My new deck

Ok my new deck is even better its a guildmage deck its a blue, white, red, and black deck its the ultimate counter deck look at my page ill post the cards there
magicthegathering-josh.blogspot.com

White Spotlight: Cheapeness

Ok, something that I've always seen that's nice about white is it's cheap enchantments/creatures. Although it isn't quite as cheap as some of the creatures green can get out, it does pretty well for itself getting out lots of small guys really fast and then using cheap enchantments like concerted effort and something chorus to make them suddenly not so small and puny creatures.
So white gets stuff out fast. This is the first part of its strategy. Getting stuff out fast and consistently allows it to develop its middle/end-game strategies that help make this more worthwhile. Sliver decks are incredible this way; it seems for every card you play it ends up affecting a whole lot more than it should. Stuff like something catapult and crossbow infantry can let your small guys take on the big ones and remain unhurt.
White is also incredible at blocking. Righteousness (spelling check), an example of this, costs one white mana and gives target blocking creature +7/+7 until end of turn. That means your puny 2/2 veteran cavaliers can defend against some huge 8/8 monster and escape unscathed. Using damage prevention spells/abilities gives even more of a boost. ok I've got to go right now, so I'll ad more later. Like tommorow or something.

Color Spotlight: White

Ok, I'm going to spend the next few posts on this spotlight, so feel free to comment as much as you would like. Each post will just outline one of the strengths/weaknesses of white. I'll cover color combinations in different spotlights.

The first quality of White I see is:

Healing/Damage Prevention: White gets life easily, which can help a lot in longer games. It has creatures that give you life when they come into play, creatures that tap to prevent damage, spells that give you life, spells that give huge advantages to blocking creatures, spells that prevent damage, etc.
This makes it good against some of red's techniques, because it can counter things like Shock or Lava Axe more easily, and help prevent the fast win. But white is different from blue in that it prevents the early game by healing and damage prevention, as opposed to counterspell. I think that white is also more inclined to use creature abilities rather than instants/sorceries, which seems different from blue.

Magic: Academy

Ok as Jack was saying, it's hard to find a lot of stuff that isn't random crap on the internet about Magic. First of all, I suggest the previously mentioned official site www.magicthegathering.com, but even within that it's hard to navigate yourself around if you haven't taken it as a college course.
So, to magically make all of these problems disappear, there is an archive specifically designed for players such as Jack who know the basic rules but don't know where to go from that,
there is Magic: Academy. It publishes every Saturday, and I read it all the time. Or at least when it publishes.
The link is www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=mtgcom/columnarchive&column=MagicAcademy

Remember, it's for players who already know the basic rules, so if you don't know them I could find them for you. Just ask.

Josh's Decks

Yeah i have two decks my first deck is called Rakdos Bloodspurt it alows me to do lots of damage and specializes in having no cards in your hand

My second deck is a blue green deck and i haven't experimented with it much

Rares

Has anybody seen some cool rares lately? I know Taylor has :P

The cooles one I've seen problably was at a Vintage review thing, it was:

Tendrils of Agony: Cost one colorless 2 swamp, Does 2 damage to target creature or player and you gain 2 life; copy this spell for each spell played this turn (you may choose new targets for the copies)

Other Blog

Hey, for those of you who don't know (and for others who I need to shove it down their throats), my other blog (for more general stuff that more than Magic nerds can contribute to) is
at stealthymatt.blogspot.com

Cards

It is apparent everyone (largely because of Josh and Daniel) has gotten a lot more cards now, so it'd be nice if everyone could post the decks they have with brief summaries.
mine are:

Black Ice: Blue/Black, relatively medium deck based on holding off creatures until some key cards come out, (e.g. Chilling Shade, Rimefeather Owl, Balduvian Frostwalker, & Grinning Demon.)

Blue Vortex: Blue/Red, control deck based on replication, returning creatures (yours and your opponents) back to hands, and using Izzet Chronarch to get them back. Playing a bunch of spells at the end allows Wee Dragonauts, Gelectrode, or some other card I can't remember to do a lot of indirect damage.

Time Spiral:

ok, the newest expansion preleases in just a couple days, and it is looking cool: TimeSpiral, focused (obviously) on manipulating time in various ways, is going to be cool.

Mtg link:

the link for the official Magic: The Gathering Website is www.magicthegathering.com, or at least that should get you there

comments

Ok, I think I've finally fixed the comments so anyone can use them. If you're having problems, try again, then tell me.

the Magic colors

we've all heard many things about what makes the colors individual, and they are have been true somewhat, but none of them have covered it completely. So what strategies have people found that work best with certain colors? For example blue decks almost always seem to be control with counterspell and flying for me. Those are just the cards I have. Everyone knows red is damage. Anything else?

Blog Purpose:

Magic! Ideas on strategy, cool cards you've seen, and almost anything having to do with Magic.