podcast, episode one: odyssey

This podcast was recorded ten years from now.

MP3 download here (mediafire link)

a style parody of matt sperling and michael j flores

Yeah, I’m losing my edge

I’m losing my edge

But I was there

I was there in 1994

I was there at the first Mirage booster draft playtests in Renton

I’m losing my edge

I’m losing my edge to the EDH players whose laughter I hear after round two

I’m losing my edge to the SCG grinders who can tell me every card played in Cawblade from June through the banning

I’m losing my edge

To all the foreign pros

I’m losing my edge to the casual players with Monster binders and ten thousand dollar versions of Ghost Dad

I’m losing my edge

But I was there

I was there at the first practice games at the beach house

I didn’t want to lend Herberholtz my Overgrown Tombs, so I gave him Stomping Grounds instead

 I made top eight at a PTQ where Conley played Death Cloud

I told him, don’t build such weird decks. You’ll never win a match

I cut Flamentongue Kavu from my Standard decks because it died to Flamentongue Kavu

I was there in 2002 testing the Pyschatog mirror against Carlos Romao

He never resolved a Fact or Fiction

I was there

I was the first guy drafting Dampen Thought

I drafted it at Neutral Ground

They know now

I was there

I’ve never punted

I was there on StarCityGames when Chapin wrote an article where he took a judge’s order to stay away from E a bit literally

I joined an Invitational draft on Magic Online and they didn’t know how to kick me out

I was there when Bertoncini won his first M11 draft with Ant Queen

I was there on MTGSalvation when Gavin Verhey infracted someone for posting a decklist with Damnation

But I’m losing my edge to better-informed players with better mana curves and different draft archetypes that are actually really, really really good

I’m losing my edge

I heard you quit Magic when damage didn’t use the stack, and again after the Organized Play changes

I heard you have every gold-bordered World Championship deck, altered to have black borders, then altered back because it was worth more originally

I heard you have every piece of tech Gerry Thompson has ever withheld from his articles

I heard you have a cube made only of cards that made other people stop playing cube

I hear that you’re buying a Sol Ring, Capture of Jingzhou, and an Emrakul, and are trading away your Snapcasters, because you want to play a fun deck

You want to play Vintage Teachings

I hear that you and your team have sold your Jaces and bought Doubling Seasons

I hear that you and your team have sold your Doubling Seasons and bought Jaces

I hear that every deck you play is more skill-intensive than every deck that I play

But have you seen my binder?

Incite, Island Sanctuary, Ernham Djinn, Protean Hulk, Stifle, Fluctuator, Crimson Acolyte, Ignite Memories, Tarnished Citadel, Arcane Denial, Demonic Consultation, Ironclaw Orcs, Pyrokinesis, Olivia Voldaren, Battlefield Scrounger, Snap, Pillory of the Sleepless, Attunement, Wall of Blossoms, Scorched Rusalka, Exile into Darkness, Desperate Ravings, Corpse Dance, Dralnu, Skyshroud Poacher, Dream Halls, Skirge Familiar, Manriki-Gusari, Abeyance, Cadaverous Bloom, Lightning Helix (just flip it…), Knight of Stromgald, Saffi Eriksdotter, Cruel Ultimatum, Plow Under, De! Ranged! Hermit! Covetous Dragon, Ebony Owl Netsuke, Serra Avatar, Goblin Bombardment, Barbed Lightning, Threads of Disloyalty, Swans of Bryn Argoll, Recurring Nightmare

Recurring Nightmare

Recurring Nightmare

Recurring Nightmare

Lend Your Cards!

There are so many articles about MTG finance and trading and how to maximize value out of the game by acting in a completely self-interested manner. This is not one of those. This article is about why you- yes, you- should immediately lend way more cards at Magic tournaments. I don’t mean just to close friends and teammates, though that’s obviously fine. I mean friends-of-friends, people in competing playgroups, that guy you saw Top Eight once, the guy who knocked you out of the last tournament, and little Timmy at his first FNM. And not just a couple uncommons here and there: I want you to start the first round of the GP with your binder spread out through the tournament hall, those dual lands and Snapcasters beign put to good use. Not just that, but you should take the first step in offering to lend these people cards.

Why?

an open letter to magic players, by planeswalker points

Dear Players,

Hey. I know we didn’t get along at first, and that a lot of you don’t like me that much. That’s cool. Some of you aren’t any hot shakes yourself. Not pointing fingers or anything, just saying.

The point is that we’re stuck with each other for a while. Cool, huh? Yeah, thought so.

So. Remember that time you tried to get rid of me? Right. Fun times, fun times. How’d that turn out for you?

Oh, that’s right. You failed miserably. Because you’re a fucking whiny cauldron of baby cries that explodes into tears if the fucking frames change for a single goddamned set, with your pitch never changing from “earsplitting,” so Wizards is used to hearing the same “we’re all quitting” bullshit every time a single thing changes. Remember damage on the stack? Yeah, you yelled up a shitstorm about that one. Bosses actually caught word of that. They rolled their eyes and continued with their actual business making actual money.

Oh no, you say. You really, REALLY mean it this time. This change REEEAAALLLLY sucks.

Well then. Sucks to be you, because it sounds the same to me. But what do I know, I’m a noncorporeal system set up to distribute incentives.

You think your silly little letter is going to get this huge change reversed? The one that was obviously approved by businesspeople that don’t play Magic, and therefore don’t give a shit what a Magic player thinks? Sign whatever fucking name you want to it. They don’t know who you are. Hey, remember that huge change to Magic that was reversed due to immediate public outcry from the community?

No. No you do not. Because nothing gets reversed like that because of a few players bitching. Because players are always bitching.

And now, guess what? After all that complaining, they made some changes. And what were those changes? I’m more important than ever.

Ha ha ha. See what happened? You complained about how the system was weird with me around. So it got changed. And the changes made me more important than ever. Funny, isn’t it? It’s funny to me, at least. Humor is subjective.

So. Then. The point here (aside from me! Haw haw!) is that I’m not going away. Live with it.

Oh sure. You might get a change here and there. But I’m here to stay.

Motherfuckers.

Sincerely,

The Planeswalker Points System

gp montreal postmortem at goodgamery

My long-awaited (by me) report from GP: Montreal is up at GoodGamery. 

"You find yourself in a modern-looking train station that, due to lack of windows, could be hundreds of feet below ground or directly under the foot of some Francophone Godzilla, and you would be none the wiser until your life ends in its footprint. You’d still be none the wiser after that happens, being dead."

writing about magic: a style guide

Magic players are mostly smart people. This isn’t just audience flattery on my part or marketing by Wizards, it’s probably measurable by a bunch of people that are too busy doing actual work to measure it. Because of this raw intelligence, us smartypantses probably put vanishingly small amounts of effort into high school English, and got good/bad grades in spite of/because of the not caring. Personally, I wrote most of my essays the morning they were due, and got mostly A’s on those papers because I could put words together without making the teacher fly into a grammatically-induced rage; I doubt my experience was unique. Unfortunately for y’all, that teacher was trying to teach some shit that’s reasonably important about How To Write A Thing, and reading a lot of Magic articles doesn’t show much evidence that it seeped through the heads of Magic players into their brainplaces.

a response to "dating and magic," by garruk wildspeaker

Now, apparently some dude tried to school y'all in "Dating and Magic." Garruk basically thought the guy's head in a place it shouldn't be, basically inside his butt.

Garruk met this guy one time. True facts. Dude was wearing some weird shiny black shirt and some like rainbow-colored armband. Looked like he was going to a funeral in unicorn land.

He made a list and Garruk will basically go down the same thing, talk about what y'all should actually know from it. Should help.

this is not a kneejerk reaction to the planeswalker points system

I’m not going to write about the new Planeswalker Points system. Yes, it’s a fundamental change to an element of Magic that’s gone mostly un-fucked-with for quite some time now. It also gives us a new number to slap down on the table for all to admire. Is it a good system long-term? I don’t know. It doesn’t rate who the best players are, that’s for sure, but it’s not really designed to do that. Will it drive more people to play competitively more often, thus spending more time and money on Magic? That’s the hope, obviously. It probably will.

obligatory alyssa bereznak response post

The Alyssa Bereznak post is the first true crossover hit between the Magic: the Gathering community and greater nerddom. For those of y’all that have, hopefully, streamed in with millions of your average-joe friends to read this fascinating piece of writing you have before you, what you have to understand is shit like this just doesn’t happen. Magic news is for Magic people. We’re comfortable in our little bubbles and don’t venture outside of them too often unless we’re really hungry and the Burger King is right there.

deck choice (a response to pvddr)

There is a very good chance that you are not Paulo Vitor Damo da Rosa. Not only, chances are, do you not have his sweet name, you are not as successful a player as PV. This means that you are under no obligation to choose a deck for your next tournament in the same way that PV does.