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The Usual Rant with Stephen Kok
Stephen Kok
stextc@yahoo.com
He started out around the Revised / Dark time of Magic, taking a break from it around the Urza and Invasion Block. Although he's a player mainly, he has experienced both sides as a tournament organise as well as a judge. The first deck he played seriously was a little white weenie sporting such fun additions as Balance and Swords to Plowshares just around the time of 4th Edition.

Writing about the different deck archetypes and understanding the world of constructed tournaments is his game. Amongst his past times include watching the Manly Sea Eagles play in Brookvale, too much time at the movies and hoping to still be in regular employment.

MtGParadise Arcana Sketches
22-10-2005
One of the biggest components of magic is its stunning visuals. From fantasy to the metallic world of Mirrodin, Magic has a huge number of art styles. Future MtGParadise Arcana will be low on words but doesn't a picture tell a thousand words?

Extended at SGC - 15th January 2005
03-02-2005
With Extended season just around the corner this was an excellent chance to practise and flex your Extended might. A good selection of decks turned up including White Weenie, Wishing Goblins, Madness and Reanimator. Affinity was surprisingly a missing archetype but I would certain expect it to become a force when Extended season rolls around. I guess fear of Energy Flux drove it away - there was an Enchantress deck which had an Energy Flux in the main deck!

Seriously Fun - Thief in the Garden
18-10-2004
Combo Decks are the probably the most fun part of Magic as they give card interaction. There's nothing more fun that cards that word together to produce an effect. Unfortunately it is probably a good time to note that the bane of all combo decks are control based decks which has the ability to disrupt the game winning combo with well timed removal or counter.

How to help?
15-09-2004
One of the nicer jobs I have as Tournament Organiser at Happyland, Northbridge is watching the players there (most are under 15) slowly improve. Suddenly they start asking the right questions to try and better themselves in the game. Questions stop being "How many lands should this deck have?" to "Is Shatter a better choice than the Electrostatic bolt?

Over and Over again.
21-07-2004
Tucked away in corner of my magic collection is an interesting deck with two prominent enchancements, namely Recurring Nightmare and Survival of the Fittest. (Although my original deck with 4 of each enchantment is no longer legal, it is still a lot of fun to play and I just haven't had the heart to take it apart after the effort to get the components to build the deck.) The concept was relatively simple, use survival to load your graveyard of needed creatures and then Recurring Nightmare to bring them into play.

Preparing for the Ravnica Pre-Release
28-08-2005
With the Ravnica Pre-Release happening on 24th September, it is a great opportunity for those who are not familiar with the tournament side of MtG to get involved. The first sanctioned tournament I was involved with was the Tempest pre-release and it was a lot of fun. At that time I didn't really know what I was doing but was there more for the ride.

Seriously Fun - Synergy
12-10-2004
Fashion. Yes, fashion. How does fashion fit into Magic the Gathering? The better you look the more distracted your opponent will be? Maybe. The worse you dress the more repulsed your opponent will be? Perhaps.

My first experience with Type 1 (SGC Type 1 Tournament Report)
11-08-2004
The first I heard of a Type 1 tournament was from MtGParadise and I knew it was something I definitely wanted to try. The prospect of playing with extreme power was very tempting to say the least. So planning was under way for the Type 1 tournament at Sydney Games Centre on the 31st of July.

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