I have 4 Trop Islands, 4 Volcanic Islands, 2 Underground Seas, a Mana Drain and that's about it. Everything I regularly play is foiled though, even some of the harder to get stuff like Oaths.

Steven's Institute of Technology in NJ is another excellent school to check out.

That's tough. I'd have to go with:

Piano Man - Billy Joel
Don't Stop Me Now - Queen
Sweet Child o' Mine - Guns N' Roses

Chuck Norris can win a game of Connect Four in only three moves.

That cracked me up.

This should probably be in humor, but I can't post there.

If you type "failure" into Google, and click I'm feeling lucky, you get http://www.whitheouse.gov/president/gwbbio.html

One of my friends showed me that today and it just cracked me up.

I play extended when I can (which isn't often enough), but vintage is definitely my favorite format by far.

The look on the little kid's face at the end is PRICELESS.

I like them, although I like the original art more (but that's just me being nostalgic). I traded my old ones recently, so I'm picking up 4 Russian foils as soon as the price for Ravnica chase cards stabilizes a bit. 

Sometimes a foil card's foil falls off (or is never put on), and that's probably what you have. I don't think it'd be worth anything, but I might be wrong.

I don't think that's such a bad idea. Letting people have as many proxies as they want, provided they have good proxies is actually incredibly helpful to many people.

For the player on a budget, it allows them to have the cards they need. I own no power, and only 1 Mana Drain, so I'm in this camp. Frankly, I don't mind spending the time to make good proxies, because I hate sitting across from bad ones, and I know that I for one appreciate being able to tell what cards I'm playing against, and I'm sure other people do too. My proxies are all erased cards with new text and art drawn in. No one mistakes them for anything other than what they are.

This is also good because it stops people from having decks made up of almost entirely proxies. It's possible to do, but honestly, other than in very extentuating circumstances, who's going to spend the time making that many proxies? It's time consuming, and quite a bit of work.

So basically, I like this suggestion a lot. As ridiculous as it might sound at first, when you think about it, it definitely has its advantages.

Welcome back!

I got back into Magic after a somewhat long break about 2 years ago. What worked really well for me was to pick up an older deck I was familiar with (Sui =x) and just start playing people on MWS. As I watched the newer decks in operation I got a better feel for what they did, until finally I picked up Worldgorger Dragon combo myself.

Just as a (way too) brief summary of a few of today's decks, I'll just give you a brief rundown of these.

Control Slaver: Recognized by Goblin Welder, Mindslaver, and either Pentavus or Crucible of Worlds and an Artifact Land. The deck uses Mana Drain  to ramp up huge amounts of mana quickly, then infinitely Mindslavers the opponent with the aforementioned cards. Usually wins with Pentavus, Triskelion, or Welder beats, although Tinker->Darksteel Colossus has been showing up more frequently lately.

Stax: A few different varieties have shown up lately, but the most prevalent has been Uba Stax, which uses Uba Mask, Bazaar of Baghdad and sometimes MD Null Rod. This deck is mono-red. The other prevalent build is 5C Stax, which on top of the normal Stax components runs White for Balance and possibly STP, and Blue for draw and usually In The Eye of Chaos. I've also seen Chains of Mephistopheles on a few occasions. Someone else might want to give a better description of Stax, I'm not the most familiar person with it.

Fish: Fish is an Aggro-Control deck that uses creatures such as Meddling Mage, Rootwater Thief, Cloud of Faeries, Basking Rootwalla and Wild Mongrel. Most current builds are either U/W or U/G. Umezawa's Jitte and Aether Vial are two important cards in making Fish competitive. It usually runs a large ammount of disruption in the form of Wastelands, Chalice of the Voids and/or Null Rods.

Gifts: Gifts is the newest deck on this list, being created by the Meandeckers shortly after Gifts Ungiven was printed. The deck is U/R/B, and runs cards like Gifts Ungiven and Mana Drain. It wins with either Tendrils of Agony (In the sideboard, retrieved with Burning Wish) or Darksteel Colossus and Time Walk. The decks sets itself up to be in complete control of the game, and then casts Gifts Ungiven for some combination of Tinker, Recoup, Yawgmoth's Will, Time Walk and Burning Wish.
Along the way the Gifts player will usually cast other copies of Gifts for whatever they need at the moment, be it mana, counters, or card advantage.

I think those are the big four at the moment, but someone else might want to elaborate on what I've written and add in decks I've left out, such as Oath, Dragon, Long, FCG and Workshop Aggro

It's always a shame to see someone quit. We never really talked, but your posts almost always made me laugh. Hope you at least stick around the community forums. Good luck to you and your daughter in everything you do!

(On a side note, I totally agree with Bram that your divorce was one of the most memorable threads ever posted.)

Sorry, Leaving out Dark Rituals was a mistake, the deck isn't (even good at pretending to be) competitive without them.

Beat me to posting it by 15 minutes. 

Those are awesome, like, they make me want to play extended again.

rofl @ silvernail: That had to be the best magic analogy I've seen in a while.

CapitanJon's build is probably not the best thing to run in an aggro metagame. You definitely wouldn't want Negators, those should be replaced with maybe Phyrexian War Beasts? I'm not entirely sure, I haven't played this deck in years. You should also drop the Black Knights for Nantuko Shades.  I'm just tossing this list together real quick, so it's probably a bit off, but try something like this is you -must-  run Sui.

4 Nantuko Shade
4 Hypnotic Spectre
3 Masticore
3 Phyrexian War Beast

4 Duress
4 Hymn to Tourach
3 Sinkhole
1 Mind Twist

4 Dark Ritual
3 Night's Whisper
1 Yawg's Win
1 Demonic Tutor

2 Diabolic Edict

1 Mox Jet
1 Black Lotus
1 Strip Mine
4 Wasteland
16 Swamps

EDIT: Haha, I can't believe I forgot Dark Ritual.

My favorite artist is Christopher Rush, just because I've always loved the art on The Wretched (I collect them  ). I do have to agree with Bram though, Drew Tucker is another great artist, and probably my second choice. My third pick would have to be Donato Giancola, he's done some of the best looking artifacts out there.

I think it's kind of annoying in some ways, but great in others. "End my turn" makes a lot more sense than "Pass", but being used to Pass by now, I keep going to click and not seeing the button.

Other than that, having all empty games located at the bottom, and being able to reject (unwanted) people who try to join is great.

I'll definitely be there. I'll most likely be taking the train though. Does anyone have directions to walk from the station to the shop? I'm not too familiar with the area.

I'm looking to pick up Mana Drains and a few pieces of power, but I really have no idea where the best place to buy it would be. I'm unfortunately from Northern NJ, where Type 1 doesn't exist, and I know none of the card shops around here have Type 1 tourneys, so I'm assuming they wouldn't have much (if any) of the Power 9. I've been looking at ebay mostly, but I've heard good and bad things about that, so I'm a little uneasy. Does anyone have an opinion either way on that? Help would be appreciated.