I just wanted you to know that you have inspired me to become a better Magic player. Your book Next Level Magic triggered my hard work and dedication to become what I am today. I owe my Top 8 of the first PTQ of the Innistrad season, my 45-pack win in an Innistrad Release Event on MODO, and my Top 8 at Grand Prix San Diego to you and your book. I could have never done it without you. Thank you and I wish you the best in your endeavors.

I am right now making my way through your book and find it really inspiring. I'm almost halfway through and have only played a couple of tournaments since I've begun, but I feel myself already able to see where the principles you're stressing are coming into play. I've been playing slower, focusing on the games and decisions I'm making: In short, it is, at long last, after 10+ years of Magic, my goal to play perfectly. And it feels so right. I thank you for your brilliance in bringing this to light, simple as it is...

...Thank you! I was reading Next Level Magic, last year. It changed my perspective on the game and gave me what I feel is the extra edge that separates doing consistently well with consistently better.

I just wanted to personally thank you for your book Next Level Magic and the wisdom and strategy I have learned from it. I had a dismal 1506 DCI Rating after 66 matches, but after reading your book for the last week, I just reached my first top 8 last night in my local Friday Night Magic. The only thing that has changed is my mindset learned from Next Level Magic. Thank you once again and I look forward to reading more of your book and SCG articles in the future.

Before I read NLM, I was, at best, an average player (3-3 at a PTQ was a good day, going 2-1 at a draft was fantastic). I won't go into detail, but the I will say that my game has improved beyond recognition since reading your book, I've finished third at a $1k event from a field of 120, finished 16th at a PTQ of 128, and won our states championship last month. I know I've got a long way to go, but I've also been winning/splitting enough 8-4 modo draft cues that I've only ever had to pay for about 4, out of 20-30.

Hey I just wanted to thank you for all the great advice you gave in your book. Last Friday I won my local FNM! I was undefeated, and 75 percent of the people I played were high ranked and far more experienced, and I was able to say with confidence to my friend before we played that I would win the tournament... and I was right! Thank you for everything and I will see you in the next couple years on the Pro Tour (hopefully); that’s my goal!

I'd been willing to get your book for a while but was holding back due financial concerns, and today I finally got it and just got done finishing it. To be perfectly honest, instead of the "purely Magic-related tips / examples," I was more moved and intrigued by other stuff, the good stuff, where everything applies to not just Magic, but any other game, and life, in general...

...I'd like to thank you again, as a still relatively younger player at 20, for being an inspiration to me for all the time I've spent reading and thinking about Magic, and beyond that, enjoying the fact that you also grasp that these lessons don't just apply to Magic, but to life, in general.

I'm sure you get tons of these emails, but I still feel that I need to throw in my personal thanks. I had been on a huge break between Mirrodin and Shadowmoor, coming back into a world run by Fae and Demigods. I was lost up until I started listening to your advice and tactics. It soon became a world of Fae and Demigods that were crying while I resolved a certain nine-mana storm sorcery. Now, with added help through your Next Level book excerpts, you continue to be the force that helps me to understand the enigma that is Standard. Thank you for all your devotion to this game we so deeply enjoy, and thank you for all the help you've given others just like me. You truly are an innovator.

From Mono-Red ten years ago to Five-Color Control today, Patrick Chapin has been instrumental in deck and theory development for years. After a mediocre finish at Pro Tour: Hollywood, Patrick helped me rethink my approach to the Pro Tour, influencing my deck choice for Pro Tour: Berlin. In this strategy guide, he shares his years of accumulated knowledge and expertise. Anyone interested in improving their game would do well to check it out!

Patrick is one of the most successful creative deck-builders and players in the history of Magic. Many people can tell you how to find the best decks on the net, and make routine strong plays. Many other players can tell you how to make different plays or unique decks. He is one of the few to explain how to make the strong but innovative deck or play. His imaginative plays not only make one better at the game, but they are also highly enjoyable.

People with experience are the best you can learn from, and Patrick has been around for quite some time, so you can safely say he knows what he's talking about. When Patrick talks, people listen.

Patrick is a great deck builder, he is also great player and writer. He knows everything about Magic, so you can learn something worthy from him. I promise his articles must be nice for us!

In the history of the game, few players have had both a complex theoretical understanding of the game and also the practical chops to play the game at the top level; Patrick is one of the best.

(The Segment on Tempo) is the best explanation of tempo I have ever read.

Patrick Chapin is a rare Magic player. There are a few Magic the Gathering players that have a strong grasp of Magic theory. These are the players that are able to build the decks we all play. And there are only a few of the very elite, the very top players in Magic. They are the ones you will find making money playing tournaments. And there are only a very few that can explain how to play the game, to explain it so that it is easy to understand. These are the ones that write books. Chapin is able to do all three.

In the game of Magic, the player is presented with infinite different plays depending on not only the cards in play, but the cards in your opponent’s hand and deck. To decipher this information, you must use a series of deductive reasoning garnered from your opponent’s play and body language. There are maybe 25 people in the world who currently play the game that can do this at the highest level… Patrick Chapin is one of those people.

I've been in the game longer than most, and since day 1, Patrick Chapin has been one of the most innovative and creative Magic players I have ever known. Not only is he one of the best deck-builders out there, he is also a fantastic player, and offering a strategy guide with insights into his brain will raise the bar for all competitive players.

What puts Patrick Chapin in his own league, when it comes to most Magic strategists, is his totally unparalleled success both as a theoretician AND as a player. His ability to consistently convert his Magic knowledge into tournament results manifests itself in the clarity and accessibility of his writing style - the reader seems to experience what Patrick thinks as he thinks it!

Yet, even more impressively, Patrick's consistency isn't the consistency of comfort, of security, of resting on his laurels. Despite a professional career that spans almost a decade and a half, making him one of the 'oldest-school' Pros currently active, he continues to pioneer new strategies, ideas, decks, and pieces of technology almost every week - and his love of the game is such that many of his best pieces were scrawled out laboriously by hand! So his nickname, "The Innovator," isn't so much a title as it is a simple fact. Patrick Chapin will go down in history alongside names like Hahn, Flores, Taylor, Hacker, and Mowshowitz as one of the game's all-time greatest minds.

Patrick's love of learning, and his willingness to learn from anyone, is one of the keys to his success, and something everyone should try to emulate...

...Patrick is absolutely right when he says that sometimes you win but gave them an extra turn to kill you, or draw their out. Sometimes you wasted a card. Just because you won doesn’t mean you played optimally, so you have to be equally critical even when you win. Only by objectively observing your choices and decisions, win or lose, lucky or unlucky, will you improve, and only by not letting your mistakes rattle you will you win the next game or the next round.