H
Hetemti
Guest
I'd hoped I'd put this blasted game behind me, but alas, an associate met through another channel has managed to drag me back into it. A new player entering the high-school Magic circles. I'm happy to say that after tearing up all his weak decks with Crazy Ivan (a black-based disruption number that generally finishes with the Russian-text Torment pre-re Laquatus's Champion), he's been whipped into decent shape, often making at least semi-final in the weekend tournaments at whatever venues he's been able to partake.
This, of course, means I have to play Magic agian. O, joy.
For those of you who haven't been keeping score, I started just before Masques came out, so I'm used to powerful cards flying out of the Rath and Urza cycle packs I opened O so long ago. The days of weak crap like Prophecy I didn't mind much, since I was still filling out my collection with older cards, but one day things kinda changed. I got an Ancestral Recall for $50. With that, I didn't much care about getting old cards anymore. I still have some Duals on my want-list to fill out the Forty, but otherwise I'd achieved my primary T1 goal, since I won't be getting Moxen or likewise until a deal similar to my Recall comes along.
Without much in the older cards attracting my attention, and my Five Boxes of Crap I'll Never Use becoming full, I pretty much stopped buying. There simply wasn't anything interesting coming out of the chute. Sets like Judgment and Scourge really offered nothing to the T1-list playing casual, except for atrocious cards that are really annoying. It's bad enough when I want to play a second hand against someone and they drag out a sideboard (which in a way is a compliment, since it means they feel they need to literally stack their deck to shift the odds in their favor), now they have two piles, one the sideboard, and two the Wish pile, from which they intend to Ma'ruf whatever insanity they need to make me roll my eyes. Again.
College meant a Magic club. Older players like myself who were ready to trade Whatever for Something Else made the experience worthwhile, and the trading was amazing. I turned a dollar into a Yagmoth's Bargain in under sixty seconds one night, which was nice because I wanted to make a second black deck, and had only my one Necro. It also meant drafting. I'll admit, I'm a rare-drafter. Sure, everyone takes the Chrome Mox they open, but I'd pretty much take everything with a gold logo I could find. Thus was born my Shared Fate deck, which is always fun the first time I play it with a group. My problem in draft is that I always wind up in 3rd or 4th...I'd never get torn up but once in a great moon, but I could never get The Good deck either. Mostly, I beat people up with stuff they didn't take because they didn't think they'd get four of it. Such as disruption cards. Which reminds me of the one time I played Extended.
I never much cared for Extended, because I didn't have the Right Cards of the era to make the well-oiled machines that Extended is home to. So, I did what I usually do...something peculiar. The most fulfilling experience one can have in a Magic tournament is to cause someone else to make a complete spectacle of himself. For me, that path is paved with card disadvantage. I ran a deck with 28 Mountain, and lots of delicious landkill, and did I struggle to suppress my smile when my opponent began to rant how Raze is a crap common and is card disadvantage, when I used it to strand all his favorite cards in his hand, while I then drew into my bountiful mountains and let my signed Cursed Scrolls and double-signed Cursed Scroll wear him away. Sure, I lost to a blue-black that had more than enough land and counter to stay alive, but I didn't care about winning, because I already had.
I quit for a while, because drafting with Darksteel wasn't really much fun, as it cut into the number of Awesome Mirrodin Packs, and that whole "education" thing started taking my time. I tried to come back for Kamigawa, though. My attempts at drafting were completely futile, and I fell back to my R/W roots. Random burn and foxes that don't look very fox-like (they made the rat people look like rats, but the foxes look more like elves than anything...) were enough to get me to the semis as always. But, alas, I walked because the Draft O decided to give me a bunch of static about how I rolled for a random discard. I'm no slouch when it comes to statistics, and I know how to select a card at random with a six sided die and a hand of three cards. Nonetheless, I get everything short of being accused of trying to cheat my way to victory because I didn't explicitly announce every minute regarding my random card selection process. Winning that hand was worth three packs, losing worth one, and walking away without an assault charge was free, so I opted the latter of the three options.
I came back some time later, but apparently everyone had T2 fever, and I couldn't get a draft to save my life. So, I opened a few packs just to see what was in the later sets of the block, and I found out. Garbage. Complete, worthless garbage.
Which brings us back to my associate. He's been trying for T2, mostly with the White Weenie route. Turns out, Umezawa's Jitte is the only powerful card in the entire block. And, I love it, despite the fact that it instantly defeats all of my decks.
See, all my high-school Magic career, I was the guy with the best cards, so I generally won by brute force. I'd throw out Covetous Dragons on turn three or four with things like Felwar Stone, Mana Vault, and such, and unless they had Terrors in hand, they were soundly defeated. The college group was pretty straight-forward...there were the okay decks which didn't pose too-threatening a challenge; the good decks, which where primarily undefeated until they met with Ivan; and the Decks I Think Are Stupid, such as Madness and other "Wizards made my deck for me!" combo-like designs. But the thing was, none of them had anything like Jitte in them. Jitte says "elminate me or you lose" unlike any other, and it reminded me of something I'd long forgotten: play with removal. For years, I'd never put much thought into removal. For the most part, never did I play Disenchant, Boomerang, Terror, or such. When red I'd have burn, but that's because that's what red does. In black, Diabolic Edict, just because it's fun to have Greven throw people off the boat. But otherwise, I usually just overpowered, but Jitte reminded me that I can't just roll over my opponent unabashedly.
So, here I am, packing up for my last year of college, and likely last year of any person-to-person Magic playing. I have ten decks sitting beside me, and I know that all of them die if they can't win before the Jitte comes down. Even Ivan would play hell trying to win against it, if Freyalise isn't Jonny-on-the-spot with that delightful little Deed of her's. I suppose I could try to 'fix' my decks, and put in the removal they need to make troublemakers like Jitte, or even the Warhammer go away before they can be annoying. But to do that means removing other stuff, and that has brought me to a revelation...
I don't know how to make a Magic deck.
Every time I look at one of my decks, its cards laid out on the table in nice little arrangements of three-by-four and four-by-three, as soon as I try to eliminate something to make room for removal de jour, my deck doesn't have the cards it needs to do whatever crazy thing I wanted the deck to do.
I started to actually pay attention to my opponent's decks, and I noticed something. It seems like every time my opponent plays a card, there's a shift in power toward a win condition. A natural progression. Meanwhile, in all my decks, each play seems to be maintaining a basic level of power. Either my plays are parts of a card combination that never reaches fruition, or the cards just kinda go out there, turn sideways a few times, and then get scooped up because Jitte hit the table and I got nuttin'.
So, here I am, packing up for my last year of college, sitting next to a pile of Magic cards, wishing I knew how to make some use of them. In a vain effort to reach some sort of closure, I suppose it could be called, with my collection, I finally sorted and alphabetised my aforementioned boxes of commons. And uncommons that aren't worth putting in the uncommons boxes. To continue making decks for my associate to goldfish against, I'll have to drag a portion of my collection with me, so I made a box of generically decent cards and some land. I suppose I'll see if I can sniff out some more Duals to complete the Forty, and maybe this new Ravnica block thing will be worth drafting a few times, but as it stands, I'm quite disappointed with where Magic has gone recently. Hell, they fired Ed Beard. I mean, sure, roll back to Legends and look at crap like Spirit Shackle and yea, he'd be a stinker, and back then, I'd have agreed; but after seeing some of his recent work, such as Mystic Familiar, there's no reason why Ed shouldn't be one of the number-one artists in the stable. But instead what do we get? More Wayne England, because every monster must have its tounge sticking out; and John Avon, who, lands aside, is far from worthwhile. Life Burst looks like some of that crappy Japanese desktop-wallpaper junk with the image-echo effect, and Mindblaze? The Mac Culkin pose isn't acceptable on any card. Except for Ancestral Recall, and only because it says "Draw 3 cards or force opponent to draw 3 cards" in big letters. Leave it to Hasbro to make their card game copy the style of the card games that copied their card game.
I suppose one of these days, I should learn how to play this game, it's only been what...six years, now? Besides, a future T2 champion is counting on me.
This, of course, means I have to play Magic agian. O, joy.
For those of you who haven't been keeping score, I started just before Masques came out, so I'm used to powerful cards flying out of the Rath and Urza cycle packs I opened O so long ago. The days of weak crap like Prophecy I didn't mind much, since I was still filling out my collection with older cards, but one day things kinda changed. I got an Ancestral Recall for $50. With that, I didn't much care about getting old cards anymore. I still have some Duals on my want-list to fill out the Forty, but otherwise I'd achieved my primary T1 goal, since I won't be getting Moxen or likewise until a deal similar to my Recall comes along.
Without much in the older cards attracting my attention, and my Five Boxes of Crap I'll Never Use becoming full, I pretty much stopped buying. There simply wasn't anything interesting coming out of the chute. Sets like Judgment and Scourge really offered nothing to the T1-list playing casual, except for atrocious cards that are really annoying. It's bad enough when I want to play a second hand against someone and they drag out a sideboard (which in a way is a compliment, since it means they feel they need to literally stack their deck to shift the odds in their favor), now they have two piles, one the sideboard, and two the Wish pile, from which they intend to Ma'ruf whatever insanity they need to make me roll my eyes. Again.
College meant a Magic club. Older players like myself who were ready to trade Whatever for Something Else made the experience worthwhile, and the trading was amazing. I turned a dollar into a Yagmoth's Bargain in under sixty seconds one night, which was nice because I wanted to make a second black deck, and had only my one Necro. It also meant drafting. I'll admit, I'm a rare-drafter. Sure, everyone takes the Chrome Mox they open, but I'd pretty much take everything with a gold logo I could find. Thus was born my Shared Fate deck, which is always fun the first time I play it with a group. My problem in draft is that I always wind up in 3rd or 4th...I'd never get torn up but once in a great moon, but I could never get The Good deck either. Mostly, I beat people up with stuff they didn't take because they didn't think they'd get four of it. Such as disruption cards. Which reminds me of the one time I played Extended.
I never much cared for Extended, because I didn't have the Right Cards of the era to make the well-oiled machines that Extended is home to. So, I did what I usually do...something peculiar. The most fulfilling experience one can have in a Magic tournament is to cause someone else to make a complete spectacle of himself. For me, that path is paved with card disadvantage. I ran a deck with 28 Mountain, and lots of delicious landkill, and did I struggle to suppress my smile when my opponent began to rant how Raze is a crap common and is card disadvantage, when I used it to strand all his favorite cards in his hand, while I then drew into my bountiful mountains and let my signed Cursed Scrolls and double-signed Cursed Scroll wear him away. Sure, I lost to a blue-black that had more than enough land and counter to stay alive, but I didn't care about winning, because I already had.
I quit for a while, because drafting with Darksteel wasn't really much fun, as it cut into the number of Awesome Mirrodin Packs, and that whole "education" thing started taking my time. I tried to come back for Kamigawa, though. My attempts at drafting were completely futile, and I fell back to my R/W roots. Random burn and foxes that don't look very fox-like (they made the rat people look like rats, but the foxes look more like elves than anything...) were enough to get me to the semis as always. But, alas, I walked because the Draft O decided to give me a bunch of static about how I rolled for a random discard. I'm no slouch when it comes to statistics, and I know how to select a card at random with a six sided die and a hand of three cards. Nonetheless, I get everything short of being accused of trying to cheat my way to victory because I didn't explicitly announce every minute regarding my random card selection process. Winning that hand was worth three packs, losing worth one, and walking away without an assault charge was free, so I opted the latter of the three options.
I came back some time later, but apparently everyone had T2 fever, and I couldn't get a draft to save my life. So, I opened a few packs just to see what was in the later sets of the block, and I found out. Garbage. Complete, worthless garbage.
Which brings us back to my associate. He's been trying for T2, mostly with the White Weenie route. Turns out, Umezawa's Jitte is the only powerful card in the entire block. And, I love it, despite the fact that it instantly defeats all of my decks.
See, all my high-school Magic career, I was the guy with the best cards, so I generally won by brute force. I'd throw out Covetous Dragons on turn three or four with things like Felwar Stone, Mana Vault, and such, and unless they had Terrors in hand, they were soundly defeated. The college group was pretty straight-forward...there were the okay decks which didn't pose too-threatening a challenge; the good decks, which where primarily undefeated until they met with Ivan; and the Decks I Think Are Stupid, such as Madness and other "Wizards made my deck for me!" combo-like designs. But the thing was, none of them had anything like Jitte in them. Jitte says "elminate me or you lose" unlike any other, and it reminded me of something I'd long forgotten: play with removal. For years, I'd never put much thought into removal. For the most part, never did I play Disenchant, Boomerang, Terror, or such. When red I'd have burn, but that's because that's what red does. In black, Diabolic Edict, just because it's fun to have Greven throw people off the boat. But otherwise, I usually just overpowered, but Jitte reminded me that I can't just roll over my opponent unabashedly.
So, here I am, packing up for my last year of college, and likely last year of any person-to-person Magic playing. I have ten decks sitting beside me, and I know that all of them die if they can't win before the Jitte comes down. Even Ivan would play hell trying to win against it, if Freyalise isn't Jonny-on-the-spot with that delightful little Deed of her's. I suppose I could try to 'fix' my decks, and put in the removal they need to make troublemakers like Jitte, or even the Warhammer go away before they can be annoying. But to do that means removing other stuff, and that has brought me to a revelation...
I don't know how to make a Magic deck.
Every time I look at one of my decks, its cards laid out on the table in nice little arrangements of three-by-four and four-by-three, as soon as I try to eliminate something to make room for removal de jour, my deck doesn't have the cards it needs to do whatever crazy thing I wanted the deck to do.
I started to actually pay attention to my opponent's decks, and I noticed something. It seems like every time my opponent plays a card, there's a shift in power toward a win condition. A natural progression. Meanwhile, in all my decks, each play seems to be maintaining a basic level of power. Either my plays are parts of a card combination that never reaches fruition, or the cards just kinda go out there, turn sideways a few times, and then get scooped up because Jitte hit the table and I got nuttin'.
So, here I am, packing up for my last year of college, sitting next to a pile of Magic cards, wishing I knew how to make some use of them. In a vain effort to reach some sort of closure, I suppose it could be called, with my collection, I finally sorted and alphabetised my aforementioned boxes of commons. And uncommons that aren't worth putting in the uncommons boxes. To continue making decks for my associate to goldfish against, I'll have to drag a portion of my collection with me, so I made a box of generically decent cards and some land. I suppose I'll see if I can sniff out some more Duals to complete the Forty, and maybe this new Ravnica block thing will be worth drafting a few times, but as it stands, I'm quite disappointed with where Magic has gone recently. Hell, they fired Ed Beard. I mean, sure, roll back to Legends and look at crap like Spirit Shackle and yea, he'd be a stinker, and back then, I'd have agreed; but after seeing some of his recent work, such as Mystic Familiar, there's no reason why Ed shouldn't be one of the number-one artists in the stable. But instead what do we get? More Wayne England, because every monster must have its tounge sticking out; and John Avon, who, lands aside, is far from worthwhile. Life Burst looks like some of that crappy Japanese desktop-wallpaper junk with the image-echo effect, and Mindblaze? The Mac Culkin pose isn't acceptable on any card. Except for Ancestral Recall, and only because it says "Draw 3 cards or force opponent to draw 3 cards" in big letters. Leave it to Hasbro to make their card game copy the style of the card games that copied their card game.
I suppose one of these days, I should learn how to play this game, it's only been what...six years, now? Besides, a future T2 champion is counting on me.
