I never did give anybody hell. I just told the truth and they thought it was hell.
Harry S. Truman
My name is David “Dave Rockstar” Heilker, and I run the website 02drop.com. My “list” of meaningful Magic accomplishments is that I made Top 8 at the StarCityGames.com Standard Open (Philly). I’m not a Pro Tour veteran, though I have aspirations of winning a PTQ (I’ve yet to make Top 8!), evidenced by the title of the column I write: Archmage Ascension.
I play with some serious players. I am fortunate enough to be a skilled networker, and I have regular playtesting sessions with some players who I feel to be pretty superlative. Someone you may have heard of — Josh Wagener (your 2003 U.S. National Champion) — lives pretty close by. Apparently he’s not a good player.
I’m honestly not entirely sure what AJ Sacher was trying to accomplish in his article, but I have my guesses. I’m not offended by it, nor am I terribly insulted by it*. The overarching message I got from it was “deconstruct the best decks, and put them back together instead of just reading decklists,” or something along those lines.
This line of thought is just as easily presented within the old adage “you catch more flies with honey than vinegar,” but Maybe AJ has actually tried catching flies and learned that Vinegar is in fact strictly better (it really is… try it). To really catch flies (and I don’t know why you want to catch flies, but I digress), AJ is using a tool he’s seen used in nature built for the very same purpose: the web. AJ has caught a helluva lot of flies with this article. However, the one thing that he doesn’t make it apparent he is catching at all is fish. This would be fine if the title of his column and most prevalent of metaphors in this latest article wasn’t “teaching a man to fish.”
So while we’re in the groove of metaphorically speaking, let’s break-break-break it down a little more.
In the context of fishing, Magic tournaments can be broken down like this:
– FNM: You’ve learned the basic concept of how to fish, but not necessarily caught anything.
– Weekly non-FNM tourney (Local Saturday/Sunday morning tournaments): Maybe you’ve caught some fish, and now you want to catch some that are worth eating.
– $2.5K & $5K tournaments: You’ve been fishing for a while, you think you’ve got the hang of it, and you want to rent a boat to see if you can really make a day of it.
– PTQs: Not so far above the 2.5K/5K tournaments, but enough to warrant a subcategory. This is the first fishing tournament that most of us will ever enter. It’s an open, but the winner gets to go pro. So there’s a lot more emotionally at stake here than with probably anything else.
– Grand Prix: You’re out on the ocean. Maybe you’ve caught something before, maybe you haven’t, but you’ve sure as hell got a boat. You’re fishing for marlin and sharks, and everyone else has a boat too. You see Jeff and Paul from the local FNMs there, and they have brought their own unconventional bait: cheese curls and bacon. You don’t understand it. You also see accomplished pro fisherman Patrick Chapin. He’s also got his own bait, but it’s his own special brew designed to lure in sharks at a rate no one’s ever seen before. It’s scientifically sound, and he’s tested it at home. In his shark tank.
– Pro Tour: You’re in a dinghy, and you’re in the middle of the ocean. You have an open cut on your leg, and your name is Santiago. You’ve probably been fishing for years, but you are, in all likelihood, ill-prepared: because if you manage to catch a Marlin, there’s sharks in them thar waters.
After reading AJ Sacher last article, I was no further along in anything, save my understanding of my own shortcomings. Not only that, but my respect for him makes me want to believe that I never have to read another article. I also, am under the bizarre and convoluted impression that fish are good decks.
Wait. What?
In the context of Stark’s interview with Zvi, this makes perfect sense. Zvi is talking about deckbuilding as an art form. He’s not talking about playing Magic in general. To Zvi, teaching a man to fish is teaching men to build successful decks, but moreover, teaching them why a deck they build is/isn’t going to be successful. From Zvi’s perspective, he wants to teach the why of the why of the how (or for that lesson to be taught by someone).
Where I think AJ is trying to say is that there’s more to improvement than playtesting and reading articles; only instead of saying just that – which not only has been said before, but has been said more eloquently – he instead says things like “…and each [winning attitude article or study-harder article] is as worthless as the last all the way back to the first ones. One of each is all you need.” and “…[the latest pro tour winning decklist] is obviously better than what you and your idiot friends would have made.” While it is certainly one thing to tell me I am going about becoming a professional Magic player all wrong, it is certainly another to tell me my friends are idiots. What end does this accomplish?
The answer may surprise you, and while I’d like to think I could state this as fact, this is actually just my crude-and-caveman-like-by-comparison hypothesis (because clearly, what AJ does is completely indistinguishable from magic — not just Magic cards, but actual sorcery): I think that he really wanted to feel prolific, above and beyond his play ability, and so he decided to say what many other players have said, but in a more rhetoric-filled and caustic, if not juvenile, way.
The fact is, AJ Sacher is young. And while this 19 year-old wunderkind has certainly accomplished more than many people, myself probably included, Magic-wise (and, to be fair, in a lot less time, as I for one have been playing Magic since roughly 1995!), he just hasn’t really influenced anyone yet. A completely understandable shortcoming for a guy of his age.
I have a complex as a writer. I imagine, but could be completely mistaken, that every writer has a similar complex. I usually believe that whatever I am sitting down to write is larger than me. Every so often, I feel like I’m writing my magnum opus. I feel like “this article is the one that will define me as an elite Magic writer.” The truth is, what we write does define us, but not necessarily in the manner we wish. These types of articles don’t come along very often. “Information Cascades,” by Patrick Chapin was one. “The Philosophy of Fire,” by Michael Flores is another, “The Danger of Cool Things,” by Chad Ellis pops into mind. It is rare we get to be prolific. It is rare we get to be the definition. The trick though isn’t setting out to write a career-making article. The trick is to try to make every article, or piece of information in the “library of us,” as good as possible. This isn’t radio. You aren’t Howard Stern. There is no need to shock us as readers with information we’re already aware of and quite uncomfortable with.
As I mentioned above, the first metaphoric “fishing tournament” most of us ever enter is a PTQ. Most people won’t win a PTQ. It’s just statistics, plain and simple. You can do literally everything possible to maximize your chances of winning, and it does nothing to change that statistically speaking, you probably won’t win a PTQ. There just aren’t enough PTQs to accommodate everyone who would like to be on the Pro Tour.
Obviously.
Meanwhile, what I think AJ could’ve more profitably accomplished is examining what people are doing, and stuff that people believe to be correct that isn’t, and then teaching us how to do the right thing.
That’s teaching me to fish.
In another section, AJ compares himself to his father’s friend who, when accosted by a panhandler, replies with “I don’t give my money away.” AJ goes on to say that we as readers are in fact bums and that he doesn’t give his “fish” away. Fair enough, but no one is here for fish. We know you only give out fishing lessons, hence the title of your column.
Who do I have to accost to get some damn fishing lessons?
We’re not bums. We’re just some honest working-class people who are down on our luck. Maybe we lost our jobs, but we have a boat, and we have some drive. We can scrounge together a little cash for supplies, but how the hell do you fish?
What, Mr. Sacher, would you propose we do in order to improve our chances of winning a PTQ, or a Grand Prix, or a Pro Tour? Clearly, regardless of our inherent ability at the game, we’re not good enough to divine why decks work or why they win, so we shouldn’t be playtesting? Is that it? Or is it that playtesting isn’t enough? Perhaps that we need to do more, but that can’t be it because surely a fisherman as accomplished and lauded as yourself would tell us what the “more” is that we need to do.
Don’t let the gaps in information fool you, though. Mozart composed his first symphony and performed for royalty at age five. There is something to be learned from the prodigies. I assure you: AJ Sacher is a prodigy.
Immature? Sure. A bit gassed? Probably. Emo? Sometimes more than a My Chemical Romance concert. Right? Seems likely. I mean the kid goes about it in what is probably the completely wrong way, but do we need to improve as players? Yeah. We do. Even the Level 4 Mages can improve; aren’t there eight Pro Club Levels?
What about as deck builders? I challenge you to name ten consistently successful deck-builders who still play. Yeah, we need to improve that too.
What it boils down to is what Lombardi was all about. Fundamentals. But not just fundamentals.
“This is a Magic: the Gathering card” is probably not going to get us anywhere. Practicing drawing cards a la Yugioh is probably not what we need, yet these are fundamentals. We need to figure out how concentrated we can make the fundamentals of Magic without getting atomic. We need to stay molecular. The smallest particle possible while still being a skill and not just a thing we have to do. No one wants to be the best at recording life totals.
So my lesson is this: a bit of an indictment, but it’s really me imploring you, from the bottom of my heart… If you put up one of those sweet flyers with the pull-tabs that say “free fishing lessons,” when we call the number on the bottom don’t just berate us and tell us we don’t know how to fish. We called you because we know that already.
Teach us. Teach us, because some of us come to StarCityGames.com and other strategy sites to learn. Some of us want to know how to be the best deckbuilders we can. GerryT, where you at? Some of us want to learn how to mulligan. Some of us want to know how to warp a metagame around our suggestion, a la Patrick Chapin. Some of us just want to ride a Dragon to the final table at a Pro Tour. So teach us. I challenge everyone writing here and anywhere else on the internet to abandon decklists for a week, and just do your best to teach any lesson in fundamental Magic. The enemy’s gate is down, but we’re still stood there, waiting for Ender.
Teach us to fish, and we’ll be fed for a lifetime.
Dave Rockstar.
* Please, don’t call my friends idiots. Do I make fun of your friends?