Swedish Nationals was just last week, and I am going to finish a separate report from that event as soon as I’m done with this daily installment. I’d be surprised if there are any Nationals left, but for those of you getting it on 24/7 in the Standard queues or care about current Standard for other reasons, I figured I might as well share the deck I should have played at Nationals in today’s daily installment. I mean, it’s even less interesting in a week right?
4
“>Wildfire
4
“>Molder Slug
4
“>Arc-Slogger
4
“>Llanowar Elves
4
“>Sakura-Tribe Elder
4
“>Kodama’s Reach
4
“>Stone Rain
4
“>Reap and Sow
2
“>Creeping Mold
4
“>Magma Jet
1
“>Stalking Stones
1
“>Quicksand
1
“>Boseiju, Who Shelters All
4
“>Karplusan Forest
1
“>Okina, Temple to the Grandfathers
1
“>Shinka, The Bloodsoaked Keep
7 Forest
6 Mountain
Sideboard
4
“>Circle of Protection: Red
1
“>Plains
4
“>Guerilla Tactics
1
“>Boseiju, Who Shelters All
3
“>Boiling Seas
2 Sowing Salt
The natural advantage of this deck is that it has no artifacts at all. By doing that, most of my opponents would have a lot of dead cards versus me, and I got to play the biggest artifact hate guy of them all. What could be more unfair? The deck has good matchups against all the control decks in the format, which was a huge reason to play it at Swedish Nationals. It crushes White Weenie, does somewhere in the 50/50 range vs. Rats (I thought it was better before Nationals, but it turned out to be pretty even). The deck would actually be insane if it wasn’t for the Red Deck Wins matchup, which is quite bad. The Circles after board help but if another guy puts out an Arc-Slogger, it’s going to be a bitch.
In today’s installment of Geeks and Girls, you are going to learn how to select a suitable object of affection. Before we get there, though, let’s look at how girls work. Any girl will have a set of qualities that might look something like this:
- Possibility for intellectual conversation
- Poor taste in music
- Cute
- Won’t mind a geek boyfriend
And so on. Take special notice to that last point, as that’s really what you’re looking for. The good news is, though, that many fewer girls than you think would actually mind. The few that do are the truly beautiful women that you don’t have a shot at anyway. At a fundamental level, most girls just want someone who doesn’t beat them and has a future. That could very well be you. Also of importance: You will need to know a little bit about a girl before making the first move unless you are extremely attractive, so don’t bother falling in love with complete strangers.
You should come up with a matching list of your wants and needs. In some cases, that might look like this:
- Appreciates The Wu-Tang Clan
- Intellectual conversations
- Not overweight
- Won’t mind a geek boyfriend
Et cetera. Some geeks may think that these two people could have a meaningful relationship, but the opposite is in fact true: You should not be looking for the person most in common with you, but the person who is the most compatible with you. All too often, geeks will wait forever until they meet someone they can share almost every aspect of their life with only to never be seen again or to resurface a couple of months or a year later saying they were too much in each others’ faces. We all need a variety of things in our social life to be happy, and pursuing separate lives on the side of your relationship is a necessity. Have you ever been to an apartment where two Magic players live? That’s what happens to geek-geekette-relationships. It seems like a happy place at first, but it gets tired real fast and those friends you stopped calling might feel hurt.
A lot of geeks have too high standards. Some have it as a way of covering up for their constant failure to pursue love, but most of you have it because of common misunderstandings. One very common pitfall among geeks is being too demanding intellectually. People playing Magic are a bit smarter than the rest of the world, and as such might encounter a lot of people we feel we gain very little from. This becomes especially clear under the extremely intimate situations that naturally arise when in a relationship, and it’s easy to get frustrated by that. You and your girl can be having the time of your life watching movies or whatever, but when you want to talk about the things that matter to you she’s not going to follow. If you look at love as the pursuit of finding someone as smart or smarter than you, you are in for a challenge. Instead I would advise you to divide your social demands among your friends and clanmates. If you find out that you and some girl have a great time doing some particular activities, then those activities are what you should stick with. You can talk about Magic with your friends, and about Iron Maiden vinyls with your other group of friends.
Then there is the matter of looks. Elitist gamer jargon will have it that almost every woman is unattractive, fat or somesuch, but you should try to look past this. I’m not saying that I don’t appreciate beautiful women, but if a girl is nice to you and laughs at your jokes and all that, you really shouldn’t be bothered if she’s a little overweight or has an odd-looking nose or something like that. In fact, if these are your standards and you’re not in the dating game, now you know why.
As you can see, it is completely unrealistic to expect a person to come along and excel at your tiniest demands. Not only that, but a scenario like that wouldn’t even be desirable in the first place, so you clearly need to stop being so demanding.
One thing you should really keep your eyes out for, though, are psychos. These girls are generally very open to dating geeks, and many geeks view them as potential girlfriends for just this reason. Psycho girls are defined as girls who cut themselves, or resort to other attention stunts and are in general a bad idea. You can relate to them, because you’ve both had a hard time with the other kids at school. Sometimes the sex will be worth it for a couple of months, but that’s pretty much it. They are extremely high maintenance and will ultimately let you down. Avoid excessive drama if you can help it.
Your assignment for tomorrow will be to get up in the morning and have a shower. Dress in an ungeeky outfit that you didn’t wear today and find someone whom you could view as a potential girlfriend. What you should be looking for is something along the lines of:
- Realizes the positive things about geeks, or at least understands and respects what you do
- Isn’t unattractive
- Have a few, but only a few, things in common with you.
In addition to that, you will get to add a few demands of your own. Not too many, though, as that would narrow your scope too much. Good luck with that, and see you tomorrow.
/Thomas