I am excited about our exclusive preview card from Rise of Eldrazi. This card should be see play in both Standard and Block Constructed and presents some interesting challenges for deck designers. I spoke with two of them — perhaps you have even read their books — about Consuming Vapors and what impact it might have on Constructed. The first two podcasts are with Deckade author Michael J. Flores huddled outside of Shake Shack on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. Mike and I also scroll through some of the officially spoiled cards and muse about their roles in Constructed formats.

The second two ‘casts were also done within line of sight of a Shake Shack. This time we were in My Files author Zvi Mowshowitz’ Chelsea apartment. We caught Zvi’s unfiltered reaction to the card as he had not seen it prior to switching on the recorder after once again talking about the highlights from the officially spoiled cards. Zvi also talked about his preparations for Pro Tour San Juan and the team he is assembling to follow up on the success of his Mythic build for PT San Diego.

Rise of Eldrazi Preview Podcast Part 1

Fans,

Enjoy this great Deck Tech from Pro Tour: San Diego 2010 with Zvi!

Happy New Year Top8Magic Fans,

BDM, Mike and I want to wish all of you a Happy New Year! We have many exciting plans for this upcoming year and we want to thank you all for your support.

BDM will be posting a cool draft walk through with a podcast that he recorded right before Christmas with Steve Sadin.

We are also recording a podcast with The Zvi to discuss My Files Part 1 and we hope to have a preview of My Files Part 2 out this week.

We also want to thank all of you who picked up a copy of My Files Part 1 and wanted to know what you thought of it. We have not seen any reviews yet, so please send them over or post your thoughts here.

Best,

Matt Wang

Fans,

My Files is at the printers and we will make sure that all preorders will make it to you before the holidays!

If you have not purchased one, order a copy for a friend as a gift  (500+ pages of Magic’s past by one of its best writers)!

Thanks for your patience and support!

Happy Thanksgiving from the Top8Magic Crew!

After a handful of delays, Top8Magic.com is about to publish our second collection of Magic: The Gathering writing from the game’s most respected and prolific authors. This time out we will be publishing a collection by Pro Tour Hall of Famer Zvi Mowshowitz that begins with his earliest works and follows his nomadic writing career from website to website.

There is hardly a Magic site of note that Zvi has not written for in his career and he was among the very first to treat writing about Magic as a way to augment a Pro Player’s salary. This is common-place in the modern era but — as Zvi points out in the new material he wrote for the section on his Magic Dojo careeer — that was not always the case.

Zvi has written abundant new material for this volume including “director’s commentary” after many of his more famous and favorite selections. As Mike did with  Deckade, Zvi has also written new material to sum up each era of his career. I am happy to present Zvi’s thoughts on The Dojo Philosophy. We hope you enjoy it and if you are interested in purchasing this volume, which will ship late September/early October, you can do so by clicking on this link.

The Dojo Philosophy
by Zvi Mowshowitz

In the beginning, we didn’t write because we were paid. We wrote because we wanted to share our wisdom. We wrote to make our name, to claim our ideas as our own while sharing them. We wrote because we enjoyed writing. We wrote because we felt it was part of our obligation to the Magic community in general and the Dojo in particular. We took in the words of others, and followed Sensei’s motto: Study and grow strong. In exchange, when our time came, we would report back on our decks, our tournaments and our ideas. Read the rest of this entry »

Duels of the Planeswalkers is a unique product. It does some things spectacularly right, and does other things spectacularly wrong. The things it does right represent some great work and show a lot of promise for other, better projects in the future. The things it does wrong range from places where I think priorities were misplaced, to places where we will need more time to improve the product to places where the game is intentionally being held back for reasons both good and ill. Overall, this is a great game at its absurdly low price point that has the promise to mature into something far greater.

Read the rest of this entry »

The Zvi, Will “Price of Progress” and Matt Wang discuss M10

Zvi Cast about M10 - Part 3