(The following scenes are recreated as best as I could reconstruct them. They are not exact.)
Preston Burke, the world famous heart surgeon is about to operate for the second time on his musical hero, Eugene Foote, world famous violist.
Preston – “Why do you want me to operate? Your heart is fine.”
Eugene – “There is a murmur. A tremor. It throws my playing off.”
Preston – “Your playing is fine.”
Eugene – “Hand me my violin.”
Preston does so and Eugene plays a beautiful piece.
Eugene – “What did you think?”
Preston – “It was beautiful.”
Eugene – “Here’s what you really thought. You thought ‘that man has no right to call himself Eugene Foot.’ That’s what you thought, and that’s what I think.”
Preston – “You could die. You are still a master. Let this go.”
Eugene – “I am no longer myself. I would rather die on the operating table than no longer be Eugene Foot. Fix me, Preston.”
Preston sets his arm on his shoulder.
Preston – “I’ll do my best.”
“Everything – a horse, a vine – is created for some duty… For what task, then, were you yourself created? A man’s true delight is to do the things he was made for.”
Marcus Aurelius
I find Poker boring. Not the games around my dining room table with the buddies, with the drinking and the trash talking and the punching and the kicking and the vomiting. No, those are good times. But playing poker to make money? Playing Poker online and knowing the odds and the math behind pot odds bore me. Folding hands endlessly waiting for the one nut draw is not my thing.
My former roommate and current house caretaker Doug Shepardson plays poker six to twelve hours a day. He has read eleven books on improving his poker. He has a notebook full of notes on his real life opponents, analyzing mistakes he has made, recording his win percentages and reasons why he might have lost to analyze later. He will join a three-thousand-person tournament at ten in the evening and regularly not finish until two or even four in the morning.
He makes a good housemate. We used to get up in the morning, have some coffee, do some Pal Dan Gum, and watch some DVR TV from the previous night. After that, the card flopping would start. His cards with 2 colors on them, mine with millions. His tournaments with hundreds if not thousands, mine with dozens. No TV, no music, no distractions. Each determined to forge our destiny in card flopping.
“Here is a test to find out whether your mission in life is complete. If you’re alive, it isn’t.”
Richard Bach
I used to train in mixed martial arts at a place called Rail City MMA. My instructor was a man named Tom Murphy. A six foot two, two hundred and twenty seven pound Atlas of a man. You may think that six foot two doesn’t qualify for the status of Atlas, but then, you have never been hit by this man. Admittedly, I have never been truly “hit” by Tom, but more, lightly tapped and kicked to demonstrate a move; lightly, but with enough force to demonstrate that you want to put your weight behind it; lightly but with enough pressure so that I could feel the man’s raw power. The tightly wound cords he calls muscles attached to the thick steel rods he refers to as bones.
At the end of class one day, I asked about his history. His eyes flashed when he talked of fighting. When he talked of past wrestling and Jiu Jitsu matches he had. (He’s never lost a match in a Jiu Jitsu tournament.) He finished up my little post practice interview telling me about how obsessed he was with fighting. How walking down the street he would be thinking of moves. Doing katas in his mind as he walked and then becoming aware that people were staring at him and realizing he was doing them on the sidewalk. He told of how he sometimes had trouble focusing on movies because his mind would drift to combat. At work he would plan which of his instructional combat DVDs he would watch when he got home. He had trouble falling asleep. Lying in bed, picturing an imaginary opponent and what he would do if his opponent attacked this way, or did a leg sweep or how he would take him down, pass guard and get him into a kimora. Or rain down elbows if they were allowed.
“Musicians must make music, artists must paint, poets must write if they are to be ultimately at peace with themselves. What human beings can be, they must be. They must be true to their own nature.”
Abraham Maslow
Almost a week ago, Wendy and I are watching “Being John Malkovich” and John Cusack is doing a…
(I can’t get over Wendy’s brain. I have no idea what the play was. Wendy walks in as I’m typing this, a fresh can of her eternally grafted Diet Coke in her right hand.
“Wendy, what was the play John Cusack was doing when he got punched?”
“Abelard and Heloise”
See? Who knows that? No one I know. )
John Cusack is doing a puppet show of the famous love affair. The longing of the two puppet lovers gets a little, shall we say, heated, while a little girl watches. Her father turns around to see the puppets humping through a wall, calls John Cusack a bastard, punches him in the face and kicks over his puppet show.
John arrives home to his wife, the lovely (though not in this movie) Cameron Diaz, and she cries out with alarm-
“Oh John, not again! How did this happen?”
“I’m a puppeteer.”
Of course he is.
What are you?
Right now, mostly, I am a deckbuilder. I’m also a writer and a Magic player.
I hope that most of you reading this will eventually know the peace that comes with knowing what you are. What you are supposed to do. What are you obsessed with. The thing that drives you. You have to do the thing you are obsessed with. You have to be who you are. It is a great feeling knowing what that is.
Right now, I am obsessed with two things.
Making it as a writer.
Making my next splash in Magic.
I build decks endlessly. I watch tournament Top 8 replays every morning.
D e n T z plays Plains.
Ray Pang plays Pendelhaven.
mikeman29 plays Shivan Reef.
Victor Galves plays Island.
MARKiS83 plays Steam Vents.
Nitsugua plays Island.
jojoseef5507 plays Steam Vents.
rodolfosc plays Island.
I enter 8-man queues every morning because I love to compete and that’s where you see the real decks.
Magic is both wonderful and terrible right now. While there are occasions where the game is over on turn 4, many times the game will take 10-20 minutes to complete and that’s how I like Magic to be played. I have long lamented the stages that Magic gets into where games are decided on draw alone. Tolarian Academy, Prosperous Bloom, Suicide Black Hatred, Jar. I hate those decks and those times that Magic devolves into a game with as much skill as scratching a lottery ticket.
Have I ever mentioned the time I drove 933 miles to PT: Chicago, and in the third round was killed on the second turn to Hatred? Yeah, I think I’ve mentioned that a few times.
In that sense, Magic is wonderful right now. And there are so many fascinating ideas and cards to play with to mold the next killer deck around. This week is deck week. I have too many ideas to test them all and some people love deck lists. This week’s column is about my obsession with new ideas and decks I’m working on.
First up? Garglehaups Revisited.
4 Creeping Mold
9 Forest
4 Gruul Signet
3 Karplusan Forest
5 Mountain
1 Pendelhaven
4 Rumbling Slum
4 Stomping Ground
3 Tin Street Hooligan
3 Wall of Roots
4 Wildfire
4 Molten Firebird
4 Mwonvuli Acid-Moss
4 Search for Tomorrow
4 Shivan Wumpus
Sideboard
4 Blood Moon
4 Carven Caryatid
2 Savage Twister
3 Tormod’s Crypt
2 Krosan Grip
I qualified once with a deck very similar to this. It had Balduvian Horde and Goblin Mutant in place of the Shivan Wumpus and Rumbling Slum. It had Jokulhaups in place of Wildfire, and Molten Firebird was called Ivory Gargoyle, but it was basically the same idea.
This deck has some of my favorite cards in it. Favorite from all time. Wildfire. Acid Moss. Molten Firebird. Shivan Wumpus is rapidly being considered for that list. A 6/6 Trample for four? Why is no one playing this guy? In my testing he has been game winning. The kind of card you play and your opponent concedes. And, he survives Wildfire. How can you not love that?
Of course the problem comes in when you play it in the practice room, smash everything not playing Blue and lose to everything that is playing Blue. It is impossible to deny the power of Remand and Repeal in Standard right now. Those two cards define the environment.
So after a few matches, I concede in the middle of a Remand on my Wumpus and build this instead.
4 Electrolyze
4 Gemstone Mine
9 Island
4 Izzet Boilerworks
4 Izzet Signet
9 Mountain
4 Remand
4 Repeal
4 Sparkmage Apprentice
4 Wildfire
1 Blood Knight
4 Molten Firebird
4 Shivan Wumpus
1 Sulfur Elemental
Sideboard
4 Blood Moon
4 Mana Leak
4 Tormod’s Crypt
3 Spell Snare
Just ignore the one Blood Knight and the one Sulfur Elemental and the janky land. I don’t have the U/R duals or any more of the one ofs. Replace them as you see fit. Personally, I would keep in the Sparkmage Apprentice. He’s muy bueno. He’s, like, two for one, like a lot of the cards.
Remand + Repeal + Electrolyze > any card that doesn’t replace itself.
But looking at the Top 8 of just about any PE, you already know that don’t you? And why wouldn’t you just play Izzetron instead of this pile?
That’s what you’re thinking, right?
Because this deck has Shivan Wumpus and Molten Firebird.
WUMPUS!
Anyone who has played Blue/Red has to be amazed at some of the games you can pull off. I played one game where I repealed, remanded, and electrolyzed everything the guy played. Then I played two Molten Firebirds and Wildfire and thought “I am a Goddamn genius. Nothing can beat this deck.”
Next game he played out Kird Ape, Kird Ape, Scab Clan Mauler, Rumbling Slum and I drew a few Izzet Boilerworks (ssssllloooowwww) a couple Electrolyze and 3 Shivan Wumpus. You know, when a Rumbling Slum is smashing your face in, your opponent has no problem putting the Wumpus back on top of your deck and swinging for lethal.
In one match I went from “I am a Goddamn genius!” to dropping the next two like I was nothing.
But who plays Rumbling Slum anyway? Jeez. Yeah, I went back to the Green/Red version after that. Shivan Wumpus seems a little better when you have more land destruction.
Work on the Blue/Green Elves continues. Taking some suggestions from the forums, I have broken the “Only Elves allowed” rule. I did try the deck with Coat of Arms and Moldervine Cloak but… it didn’t seem to mesh. Don’t know why. Doesn’t make sense why the Coat of Arms didn’t work, but maybe because I only had three and rarely saw them in my test games.
4 Elvish Champion
10 Forest
4 Gemstone Mine
3 Island
4 Llanowar Elves
4 Mystic Snake
1 Pendelhaven
4 Remand
4 Repeal
4 Viridian Shaman
4 Yavimaya Coast
4 Boreal Druid
4 Coiling Oracle
4 Gaea’s Anthem
2 Trygon Predator
Sideboard
4 Carven Caryatid
4 Leyline of Lifeforce
4 Mana Leak
3 Tormod’s Crypt
As someone suggested, the deck might need more hard counters, and I do so love Flash. Mystic Snake had to go in. Might add in some King Cheetahs as well. Those guys rock. Wait, hang on, got to sober up before I write the rest of this.
King Cheetah? What, are you high?
Trygon Predators have made the cut as someone suggested, because there are so many Signets about these days. So many, in fact, that Viridian Shaman has replaced the Elvish Warriors. With Remand, Repeal, and Viridian Shaman, some decks have problems getting the three colors they need.
I’m looking at you, Angels. *shakes fist*
I’m really liking this version. It has the ability to create insane card advantage, and flashing in a 4/4 Mystic Snake to counter a spell and smash face on your next combat phase is… shocking.
The Champions and the Anthems stymie the rampant use of Deserts and Electrolyze. The side has the ability to delay Dragonstorm for a bit, and can you just imagine the card advantage and frustration you get against aggro when you add in Carven Caryatid?
Remember a few weeks ago when I was working on Ghostway? I decided then that it was time to buy some stuff. Can’t be taken seriously making decks with Sunlance and Condemn and no Wrath. I buy some Jedit (WTF Wakefield) Wrath and Ohran Vipers. I love Snakes. I have an Extended deck that just tears the Casual New player room up. And I can always use them in Standard. Hell, let’s just make a deck with 4 Ohran and 4 Greencentrate. You know you’ve been wanting to.
21 Forest
4 Llanowar Elves
4 Moldervine Cloak
2 Pendelhaven
4 Scragnoth
4 Silhana Ledgewalker
4 Boreal Druid
4 Gaea’s Anthem
4 Harmonize
2 Jedit Ojanen of Efrava
4 Ohran Viper
4 Scryb Ranger
Sideboard
4 Chameleon Blur
4 Essence Warden
4 Krosan Grip
3 Squall Line
Yeah, I’ve played it. Oddly enough, it’s kind of slow. As you can imagine, the Vipers are pretty amazing. Well, you don’t have to imagine, I gather you know. They’re like Dark Ritual to Hypnotic Specter scary. They eat Bolts and Chars like no one’s business. The Harmonize are nice, but they are usually the last card I play and the game is decided before I play it. Green’s theme of “Attack you. Did I win?” is in full force in this deck.
My purchases inspired two other decks. Standard Protection and Extended Snakes.
Let’s take a break from Magic for a second to discuss the book of the week: Odd Thomas.
Following this week’s theme of purpose, let’s start with a quote from the book –
“In moments like these, however, I can’t restrain myself from action. A kind of madness comes over me, and I can no more turn away from what must be done than I can wish this fallen world back into a state of grace.”
Given to me as a gift from Deb Brisson, former lover, roommate, and friend of twenty plus years. Also like a sister to current significant other, the Beautiful Wendy. None of which has anything to do with anything, other than the fact that I wanted to mention her, and try to write all flowery and pretty.
Dean Koontz brought that out in me.
He brings me hope. Odd Thomas is written in first person. I don’t know the last time I’ve read a novel in first person. I had forgotten that it could be done. Perhaps I will change my novel to first person. It’s how I write all of this and the style I have the most practice with. There I go again, ending a sentence with a preposition. What is up with that? Oh wait, I was writing about how he gives me hope. Stay on topic, Wakefield.
I’ve never liked Dean Koontz. I admit this is a shallow judgment based only on his collaboration with Stephen King that I did not enjoy. It is not through extensive reading of his many novels that I came to this judgment.
This summer at Wendy’s house on the lake, while sunning ourselves on the dock between swims, Deb gave me Odd Thomas for my birthday. I had introduced her to George R.R. Martin and she wanted to repay me in kind. This is one of her favorite Dean Koontz books and she hoped I would enjoy it.
Odd Thomas is actually the main characters name. As in, first name Odd, second name, Thomas.
At first, I hated it. With Odd narrating that “In fact I am such a nonentity by the standards of our culture that People magazine not only will never feature a piece about me but might also reject my attempts to subscribe to their publication on the grounds that the black-hole gravity of my non-celebrity is powerful enough to suck their entire enterprise into oblivion.”
Within the next ten pages we find out that Odd sees the dead. He wreaks vengeance on killers, and the chief of police knows about this and covers for him so that the world doesn’t find out about his gift. We then later find out that his father is independently wealthy, only dates girls under twenty, and is selling real estate on the moon.
I don’t know, that sort of sounds like someone that People magazine would be fascinated to hear about, don’t you think?
Warning, spoilers about “Odd Thomas” are below this text. If you don’t want to know plot and ending to the book, please skip to the next deck list.
It’s lazy free writing like the above that doesn’t get scrubbed from manuscripts that annoy me. It’s clear to me he wrote that long ago in an attempt to get his brain writing, and it made no sense, so it should have been removed.
The next hundred pages of the book are workman-like. Dry prose. Nothing special. Nothing that I didn’t feel I couldn’t match. It filled me with great hope. Not only have I discovered that I could write a novel in first person, but I felt that my writing rivaled that of Dean Koontz.
The next three hundred pages erased this belief.
Having found his voice, Koontz goes on to write some strikingly detailed prose. Passages like “Considering that the modern and contemporary literature taught in most universities is largely bleak, cynical, morbid, pessimistic, misanthropic dogmatism, often written by suicidal types who sooner or later kill themselves with alcohol or drugs or shotguns, Professor Takuda was a remarkably cheerful man.”
This made me laugh out loud. Disguised as Odd narrating, this was clearly Dean Koontz throwing some personal reflection into the piece. Hey Dean, I’m right there with ya! You just described the majority of my writing professors to a “T.” (Whatever that means.)
Further prose that tickled my fancy and made me green with writer’s envy –
“The shank of the thorn protruded from my thumb. I plucked it free, but still the bleeding puncture burned as if contaminated by acid.”
And:
“The slightest fever or sore throat that troubled me was a crisis with which she could not deal. At seven, afflicted by appendicitis; I collapsed at school and was rushed from there to the hospital; had my condition deteriorated at home, she might have left me to die in my room, while she occupied herself with her soothing books and the music and the other genteel interests with which she determinedly fashioned her private perfecto mundo, her “perfect world.”
And:
“When I stepped inside, I felt as if I had cast my lot with Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego in the furnace of Nebuchadnezzar, though this was a heat laced with an unspeakable scent, from which even an angel could not spare me.”
And lastly:
“When I switched off the engine and got out of the car, the fiery sun was both a hammer and an anvil, forging the world between itself and its reflection.”
Good stuff.
Sadly, I can’t recommend the book. The ending made me want to fly to Vermont, find Deb, and slap her. Not that I ever would, but that’s the bitter taste the ending left in the back of my soul. A uselessly sad ending for no reason. I hate gratuitously sad endings. They ruin the entire experience for me. Be they book, movie, or video game, sad endings are something I cannot fathom. Reality is rife with sad endings. More than enough to fill an ocean of sadness. If you wish to cry, watch the news or live your life. All the sadness you need can be found there. The book dropped from a rating of four out of five to a two out of five. When once I was eager to run to Wikipedia and see if a movie was being made about the book, now I would refuse to go see it.
Just thought you should know.
Let’s get back to Magic.
One of my favorite spells of all time is Sosuke’s Summons. Should I ever win the Invitational, I would design my card to be an exact copy with every word of “Snake” replaced with “Elf.”
Having just spent some tickets on Ohran Viper I was inspired to revise my Extended Snake deck to this version.
4 Chrome Mox
8 Forest
4 Gemstone Mine
4 Island
4 Mystic Snake
4 Remand
4 Repeal
4 Sakura-Tribe Elder
4 Seshiro the Anointed
4 Sosuke’s Summons
4 Yavimaya Coast
4 Coiling Oracle
4 Ohran Viper
4 Patagia Viper
Sideboard
4 Ground Seal
3 Hail Storm
4 Tormod’s Crypt
4 Krosan Grip
It’s pretty self-explanatory. As you can see, I’m falling into a pattern. There was a period of time when all my decks started with:
4 Dark Ritual
4 Hypnotic Specter
4 Hymn to Tourach
And built from there.
Now, my decks start with:
And then from there either
4 Electrolyze or 4 Coiling Oracle.
And then the rest. Hmm, wonder if I can make G/U/R deck with all of those? Don’t see why not, Signets seem pretty bomby these days. Maybe next week.
The last deck I have to tickle your funny bone is Standard Protection.
4 Brushland
2 Elves of Deep Shadow
4 Forest
4 Grave-Shell Scarab
4 Llanowar Elves
4 Llanowar Wastes
4 Mortify
4 Mystic Enforcer
4 Overgrown Tomb
1 Plains
4 Putrefy
4 Scragnoth
1 Swamp
4 Temple Garden
4 Whirling Dervish
4 Wrath of God
4 Scryb Ranger
Sideboard
3 Hail Storm
4 Leyline of Lifeforce
4 Leyline of the Void
4 Nightmare Void
- Llanowar Elves and Elves of Deep Shadow are Protection from Mana Screw.
- Mystic Enforcers and Whirling Dervish are Protection from Skeletal Vampire and Seize the Soul.
- Scragnoth and Scryb Ranger are Protection from Teferi and Repeal.
- Scragnoth and Grave Shell Scarab are Protection from counterspells.
- Wrath, Putrefy and Mortify are protection from agro.
- Hail Storm is protection from Goblin Storm.
- Leyline of the Void is protection from reanimation.
- Leyline of Lifeforce because I hate counterspells so very, very much.
- Nightmare Void is weak protection against Dragonstorm. Might change these for Luminesce.
Anyway, those are all the decks I’m working on. All show promise and all suck, depending on matchups and the position of the moon. Hopefully one of them can be fine-tuned enough to get me to Spanish Nationals. If ever I can stop flitting about and settle on just one…
(Of course, that would depend on if I don’t miss it, since I thought Regionals were in April, and I see nothing on the Wizards site about when or where Regionals are taking place. Little help please?)
Until next week,
Jamie