Hello everybody! Welcome to the newest edition of Ben's Corner! This is where you can find out the latest goings-on at StarCityGames.com. This past week saw the release of 9th Edition, and early impressions are that this set is a hit! We ran our 9th release tournament concurrent with Friday Night Magic at our store and ended up with an attendance of 46 (which is very strong for FNM). According to our staff, everyone had a great time and people were pleased both with the selection of cards in the set and how well the set played in limited.

9th Edition Boxes
9th Edition Theme Decks
9th Edition Singles
9th Edition Foil Singles
9th Edition Fat Pack

Card of the week: 9th Edition Foil Serra Angel

The hottest card this week is the 9th Edition Foil Serra Angel. We have been selling these at an incredible pace, which is no suprise - Greg Staples outdid himself on the artwork on this card! This is not only the best looking Serra Angel ever (sorry Doug Shuler!), but one of the best pieces of Magic artwork ever committed to cardboard! There are two ways to get your hands on everyone's favorite vigilant flying lady: Order one for only $9.99 or pick up a 9th Edition Two Player Deck for $12.99. Each Two Player Deck comes with a Foil Serra Angel, along with a few other cards not available in 9th Edition Booster Packs (Coral Eel, Eager Cadet, Enormous Baloth, Giant Octopus, Index, Spined Wurm, Vengeance, Vizzerdrix).

We now have Ravnica: City of Guilds sealed product available for preorder, and Ravnica is shaping up to be one of the best Magic sets ever released. The expectations for this set are at an all time high, and these expectations have only been fueled by the spoiler information leaked at MTGSalvation.com. For those who have not been keeping up with Ravnica, let me catch you up quickly - and keep in mind that this information might be wrong, but the track record of MTGSalvation.com on spoiler information such as this is pretty spot-on. Ravnica is a set based around multi-colored cards, much like Invasion. There will be a ton of gold cards in the set, but that's not all - there will ten new combinations of colors in the set! Each color combination (for instance, Red/Blue or Red/Black) will have a unique mana symbol. When a spell has that symbol in the mana cost, you can use either color of mana to cast that spell! Here is one sample card from MTGSalvation.com which uses this type of mana:

"Flaming Fist" Guildmage - (R/W symbol) (R/W Symbol) - Meaning you can pay RR, RW, or WW to cast this creature!
Creature - Human Wizard
1R: Target Creature gets haste until end of turn.
1W: Target Creature gets first strike until end of turn.
2/2

The new mechanic both encourages multi-color decks and helps fix the problem of mana screw - quite well designed if you ask me. In addition, there is a rumored bleed mechanic also revealed on MTGSalvation.com.

Spoiling - GG2
Sorcery
Destroy target land. If any B was spent to play Spoiling, creatures get -1/-1 until end of turn.

Let's not forget that Birds of Paradise and Dark Confidant (Bob Maher's invitational card) are in Ravnica as well! Preorder Ravnica: City of Guilds today!

What's Hot:
Block constructed cards continue to be hot in the wake of Kamigawa Block PTQ season. The highest demand cards over the past couple of weeks have been the Black cards: Sickening Shoal, Kagemaro, Ogre Marauder, and Hand of Cruelty in particular. Manriki-Gusari is also selling extremely well. Here are the best selling Saviors block cards for us over the past couple of weeks:

Rares:
1) Kagemaro, First to Suffer
2) Goryo's Vengeance
3) Disrupting Shoal
4) Seshiro the Anointed
5) Enduring Ideal

Uncommons:
1) Manriki-Gusari
2) Ogre Marauder
3) O-Naginata
4) Sensei's Divining Top
5) Kiku's Shadow

Commons:
1) Rend Flesh
2) Sakura-Tribe Elder
3) Kodama's Reach
4) Lava Spike
5) Frostling

I've gone through our system and reduced the prices across the board on a couple of categories of cards. Check out some of our low prices on these cards!

* 8th Edition Box Toppers (Don't forget to check out our full selection of 9th Edition Box Toppers as well!)

* Antiquities - some cards I've dropped the price on include all four Mishra's Factories, all 4 Strip Mines, all 12 Urza's lands, Triskellion, Su-Chi, Argivian Archaelogist, Power Artifact, and Transmute Artifact!

In addition, we've restocked a few sets in particular. Thousands of cards from each of these sets have been added to our system, and prices have been reduced on many cards within each of these sets! They include:

* Revised
* 4th Edition
* 5th Edition
* 6th Edition
* 7th Edition
* 7th Edition Foils
* 8th Edition
* 8th Edition Foils
* Judgment
* Mercadian Masques

I've put in the following high dollar cards for sale over the past week:

Alpha:
Berserk
Savannah
Serra Angel

Antiquities:
Mishra's Workshop

Arabian Nights:
Ali From Cairo
5x Bazaar of Baghdad
3x City of Brass
Juzam Djinn
Library of Alexandria
2x Old Man of the Sea
5x Shahrazad

Beta:
Ancestral Recall
Braingeyser
Royal Assassin
Savannah Lions
Underground Sea

Guru:
Island

Legends:
Chains of Mephistopheles
7x Mana Drain
Nether Void
The Abyss

Italian Legends:
Mana Drain

Promo:
Balance (Judge Foil)
4x Mana Crypt
Vampiric Tutor (Judge Foil)

Unlimited:
2x Ancestral Recall
3x Berserk
2x Black Lotus
2x Chaos Orb
Gauntlet of Might
2x Mox Emerald
2x Mox Jet
2x Mox Pearl
3x Mox Ruby
3x Mox Sapphire
2x Time Vault
3x Time Walk
3x Timetwister

Urza's Legacy Foil:
4x Goblin Welder (Foil)

Until next time, I'm Ben Bleiweiss signing off.

- Ben Bleiweiss
General Manager, StarCityGames.com