Welcome back to the StarCityGames Daily series. As I said yesterday, I’m on vacation in AC right now, so there’ll be no forum responses from me on this one until later this weekend. I take nothing for granted, so I’d like to thank everybody yet again for reading and responding in the forums.
I’ll be honest with you… the response to this Daily has been so overwhelmingly positive, and so far beyond what I expected, that I’ll probably stick with the “lists” format next time also. There are plenty more ideas for lists that were left on the cutting room floor. As soon as I came up with the “lists” plan, though, I knew what would be running today…
Friday’s List: My Top 10 Favorite Magic Articles
That title should be pretty self-explanatory. Some are my favorites for strategic value, some for sentimental value, and others can only be described as … well, “other.” The only exclusion I want to mention is Mike Flores‘s “Who’s The Beatdown.” It’s definitely one of my top 10 favorite articles, but so much has been said about it in other places (including Mike’s book) that I saw no reason to go there. Let’s get started!
10. The Art of the Save, by Mark Young
Yeah, yeah, I cited myself; I mean, this is a list of my favorite articles. Trust me, it will only happen once, and only for a very special article: the one that made me think for the first time that I could do this thing and get paid doing it. While I was writing this article I felt like I finally had some insight, as though I was seeing the game in a way that I had never seen it before. The results have been even better than I could have possibly imagined.
I don’t list this one purely for sentimental reasons, though: it headlined the StarCityGames.com homepage that day (I had never seen that happen before with a non-Featured Writer) and Doctor Doom Teddy Cardgame called it one of the best article submissions he received during the entire year of 2004.
9. Thanksgiving in Dominia, by Ben Bleiweiss
When I got back in the game during the autumn prior to the Onslaught release … well, I’m not gonna lie, I was stains. Not that I’m all hot sh** now, but I was really awful then. Part of the reason is that I had quit Magic prior to the Sixth Edition rules switch, and no one bothered to tell me that the rules had actually, y’know, changed (I thought “the stack” was just some East Coast slang). So I was designing and playing my decks with a pre-Sixth Edition mindset, only to get blown out by a Small Child™ who knew how to put damage on the stack. Enter the Bleiweiss, with this terrific MagictheGathering.com article about the Sixth Edition rules modifications.
I imagine that the experienced players out there will consider this article a waste of a perfectly good top 10 slot, since they already knew all of this stuff. However, I want to acknowledge the article that got me back in the game for real.
8. Road to LA — End of the Road, by Richard Feldman
When Richard “lcdcow” Feldman first became a StarCityGames.com Featured Writer, I thought he and I were pretty much on the same level. This article removed all such notions from my brain, as not only did he top-2 a Pro Tour Qualifier, but he also wrote an article of such high quality that I could only stand by, in awe, envious of his ability to combine high strategy with the turn of phrase. Feldman is probably the second-best writer for this site, and if you aren’t familiar with his work, click that link right now.
7. The Daily Shot: Behold Laura Mills‘ Deck!, by Geordie Tait
I should probably pick only one Geordie article, but there’s so many to choose from! I could present another top 10 list with just my favorite Tait work. I figured I should set some criteria:
- My selection should be a Daily Shot article. Some of y’all don’t know, but Geordie was a pioneer in this Daily thing back when Teddy Cardgame wasn’t even dreaming of being a Magical editor.
- My selection shouldn’t be about Constructed. I always thought Geordie’s best writing was in the Limited arena.
- My selection would have to capture the unique brand of humor and rage that is the Geordie Tait Experience.
I finally picked this one just for the fantastic examination of the various levels of “asshammering.” Not that I’m into that or anything.
6. Do It For the Kids, Yeah, by Tim Aten
Same as it was for Geordie: there’s simply too many amazing articles by this author for me to call one the “favorite.” So I picked this article because, in addition to all of the quintessentially Tim humor, this article also debuted my favorite Aten method, the Team Name Analysis. In case you’re curious, I was on the team “Young Guns,” but I was 26 years old at the time, so that name was sort of ironic. It would be really good now.
5. My Penance, by Toby Wachter
There’s a whole backstory to this article, about how Wachter’s reaction to Rizzo’s retirement from Magical writing caused some controversy. However, I want to ignore that and focus solely on this article, probably the best piece of satire in Magic history. Wachter adopted the humorous conceit that he had been wrong about Rizzo, and as penance he would try to be more like the casual player, using that as a jumping-off point to cleverly (and good-naturedly, at least in my opinion) poke fun at Rizzo, professional wrestling, and himself. Psychatog is an excellent card … for me to poop on!
4. The Definitive Tourney Report, by Geordie Tait
Screw it, I’m going with two Geordie articles. Actually, I’m going with six Geordie articles, as Tait’s aptly-named description of his competition in Pro Tour Chicago 2003 was spread out over five installments. The link above is to Part 1, and I guarantee that once you start, you won’t be able to stop. This is just masterful writing: from a gamer, for gamers, with the love of Magic that only the most passionate gamer can have. Check out this section, when Geordie is commiserating with his friends who scrubbed out of the Last Chance Qualifier (and foreshadowing his own Pro Tour experience):
“Losing is never easy when you expect great things of yourself, and I think I know about a hundred young men who spent at least part of the weekend feeling some version of what my friend John was feeling. Sure, the next day you’ll be out drafting, drinking, horsing around, but for a while everything just seems gray.
“If hurt had a color, that would be it. Grey. Grey as a sky that isn’t planning to change much, and cold as the water at deep fathoms.”
Maybe it sounds corny, but I’ve never read anything, before or since, that so clearly sums up why I play Magic and how I feel when I fall short at an event. So read this article, and if you don’t like it, get @$%% down and get busy on my @#$%.
3. Aaron Forsythe US Nationals Saga, by Aaron Forsythe, derf
U.S. Nationals 2000 is mostly known for Jon Finkel showing up like he owned the joint, and then making good on that promise. For me, though, that era in Magic (during which I was retired from the game, but I grinned my way through a couple of Magic broadcasts on ESPN2) is defined by this spectacular tournament report from then-CMU team member, now-Wizards of the Coast team member Aaron Forsythe.
There just isn’t a bad sentence in this entire report. It’s all golden, from the Draft portion (“I never needed a Gary Wise article more!”) to the history of his famous deck (“How The Hermit Got So Angry”) to the potshots at Mike Long (“I told him it was easy to see why no one liked him”). I could read this article over and over all day, if I didn’t have to do real work from time to time.
2. Saving the Best for Last: The Final and Ultimate Pro Tour Boston Tourney Report, by Tomi Walamies, Jeff Cunningham, and Brett Shears
OMG Tomi and ffeJ my head asplode.
No, seriously, if some Vintage player hadn’t taken a break from his Worldgorger Dragon combo to play Animate Dead targeting me, I wouldn’t be able to finish this Daily. My head asplode! That’s how funny this collection of tournament reports is; for example, it contains not one but two “Bloodsport” references (sadly, neither of those jokes involves someone saying in badly broken English, “it’s time to protect your nuts, guys!”)
It’s only natural to focus on Walamies and Cunningham, but this Shears kid is funny too. It’s amazing, really, that no professional comedian throughout the post-Cold War period had yet found the proper voice to mock Boris Yeltsin, until Brett showed them the way. Come back, Brett! Our leaders are even more inebriated now than before! Your country needs you!
1. Who Comes in Ninth?, by Mike Flores
Simply the finest tournament report ever written. Both Teddy Cardgame and Josh Ravitz — i.e., people who know Mike much better than I do — have cited this article as a personal favorite out of his body of work. The short story is simple: Flores 5-1’ed the Draft portion of US Nationals 1999, but ran into some rough times in Standard. Going into the last round, Flores was ninth on tiebreakers facing a must-win match – which he did in fact win … but his tiebreakers didn’t improve, and he stayed in ninth place.
You may wonder why you now have reason to read the article, given that the tech is almost seven years old and I just told you how it’s going to end, but if you think that then you really don’t have the proper respect for Mike’s fantastic wordcraft. Slang and strategy rationed out in the perfect proportions, plus a tragic ending with which we can all sympathize. I bookmark this on my computer at home, just so I have somewhere to go after a particularly brutal tournament performance.
Until next time…
Mark Young