Hello, gamers. With SCG shifting its content strategy, I am writing with a heavy heart what will be my last article published on the site. I must first express my eternal gratitude to everyone who has read my articles, enjoyed my commentary, and watched my streams over the years. I can’t imagine where I would be without the Magic community and the opportunities that I have been provided within it. Magic is so much more than a game, and I’m tremendously lucky for everything it has given me.
It’s unclear to me what is expected from a writer for a final article, and I feel a weight writing today that I don’t often feel at my keyboard. I imagine that my own wants, those of my content manager, and those of you, the reader, all vary to some degree. Hopefully everyone walks away from this article satisfied, but I’m going to do something that I’ve been working on doing better in my life lately, and focus mostly on what I want. And today, that means being a little vulnerable, with a goal of mine being to encourage others to do the same.
What’s Your Endgame?
One of the first things I did when I got the news that this article would be my last was to pull up Gavin Verhey’s “What’s Your Endgame?”, his final work on this site. It’s a piece that many have pulled inspiration from regarding setting and achieving goals, and one that I often see cited on lists of favorite Magic articles of all time.
As an aside, my favorite Magic article is Shaun McLaren’s “A Doorkeeper”. I shared it with my now ex-partner a couple of years ago, and after reading it, she approached me with an uncomfortable look on her face. She found the article to be very sad, though I had been carrying it for ten years for the way I always found it relatable to the point that it gives me goosebumps, even now on rereading.
It was actually “What’s Your Endgame?” that filled me with an existential sadness. Because to tell you the truth, I’ve never had an idea of where I was going in life. I’ve often had a loose grasp on where I even am. When I was in high school, I liked to joke that I was going to die when I was 26 years old. It was an edgy and stupid thing to say, but it got a reaction, so I ran with it. And like every joke, there was some truth behind it. Not in that I wanted to die, but in that I wasn’t putting nearly as much thought into living as I wish I would have. So today I’m 35, I’m alive, and that’s more than I had planned for.
What’s Sustaining You?
I’ve had a thought recur in my head every month or so for the past year that I don’t know how much I have left in the tank as a writer. Something or some list of things would always come to me, and I never had to take so much as one week off, but it’s abundantly clear that my lack of vision, my lack of an endgame is what caused those spells of doubt. In that way, I can already envision ways that moving away from writing might be good both for me personally and for what I will create in the future.
I think my years doing commentary on the SCG Tour, where after every show I would watch the broadcast back to make notes for myself on what I thought I could be doing better. There are the bones of a good process in that exercise, but if you had access to the transcript of my internal monologue, it was mostly self-hatred and the near-constant worry that I would soon be fired. And I must say, living to make it through the day, through the week, through the next show, is a lifestyle that will leave you completely depleted.
I do think that I found a good groove writing about Cube these last few years. Despite not always knowing what came next and absolutely not having a long-term plan, I am proud of what I’ve built. It fills my heart every time somebody tells me that they built one of my Cubes and how they enjoy playing it. Admittedly, when I hear that, my hope is that the next step for them is working on their own designs, but it’s rewarding knowing that I’ve set anyone on that path.
What Endures?
I hate self-promotion, to the point that I’ve given a lot of lousy job interviews because I’m just not that interested in talking about myself, which has surely limited my prospects as a “creator” as well. I don’t want to go through my backlog to come up with a list of my favorite things I’ve written, but I do want to say that if I’ve written one enduring piece for the Magic community, it was my work on the original Twobert.
When I first got into Cube, I had a lot of thoughts on how Cubes “should” be built that were toxic and self-important. With Twoberts, I presented a list that was fun to play as is, while also providing a framework for designing a small Cube that, I believe, significantly lowers some of the myriad barriers of Cube design and makes the format more accessible in that way. The easiest way to learn is to start doing and to see what happens, and a Cube list that is easy to emulate and a roadmap for your own easy design is something that I know would have been very useful to me when I started designing Cubes, and that many have expressed their appreciation to me for.
Are You Building Something?
Today, as I contemplate what my endgame is, the two words that I’m holding onto as a mantra are “build something”. As you all know, I love building Cubes, and I suppose I’ll offer a little of your regularly scheduled programming here with a quick link to my current project: The Tundra Desert Twobert. It’s an environment where there are three or six copies of every card, and you can only play the cards that you draft (including basic lands!). It’s been an absolute blast.
So when I say “build something”, I of course intend to build more Cubes in the future, but what I really want to build and help build is community. Often, when people refer to “the Magic community”, it’s in reference to talking heads and reactionary takes on social media, which is inadvertently and tragically dismissive of the importance of building and maintaining community in our lives.
What Are You Gathering?
Earlier this year, we ran a charity tournament at Lodestone where 35 players got together to play 2009 Extended, and it was far and away the most fun event I have ever participated in. Old friends came out of the woodwork to play, and new faces who started playing Magic long after 2009 turned up to raise some money for humanitarian aid and to just play fun games with a little structure. And for a sick trophy, of course.
My only regret is that I haven’t put in the work to run more events of this nature since. I would like to fix that in the future, and in the realm of working to build community I will be doing commentary at this year’s Cube Con in Madison in October to help spread the good word of Cube. Part of the beauty of Cube is that a Cube requires that people come together to play it, so in a way, building a Cube is a step towards building community itself, and it’s incredibly cool to see community-driven Cube events pop up more and more.
Where Can You Find Me?
There are a couple of places where you’ll be able to find me in the future. I stream paper Cube Drafts every Thursday night at 6:30 PM Central at WeWillBeCubing on Twitch (@WeWillBeCubing on Twitter) and have also gotten back into streaming a little Magic Online on my personal Twitch channel, RyanOverdrive. I have ideas on ways that I want to expand what I’m currently creating, and I want to say that much to hold myself accountable, but I don’t want to promise anything that I won’t deliver on as I move into this next chapter of my life. What I can say for now is that any updates on my next steps will be posted on Twitter @RyanOverdrive.
Thanks
Thank you so much to everyone has supported me and has expressed kind words about my writing, my commentary, my stream, my Cubes, and whatever else over the years. I often feel like I’ve fallen backwards into almost everything in my life, but knowing that my work has offered some value to some people fills my heart. On that note, I want to leave you with the same question that I’m currently pondering myself:
What are you building?
