Today’s a three-fer Thursday, complete with some very thought-provoking questions and Where’s Waldo type ponderance about one of our Featured Writers. Out in the real world, all of my extended family, friends, and acquaintances excluding StarWarsKid are busy mourning another four years of George W. Bush (you think I’m kidding, but it’s like 55% suicide watch, 45% “I’m moving to Canada – oh wait, make that someplace warmer”). Here in questionland however, the beat goes on.
Where is Geordie Tait? He has been missing in action for quite some time.
Albert
For the time being, Geordie has given up our fine game in favor for working for Magic’s main competitor – the Vs. System. He secretly relocated to the Bat Cave somewhere in California for a time in order to do some contracting work for Upper Deck (owners of Vs.), but now he’s back on Canadian soil, probably playing hour after hour of computer roleplaying games.. When I talked to him recently, he explained that playing a game is all or nothing for him, and he couldn’t really reconcile only playing part-time, so he’s not playing Magic much at all right now. Here’s to hoping that we do get to read more of his writing on a frequent basis, whatever the game he’s writing about happens to be.
My friends and I have playtesting problems. When he and I sit down, it never seems to be for long enough or thoroughly enough. Can you give us any advice on how to “Playtest like old men”?
Connor Oakes
I think Scott Johns and I have probably written the two best primers on playtesting around, though I’m sure there are tons of solid ones out there. Scott’s is buried in the Mindripper archives on the Wayback Machine (translation: I have a copy on my machine that I can’t post and I’m too lazy to look up Scott’s article), but here’s a link to mine.
Playtesting is hard work. Some people love to do it (like Jim Ferraiolo and Osyp Lebedowicz), and others abhor it (like any Limited specialist alive), but when you do sit down to actually make it happen, here are a few things to keep in mind to make it go smoothly.
1) Always bring pre-built decks, as the time you’ve set aside for testing goes quickly and there’s never enough of it.
2) Play a set number of games before switching cards in a particular deck or switching decks.
3) Stop dicking around and playing Halo when you should be learning the important cards for a particular matchup, and how to sideboard. No excuses!
This is all simple stuff, but when combined with the article above, it should help you overcome some of your difficulties. If you still aren’t getting the job done, maybe it’s time to find somebody else to test with, or to test with the same person, but to do it online where there are fewer distractions. As for playtesting like old men, Mike Flores, Jon Becker, and Brian David Marshall would be more appropriate parties to ask.
One of your most famous articles featured you performing at a tournament while under the influence of Marijuana. Some years later, as a head of Starcitygames, itself a head of the world of Magic strategy, do you feel this past transgression harbors your site and/or yourself in a negative light? Or do you feel it is easily pawned off under the guise of “experimentation”?
This may be the best question I received, and it refers to this particular article that I wrote way back when I was first starting on the scene, though these days, I’m not that certain how many of our current readers are even aware the article exists.
Back in my early days, I was kind of stunned to see how many Magic players were also recreational drug users. Growing up in a conservative area of the Midwest and then going to school at Oklahoma meant I didn’t have a lot of exposure to drugs like most of today’s kids do. I didn’t take my first drink until I was at my bachelor party (I was 20 – nooot kidding), and up until that point in time, I had never tried mary jane, though literally every Magic friend I had was at least an occasional pot user. Therefore when Ferrett brought the idea up, I figured I’d give it a shot and see what the big deal was. After all, it was time to stop getting by strictly on what I was told growing up, and to gain enough experience to make my own choice. (I wrote a paper in my senior political science seminar about legalizing pot without ever having tried it myself, something that seems rather strange now that I look back on it.)
Since that time, I’ve probably used pot a couple of times a year on average. I usually enjoy the experience, but I really dislike the after-effects and the fact that it often takes me a couple of days to get full use of my vocabulary and writing skills back. This is more than a little frustrating in my line of work, though I doubt I’d use more even if I were doing something else as a job.
As for how it reflects on the site, I’m not really sure it does. My actions in the Magic world and how I treat people when I meet them go a lot further to set impressions about myself and StarCityGames.com than an article I wrote about an experiment from three years ago. People in the game are often the types to use drugs recreationally. To me it’s just another aspect of talking about the game itself, which is what I think sets us above all the other Magic sites out there.
I just try not to discuss illegal activities too much or those idiots over in the MiseTings forums start commenting about it and Pete gets annoyed at me saying things that might make the parents on our site upset.
Anyway, I hope you’ve enjoyed today’s three-fer. Join me again tomorrow for a weekend edition of ATE, and remember kids… “Don’t do crack – it’s a ghetto drug!”
Teddy Cardgame
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