of this card is two fold.  First, it automatically smooths your mana.  The type of lands you control no longer matter.  All you're worried about now is the CMC.  Additionally, it frees up your lands to activate abilities and to pay for other non-casting costs.  And finally, it doubles your mana.  You get to cast 2 spells, each less than or equal to the CMC of the number of lands you control. You can do a lot with that kind of power. So let's look at one way to abuse this card. Reading the text of the card, "You can cast spells only during your turn..." instantly makes me want more turns.  So here are a few cards I intend to drop once Fires of Invention is on the battlefield. First and foremost, a somewhat unplayable card

This year I am working to expand the MTG Content Creators Awards from 11 to 18 awards. This fundraiser represents approximately half of the overall costs.  Your help is much appreciated. Click here to get to the GoFundMe page.

My good friend Chuckwagon MTG has been trading and hustling to raise money for a great charity.  Check out this auction and the fantastic cards that you could get. EBAY AUCTION

Reddit Link HERE

With the introduction of the Commander 2019 precon decks, I feel like there is something different going on with Wizards of the Coast.  I have been playing EDH for about a year.  I am fairly new to the format, and I am not too proud to say that Brawl is the reason for my interest.  But after my Brawl summer fling, I was ready to settle down and get into a long term relationship with a more mature format.  Commander was there for me. So like all newbies, I began to sift through the mountain of precon decks that were available.  Some were interesting, but most were not particularly ready to play out of the box.  I would have to supplement each deck significantly, and in some cases, purchase up to 40 cards to make the deck function well.  Basically, it was a non-starter.  Standard Sets The Stage Then in 2018, WOTC came out with the Challenger Decks.  As a Standard player, I was pleasantly surprised at the out-of-the-box playability of the decks.  Hazoret Aggro, Vehicle Rush, Second

First and foremost, I would like to say thank you to all who participated in the inaugural MTGCCA ceremony.  It was the first of it's kind, so I'd like to take some time to illuminate the origin of the awards, their purpose, and some ideas for next year's. If you haven't seen this year's video it is here: https://youtu.be/KEUwpX-cpNM Origin A few years back I had a giveaway.  I hit 666 subscribers on this blog and wanted to say thanks by giving away a not so good Modern devils tribal deck.  It was like every other giveaway with one exception.  Instead of retweeting or subscribing to my channel, I asked people to find a new content creator, watch one of their videos and tweet it out with #WeAreMTG. I was not prepared for the thousands of entries.   You try counting every #WeAreMTG, making sure the attached video was an MTG content creator and that it wasn't tweeted by that person previously...  The spreadsheets were staggering.  It became a sec

Here's the spoilers coming out of PAX EAST.  The new ability 'Amass' which can build you a zombie army from nothing is a cool idea.  I'll make some short comments, but I'm more interested in what you think. I think Emergence Zone has some interesting applications in Modern.   Flux Channeler....just looks like an absolute bomb. I think holding Ob Nixilis as an enchantment is probably good enough.  Ravnica at War is a fantastic removal spell, especially at 4 mana.  As EDH Academy correctly noted this does not exile lands. Affinity in Standard???  Game changer.  There are so many applications, I don't know where to start. I will dare to say that this Tibalt is better than the last Tibalt.  Mostly because it makes tokens and dies quietly without messing up your hand.

Just a general announcement: The MTG Content Creators Awards will be held April 3, 2019 at 5:00 PM EST. https://twitter.com/MTG_Strategist/status/1110918149203869696 https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCLOU59aoMTQ30HnTBoZv3iA?view_as=subscriber I hope to see you there! JJ

At some point in your online life, you have most likely experienced some sort of general harassment or bullying.  The anonymity of social media and the shield that it provides can enable some of the most shocking forms of non-physical attack.  Those who seek to find friendship through these pathways, especially when they are starting out, are the most vulnerable to the emotional turmoil that ensues when cruelty is fired in their direction.  Unfortunately, this is the norm. Eventually, we learn to shrug off these comments and try to make sure these stings don't leave a mark.  We block.  We unfollow. We mute. We work to build a fortress of safety around ourselves.  We intentionally begin to segregate everyone into groups deemed 'good' and 'bad'.  Then we cut off the bad limb. Break In the military, war is handled at 3 different levels.  The lowest level is called 'tactical'.  This refers to a single unit or a small group taking action that has a short ter