Wow, a great conclusion - I enjoyed the first two, but the finale is where the real meat of the series is. There is a lot more content directly related to magic, and the life lessons are more interesting and thought provoking. The story of Tarmogoyf has been mentioned before, but it's great to see it in detail. It's too bad development didn't stick with Maro's original version of the card, because Tarmogoyf is clearly too good and makes too many other creatures unplayable in comparison. I am also glad to see the comparison drawn with GDS2 winner Ethan Fleisher, whose design work I am very excited to start seeing in the real world. I think it would be great to see some updates from Ethan about his design work now that he is on the inside. Hopefully he will have time to do some writing for the website.

I'm sure leaving Roseanne felt like a setback at the time, but the world of gaming is a lot better off for it. Whoever fired Rosewater from the show may have made the world of sitcom writing poorer, but magic players are grateful.

You know, this Roseasse series has reminded me how great MaRo's writing is even when it has nothing to do with Magic. 

One day, when MaRo semi-retires from Magic (much in the way Richard Garfield is retired from Magic) after he pusblishes Mood Swings, I want to read a column where Mark just talks about things. It can be about anything at all, and he could make it interesting.

Through the years, MaRo's column has been the only one that consistently jumps off the page [with the exception of a string of four equally fantastic House of Cards writers] and can be counted on to be good every single week. I don't want to name names, but half the time I fall asleep halfway through [Steve Sadin's name redacted]'s column. Contrast this to MaRo, I feel he doesn't get enough appreciation for being able to make ten thousand words about anything he writes about genuinely interesting.

Disclaimer: I realize that Sadin has to write in a certain way because the audience for his column topic is interested in a very specific set of information. That doesn't make Rosewater's feats any less impressive. 

The Head Writer told me to lay low, so I did. In retrospect,  though, I  made a very big mistake. If I was going  to stick around, I  needed to make my worth known.

So in other words...Damned if You Do, Damned if You Don't.  No single  strategy will guarantee that your chances improve, so you might as well  just throw darts at a phone book and hope for the best.

Every so often there's a Magic article that explains that the key to getting better at Magic is accepting that you are the cause of your performance. If you lost,   it was because you did something, or more often many things, that led to   that loss.

Or it means your opponent could afford to spend $4000 on a deck and you  couldn't.  When you can't afford Jaces and dual lands and everyone else  can, you're pretty much hosed; any strategy you build to defeat the most  broken deck in the format will fail against the second most broken, so  there's really nothing you can do other than play only against friends  who will let you win once in a while by not bringing their A-game (or  just not having an A-game comparable to the tourney circut).

I know you're trying to sound profound with your life lessons, MaRo, but  get real.  Sometimes life just plain sucks for no reason and nothing  can be done about it.  We're not omnipotent or omniscient, so personal  responsibility only goes so far.  I get a little tired of hearing the  new age crap about how believing in your dreams and thinking positively  will fix all your problems; try telling that to people who are getting  murdered by their government in Libya or dying of radiation in Japan.   You lost your Roseanne job because life isn't fair, that's really the  only lesson I see here.

Apr 10, 2011 -- 10:24PM, willpell wrote:

try telling that to people who are ... dying of radiation in Japan.

No. This is bullshit, and I WILL NOT allow this misinformation to spread. Sorry MaRo, I'm hijacking the hell out of this thread.

No one is dying from radiation in Japan.

The dose you get over the course of an entire day near the Fukushima reactor is less than ONE PERCENT of the dose that you would need to be exposed to to have symptoms of radiation poisoning. And that dose is an accute one, not one over the span of a day. Stop reading sensationalist bullshit and actually do some research. Here's a good introduction to doses and effects. If you'd prefer a bit less detail, but more colors, Randal Munroe of xkcd has done a chart as well. You can look at the actual current doses on a map displayed here. There's video of Japanese journalists entering the area, with radiation levels reported. Wikipedia has a reasonably good page on the effects as well. You'll note that only two people have been hospitalized, both of whom were standing in cooling water.

Magic players are a smart bunch. Can we PLEASE see some of the brainpower normally used for evaluating decklists spent evaluating the real danger before spreading misinformation?