Let this be our mantra — “There is more to the world than me.”
You want the metagame? You want the scoop from the pros, the savage tech, the newest, most broken, most awesome of the awesome? Yeah? You do?
Go the hell away. I’m angry and I’m pissed off and it’s other people’s fault.
As I write this, it’s Release Week. For those of you who haven’t had this happen before, what often happens is that it brings the sharks out. Suddenly, the metagame is just the teensiest bit not completely stagnant, and your average Wants To Be Mike Flores So Bad is too spooked to go into the tournament practice room. So while you and I are making geeky decks going “Hey, wow, Belfry Spirit’s uncommon?” and trying to make Nephilim connect with our opponents…
There are sharks in the water.
I don’t mind tournament types. I really don’t. I played in the odd tournament, in the days of my paper career. My collection could sustain it, I could test enough, and I had a good bead on my opponents most of the time. My budget wasn’t up to true snuff, but I was able to swing into Friday Night Magic tourneys and have a bit of fun. When we played Extended, I had ninjas leaping out and Psychatogs going home.
But on MODO*, these people are inconsiderate. In the extreme. Let me make this clear; I am a casual gamer. I go to the casual room. The casual room has no defined code of behaviour. It really doesn’t. This is, in my opinion a bad thing (more on this later). Let me make it clear to you, Mr I Bought Four Ghost Councils In Release Week And All My Duals Are Foil. You want to play with foils, you want to play with good cards, go ahead. But you are not getting anything out of testing your Newest Tourney Creation against me, beyond your own self-centered onanism.
Last night, I played against a wonderfully considerate (sarcasm) butthead (not sarcasm). Turns out he was interested in this new deck idea from a friend of his. Except his friend was Katsuhari Mori, and he didn’t know him from a side of cheese. Yep, fully powered, needles-and-all Ghazi-Glare, right there in front of me in the casual room. My deck cost as much as one of my opponent’s Loxodon Hierarchs, and here I was, getting skulled by a deck good enough to Take Worlds. This was really casual to me. This was really fun (blatant lie).
See, here’s the thing. I don’t play Magic to Just Plain Win. If my opponent mulligans to four, I offer a draw. It’s no fun to play if you’re not in the game. I can goldfish any time I want to — the game accommodates that. A few things work oddly — cards like Secretkeeper, for example, give you a false impression of their Awesomeness when you play them in Solitaire mode. But it’s there. It can be used.
Let me speak to you of cowards. Let me speak to you of men of low character. Let me talk to you of bullies, of brutes, and above all else, the cringing, fearful self-important wankers who seem to infest the waters of Magic Online. It’s Release Week. They’re flying thick and fast.
Oh, how I hate them.
Here’s the problem with the Internet. Penny Arcade summed it up; Anonymity + Audience = Complete *sshole. When I sat down at the Phantom Zone and glanced across the table at Brodo or Haggis, I knew them. I knew that my local Angry Scot was in a bad mood because he’d had a long night and hadn’t had a chance to sleep it off when having to take care of the place. There weren’t sharks in the water, per se, at this venue… because I knew the people I was dealing with.
If Brodo’s deck was running Jittes and such… well, he was testing. I’d rather not play against that — I don’t have anything any good on me right now. Oh, okay, he’d say, and produce something fun and relaxed. Something… casual. There was no bitterness, there was no spite. If someone had a crappy series of draws, they’d just deal, stop playing Magic so much, stop taking it so seriously, and relax for a bit. We could play tourneys, and we could play casual.
Here’s the thing. In the end, Magic is a game. It’s a game based on competition; on two things squaring off. I do not feel good when I win against an opponent whose first creature is Eager Cadet. Just as if your opponent mulligans to four in a tournament, you run a lap of the table, if my opponent mulligans to four against me, I offer them a draw. That’s not a game. If they mulled to four — for whatever reason — they’re not going to be in this game. It’s not fun for me to beat up on someone who’s not there. It’s not fun to lose when you were never really playing.
Yes, I’m saying “it’s not fun.” This is opinion. You mightn’t agree. If you really like beating an opponent who’s only got four in the grip and goes three turns before laying his second land, then in my opinion, you’re a jerk. Not just a jerk, but a coward. You’re a bully.
“Bullying is a behaviour, it is something people learn. Bullies may also be bullied themselves, or they were bullied at one time or another in their lifetime. People bully because it makes them feel superior to others. They might get power and strength from bullying others. People bully to get attention. They think that it makes them popular, or that bullying may be a way to fit in. Bullying doesn’t make someone popular or cool, it just makes them mean. People who bully are often scared about something about themselves, so they try to scare others to hide their feelings or pick on others so they won’t get picked on first. People who bully are unhappy and they take out their unhappiness on others. People who bully feel little or no responsibility for their actions, and often feel the need to control others and may always feel the need to win…”
-“Why do People Bully?”, bullying.org
What’s that I hear? Is that “close to home” being struck?
If your desire to win is so great that you will bring guns to knife fights, that you will bring your deck testing into the casual room and seriously, xenocidally beat the everloving snot out of people with a deck that costs as much as a rent payment, then you’re a bully.
There’s a tournament testing room. Go there. Oh, wait, you’ll lose? Oh horrors! Scandal and disgust! We can’t have that! Precious baa-lamb’s creation might lose?! That’d just be terrible!
“As Iron Sharpens Iron,
So One Man Sharpens Another.”
-Proverbs 27:17
You gain nothing from beating Johnny New Guy and his tribal Nephilim Deck. You learn nothing. You learn that oh wow, eight Wraths, Knell, Kokusho, and Mortifies are some good against aggro decks. My god, what kind of idiot are you? You needed to test the Nephilim Tribal Matchup?
No, you didn’t.
You had to satisfy your own damn thirst to win. You had to go down to the end of the park and, so nobody would pick on you for your bad attitude, you went and kicked the red-headed kid in the gut, then you pointed and laughed at him.
Get the hell out of my casual room, you self-centered jerk.
You want your deck to get better? You want to hone your golden monstrosity to be a tournament force? Then take it and put it in the tournament room. You’ll get better competition. You’ll teach others and you will learn. You will Study And Grow Strong. If that’s your goal, and if that’s your ambition, and you are willing to pour time and effort into the deck… go for it. I am hugely behind you. It’s a great idea — net decking allows for established metagames and it invigorates the competitive tournament scene. I love that.
Release Week brings these *ssholes out of the work. Release Week! New cards! New metagame! Can’t go in the tournament room! It’s too scary! Wah wah wah, I have to go beat up on weaker opponents.
I’m angry and I’m sour, and I have had an awful week. These people have tried to rip me off, talk down to me, insult me (and whoever it was who called me a filthy muslim bastardo, I hope you’re enjoying whatever ban or suspension you got for it), and then, tried to shove me out of the casual room. “Go to the new player’s room!” I’m told.
No. Screw you. I’m not a new player. And I’m more considerate than you.
I introduced a friend of mine to Magic lately. And he lost a game in the new player’s room to Llanowar Wastes, Budgie, Overgrown Tomb, Putrefy, Watery Grave, Moroii, Jitte equip. You want to tell me that that guy was a “new player?” You want to try and tell me he belonged in the room of Coral Eels and Hill Giants?
No.
He was just being a bully. He was being a self-centered, onanistic, arrogant *sshole, and I pray that somewhere along the line, he suffers for it.
Here’s your metagame: The casual room is currently infested with *ssholes. Get out.
Hugs and Kisses
Talen Lee
talen at dodo dot com dot au
Ps. It bears mentioning there are some nice guys in the casual room — plenty of them. But Release Week brings the wankers to the surface, and I can’t stand it. So here’s what you get.
* ‘Magic Online Digital I Know It’s Not Called That Any More Really But It’s So Easy To Say Object.