To Be Continued LLC is a media and entertainment company focused on creating intellectual property for the comic and collectible card game market and was founded in 2005 by Brian David-Marshall. The company is currently working on a number of comic and card game-related projects. The card-game related projects fall under the imprint of Top8Magic.com.

Top8Magic.com’s Mission

Back in the early days of Magic: The Gathering Pro Tour there was a flurry of publishing activity based on understanding how to play the game better. George Baxter published a series of books which covered theory, deckbuilding, and basic strategy. Jeff Franzmann (aka Canticle) published a collection of Single Card Strategies. Wizards of the Coast even got into game with a series of books by Beth Moursund that deconstructed decks and provided general strategy aimed at beginning players.

As the Pro Tour took off the era of the Internet Magic began and books dedicated to improving your Magic play quickly became obsolete. People did not want to hear about last month’s decks when the Magic Dojo was giving you the Decks to Beat from last weekend’s tournament. Books continued to come out but they could not possibly keep pace with the steep learning curve of the times. Players still needed to learn to keep their decks to 60 cards, play four copies of their broken spells, and how to determine who the beatdown player was in a given match-up. All those lessons would be learned on the pages of the web and not those found in books.

This may seem an odd way to introduce a line of books about Magic. It has been ten years since that first Pro Tour and there has never been a better vantage to look back at the game and appreciate the road we have traveled. Our first publication is going to do exactly that as we collect ten years of writing by Michael J Flores from his earliest Usenet posts through his Dojo reign through the Neutral Ground era and onto his current stint at Star City Games.

Michael J. Flores: Deckade

The book is called Michael J. Flores: Deckade and it will be on sale exclusively through the Top8Magic.com store. All of his seminal theories and decks are included in this massive 700 page tome; from ‘Investment’ to ‘How We All Learned to Break The Rule of Four’ to ‘Silver Bullets’ to ‘The Philosophy of Fire’.

If it appeared on the old Usenet boards, The Magic Dojo, Neutral Ground, Brainburst, or Star City Games it is all collected in Deckade with new commentary by Michael J. Flores and introductions by some of the top names in Magic including Randy Buehler, Brian David-Marshall, Zvi Mowshowitz and more!

Future Projects

Mike is working on another book for later on this year which is going to be in collaboration with Jon Finkel. The book is going to follow Jon’s Magic career step by step and delve into Jon’s unique approach to playing Magic that carried him through eleven Pro Tour Top 8s, two Junior Pro Tour Top 8s, multiple Pro Tour victories, a Player of the Year title, and recently culminated with his induction into the Pro Tour Hall of Fame. Mike is also working on an exciting new media project that we hope to announce shortly.

Future books this year will include an exhaustive analysis of all the Top Constructed decks in the 10 year history of the Pro Tour as well as a similar look at the evolution of Magic theory.

Podcasts

In the time between releases we will try to keep you entertained with Podcasts from the New York Magic scene. Our first podcast came out in the days leading up to State Championships at a mock tournament where it was determined that the best deck for that event would be Flores’s nearly Mono-Blue Control deck. More recently we held another mock tournament leading up to Grand Prix Philadelphia where Rich Fein went undefeated playing Chris Pikula’s Deadguy Ale deck. (of course we are only posting that podcast now so don’t feel bad that you missed it).

Check back regularly as we will also be posting semi-regular updates with Top 8 lists by some of the game’s most opinionated souls. They wont make you a better Magic player but they may inspire you to register for our forums and make yourself heard.

About the Partners

Brian David Marshall has been involved in the burgeoning collectible card game market (Magic, Pokemon, Yu-Gi-Oh) for the more than ten years. Brian is the founder of Gray Matter Conventions and Neutral Ground, the largest gaming location in New York City. Brian is currently a featured columnist for www.magicthegathering.com, a commentator on the Pro Tour webcasts, and is the Pro Tour Historian for Wizards of the Coast.

Matthew Wang used to be a decent player and participated in Pro Tour: Columbus, Atlanta and Dallas. After graduating college, he became a banker, but was ultimately pulled back to the world of Magic. As a banker, Matthew has worked on a large variety of deals ranging in value from $100 million to $2 billion and in a number of different industries including energy, media, beverages and drugstores. He usually can be found booster drafting on Magic Online or around Manhattan.

Contact Information

Problems with your order? Email orders@top8magic.com.
Comments / Suggestions? Email comments@top8magic.com.

Top8Magic.com
c/o To Be Continued LLC
115 West 27th Street
Suite 1002
New York, NY 10001
P: (212) 633-8089

Brian David-Marshall: brian@top8magic.com
Matt Wang: matt@top8magic.com