Hello there everyone, my name is Zanzibar Jones, and I’m this week’s guest columnist for Embracing the Chaos. I tried out for the Undiscovered Talent contest, but I think they’re still discovering my talent. Anyway, I asked Sheldon if I could sit in for him one week, and he happily consented (the C-note didn’t hurt, I suspect).
I thought that it would be interesting and different to interview one of the existing SCG columnists, and since all the interesting people were already busy, I took my fourteenth choice (choice thirteen, Riki Hayashi, was getting a high colonic), the very same person who I’m sitting in for! Isn’t that clever?
As you know, Sheldon is a Level 5 Judge, but first about me. I’ve been playing Magic since the set where they had the blue Fireball. I once—no, twice—3-3ed a PTQ, so you know I’m the best player in my local group. I was the one that discovered Prodigal Sorcerer puts your opponent on a nineteen-turn clock. My favorite card is Pearled Unicorn, since it’s so, you know, pearly.
Anyway, I sat down to interview one of the most influential judges in Magic history, one of the creators of the EDH format, and one of the original stable of SCG writers. That’s a lot of one-ofs—like a Nick Spagnolo deck. I figured I’d put him neatly into a box, since all judges think exactly alike, back him into a corner on tough social issues, and expose him for the monster he truly is. I got that, and so much more.
I met Sheldon at his Tampa, Florida, home, where he lives with Gretchyn, his wife of five years, and their four cats, Dasher, Cupid, Comet, and Vito.
ZJ: Thanks for agreeing to the interview.
SM: Sure thing. I don’t actually recall setting it up, though.
ZJ: Oh, your agent told me that you’d be happy to do it.
SM: Um… I don’t have an agent.
ZJ: Well, you should, and he told me it was okay. And since I’m here, you might as well answer my questions.
SM: Yeah, why not. Can I offer you an espresso?
ZJ: Don’t you think it’s a little early to start drinking?
SM: Espresso is concentrated Italian coffee.
ZJ: Seems a little high-falutin’
SM: I enjoy good coffee. I’m particularly fond of Stumptown Coffee Roasters out of Portland, Oregon. They ship me a couple of pounds of beans every month.
ZJ: Yeah, I’m sure the readers care about your beverages. Let’s get start with some personal stuff, though. I hear this wife of yours is very beautiful.
SM: And that’s not the half of it. She’s pretty bright, too.
ZJ: What does she do?
SM: She’s an Aerospace Engineer.
ZJ: A what?
SM: Rocket scientist.
ZJ: Get out! That’s quite something. Do I get to check her out?
SM: Up to her, I suppose.
ZJ: So where do you stand politically?
SM: I’m a concealed-weapon permit carrying, strong on defense, fiscally conservative, screaming social liberal. I don’t think there’s a party for me. I support gay marriage and am willing to defend the institution at gunpoint.
ZJ: Sounds kind of schizophrenic.
SM: Not really. Not everyone’s worldview can be neatly tied up into two parties. I don’t think that because I support national defense that I have to also support religious zealotry. I was actually considering a move into doing some political punditry. I think there’s a full-time career in the WTF? moments every time Michelle Bachmann opens her mouth.
ZJ: How did you vote in the recent elections?
SM: For individuals who I thought would do the best. In our local elections, I voted for the Republican candidate for Country Treasurer and the Democrat for Commissioner of Agriculture. Sounds a little stereotypical, mostly because it is.
ZJ: What do consider the most serious current political issues?
SM: You know how at the Sam’s Club, there’s that parking spot that says “Reserved for Member with Infant” and is closer to the door than the handicapped spot? I hate that. I park there. I mean, for crying out loud, I’m already bearing the tax burden for these people and now they want better parking? It’s the line in the sand for me.
ZJ: Surely, you realize shopping with an infant is difficult.
SM: Having children is a choice (unlike being gay, btw). Next they’ll have “Reserved for Member That Smokes Too Much and Doesn’t Exercise.” People need to own their choices and stop trying to make others do it for them. I guess in the current political definition, that makes me a Libertarian. But supporting and putting up with other people’s children gets under my skin.
ZJ: I hear you’re a big wine drinker.
SM: I do love the wine, and it’s grown from a passion to a sickness. I have a 600-bottle cellar in the garage and a 142-bottle unit in the Whisky Room.
ZJ: You have a Whisky Room?
SM: Yeah, where else would you put your whisky? Even have one of those globes that open up and have booze inside it.
ZJ: Weekends around here must be interesting.
SM: Hopefully, never a dull moment.
ZJ: So let’s get to Magic. Which of your Magic accomplishments are you most proud of?
SM: I’m most proud of my efforts to clean up the Pro Tour. And EDH.
ZJ: If I understand correctly, you stole the EDH format from some guy named Jeremy Blair.
SM: As far as I know, EDH was conceived by my friend Adam Staley in Anchorage, Alaska, sometime around 2001-2002. At the time, we all played casual Magic at the house of our friend David Phifer, and one day the gang showed me the format. At the time, there were only five people playing because the Generals were all the Elder Dragons from Legends. Obviously, once more people wanted to play, we had to expand the ‘allowed’ list, because we wanted every General to be unique to a player. We couldn’t have conceived of the day that people would have a dozen decks. We could barely conceive that there would be a dozen people playing the format. The rules at the time were very loose. Since it was a true singleton format, to include basic land, there was a gentleman’s agreement on not playing non-basic land hate. Other than that, the only rules were the 21 damage from a single General and starting life was 200 divided by the number of players in the game.
I nearly immediately saw some potential for the format and suggested a banned list—the first card being Biorhythm. I hadn’t actually played that often when I moved to Virginia in 2003.
I suggested it to my new local group; it became our favorite format; I wrote about it on this very website, and at Worlds 2004, we had the very first widely covered EDH event. It was the Pro Tour judge community that really picked up the format and took it back to their local groups and fostered its spread through local communities.
Some of the earliest days are a blur. I don’t specifically remember when we changed to a static forty life, or when the General started in what we then called the RFG Zone. Can you imagine starting with your General in your deck?
ZJ: Yeah, that would be kind of lame. How else can you Braids lock out everyone on turn 2? That’s highly skilled Magic.
SM: Braids is banned as a General, for good reason.
ZJ: Yeah, yeah, interactive format, whine, whine, I hate combo. Sing a different song. That one’s getting
really
old.
SM: I want everyone to enjoy playing the format the way they enjoy it. If a group of ‘let’s see who can combo out first’ players wants to play together, more power to them. It’s just not the game I want to play in.
ZJ: What would you say to people who think you shouldn’t tell them how EDH should be played?
SM: I’d tell them to go invent their own format.
ZJ: So if this Staley character invented it, why do you get all the credit?
SM: Well first of all, all the credit isn’t mine. It belongs in part to the aforementioned PT Judge community and in part to Canadian L3 Judge Gavin Duggan, who really pushed for formalization of the rules set and creating a Rules Committee. I got things started, maybe led the initial evangelism, and fortunately had a loud enough voice, both through the Judge Program and writing for SCG, that I could help other people to get excited about the format and be the ‘face.’ I’m kind of the creator of EDH in the same way Abner Doubleday created baseball. And ‘guy who made it popular’ is just clunky to say.
ZJ: So let’s talk about being a Level 5 Judge.
SM: Sure.
ZJ: Who did you have to sleep with?
SM: <laughs> Actually, it was
not
sleeping with people that got me to L5.
ZJ: Is it true you can actually ban people for no reason?
SM: No.
ZJ: Can you just demote judges because you don’t like them?
SM: Of course not.
ZJ: Sounds like being L5 doesn’t have many benefits.
SM: It has the benefit of being able to positively impact 2,000 of the best volunteers in the world and help them help even more people enjoy the game we all love.
ZJ: Are you running for some sort of office?
SM: <laughs again> No, I’m being quite earnest. I love that I can help so many people enjoy themselves. We have a great community.
ZJ: But you make like major dollars doing it, right?
SM: I was sitting around with some other judges once talking about compensation and did a brief calculation. I think I came up with a number of like twelve cents an hour over the now fourteen years I’ve been with the program, so no. Anyone who gets into judging for the material gain is likely going to be disappointed.
ZJ: I heard you get foil playsets of every card.
SM: You heard wrong; although there are a few nice benefits of my level. One of my favorites is a ‘company’ MODO account, so I can go into the casual rooms and hang out with the players and chat with them, listening to what they have to say about the game. I can’t play competitively with the account, but I’m more interested in talking to people anyway. If you want to Buddy me, the account is Judge_L5_Sheldon_M.
ZJ: You can’t be a coward and answer this next question “there are too many to choose from.” Who is your favorite judge of all time?
SM: If you put it that way, me.
ZJ: No, someone else. Someone who you’re really always happy to be around and have a great time with.
SM: Still me.
ZJ: …
SM: Seriously, there
are
too many to choose from, but I will say that some of my best friends in life come from both the program and Magic in general. If I’m forced to pick a favorite judge, no disrespect to anyone else, but I love me some (current Rules Manager) Matt Tabak. He’s consistently one of the most fun people I’ve ever been around, and if we lived near each other, we’d probably hang around quite a bit. And I don’t know much about him personally, but that Jared Sylva is
dreamy.
ZJ: How about players?
SM: None of them are Jared Sylva-dreamy. Not even Kibler.
ZJ: No, I meant any favorites?
SM: Let’s cover first that there are lots of players that I really like as people, but that would never compromise my ability to make fair and consistent rulings at events or in the program. That said, I can’t say “awesome” enough times when it comes to PV. If the PT, GP, and PTQ circuits were full of PVs, it would be heaven.
ZJ: Who do you hate?
SM: Cheaters. Fortunately, we’ve done a pretty good job kicking them out of the game at the Pro Tour level.
ZJ: C’mon, you can drop a name or two.
SM: If I started to, there would be hired guns from the WotC legal team rappelling into my living room before the sentence was finished. I can tell you that despite common belief, I don’t hate Charles Gindy or Germans.
ZJ: You’ve been around the game since the earliest days of the Pro Tour. What are your memories from back then?
SM: I knew Kai when he wasn’t even the best player in his area. There was this excellent German player named Stephan Valksyer (who maybe even won a GP) who was outrageously funny. Not pie-in-the-face funny but still hilarious. Rudy Edwards might have been the best trash-talker ever. There was a GP in Zurich somewhere around 1997, and one of the semis was between Rudy, who had drafted a seven-creature deck, and Steve OMS. The two of them were going back and forth the entire time. I was table judging, and it was difficult to keep a straight face.
ZJ: Do you have a Hall of Fame vote?
SM: I do.
ZJ: Will you vote for Mike Long next year?
SM: You know you don’t need to do setup questions, right?
ZJ: Okay, so who isn’t in the Hall that you think should be?
SM: Brian David-Marshall.
ZJ: He doesn’t have the Pro Points.
SM: There are people whose contributions to the game make them Hall-worthy, and BDM is one of those people. I don’t care if it’s a “Non-Player’s Wing” or something, but there are some people who have made great contributions to the game. If Randy Buehler was below the threshold for Pro Points, I think he’d still merit consideration. I might also make an argument for Michael Flores.
ZJ: Why didn’t Homelands kill the game?
SM: There was the card with the guy that looked like Steven Tyler. Other than that, no idea.
ZJ: So why are judges bad at Magic?
SM: I’ll challenge that the average judge is probably a better player than the average non-judge. I really hate the myth, perpetuated by a few judges even, that we judge because we’re not good at playing.
ZJ: Why are
you
so bad at Magic?
SM: I’m almost 50. Guess I’m too old to think clearly.
ZJ: What was your first Pro Tour?
SM: Mainz, 1997. I ended up Head Judging the PTQ on Saturday, which featured a new Extended rotation (Fork became unrestricted or unbanned or some such), and someone in charge (I want to blame Skaff, but he was probably sleeping at the time) decided rounds would be 70 minutes long. These were the days before DCI reporter, so everyone had an individual match results slip that followed them around all day, and we would quite literally pair by hand. Tiebreakers at the end were painful. We ended up playing one round of the semi-finals and the finals on Sunday because at 5 am, neither the staff nor the players could stay awake. I believe that Andrew Wolf, one of the Good Men of Magic, was involved.
ZJ: What was your favorite Pro Tour?
SM: Worlds 2008 in Rome. My wife and I and my best friend and his partner had just finished a twelve-day cruise that left Venice, went through the Med, Greece, Turkey, Croatia, and southern Italy and landed in Rome the day before I needed to be there. It was a great confluence of timing. After all that, I got to be in Rome, which is really one of the great cities of the world. Then I had the privilege of leading the largest ever judge staff at a professional event (103 to be exact).
That said, I’ll always have fond memories of the PTs we ran at the Hyatt Regency in Chicago because of the Giant Bar on the second floor, where you could get 42-ounce martinis.
ZJ: There have to be some great stories there.
SM: Many of them involve Jeff Donais feeding drinks to people who didn’t normally consume alcohol, so many of them ended badly.
ZJ: Who would play you in the Magic movie?
SM: I’d like someone with the smoldering intensity of Karl Urban (like when he played Eomer in Lord of the Rings), but I’d probably end up with someone goofy like Robin Williams.
ZJ: What’s your favorite movie of all time?
SM: The Godfather. It’s both my favorite and the movie that I believe is the most well made film ever.
ZJ: Who are your favorite musicians?
SM: You know you can read that kind of stuff on my Facebook page, right? But Rush, Yes, Emerson, Lake, & Palmer, and Dream Theater.
ZJ: If you were to add one rule to Magic what would it be?
SM: In Sanctioned tournaments, you get a number of free mulligans equal to your judge level. Otherwise, I’m all about reverse trample.
ZJ: Reverse trample?
SM: Yeah, so if you attack with your 2/2, and I block with my 4/4 reverse trample guy, you take two damage.
ZJ: I’ve heard that idea before, called “blample.”
SM: Blample is one of the stupidest words I’ve ever heard. Sounds like a Spike Lee character. Sheriff Blample.
ZJ: What rule would you remove?
SM: Banding, because I never liked the way Benalish Hero looked at me. It’s like she thinks she knows something.
ZJ: Who is the hottest woman on a Magic card?
SM: Merieke told me to say it was her, and when Merieke tells you, you listen.
At this point, he furiously scribbles a note and passes it to me. It reads “Sixth Edition Stream of Life.”
ZJ: Why aren’t you writing any of those Untold Stories things?
SM: None of my good stories qualify for the PG-13 rating.
ZJ: Will mythic rares kill Magic?
SM: Nothing short of a Zombie Apocalypse will kill Magic, and even then, we’ll probably be drafting after we get to the chopper.