{From Right Field is a column for Magic players on a budget or players who don’t want to play netdecks. The decks are designed to let the budget-conscious player be competitive in local, Saturday tournaments. They are not decks that will qualify a player for The Pro Tour. As such, the decks written about in this column are, almost by necessity, rogue decks. The author tries to limit the number of non-land rares as a way to limit the cost of the decks. When they do contain rares, those cards will either be cheap rares or staples of which new players should be trying to collect a set of four, such as Dark Confidant, Birds of Paradise, or Wrath of God. The decks are also tested by the author, who isn’t very good at playing Magic. He will never claim that a deck has an 85% winning percentage against the entire field. He will also let you know when the decks are just plain lousy. Readers should never consider these decks "set in stone" or "done." If you think you can change some cards to make them better, well, you probably can, and the author encourages you to do so.}
I don’t like people. I actually loathe them. If I don’t know you, I’m probably not going to like you. You’re self-centered. You’re egotistical. You’re not as smart, or as attractive, or as good at, or good for, anything as you think you are. You’re too loud. You’re too arrogant. At the same time, you’re too timid. You let other *ssholes get away with things they shouldn’t get away with.
You’re irresponsible. When things go wrong, it’s always someone else’s or something else’s fault. Sometimes, you even blame God for your problems. (Free advice time. I wouldn’t go around blaming God for anything. In the end, He will win. And you can’t ask to speak to His supervisor, threatening His job, in the hopes of getting His decision overturned.)
Of course, I put myself into this group. Yes, I hate me, too.
Yet, somehow, people still manage to disappoint me. Ironic, isn’t it? I presume that you are going to be a bad, selfish, stupid person, and you can still surprise me. I think that there’s still a part of me that’s a naïve young adult, the one who had the philosophy that people were generally good and deserved my respect until they proved that they didn’t.
I don’t feel that way anymore. You have to earn my respect. Until you do, you’re a piece of donkey dung just like the rest of the world. When I’m driving, I see you over there. You’re going to try to pull out in that little break in the traffic, aren’t you? You can’t wait. You actually want to get into an accident with me, don’t you?
Now you’re in front of me in line at the store, and you’re going to cause a stir and waste time over a twenty-cent coupon, aren’t you? Yep, you sure are. Hey, Frito-face! There are people behind you. How about you buy one less lottery scratch ticket this week and come out eighty cents ahead?
You’re calling me at work now. You have a question. You don’t really have a question, though, do you? No, you want to argue about facts. So, you “ask” me a “question,” ignore my answer, and argue about facts with me. Or you “ask” me a “question,” get my answer, and then “ask” me the same “question” again. Hey, you with pea gravel for brains! When you ask a question, you really should listen to the answer.
Presuming that you want an answer.
You don’t really, though, do you? You just want to argue. Because being uncivil is how we’ve learned to get ahead today, isn’t it? The louder you are, the more vehemently you scream your “beliefs,” the more right that you are.
Oh, sh**, now you’re going to sit down across from me to play Magic. I wait to see if you’re going to acknowledge that I exist. Of course, in your world, I don’t. So, as usually happens, I’m the one who makes the first move which, according to The People Who Write Books on Getting Ahead, is A Sign of Weakness. Blow it up your anus, Donald. It’s a sign of respect. Too bad that, since the glorious Decade of Conspicuous Consumption known as the 1980s, respect for others is now equated with weakness. I don’t care. Or maybe I am a weak, subservient, passive cow of a human who deserves whatever people do to me.
I say “Howdy!” This is a jovial greeting, so absolutely American (i.e. United States-ian) in its origin that people typically equate it only with cowboys and / or rednecks. Actually, it’s a contraction of the much more formal “How do you do?” As in “Howdy do?” Or just “Howdy!” Of course, the rest of the world, like they matter, would point to the greeting’s etymology to prove exactly how uncouth Americans are. We would prefer to believe that we do things better and more efficiently, but we’re *ssholes.
I say “Howdy,” and you look at me like I have a worm between my teeth. You look back down at the deck you’re shuffling and offer a weak “hey.” Hey is for horses and cows, Dilbert. Address your elders and your betters – both, in my case – with a little respect. Eh, what the flock. I’d be lecturing someone with a level of maturity somewhere between a bag of potting soil and a kitten.
Oh, you’re so proud of yourself when you play that foil – Foil! – Italian Sacred Foundry. “I guess you have a pretty good job, huh? Computer programmer?” You look at me like I’m from the Planet Vagina, a place I know you’ve only seen once.
“No,” you say with a snarl. “I have a hundred-dollar a week allowance.”
“I get it,” I respond. “You won the Uterus Lottery. Congrats!”
You either have zero sense of humor, can’t figure out what I mean, or don’t understand that you really did get lucky regarding out of whom you popped. Your Mommy and Daddy have probably raised you to think that you’re just the greatest, bestest, most wonderful gift to the world ever, and you deserve all of the stuff you have because God loves you more than other people. I mean, if He didn’t love you more, you wouldn’t have been born to parents who would buy you a gas-guzzling SUV for your sixteenth birthday, would He? No, you would have been born in Tibet or Calcutta or someplace awful like that.
Throughout the course of our first game, you’re taking great pride in playing a deck that you copied from the Internet. Yes, Boros Deck Wins is very, very, very good. You made a wise choice to copy it. You really need to get over yourself, though. You didn’t invent it. Also, I notice that my cheap little Red and Green deck is beating you. And, now, I’ve won.
Oh, no, wait. I didn’t win. I could not have beaten the Mighty Mikey and His Internet Deck of Dollars. So, I didn’t actually win; your deck lost. Your deck punked out on you, you tell a friend. You know, the way decks do when they don’t have any card drawing and the other guy’s creatures are bigger. Besides, who plays Resize? (Answer: I do.)
I’d suggest that your loss might have had something to do with the fact that you’re not that good a player. You’re obviously one of those overly confident dipwads who thinks he can’t just sit down with a deck that’s won a Pro Tour and automatically win with it. You still need to make good decisions, bra. You didn’t. Like when you Lightning Helixed my Golgari Grave-Troll. He regenerates. I had just brought a Resize back from my graveyard, too. In other words, there were about sixteen ways that that play was wrong. You’ll probably play it off later to your friends by saying that “I meant to do that. I needed the life.” So, you paid W/R to gain three life? Really? Really?!? Why not just aim it at my head?
I try not to show too much pleasure when I beat you in game 2. Without sideboarding. I just didn’t need to. Squall Line took out your fliers. The second time, it ended the game. That was a maindeck choice, too.
(Later on, sure enough, I overhear you telling your friends how lucky I was to get Squall Line. Of course I was. It was complete luck that it was in my deck. In fact, I hadn’t even meant for it to be in there. It was supposed to be Wormwood Dryad. Why, thank my lucky stars that some Sprite or Leprechaun magically switched those out for me. *sshole.)
You’re the reason that I don’t like to go out to do things anymore. Going to the movies is a complete hassle. You’re in line in front of me and in back of me. I don’t want to hear your conversation you’re having with your sister-wife on your new cell phone that’s so thin you can fold it up and put it in your wallet.
A piece of advice. If you have to ask “Are you there?” or “Can you hear me?” three or more times, the answer is “no,” you inbred piece of fish carcass. You know what, though? I can hear you just fine. Did you really want me to know how your vasectomy is healing?
People: the reason that I’m gravitating more toward playing Magic Online almost exclusively.
Now, you’re really giggling, aren’t you?
“You want to play Magic Online because you don’t like how immature people are in real life? I’ve never seen such a group of immature, whiny, crybabies as the people playing on MTGO. And I run a day care center!”
It’s true. The incidence of whining on MTGO is much higher than at tourneys. Or at least the volume level is higher. Everyone who whines in a chat window is essentially whining loudly enough that everyone can hear it.
For me, though, that’s actually A Good Thing. You see, even though Clem007 is whining that “my opponent lost the connection when I played my third counterspell in the first four turns,” I don’t actually have to hear it. It’s just words typed on a screen. On MTGO, I’m also not in fear of losing my own temper at some complete toad-licking tool and getting kicked out of the store when I punch him and / or hit him with a chair. (Like I said, I hate me as much as I hate you. We’re all asses.) Actually, in real life, I’m more likely to get my ass kicked when I’m simply unable to control my laughter at some troglodyte’s inane utterance and he attacks me while I’m doubled over with laughter, unable to defend myself. I’ve been close a couple of times which is why I typically go to tourneys with a group of people, all of whom know how to fight pretty well. Or at least they’re big guys.
Complain all you want about MTGO and the absolute d*ckfors who play on there, but at least they can’t follow you around your house, to the fridge while you get a beer (something you can’t normally drink at a tourney or card store), and into the john. If they’ve been annoying you via IM’s, then you haven’t figured out how to right click on their name and block them. Which is your own fault. (For what it’s worth, my blocked list is so large that, when I find a new piece of matted pubes to block, I have to take someone else off my list. Supposedly, the next version of MTGO will allow unlimited blocks. I can’t wait. I’ll block every screen name I see.)
Is this anything new regarding Magic? No. There’s nothing new with Magic. Heck, this behavior isn’t anything new, period. Put two or more people together in any one place, I don’t care if it’s in the middle of ten thousand acres of corn, and someone’s gonna be a complete brown-eyed wad. It’s what we do. Thanks to the Springerization of America, no one’s responsible for their own actions. It’s not my fault that my mortgage didn’t get paid; you didn’t send me a bill this month. Oh, you did? Well, I didn’t get it. It’s the post office’s fault. Even though I know that my house payment is due on the twelfth of every month. And you can’t give me a ticket for running that red light. It was still yellow when I went under it. It changed too quickly. And I didn’t lose to you; my deck punked out. It has nothing to do with the decisions and choices I made, like the decision to play the deck that I played and the choices I made during our match. Nope. Not my fault. I’m perfect. The deck was imperfect, two out of three games.
Do I sound negative right now? Yes? Then, you’re one of those other types of people that I loathe. “Don’t worry. Be happy.” That’s easy to say if you’re already happy and you’re the kind of person that does whatever you want, letting the world clean up the messes you leave. For example, if you notice a lot of people having auto accidents behind you, it’s not that “I’m so lucky! I just missed being in that accident!” The truth is that you probably caused that accident. You just pulled into whatever lane you wanted to be in without looking because, of course, you’re entitled to it. The good, responsible driver, the one you cut off, had to swerve to miss you. Sadly, there was a car in the other lane, too. You leave destruction in your wake because you only care about you. What you do and the choices you make are right. Everyone else must react to you.
I’m not negative. I’m a realist. Think about this raw truth. Everyone will die. There’s nothing you can do to prevent that. You can try to fend it off for as long as possible, but you can’t stop it. “Oh, you’re so negative!” No, I’m a realist. Reality has a decidedly negative slant to it. Learn it. Know it. Love it because there’s nothing you can do about that. You can only deal with it.
Where’s all of this coming from? Two places. First, I want to get back to my roots, and, from the feedback I’ve been getting over the past few months, many of you want me to do that, too. When my first piece appeared on this here site here almost five freakin’ long ass years ago, I was snide and funny. That’s what made reading my stuff fun. I was called Rizzo-esque. I think that was going too far, but I took it for the compliment that it was. Interestingly, Rizzo had left Magic and Magic writing, so there was essentially no one else writing like that. Not that I’m claiming that I write like Rizzo. I’m just talking about tone, not ability. Don’t flame me about that, or I will come down on you like the spew from a wasted sorority girl.
Since then, I’ve obviously become Billy Joel. That is, by becoming happily married, B.J. and I both lost the Angry Young Man inside of us. He had the good fortune to be able to retire on millions of dollars worth of sales royalties. I don’t. And I want my stuff to be fun to read again. I want to experience a rebirth a la Johnny Cash with Rick Rubin on the board.
Second, I have decided that I’m going to focus almost solely on MTGO as my medium for play. You probably saw that coming since you’re as smart as you are good looking. I know that a few months ago I mentioned focusing more on MTGO. Well, now I’m saying that MTGO is going to be my nearly sole focus. I may still buy cardboard just so I can have cards to use casually with my brother and non-tourney-playing friends, but my budget will be spent on MTGO.
However, I will still talk about the costs of the cardboard. Someone asked about this on the forum. He just couldn’t figure out why I’d mention the cardboard cost when I was talking about playing online. Dear gawd in heaven, do you people not even know on which site you’re reading this? StarCityGames.com doesn’t sell cards on MTGO. They sell cardboard. I write for StarCityGames; StarCityGames hopes that said writing sells more cards. Real cards. Thus, until and unless StarCityGames sells virtual cards, I’ll primarily reference prices of the real-life cards.
To those of you who live to do nothing but pounce in the fora, see that word “primarily” in the last sentence of the previous paragraph. That means “mostly, but not exclusively.” That means “sometimes, I may point out difference in prices between real cards and fake online ones.” Mostly, that’s going to occur when there’s a big discrepancy between the prices, something that usually happens because of reprints. For example, online, Hypnotic Specter is somewhere between fifteen and twenty-five tickets (i.e. $15 to $25). In real life, you can get them for five to six bucks. That’s because it’s been reprinted many times in cardboard but has only been printed once online. The flip side of that is a card like Psionic Blast. Online, they go for three to eight tickets. In real life, they’re between $17.50 and $25. That one I can’t explain. I shouldn’t have to, either. Who am I, Alan Frackin’ Greenspan? Besides, I don’t care why. It is what it is, and that’s all that matters.
For those readers that care how this will affect the “tech” (why do you come to me for “tech”?) that I write about, yes, often, my decks won’t feature the newest cards until they come out online. For Planar Chaos, that means February 26th. When a deck does feature new cards not yet available on MTGO, this means that I tested with proxy decks. If there is a situation that you can think of that I haven’t mentioned here, whatever I say or do is right and any arguments you make to the contrary are futile and wrong.
Really, though, you come to me for tech? Really? Really?!?
As usual, you annoy me.
Chris Romeo
FromRightField-at-Comcast-dot-net
P.S. Just as I was finishing this, I flipped over my Maxine-a-Day calendar (she’s the cantankerous old biddy that Hallmark markets) to the following quote: “Being a jerk means never having to say you’re sorry.” Damn, ain’t that the truth?