S
Secret Asian Man
Guest
(I'm sorry if any of you guys don't like this or think it's waste of time and end up hating me for it, but I, by nature, am a storyteller. This is my story, and I would like to tell it.)
I started playing Magic when I was seven years old, around the time Fallen Empires was first released. My first cards were given to me by a friend, and included a Kird Ape, a Fireball, and a Hill Giant, all revised. It was the proudest moment of my life when I saved up enough money to buy a pack of Fallen Empires ($1.50). I got an Ebon Praetor and a Hymn to Tourach. These were the days when I thought I could prevent all the damage from a fleet of Shivans and a pair of Lightning Bolts simply by paying 1 to a CoP: Red. I stopped playing for a while when Mirage came out because all of my cards were stolen and I could not afford to replace them.
I started playing once again around the time Stronghold was released. I did some menial work for the comic book store guy and as a reward, he gave me a pack of Stronghold. I got a Grave Pact. It was then that I started my tradition of building decks around the first card of an expansion. I dug out the old pump knights, Breeding Pits, Hymns, Rituals, and other black staples and stuck them into a random deck with no rhyme or reason, as most players of my experience at that time are wont to do. It actually wasn't bad. My friends had also stopped playing Magic for many of the same reasons that I had, and I somehow managed to revitalize the entire Magic community in my Junior High School. The Grave Pact deck grew into a R/B weenie/burn deck with Black Knights, Pump Knights, and Bad Moons, supported by Lightning Bolts and Fireballs. I had no concept of "card advantage" (in fact, I had never even heard the term) and I had no concept of a "mana curve" or any sort. I built the deck based on my tried-and-true experimental 21 land for a 60-card deck rule. It was the Deck To Beat in school and people started building decks crafted to kill it specifically. It fell to U/W damage prevention/blockers/control, and I decided to shelf it and explore my other options.
Exodus was released. My very first rare was Survival of the Fittest. I built an incredibly crude Survival deck that used Demonic Tutors, self-Mind Peels, and Animate Deads. It sucked, but then my friend traded me Recurring Nightmares as crap-rare throw-ins in a trade. I saw the synergy and threw them in, and once again I had the local Deck To Beat.
Saga was released. I got a Time Spiral in the first pack I opened. All of my friends Ooh'ed and Aaah'd, marveling at how similar to the old broken Timetwister this card was. Now, at this point, I had an epiphany concerning Magic and the depths that humans will sink to in pursuit of something that's supposed to be fun. I stuck the Time Spiral into a mono-blue control deck as an inconsistent but still effective "reset button" and it stayed there until a friend showed me this cool website called The Dojo that was dedicated to Magic and had a cool deck called "Academy" in which Time Spiral was an important part. I visited the Dojo, traded almost all of my other cards for the cards I needed for my Academy deck, and built the deck according to the decklist on "Decks To Beat". Naturally, I cleaned up at the Saturday afternoon tourney.
But I felt something strange that I had never felt before when I won that tournament and the 12 packs of Saga...I felt like I had cheated myself. Every single one of my other decks had been good, but they were good because of the meticulous work and effort that I had personally put into each of them. This new Academy deck was better than all of my previous decks, but I personally had not put a shred of effort into it and for some reason, it felt like it wasn't my deck. I immediately scrapped it and traded all the power cards away, and I slowly drifted away from Magic. Understand that it really wasn't fun for me to win with the Academy deck...I felt like a cheap dirtbag every time I did because I couldn't stop thinking about how I had just copied the deck off some Internet site. I missed Legacy, Destiny, and Masques releases.
It had occurred to me that many of my tourney opponents and even some of the friends that I played with casually during lunch were also just copying decklists off the Internet. This sickened me. I felt, and still feel, that this practice is totally contrary to the heart of Magic. Though some of the soulless people who used Netdecks had no qualms about practically stealing the award pot at the tourney with a deck concept that wouldn't even have occurred to them, my personal ethical code simply would not allow me to do that. For me, Magic was supposed to be a battle of wits and skill between the two players, not a battle of my homebrewed deck vs. a Mowshowitz tourney creation my friend saw on the Dojo last week.
I got back into Magic around when Nemesis was released. My friends persuaded me, and the trauma of Netdeckdom has faded somewhat in my mind. I bought a pack each of Destiny, Masques, and Nemesis (Legacy was sold out) and got a Negator, a Port, and an Evincar. I stuck them all into a deck together and got a weird ultra-rogue Suicide Black Weenie that had no real strategy behind it except to beat the opponent's skull with creatures. It was surprisingly effective. I was proud of it. I took it to a tourney and it got school first game 2-0 by Trinity Green. Netdeck, of course. I realized that Magic had entered a new age, the age of the Netdeck, and that if I wanted to keep enjoying this hobbie, I would have to get used to getting my oink kicked. It was a sacrifice I was willing to make at that point, as I had gained the emotional maturity to deal with it (which I lacked in the Academy days). I scrapped the deck and bought a few packs of Prophecy. My first rare was Latulla, and I naturally built a burn deck around her, which fared better than my previous one but still consistently lost first or second round.
I went ultra-rogue when Invasion came out and built a Type I deck that my friends call "Crippled Sligh" because it uses crappy subsitutes like Orcish Conscripts and Goblin Patrols for hard-to-get Jackal Pups and Mogg Fanatics. It doesn't actually follow the Sligh mana curve, but it works pretty much the same. I placed second at a local Type I tourney. Planeshift came out, I got an Urza's Guilt. Brushed the dust off the old Megrim/Rack deck, threw in some blue, and did pretty well. Apocalypse came out. I bought my first box ever, which was a big step for me. The first pack I opened, I got a Spiritmonger and called Wizards because I thought it was a misprint. 5 for a 6/6 with three good abilities? Good lord. It only got worse when I saw Desolation Angel, Pernicious Deed, and Vindicate. So a few weeks ago, I bring in the Apocalypse and offer it for trade. People scurry up to me and ask if I have playsets. "No...I only bought one box." I get sneers and raised eyebrows.
The thing that I hate nowadays about Magic is no longer Netdecks. My ethics have eroded so much that I'v become accustomed to even that. When I sat down at the last IBC tourney in late October as an non-playing observer, I witnessed an event that almost made me literally cry. It was an exchanged between a middle school kid and a Dartmouth student in the first round. The middle school kid had a very rogue W/G deck and the Dartmouth student was playing Dark Fires with Mongers. After soundly trouncing the kid 2-0, he proceeded to explain to him that he couldn't possibly expect to go any further in a tourney unless he went out and spent hundreds of dollars on playsets of Rages, BoPs, Absorbs, and Mongers. Why are you even her with your crappy deck if you don't have Skizziks and Vindicates or anything? Never come here again unless you're actually going to compete!
That's what I hate about Magic. When I got into Magic, it was a fun game to play with friends on weekends and every now and then drop by a tourny and see how well you can do. Now, Magic players are more like football players than anything else. They exercise rigorously, get psyched up for games, and become depressed when the lose. Their lives literally revolve around it, and they are passionate about it to the point of psychosis. Magic is no longer played for fun. Magic is now played for DCI points and foil promo cards.
I have totally stopped doing tourneys. I simply can't deal with the kind of people I meet there. I play Magic with my group of friends over lunch every day. I buy a box of each new expansion that comes out and trade with my friends and ask my friends to get certain cards for me to trade for. I am reacting in an almost Unabomber-like fashion to the abomination that Magic has become. Maybe there's just something wrong with me, but I just don't want to be associated with the typical Magic player anymore.
CPA is where I have come to find Magic players who aren't like that. I am so grateful for you guys.
I started playing Magic when I was seven years old, around the time Fallen Empires was first released. My first cards were given to me by a friend, and included a Kird Ape, a Fireball, and a Hill Giant, all revised. It was the proudest moment of my life when I saved up enough money to buy a pack of Fallen Empires ($1.50). I got an Ebon Praetor and a Hymn to Tourach. These were the days when I thought I could prevent all the damage from a fleet of Shivans and a pair of Lightning Bolts simply by paying 1 to a CoP: Red. I stopped playing for a while when Mirage came out because all of my cards were stolen and I could not afford to replace them.
I started playing once again around the time Stronghold was released. I did some menial work for the comic book store guy and as a reward, he gave me a pack of Stronghold. I got a Grave Pact. It was then that I started my tradition of building decks around the first card of an expansion. I dug out the old pump knights, Breeding Pits, Hymns, Rituals, and other black staples and stuck them into a random deck with no rhyme or reason, as most players of my experience at that time are wont to do. It actually wasn't bad. My friends had also stopped playing Magic for many of the same reasons that I had, and I somehow managed to revitalize the entire Magic community in my Junior High School. The Grave Pact deck grew into a R/B weenie/burn deck with Black Knights, Pump Knights, and Bad Moons, supported by Lightning Bolts and Fireballs. I had no concept of "card advantage" (in fact, I had never even heard the term) and I had no concept of a "mana curve" or any sort. I built the deck based on my tried-and-true experimental 21 land for a 60-card deck rule. It was the Deck To Beat in school and people started building decks crafted to kill it specifically. It fell to U/W damage prevention/blockers/control, and I decided to shelf it and explore my other options.
Exodus was released. My very first rare was Survival of the Fittest. I built an incredibly crude Survival deck that used Demonic Tutors, self-Mind Peels, and Animate Deads. It sucked, but then my friend traded me Recurring Nightmares as crap-rare throw-ins in a trade. I saw the synergy and threw them in, and once again I had the local Deck To Beat.
Saga was released. I got a Time Spiral in the first pack I opened. All of my friends Ooh'ed and Aaah'd, marveling at how similar to the old broken Timetwister this card was. Now, at this point, I had an epiphany concerning Magic and the depths that humans will sink to in pursuit of something that's supposed to be fun. I stuck the Time Spiral into a mono-blue control deck as an inconsistent but still effective "reset button" and it stayed there until a friend showed me this cool website called The Dojo that was dedicated to Magic and had a cool deck called "Academy" in which Time Spiral was an important part. I visited the Dojo, traded almost all of my other cards for the cards I needed for my Academy deck, and built the deck according to the decklist on "Decks To Beat". Naturally, I cleaned up at the Saturday afternoon tourney.
But I felt something strange that I had never felt before when I won that tournament and the 12 packs of Saga...I felt like I had cheated myself. Every single one of my other decks had been good, but they were good because of the meticulous work and effort that I had personally put into each of them. This new Academy deck was better than all of my previous decks, but I personally had not put a shred of effort into it and for some reason, it felt like it wasn't my deck. I immediately scrapped it and traded all the power cards away, and I slowly drifted away from Magic. Understand that it really wasn't fun for me to win with the Academy deck...I felt like a cheap dirtbag every time I did because I couldn't stop thinking about how I had just copied the deck off some Internet site. I missed Legacy, Destiny, and Masques releases.
It had occurred to me that many of my tourney opponents and even some of the friends that I played with casually during lunch were also just copying decklists off the Internet. This sickened me. I felt, and still feel, that this practice is totally contrary to the heart of Magic. Though some of the soulless people who used Netdecks had no qualms about practically stealing the award pot at the tourney with a deck concept that wouldn't even have occurred to them, my personal ethical code simply would not allow me to do that. For me, Magic was supposed to be a battle of wits and skill between the two players, not a battle of my homebrewed deck vs. a Mowshowitz tourney creation my friend saw on the Dojo last week.
I got back into Magic around when Nemesis was released. My friends persuaded me, and the trauma of Netdeckdom has faded somewhat in my mind. I bought a pack each of Destiny, Masques, and Nemesis (Legacy was sold out) and got a Negator, a Port, and an Evincar. I stuck them all into a deck together and got a weird ultra-rogue Suicide Black Weenie that had no real strategy behind it except to beat the opponent's skull with creatures. It was surprisingly effective. I was proud of it. I took it to a tourney and it got school first game 2-0 by Trinity Green. Netdeck, of course. I realized that Magic had entered a new age, the age of the Netdeck, and that if I wanted to keep enjoying this hobbie, I would have to get used to getting my oink kicked. It was a sacrifice I was willing to make at that point, as I had gained the emotional maturity to deal with it (which I lacked in the Academy days). I scrapped the deck and bought a few packs of Prophecy. My first rare was Latulla, and I naturally built a burn deck around her, which fared better than my previous one but still consistently lost first or second round.
I went ultra-rogue when Invasion came out and built a Type I deck that my friends call "Crippled Sligh" because it uses crappy subsitutes like Orcish Conscripts and Goblin Patrols for hard-to-get Jackal Pups and Mogg Fanatics. It doesn't actually follow the Sligh mana curve, but it works pretty much the same. I placed second at a local Type I tourney. Planeshift came out, I got an Urza's Guilt. Brushed the dust off the old Megrim/Rack deck, threw in some blue, and did pretty well. Apocalypse came out. I bought my first box ever, which was a big step for me. The first pack I opened, I got a Spiritmonger and called Wizards because I thought it was a misprint. 5 for a 6/6 with three good abilities? Good lord. It only got worse when I saw Desolation Angel, Pernicious Deed, and Vindicate. So a few weeks ago, I bring in the Apocalypse and offer it for trade. People scurry up to me and ask if I have playsets. "No...I only bought one box." I get sneers and raised eyebrows.
The thing that I hate nowadays about Magic is no longer Netdecks. My ethics have eroded so much that I'v become accustomed to even that. When I sat down at the last IBC tourney in late October as an non-playing observer, I witnessed an event that almost made me literally cry. It was an exchanged between a middle school kid and a Dartmouth student in the first round. The middle school kid had a very rogue W/G deck and the Dartmouth student was playing Dark Fires with Mongers. After soundly trouncing the kid 2-0, he proceeded to explain to him that he couldn't possibly expect to go any further in a tourney unless he went out and spent hundreds of dollars on playsets of Rages, BoPs, Absorbs, and Mongers. Why are you even her with your crappy deck if you don't have Skizziks and Vindicates or anything? Never come here again unless you're actually going to compete!
That's what I hate about Magic. When I got into Magic, it was a fun game to play with friends on weekends and every now and then drop by a tourny and see how well you can do. Now, Magic players are more like football players than anything else. They exercise rigorously, get psyched up for games, and become depressed when the lose. Their lives literally revolve around it, and they are passionate about it to the point of psychosis. Magic is no longer played for fun. Magic is now played for DCI points and foil promo cards.
I have totally stopped doing tourneys. I simply can't deal with the kind of people I meet there. I play Magic with my group of friends over lunch every day. I buy a box of each new expansion that comes out and trade with my friends and ask my friends to get certain cards for me to trade for. I am reacting in an almost Unabomber-like fashion to the abomination that Magic has become. Maybe there's just something wrong with me, but I just don't want to be associated with the typical Magic player anymore.
CPA is where I have come to find Magic players who aren't like that. I am so grateful for you guys.
