A little over a year ago I made the decision to get into Magic: The Gathering. I wrote a blog post about it. Let me give you a quick recap of why I decided to get into Magic:
1. I needed to make friends.
2. I needed some intellectual stimulation in my life.
3. I needed something in my life that was a stress-free break.
4. I needed to "let my geek flag fly."
5. I needed to have something that made me feel proud of my self and competent as a person.
#1 on that list was probably my biggest motivator. Making friends as an adult seems to be nearly impossible, and I was extremely lonely. I'm not the world's most social person and it had reached the point where things were just unhealthy.
My story begins simply. I decided I wanted to get into Magic. I bought the Speed Vs. Cunning Duel Deck and my wonderful wife and I sat down at our kitchen and table and pretended to know how to play. First off, major kudos to my wife for being willing to do that with me. She was so willing to support me getting into the hobby and help me out. She's great.
From there I bought a Deck Builder Toolkit and built myself a nonsense little deck. I was so proud. It felt so good to be creative and be piecing together the puzzle of this new hobby. The videos of Tolarian Community College were a massive help to me in learning about this deeply complex game. If you are interested in getting into MTG or just enjoy hypnotically compelling product reviews I suggest you check it out.
From what I could see on the internets it seemed that playing in drafts would be a really good way for me to get into playing Magic. A Magic "draft" is, in simple terms, when you open booster packs and pass them around a group each taking turns picking 1 card at a time to build a deck. Then you play those decks against each other. It's great because you're getting more cards for your collection and also getting a lot of practice with diverse strategies.
So, with some trepidation I looked up when my local gaming shop was holding drafts and walked in on a Monday night ready to go. Well, I say ready to go when what I really mean is I'd bought card sleeves and watched a few youtube videos. I had an employee at the shop give me some advice. He told me to remember the pick order acronym B.R.E.A.D.:
B=Bombs, the cards that can win a game on, or nearly on, their own
R=Removal, cards that kill creatures and other threats your opponents present.
E=Evasion, creatures that have ways to get past blockers to damage your opponent.
A=Aggro, aggressive and fast creatures.
D=Dirt, the stuff no one wants.
For some reason I focused in really hard on the center letter of B.R.E.A.D. and when I opened my first pack, after the panic had subsided, I noticed some of my creatures had flying. "Flying is a really good keyword!" I thought, and went on to build a terrible Blue-White fliers deck. It didn't win at all. It didn't matter. I had a lot of fun and I had finally taken the step into my gaming community. I had met for the first time people who would eventually become friends.
A month after my first draft I had my first opportunity to go to a prerelease. Magic gets a new expansion quarterly, and each time a week before the official release stores hold "prerelease" events that give everyone an opportunity to play with and get some of the new cards before they are officially released. I still felt new and uncomfortable in the community, but I had decided to jump in headfirst. I went to my first ever prerelease event, a midnight event for the set Fate Reforged (The set title seems quite fitting). Not only did I have a great time, but I came in second place! It was an amazing feeling. I credit my regular success at midnight prereleases largely to the fact that I can function quite well while tired. I've definitely won a few games due to sleepy opponents.
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| This is what I'm talking about when I say Magic is my stress free break. Also, you should check out Cardboard Crack. They've got some solid comedy going on. |
Over the next month I continued to draft and trade in order to build up my collection and build my dream deck. Eventually I had collected most of what I needed in order to join in on my first Standard tournament. I lost terribly, but I was able to meet new people and experience an entirely new format for playing magic. (Note: Magic is played in a variety of formats. Standard is the most commonly played, and consists of only cards from a limited card pool of the last several sets. Modern, which I will mention later, consists of cards from 2003 until now.)
I didn't give up on Standard, but I also didn't focus on it too heavily. I was mainly focused on drafting regularly until a magical day in April. My brother-in-law Jon, a fellow Magic player and gamer, was visiting with my in-laws and that day also happened to be the Dragons of Tarkir Game Day. Game Days are Standard tournaments that happen a few weeks after a set is released that kind of celebrate the new set and give players a chance to toy around with the new cards in a competitive setting. They also give out pretty sweet promotional cards! So, Jon and I decided to go to the Game Day together. I didn't have very high expectations for myself. I thought I might win a match or two. But then I started winning....and winning...and I didn't stop winning. I only had a single loss and ended up taking third place out of 16 people! I could not have been more proud. My goofy little deck had brought me to a successful finish at a tournament. I was thrilled.
Around this time I heard about The Meadery, an MTG specific social media network. For fun I joined and posted my signature deck, "Sultai Elementals," on the website. Next thing I knew someone in my game store's Facebook group posted that my deck had been featured in an article on The Meadery! I was amazed and overjoyed. It was the coolest feeling in the world. For a moment I felt famous. I felt like the greatest Magic player in the world. I felt good about myself. I really cherish this time in my life. Having generally pretty low self-esteem, the 1-2 punch of tournament success followed by public recognition was life changing. The message of "you're good at something! You're a competent human being!" meant so much to me.
I had also discovered Pucatrade, an online MTG trading service. If you're interested you should click that link and sign up. If you do I'll get bonus referral points! #ShamelessPlug Anyway, as the competitive environment shifted my deck became less effective and I found myself wanting to switch to something different. I used Pucatrade to switch over to a more established and competitive deck known as Abzan Midrange. After switching I started to win. A lot.
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| Me on the left as Liliana Vess, Maya in the middle as Nissa Revane, and Jenny on the right as Chandra Nalaar. |
This summer our good friend Maya was living with us and working with me. I had been saving up store credit from my numerous wins and invited Maya and my wife, Jenny, to join me at the prerelease for the summer set: Magic Origins! They agreed on one condition--we all had to dress up as characters from Magic. Well, you can see the picture. It was awesome. Also, yes I cosplayed as a female character. I also got my wife and good friend to go play Magic with me. So worth it. It was super fun having my friends with me and getting to introduce them to something I love.
By now I was having a lot of success with my Standard deck. In September there came an opportunity to take my game to the next level. Magic has a quarterly pro tour with a grand prize of $40k. My store was hosting a Preliminary Pro-Tour Qualifier (PPTQ), my first step towards Magic fame and fortune. I had never been to an event at such a highly competitive level and I had no idea what to expect. I have not before or since faced competition quite so fierce. Despite the high caliber of my opponents I still managed to get a record of 2-2-1 (2 wins, 2 losses, 1 tie), landing me straight in the middle of the pack. All things considered I'm quite proud of that for my first ever competitive event.
We're now at just about a month ago in the story. Many of my new friends had been pushing me to get into Modern, a Magic format featuring older and more powerful cards and strategies. Because of it's age, the cards in Modern can be expensive and hard to come by, but I had been slowly trading to piece together everything I would need to finalize a competitive Modern deck. At the beginning of December I went to my first Modern tournament. The next week I went again! I had a blast! Also, Modern fanned into flame the spark that Magic had begun to produce in me, the spark of creativity. Thanks to Modern I began to write again. For the first time in over a year I blogged. I blogged, just not here. I began to write about my experience with Modern on The Meadery. Check out my two posts!
1. You Never Forget Your First Time (My Intro to Modern)
2. Stepping into Modern, Take 2
So that brings me to where I am today. Magic has brought me new friends, given me more self-confidence, and even inspired me to write again. One of my New Year's Resolutions is to place in the Top 8 of a Competitive REL Magic event. Tomorrow I might just have that chance. Hopefully tomorrow I'll be blogging about my string of victories and glory.
One way or another, check back tomorrow to hear more about this life of mine. It will be probably be great.
(Note: This post is up on January 6th because it took so long to write. This counts as my post-a-day post for January 5th.)
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