Hello again. Despite my previous promise to update, I quickly became overwhelmed with schoolwork, two visits a day to the gym, and parties. I'm going to try to force myself to make time to update at least once a week. I think it will be good for me, and may actually get me a couple readers. ^_^;
If it isn't obvious by the way, if you haven't read my first blog, please do so before reading this.
As promised this week I will be writing about how I got sucked back into Magic. It is arguable that I never really left, as I still read the occasional article and popped into FNM to hang out with friends and play horrible decks for fun. (We call it KenDecking as a reference to a bad deckbuilder we knew) However the defining factor of my Magic "hibernation" was the fact that I played absolutely no Limited. Limited is my baby. There are few things on the face of this planet I would rather be doing than drafting with skilled players. (A rare treat before MTGO) Because of this lack of Limited play my enthusiasm and interest in Magic were extremely low.
On just one such FMN where I had only popped in to play the worst U/W Control I've ever ran, and hang out with some friends, I decided that it was the last one. It was almost the end of August, and the semester was about to start. This meant homework, reading, and parties would dominate my time. I didn't see where a half hour drive to go to FNM for a few hours on Friday night fit in. I had scheduled myself for no Friday class so I could party more, not to drive lots and continually go 3-2 because I didn't care enough to build a real deck. Then a funny thing happened as I was driving my friend Joey home. I suppose you need a bit of background for this conversation. Joey and I have been playing Magic together for years. We go all the way back to a local store called Gamequest that hasn't been open for a few years now. It was an odd place. Full of mediocre to bad players, a horribly warped Metagame, and people whom it was often hard to tell if they loved or hated each other. The store owned was an eccentric fellow who I think wanted the store to succeed very much, but we all kind of knew it wasn't to be. Back at this store Joey and I met and became very close friends. We had kicked around the idea of forming a serious competitive team multiple times over the years, but we never seems to have enough people, or enough money or enough time. There was always something between us and the regular regiment of testing we knew we needed to stay on pace with the real metagame. The only person we knew we could count on at the time was our friend Justin. Justin was a judge and knew the competitive scene well enough to be taken seriously. He had in fact had a hand in teaching me about good and bad decks, if only by pummeling my horrible excuse for a deck week in and week out with Tier 1 builds like Tendrils and Tog.
[disclaimer:I don't remember the details of how this conversation went, so this is all hacked together from vague memories, but probably isn't far off. I'll have Joey read this and correct any glaring mistakes]So back in my Intrepid a few weeks ago, Joey and I are talking about another guy we know from the current store we play at named Matt. (Shameless pug: If you happen to find yourself in Canton, Ohio check out Universal Comics on Fulton. Joe is one of the coolest owners ever.) Joey mentioned the deck Matt was running and I said something about how I thought Matt was coming along nicely in playskill. Joey agrees and says he thinks that Matt would do well as at a PTQ or some such, and that he would be good for testing. At this point I'm fairly sure it strikes us both immediately, we begin thinking of how many players there would be for the team. The first inclusion is Aaron. I've known Aaron for even longer than I've known Joey. I went to the same high school as him, and although we weren't close back then, we've sort of rediscovered our friendship of late, and I think we're both glad we did. Oh, and I guess he's ok at Magic sometime. Only when he pays for his Pacts though. (A bit of a warning. I will not fail to indulge in the time honored tradition of heckling and in-joking to my friends during my entries. You'll just have to live through it readers.) On a serious note though, Aaron is a good player and a cool guy. We knew he'd be interested. So we have four people. We want 8 for a full draft table, but anything close will do. Then we remembered something. Who else had showed up at an FNM after months if not a year of not playing than Justin. After Gamequest we had seen him now and then, and then the last we'd heard he didn't play anymore. However there he was, and had mentioned he wanted to play a little. (Apparently a little being enough to brush of a still sleeved Ghost Dad/Husk deck he probably had to rummage through a closet for.) We counted him in, as we knew he always enjoyed the Tourny scene, and would probably be good in it.
So there's five. We're close, just 3 people away. At this point Joey offers one if his lackeys in the form of Jimmy. Joey seems pretty good at gathering lackeys. I mean Joey is like the R_E of Canton with all his Barns. While not really that a great a player, Joey says that Jimmy has been making progress at a solid rate and he is confident he can train him. We count him in, and go to six. Just two away now, and I begin to be really intrigued by the prospect. One of us then recommends our friend Brooke. We've known him for a few years from back at Gamequest. After a brief period of wondering about his playskill level and seriousness, we decide he's be a decent candidate and call it seven. After failing to think of a final member, we decide we would find and train a newb. While finding a newb with both enough potential to be worth your time and a low level of bad misconceptions from a horrid playgroup is tough we decide it is indeed worth it, and we're at the coveted eight man team.
We're both very excited about the prospect of having a serious group of good players to test with, and decide to try and coax them all into at the next FNM. And it goes smoothly in fact. Aaron, Matt, and Brooke all seem rather intrigued by the prospect as well. Justin is busy with work, but says if we can set our weekly times around him he'd do it. I get everyone's schedule and am floored by how fast it seems to have come together. In fact at first it seem to have gone even better, as we forgot that Brooke has Barns as well, and we could annex one of them.
However a few days later we come to realize a couple of things. Brooke increasingly seems like a bad choice. We had observed some of his Barns' play at the FNM and it was clear they needed work. More work than my laziness would allow. Brooke also had basically a Team of his own, and we were unsure if this would work with him ending up in the middle of both. In the end we decide to leave him be with his current team to focus on Legacy.
And now an aside for a funny story. The night we came to realize that Brooke's newbs were not as developed as we had believed/hoped, we discovered it in a hilarious way. Brooke had thrown together a deck for his friend that he thought his friend would like. It was kind of silly with win conditions like Coalition Victory. It also featured a heavy control suite in the form of Pickles locks and various other Shapeshifter "tricks" like Mystic Snake and Avalanche Riders. Thats right, he thought the flipping of a Shifter would trigger CitP abilities. I of course had to tell him after the round I saw this that his deck didn't work, but we all got a good laugh out of it. (Sorry to anyone from Brooke's team who may read this. I mean no offense, but it was really funny.)
So now we are again in need of people. Fortunately Matt has an answer of sorts. Two brothers who play at Universal named Paul and Chris. Both older than ourselves, but seem to be decent players, and definitely have the money for building Tier 1 decks. I don't know them at the time, but we accept them as if nothing else a temporary fix. So that's what we go in with. I'll now do a short bio for each member.
Myself: You never realize how hard it is to describe yourself without feeling like a self absorbed asshole until you try. ^_^;
I'll stick with the minimum. I've been playing for many years, Limited is my specialty, however I consider myself a decent niche deck designer as well.
Joey: The player with the (sadly) most experience with competitive play in that he went to JSS Nats, and places well in big events. Probably the best technical player we have, I expect him if any of us to make it to a higher level of play. Sadly barring a serious glimpse of success in Magic this year, this will probably be his final season. Next year he will go away to college, and it deeply saddens me to say that I'll see very little of him after that, perhaps for the rest of our lives. He's been a good friend over the years, and I expect great things for him in his lifetime.
Aaron: I am unsure how long Aaron has been playing at his current (good) level, as I was not involved with the local scene for some time. I do know however that he has made quite the reputation for himself as a good local player, and a solid deck designer. He has also become a very good friend of mine lately, and I am glad for this.
Matt: I really don't know much about Matt at all, or at least I certainly didn't before going to a PTQ in Columbus with him recently. (More on that later) In fact Joey and I joked that "For all we know he's just a Magic playing machine with no further interests" as we had never heard him mention anything else. All we knew was he used to play football before he was hurt, leading Joey to comment "Yea, he was a football playing machine, but then he broke. Now he's a Magic Playing Machine". To some extent this sentiment still lingers. Despite all the time I now spend talking to him, I still have yet to feel like we've connected much outside the game. This will change with time though, and I'm glad because he strikes us all as a genuinely nice person, and one worth knowing.
Paul and Chris: I really didn't know them at all either. They seemed like nice enough guys though, and so far have proven to be so. Paul especially has been kind enough to host testing sessions at his ridiculously nice house. :-P
Justin: A nice guy, and very knowledgeable about the rules. At this point it is unclear to me how rusty he is from lack of practice like myself, but I know he has the natural skill to re hone.
(A bit of a note: One thing I do need a lot of work on is this very rustiness. I've been noticing lately that I frequently make a clearly wrong play, and sometimes forget exactly how rules work. While it is encouraging that I at least recognize these mistakes, I certainly need to work on these skills before the PTQ season begins for us.)
So that's the 7. There have been a couple of other people who drift in and out of testing with us, but for the most part that is the core.
As this has become rather lengthy, I think I'll end here for now. Tomorrow I will update again with the story of our first event, the Columbus PTQ.
I will close simply by saying that after reading this through once, it is purely rubbish and a bad read. However as it is just a beginning point for the real meat of the experience, I don't think I care enough to go back and re write it.
-Josh
