As in other sports, watching the coverage is more interesting when you know the competitors and have favorites to root for. Befitting of a World Championship, most players that will be in Amsterdam are indeed Magic celebrities already. However, some might be not as well known yet, or you might just want to know more about a few of them.

When I started this booklet, the idea was to create something similar to the special issues sports magazines publish when a new football or baseball season starts. I can compete neither in professionalism nor in man hours with something like Sports Illustrated, of course. Nevertheless I think this booklet is a good first step to bring an analog to those magazine’s to Magic.

In the course of this booklet, the tournament, its history, and all the players are introduced. For each competitor there are stats, a brief description of the player, a picture, and an interview with the player. Without a doubt the interviews are the heart of this text. I am very grateful that all 16 players took the time to answer the questions I sent them. This is where this document comes alive instead of being just a collection of stats.

Players must have spent ten years since their first Pro Tour appearance and amassed 100 Pro Points in their career to be eligible for the Pro Tour Hall of Fame. The requirements are simple. Meeting them is not.

Magic 2014 is upon us, and I am excited about one card in particular: Young Pyromancer.

It's almost as if Wizards of the Coast saw my deck, figured it needed a little extra juice, and went back in time to create Young Pyromancer just for me. Sure, other players and deckbuilders might be interested in Young Pyromancer (hi Drew Levin!), but for now I'm going to assume it was made just for me.

Many of you know about the Myers-Briggs personality test. It labels your personality based on four different dichotomies: Introvert vs. Extrovert, Sensing vs. Intuition, Thinking vs. Feeling, and Judging vs. Perception.

I've come up with a similar test specifically for Magic players, after observing the different kinds of people in the game and their unique play styles.

This isn't anything like Maro's Timmy, Johnny, and Spike categories because it isn't about what you enjoy in Magic. It's about the kind of player you are and where your strengths lie. It's about what motivates you to play and how you make in-game decisions.

I believe understanding yourself as a player will help you use your strengths more wisely and help overcome your weaknesses. A certain level of self-reflection is needed in any player with the ambition to win a tournament—whether it is FNM, a PTQ, or a Pro Tour. Knowing more about your own play style and preferences will also help you connect better with others, such as teammates who need to combine their skill sets. (Voltron it up!)

Note that everyone has some of each quality; no one is 100% one or the other. But often they will have a stronger preference for one over the other. The question is, which is stronger for you?

Hello!Originally, I was going to write about the traps you can fall into when you’re deckbuilding, which was a suggestion I received on Twitter. As I wrote them, though, I found that they applied more to playtesting than to deckbuilding, so I changed the focus of the article. Of course to deckbuild you have to playtest, so it’s not that different, but hopefully it helps when you need to tweak a deck or even just figure out which of the already existing decks you like more.

Throughout the years, I’ve worked with different kinds of players, of many different levels. I’ve been a casual player, I’ve been a PTQ player working with other PTQ players, I’ve been a first time PTer working with other first time PTers, and I’ve been a Pro Player working with other Pro Players. For all their differences in skill and experience, most players in those groups (as well as myself) have fallen for the same playtesting traps.

A post goes live, and a link appears like a beacon in the night. Little link tentacles begin to reach out to Twitter, Reddit, and Facebook, and the discussions explode. The experts on everything with “studies” they found in their Google search bar begin dispensing knowledge justice.

Here come the trigger words: sexism, white knights, oversensitive, crybabies

The Backfire Effect  is in full display, and nothing is really solved. Nothing changes.

I received several e-mails and more direct messages on Twitter from both men and women asking what I thought of Aaron’s comments. I too could respond with studies. I could become gleefully link-happy with study after study accounting how not only can women be just as competitive as men but when needed can display a viciousness unique unto ourselves. I mean, have you ever been to cheerleading tryouts? I could explain to you that law-enforcement agencies across the country are now recruiting women with intensity to combat toxic and brutal cop cultures. We can read studies together finding women are more likely to deploy empathy over ego, attempting to keep volatile situations from escalating. We could examine statistics by Fortune 500 companies showing there is a direct correlation between having a strong female role model and recruitment levels. I could. I’m not.