The DCI says that twitter is part of the tournament floor.

Not every suspension makes headlines, typically the publicity is reserved for flagship players. And if it wasn't for Sperling and Lee's tripping over their words on twitter I'd probably never of known about it. Today is my birthday and I was going to postpone this week's blog until tomorrow but this really struck a chord and I feel that the community shouldn't agree with WotC's decision. Gerald Freas, took photos of players at gp indy and were being sent to his twitter with captions that cruelly described players being photographed. There has been a bit of confusion as to how this was handled and I do plan to talk to some of the level 2 judges I know about it. According to sources there was no warning, the judges, the TO, no one at the venue approached him and asked him to stop what he was doing. A lot of people have chimed in saying that they saw him do it, and expected the ban to carry out, none of them claiming to interact with him or talk to a judge about it. 18 months is the same sentence that is given to people that are deliberately cheating. I wish this was all there was to this story but it gets even uglier, Aaron Forscythe favorites tweets that insult Freas, this alone looks like a complete train wreck on WotC's part.

This is what happens when bad meets evil, and Gerald isn't the only person to be held accountable, just as it would for bribes and other penalties, all surrounding parties that witnessed the events and did nothing should also be held accountable if this is the future of events.

The average magic player at a large event has poor hygiene and is an eye sore to look at, so instead of removing something that creates a health issue it's easier to remove the people that point this out?

This is to create an example, that we as players are not allowed to use social media during events because these parts of the internet are considered part of the tournament floor. I imagine WotC supports SOPA.

Kiss your token deck goodbye.

I certainly don't have the best track record when it comes to B&R. But when I see IV being put onto the chopping block as a candidate for banning in block I had to double.... triple take. Between that and JVL advocating to young new players on his "building on a budget" article that ponder was modern legal figured I had a slew of topics...that I would rather just not address. It's not that they aren't important, it's just they've all been addressed and beaten into the ground already. It's funny I wanted to make posts on Monday to avoid this sort of thing. Twitter has been painfully slow, no one was mugged or had their car broken into this weekend, and it snowed here in California. I imagine this is what it's like to be in bizarro world, I know it's all fucked up but what more should I expect from bizarro world.

It should be obvious that if you have BWG tokens in block you should spend time this evening unsleeving and prepping to sell off the walkers so you can rebuild something else, the image means it's getting banned. I want to argue that it's just in modern because everything gets banned there, but I've come to learn that B&R isn't really about rational thought and over looking design that WOTC spends years on. What it's really about is whining on twitter after shifting large quantities of stock out and wanting to do the same with the remainder of your inventory, currently SCG has 9 sorins and 9 garruks in stock. Coincidence that their writers have been advocating the deck as a problem, only in the second hand business you want your top sellers to flop, lets you sell a wider range as the hive mind catches back up. It's dirty pool, it wont stop, but it needs to be made more apparent.

Circle of Protection: Theft

Theft has gotten way way waaaaaaaay out a hand over these past couple of weeks and twitter seems to be getting a lot of people talking in circles. This is never going to go away, magic cards cost way to much money, most standard decks are the equivalent to a car payment and legacy...actual cars. Imagine a room full of 20-30 year old males, over 90% of them are overweight and out of shape, they all carry books and boxes of card board estimating anywhere from 800-1500 dollars on average, when there is security they man the front door, the halls outside, and they armed with a walkie talkie and can't physically do anything. But it gets better, you don't have to walk down to the pawn shop or swindle people out of the back of your car, there are people in the building that pay cash for this cardboard without having to check id and no documentation. This is candy land for any thief.

I just want to make it clear that things have been taken into consideration, long before any of this the head judge does take time during announcements to address taking care of your belongings, something along the lines of "watch your shit, don't let your buddies watch your shit, they aren't going to treat it like it's their shit", I'm not sure if I'm actually quoting or paraphrasing but you get the idea. But what more do you want than that, it's not the judges job to act as security, they aren't your mother.

So what do we, the players do. There is the obvious, maintaining your belongings under you, putting your chair leg through your back pack strap. There's also the easiest, carry nothing other than your deck strategy, which works if you don't like trading or making money from the vendors.

What to consider:
1. Your bag itself, do all the zippers work? Are there any holes or tearing? This isn't your school books, these are your magic cards, it's money, if your bag isn't in great condition, buy another one.
2. Weight, are your belongings so heavy that you can't comfortably carry them around for 8-10 hours, your probably one of those people that trust your friends casually playing between rounds to watch your stuff, consider some, possibly all of it gone. That extra couple of decks for casual play maybe your clothes and hygiene products, leave it in the room, lighten the load.
3. Size, if it cant fit into a bathroom stall with you, you should of bought vendor space, you need to be able to properly watch your bag under your own power.
4. Deck boxes, the perfect thing to pocket, if you have several of these things your asking for it, keep it simple, what you need, everything else needs to be under lock and key and attached to you or not on the floor.
5. While trading, watch your books, if your belongs make you to stationary your going to have problems moving while your partners buddy shows up and it slowly moves further and further from you.
6. Restrooms, use the ones closest to the floor or the ones on the floor, many events are held at convention centers and I know the line can get long sometimes, but if your not capable of fending off several people maybe it's best you stay with the herd.

Simple stuff no one really takes into consideration, you may not be watching your stuff every second, they are.

Asphyxiating Blast

Over the weekend this received a lot of attention. And based on the rationality of this doesn't matched the already confirmed names of Avacyn Restored's pre-release and buy a box card, even though the release and game day cards easily fall under "promo", was quickly discarded as fake. But what if it's not. What if WotC understands that it has to properly address what's wrong with legacy. FoW isn't on the RL I do understand that, which is why the discussion of it being reprinted is very common as it obviously feels mythic, which is why the uncommon fetches a $50+ price tag. But FoW can't be reprinted, because it's just to good, dramatically unbalancing blue for the next 2 years is the only way to properly justify a reprint in a non promotional print. So ideally we would need a "fixed" version, an almost neutered version to help usher in the next generation of legacy players, if WotC does in fact want to preserve the format. Id go as far as to say that this would ultimately allow WotC to ban FoW, maintaining a necessary evil that must exist as there are way to many combo decks that would easily be a repeat of combo winter times one thousand.

The argument "WotC learned it's mistake from misstep" argument is heavily flawed. Now the source really didn't state how they came into contact with this information it could very well be a poor translation. Now what if it read like this:

Asphyxiating Blast
1UU
instant

You may pay 2 life and exile a blue card from your hand rather than pay Asphyxiating Blast's mana cost. Counter target spell with converted mana cost 3 or less.

Now from a standard players view point this is a 2 for 1 for the first couple of turns of play and as the game progresses it becomes a narrow cancel. It's good, feels mythic, yet isn't overpowered. But it would still be quickly banned in modern, that list isn't long enough yet and is dictated by twitter.