I learned a new thing today. That thing? Rejected flavor text. It's a little-known website out there, but Rejected Flavor Text has some winners. Take, for instance, this rejected flavor text for All is Dust. "“Not by the hair on my chinny-chin-chin,” said the pig from inside the brick house. “If you say so,” said […]

The post Rejected Flavor Text first appeared on Quiet Speculation.

Dragon's of Tarkir is failing to excite many in the tournament community, but Corbin believes its value will ultimately be buoyed by casual demand. Read on for his explanation.

The post Insider: Dragon’s Maze of Tarkir? first appeared on Quiet Speculation.

Not that I know much about any of it, but there's a lot of different ways to make art for Magic. From your "traditional" methods to the newest forms of creation, Magic art is created in a variety of ways, much of which is, like most other things these days, digital. But not Dragons of Tarkir.  […]

The post The Art of Dragons of Tarkir first appeared on Quiet Speculation.

(This has been cross-posted in a partnership with Empeopled.com). Insider members of Quiet Speculation had access to parts of this article a few weeks ago, but it's now freely available to everyone! You can find the full article here. 

The post Five Specs I Love first appeared on Quiet Speculation.

There was an interesting discussion about this that spawned from this post, but there's a TL;DR version as well. Basically, it boils down to this question: should a store employee or judge working the event also be allowed to play in the event? The rules are that they can, so there's no issue there. The […]

The post Should employees/judges play in events they’re running? first appeared on Quiet Speculation.

It's that time again, the time when everyone is going to look ahead to Dragons of Tarkir! Also, it's that time when we all do set reviews. At Brainstorm Brewery we're no different, and we spent the week on the podcast turning in a two-hour review of every Rare and Mythic. I'm sure we're right […]

The post Brainstorm Brewery Dragons of Tarkir Set Review first appeared on Quiet Speculation.

Corbin Hosler presents his thoughts on Dragons of Tarkir as we move into prerelease weekend, discussing notable financial players in the set and where he sees them settling down the line.

The post Insider: Dragons of Tarkir Prerelease Primer first appeared on Quiet Speculation.

There's been a popular series running around recently, highlighting some competitive-ish decks for formats while keeping the cost under XYZ amount of dollars. Kind of a cool idea, and an easy way for people to break into older formats. Now, we've talked before about how sometimes building a "cheaper" Tier 2 deck is more expensive […]

The post Playing Legacy on a (tiny) budget first appeared on Quiet Speculation.

This is cross-posted in a partnership with www.empeopled.com. Spoilers upfront: I don’t expect any bans or unbans when Dragons of Tarkir officially releases next week. Modern seems healthy-ish if not perfect, and Standard and Legacy seem to be in okay places as well. But you never know what could happen, and today I want to […]

The post Finance 101: Managing the Banlist first appeared on Quiet Speculation.

The Dragons of Tarkir prerelease is almost upon us, and Gavin Verhey at the mothership has you ready to go. There's the usual info and deck-building tips, but there's also info about the promotion that is happening at this particular Prerelease. Dargons destroy things! That's it in a nutshell. With successes come prizes, and the ability to […]

The post Gavin Verhey’s Prerelease Primer first appeared on Quiet Speculation.

And in Magic, it does even more. I'm not an art guy. I'm no Mike Linnemann. Half the time I don't even look at the art outside of using it to identify cards. But, hell, when you take the time there's some really cool stuff there. Take this, for instance. Looked at separately, you'd never notice […]

The post Time Does Things To You first appeared on Quiet Speculation.

Right before Dragons of Tarkir gets officially released, Corbin looks back at his calls for Fate Reforged. Read on to see how his predictions fared this time around.

The post Insider: Reforging the Fates first appeared on Quiet Speculation.

Jason does a great job covering all your spoiler needs for Dragons of Tarkir, but we have some late-breaking spoilers today that I wanted to write a little about. They're big, they're scary, they're... rocks. But really cool rocks. All of these Dragon monuments function the same way: they add one of two colors to your mana […]

The post Dragon Rocks! first appeared on Quiet Speculation.

You may have heard of CardMageddon. Or, more likely, you didn't. It was a big event hosted by CardAgain some number of months ago, and they ran into a few problems, to say the least. Basically, no one showed up for whatever reason. It was the company's first tournament, and it's safe to say the […]

The post CardMageddon pays out… a little first appeared on Quiet Speculation.

It's that time of year again. The time when there's an awesome convention I would love to be at but unfortunately cannot attend. It happens several times a year, for what it's worth. The way WoTC is teasing this thing... I don't even know what to expect. Whoever wrote this (hi, Blake!) says it will […]

The post PAX East MTG Panel will be streamed first appeared on Quiet Speculation.

It's the nightmare scenario for many of us. Your cards are stolen from your car, lost in a fire, whatever disaster may strike. Either way, it ends up the same. You, without a collection. How would you cope? Personally, I've insured my collection to help ease the pain of something like this happening. Other have […]

The post Coping with a Lost Collection first appeared on Quiet Speculation.

It seems spoiler season has sneaked up on us faster than usual with Dragons of Tarkir. Corbin surveys the new cards we've seen so far, as well as announcing a new project he'll be reporting on in his column.

The post Insider: Snap Judgments and a New Project first appeared on Quiet Speculation.

This is cross-posted here thanks to a partnership with www.empeopled.com. We're back this week to Finance 101, and today I think I have a really good topic that toes the line between 101 and more advanced. What makes for a good spec? A month or so ago I noticed that, as everyone has by now, […]

The post What Makes a Good Spec? first appeared on Quiet Speculation.

First it was the "accidental" leak of a mechanic many have labeled "Megamorph." And, on the eve of Dragons of Tarkir spoilers (that came along fast, didn't it?), we'll take whatever spoilers we can get. So here's another. Not so helpful? Here you go. Deathbringer Dragonlord (or Reaper Dragonlord ? I don't know its official […]

The post First Dragons of Tarkir spoilers trickle in first appeared on Quiet Speculation.

It's been a hot-button topic recently: counterfeits, and since they're so often tied together, the Reserved List. We all know and hate the Reserved List, but it seems to always come up when we talk about the counterfeits that have been occasionally popping up in the market. We talked the topic on Brainstorm Brewery this […]

The post Brainstorm Brewery #136: The One Where We Talk Counterfeits and Reserved List first appeared on Quiet Speculation.