Dies to Removal

TCG player is the only place I usually read. Don't read SCG since they charge for the "good" stuff. Where else has some decent articles?

We don't charge for "good" stuff, we charge for stuff written by players that people know. Trust me, as somebody who reads a lot of those articles in editing, a lot of what you get is a finished product, but it's just from a talking head. We use their names more than we use their information, which is just as likely to be rubbish as something written by a random contributor.

TCGPlayer is good too, though. I like how they lay all of their information out graphically.

TCG player is the only place I usually read. Don't read SCG since they charge for the "good" stuff. Where else has some decent articles?

Channel Fireball, gatheringmagic.com. Don't read them regularly, but what I've read, I've often liked.

And TCGplayer definitely has my favorite author ever, though he doesn't write very often since this last year on account of getting married and job'd and all, and doing his gardening work all afternoon today.

We don't charge for "good" stuff, we charge for stuff written by players that people know. Trust me, as somebody who reads a lot of those articles in editing, a lot of what you get is a finished product, but it's just from a talking head. We use their names more than we use their information, which is just as likely to be rubbish as something written by a random contributor.

Is this supposed to be in support of charging $50/year for articles about turning cardboard sideways and YouTube videos shot in someone's kitchen?

I am not obligated to try and
sell subscriptions, so I am just telling it like it is. Pros can be bad at this game too, we exercise a certain level of quality control in editing so that said "pros" can't spread misinformation rampantly. I don't know if other sites do this or not, but what I do know is that we edit quite a bit of bad information out of all of our articles, premium or not.

And yet Brad Nelson still gets to write?

And yet Brad Nelson still gets to write?

You should see Cedrick's unedited articles. Ugh.

Half the shit that gets published by Cedric is...questionable.

I'm only allowed to chop so much because if I go too far they just whine about having to start from square one, and then I get grumbled at by the rest of the staff on google voice.

Why would someone pay for articles in a game where most formats have 4-5 top tier decks that everyone knows. Reading articles won't improve your limited skills imo.

I understand you charge because people will pay I just don't see the logic

I understand you charge because people will pay I just don't see the logic

To be fair we practically give away premium subscriptions like candy. Even we don't really know why we still have premium content still.

It is probably just a relic of an age since passed, where information moved more slowly and we capitalized on that, but I didn't work at SCG back then so I don't know.

What do you mean you give them away?

TCG used to have a guy who break down the mtgo meta game every week with percentage of major decks showing up. It was pretty good. Apparently they don't do that anymore though.

What do you mean you give them away?

I mean we literally give them away. You get free premium every time you enter a Starcitygames event, we raffle off premium on Facebook/Twitter pretty regularly, etc.

We actually don't make a lot of money on premium anymore, so like I said, I'm not sure why we still have it.

I happen to actually hit MTGS, not for the forums but for the site content particularly the aggregate.
http://www.mtgsalvation.com/radar.html
Helpful to find what you want as its a daily digest and not have to weed thru so much

I also enjoy Dee over on
http://magicgameplan.com/blog/

Yeah I found MGP around a week or two ago, that's a nice little spot. Will be trying his bant delver deck after I get the pieces from DGM for it, pobably week after next.

I always like to read: Paulo Vitor Damo da Rosa (thursdays in channelfireball, sometimes he has some outstanding theory articles)

I always like to read, but less than PV and in no particular order:
Gerry thompson (SCG premium, mostly because he is pretty honest and will not tell you that a certain deck is terrible and then play it... a few months ago he posted his list for the SCG invitational in an article, he played like 73 of the 75)
Shuei nakamura (whenever he writes on Channel Fireball)
Conley Woods (tcg player and Channel fireball)
Luis Scott-Vargas (set reviews, he is also pretty honest and tells you when he thinks a card is going to be big)
Craig Wescoe (TCG)

Matt sperling (Channel fireball, mostly because of the "sick of it" series)
Josh silvestry (Channel fireball)
Roberto Gonzales (bow tie guy)

sometimes they have a good article, i read them only when the headline is atractive enough
Brian kibler (SCG premium)
Patrick Chapin (SGC premium)
Caleb durward (channel fireball)
Ari Lax (Scg premium)

I don't like this author, although i still skip through his articles in order to keep my mind open... sometimes they do have interesting stuff, most of the time i don't agree or don't like the way it is epressed.

Owen trurtnmrnnstelwald (channel fireball, sometimes he is misleading, i remember an article about X deck he played in a GP and made top 16, the thing is that the article was titled "
Winning with X in Zville", he didn't won, and the deck he played had only 3 copies in the top 32 out of a 800 players...and one of the other copies of the deck was played for another pro player... so no... he was not winning neither the deck was winning.)
Travis Woo (the guy was funny... then he got crazy and started to feel himself like an internet celebrity and now he is nuts)
Mike Flores ("who is the beatdown" is one of the mastrpieces of the mtg theory most of what he writes now is just well, weird.)
Cedric Philips (He reminds me of the uncle of napoleon dynamite... when i was in kyoto i was awesome... blah, blah, blah, Patrick Chapin sometimes has the same issues)