I just got done watching Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets on DVD when I realized my Intarweb connection was down. I got really pissed and was about to go to bed when I checked it again and it was working! Now I’m even more pissed at myself for writing this. The childish behavior of Magic players when it comes to trash talking is not something to write an article about, yet I’m doing it anyway. Grrrrr.
Ben Bleiweiss posted an article a few days ago that I hadn’t read until I decided to write this. I hopped over to TMD after my Intarweb was working again and saw a new thread with lots of replies. Then I saw all of this crap, and got annoyed.
To start: TMD Community – What the hell guys? You should all be used to this kind of abuse by now. I’m not so sure what’s so special about this article; shtuff like this has been thrown at us for years. I guess everyone just wanted some drama. Be that the case, fair enough. If everyone is just going to complain about the sand in their nether regions, keep it to yourself, don’t waste good bandwidth. A few years back we were clamoring for attention. We eventually got it around when Onslaught came out. I’m not sure what spurred the change, but I don’t really care to think back that far. We got our beloved World Championships (which I plan on winning again this year, just to let you all know. hehehe), and a lot more exposure through outlets like StarCityGames.com and TheManaDrain.com.
The number of tournaments and players has jumped drastically, and one little freaking article from someone (Warning: talking out of my ass here) who doesn’t play, much less have any knowledge of the format criticizing our play skills and deckbuilding. Noooooooooooooooo! Anything but that! Guess what? Most Type 1 players are truly awful and have no clue how to build decks (sorry guys, it’s the truth). The fact that anyone is taking offense to that is just stupid. This is a game, a really fun, social game full of good times and warm happy feelings. Why ruin that with negative energy? To wrap this up: Chill guys. It’s. A. Game.
To continue: Ben – Huuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuh? What was that about? Now that I give it a sliver of thought, I realize that this could most likely be a humor piece that just happened to be way over the heads of most of the Type 1 community. The problem with that is Magic players are very sensitive and defensive when it comes to negative criticism, make sure you put a disclaimer somewhere unless you feel like a fishing trip, because you’ll be opening a big ole’ smelly can o’ worms. (And if you aren’t careful they’ll be flashed back, and nobody likes to deal with a 6/6 for four mana.) (That was awful, I deserve to be hit.)
I can understand why everyone is (I suppose”upset” is the word), over this. Type 1 players are a very special group of players. I don’t mean that they need foam helmets (although Bryce should probably be outfitted with one at some point in the near future), but they’ve been playing a very mocked format for years without support from anyone but other members of the community. Despite more exposure, they still feel isolated and frightened of the big scary world of the DCI Cornucopia of Love (Potter puppet pals rule). I’m not sure the members of the community are ready to be assimilated into the realm of mainstream Magic, but they hopefully will someday, and articles like that aren’t helping. Keep in mind: More Type 1 players = More sales of overpriced OOP rectangles of cardboard.
To finish: Me – Why aren’t you writing more? Why aren’t you filling the role of”Poster Boy” (God, I hope I’m not supposed to fill that role, unless it involves more pictures of me. I’m a camera whore)? Why can’t you punctuate correctly? The answer to all three is: they just haven’t been a priority lately. When I was in school, I was all about getting stuff done and following a schedule. Now it’s summer, and all bets are off. I’m getting home no earlier than 3 AM every night, I’m waking up no earlier than noon every day, and I’m consuming far more Chinese food and milkshakes than anyone should. It’s a lot of fun. The way things are now don’t really allow me much time to be online, let alone to sit down and write out a fourhundredkabillitymillion word article that is of an acceptable level of quality. Like, I know I promised I’d try and write more, but other stuff gets in the way, ya know?
Getting material to write about is really hard. One of my ideas for an article was to interview the Top 8 of the last Waterbury tourney. As it turned out, I ended up smashing some face and playing in said Top 8, and by the time I was done, most of the players had left and some crazy punk rock chick had tied up my friend Liz. [Sounds like a good date. – Knut] But I won a Mox Pearl and smoked victory cigars with Ben Kowal and Rather Large Charles, so it was awesome sauce, and I love awesome sauce, let me tell you.
I forgot where I was going with this and I blame not only myself, but the aboved-covered parties for my lack of concentration, because it’s three in the freaking morning and I’m writing a rebuttal to an article I only read the first few paragraphs of. Oh, now I remember. I haven’t had a whole lot to write about. I don’t do the whole deckbuilding/theorizing thing, and I certainly haven’t played in any large tournaments (even though that’s a savage lie and I played at Waterbury like, three weeks ago), and anything I write would likely be around 1% useful information, 76% funny stuff, and 37% awesome sauce (That’s my secret to writing articles – using awesome sauce to make articles better than 100% good). I like writing tournament reports, but Waterbury came in the middle of a very dramatic time coupled with the last few weeks of school, so I didn’t have a whole lot of time to write stuff.
I now have a new policy when it comes to my writing and playing: Don’t ever expect me to do it again. When you see it, be happy and surprised! I’m kidding, but I really don’t want to have my reason to write be some jibba-jabba between the children. Next time, instead of writing I’m bringing out the paddle, and I’m going to enjoy it far more than you will, mark my words. If it’s fiddle-faddle we’re talking about here that’s a different story, but that usually isn’t the case, so I won’t go into that. If you all would like, I could write some stuff about my Magic Online adventures, only with any glaring mistakes I make edited out to make myself look better in Ben’s eyes. I certainly don’t want to have to whine about my skillz being pimp slapped on the Intarweb. That would be the awful sauce, something I’ve tried to cut down on and leave out of my articles.
My final message is: Children, play nicely, get along, and bring daddy some suga.
Carl Winter
Moderator on TheManaDrain.com that probably shouldn’t be, but I <3 Steve for leaving me as one because it's a nice status symbol.
Featured Writer for StarCityGames.com for as long as Knut will tolerate my laziness and Ben doesn’t read this article.
Carl underscore Winter at Hotmizzle dizzot cizzom (Let an e-mail harvesting bot figure that one out, hehehehe).