Limited Category Submission for the 2010 StarCityGames.com Talent Search
#scgsearch
I open up my Twitter (
@feb31st
— troll me please) a few Mondays ago to see that
@starcitygames
has posted some sort of Writing Contest to Get A Job That Will Fulfill Your Hopes and Dreams kind of thing. Two thoughts immediately enter my head:
1) I will crush this contest.
2) What am I going to write about?
The four choices of Things To Write About were Constructed, Limited, Mixed Media, and Casual/Other.
My initial thought was to do some sort of Mixed Media submission. I could improvise something witty about Magic cards on camera and send it right on in, where Teddy CardGame himself would forward it around the StarCityGames.com offices (do they have those? I should ask), whereupon I would immediately go viral, and, as they say, blow this Popsicle stand. The dream of being an internet celebrity and getting tail in Lenny Kravitz-type proportions was shattered when I looked in the mirror. Good lord, that’s an ugly man in that mirror. I belong on camera as much as Andy Reid should be teaching a parenting class. Mixed Media would be better left to the womanizer/playboy/Clooney types, like Evan Erwin. Damn you, Evan Erwin.
I briefly considered Casual/Other as my path to providence, but as soon as I read it, I realized that route would be no good.
* * *
It’s freezing out.
I’m walking towards a hall on the campus of an Ivy League school in upstate New York that I don’t attend. It’s a Friday night, and I’m ready to play me some Magic. Friday nights are usually drafts at Goldwyn-Smith Hall, but I also brought a singleton deck along with my forty empty sleeves. The dudes on the forums are trying out a new singleton format that legalizes some pretty powerful cards, so I figured I’d make a deck for fun and see how it went.
I sit down across from Mike, and we start a game. He wins the roll and drops Taiga, Orcish Settlers.
I go Mishra’s Workshop, Trinisphere, go.
Mike: “…Okay…” Bayou, swing with Settlers, go.
Me: Crucible of Worlds, Wasteland, Waste your Bayou, go.
Mike: “You have got to be sh**ing me. Go.”
Me: Waste your Bayou, Metalworker, go.
Mike: Draws, “**** YOU, DECK,” scoop.
Game 2, he leads with Forest, Birds of Paradise.
Me: Library of Alexandria, draw a card…
Mike: “What the ****, MAN. You proxied a
Library of Alexandria.
Me: Black Lotus, Trinisphere, go.
Mike: “…Jesus Christ.” Taiga, Survival of the Fittest, go.
Me: Draw off Library… Mox Diamond, Ancient Tomb, Tinker, Sundering Titan.
Mike: “WHAT THE ****, MAN?! This is a casual format. Those are all ****ing proxies! Are any of those cards real?!”
I pick up my deck and search through it. “I think there’s a Thirst for Knowledge in here somewhere…”
Mike slams his palm against his face.
“Oh, wait, nope, that’s a proxy too.”
* * *
And that’s why I decided to stay away from Casual.
Constructed was certainly another option, and an excellent one at that, but the thing about Constructed is… I’m poor. This last summer, I took a trip down to my friend’s parents’ place in Washington, DC for Grand Prix DC, but before we left for DC, we played Magic that Wednesday at his local card shop in South Jersey. I had no idea what I wanted to play, having just simply not played the game in a while. I also owned zero cards. My friend Brad had pretty much anything I wanted to play, owning a lot of extra cards, but unfortunately he didn’t own eight Jace, the Mind Sculptors, which limited my options severely. I also didn’t have $320 disposable dollars to buy four Jaces. Stephanie, a girl gaming at the shop that night, did own four and was not attending the GP, so I asked her if I could borrow them for the weekend. She inquired what I owned as far as collateral, and there was an awkward silence. Brad offered, “What about your car keys?”
Everyone turned in their chair to witness my next move.
I was riding with Brad to DC. My car, a 2001 Ford Taurus whose check engine light just stays on for some mysterious reason, was staying in the parking lot of Brad’s apartment in South Jersey during the weekend of the GP… so the car keys were something I certainly didn’t need. However, I was in the very precarious position of having to give
an actual working automobile
as collateral for four Magic cards. “That’ll work,” she said.
I took a deep breath. “Alrighty then.”
We exchanged phone numbers, and then she went to the trouble to ask for my license number, which made me feel supremely uncomfortable. At this point, the small crowd that had had its eyes on Stephanie and I turned back around to their games. I imagine they felt as uncomfortable as I did. I tried to laugh it off, but she was persistent. Apparently this was for keeps. I wrote down three random letters followed by four random numbers on a slip of paper, handed it to her along with my keys, and continued on with my game.
The one thing I did not hand to her: the sinking feeling that stayed with me all weekend.
Where’s my deck.
Where is it?
I didn’t ask that question in a reasonable manner for three days straight.
Constructed is just too expensive for me these days, a college student at a state school in upstate New York. The prospect of writing more than zero articles about that format is terrifying to me. If I wanted to be in a position to write about Constructed, I’d have to start hookin’. And then when would I study? Or drink? Or drunkenly study?
So I have landed at Limited by default. But where to start?
Twitter is awesome. I’m a very clever man, and I also crave attention, so I can tweet whatever random witticism flitters through my head, and
bam,
it’s on the internet forever for me to bask in when I’m not behind the wheel of my car anymore. Twitter is also awesome because it allows me to follow celebrities like Osyp Lebedowicz and Dwayne Wade and see what they’re up to at all times.
And they’ll never know!
I am a quote/unquote Michael J. Flores fan. I figured, “Hey, this guy writes about Magic sometimes; I wonder if he’d give his
soon-to-be biggest competition
a few pointers.” So I tweeted him, “Feeling a lot of pressure with this SCG contest. Got any tips on how to make a Limited article fun w/o a tourney report?”
His response: “Do you
have
to do Limited? No matter what anyone tells you, no one really likes Limited articles. This has been true for 14+ years.”
Oh boy!
So I sat down to write a Limited article, but soon enough I got distracted. Distracted by my sadness. I was about to make a concerted effort to write about something that a writer I respect very much basically said was
not
fun, or liked by anyone. I was about to try and write a fun, sexy article about getting a root canal.
Desperate for some better news, I turned to Mr. Theodore F. CardGame himself: “Got any tips on how to make a Limited article fun when you’re under a lot of pressure to be fun?”
His reply was an uplifting one: “No pressure. Just feel free to explore, and be entertaining.”
And that made me feel a little bit better. Honestly, though, I sort of liked the idea of being up against a task like making something crappy fun. I think I’m just masochistic enough to enjoy stress. Case in point: I’m in a fantasy football league with a bunch of dudes I went to high school with, and this week I was up against my friend Joe. A bunch of my dudes blew up (except for Dwayne Bowe, thanks for the drops), and by the end of the 1 o’clock games, I was up 70 to 42, yet I was still glued to that live fantasy cast like it was giving out free Jaces or cars. I certainly didn’t need to be. The stress of competition is a fun one for me. It reminds me of, wouldn’t ‘cha know it, a Magic tournament.
So on to the subject of Limited. It’s a topical one; the next qualifier season is Scars of Mirrodin Limited. It’s certainly a lot like drafting Mirrodin. I bet that’s what they were going for. I’ve done one Sealed so far, at the Prerelease, but it was a Sealed where I was fortunate/skilled enough to open Steel Hellkite, Molten-Tail Masticore, Sunblast Angel, Myr Battlesphere, and double Volition Reins. I didn’t learn much from that Sealed pool, but I still maintain that I deserved it.
I’ve also done a whopping one draft. I cut black from the guy I was passing to completely, but he was fortunate enough to open Skithiryx, the Blight Dragon, so he made the executive decision to force black despite seeing none in pack 1… which, unfortunately, still might be correct. I knew going in that I’d have to draft
some
artifacts, but c’mon, man, it’s
Vedalken Certarch!
A one-drop Master Decoy! And I don’t even need mana to tap stuff down! And so it went; I took colored guys over artifacts more often than not, and soon enough, I had ten artifacts in a 42-card pool with which to make a deck. Those Vedalken Certarchs looked pretty underwhelming at that point.
So my Limited advice? Draft some artifacts.