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by Jacob Montanez
An Eternity of Pain I take my cue for this article from a recent Rumor Mill discussion about the fun of the game. The discussion focused on the following things: Is M:TG fun anymore? Why or why not? Has the competitiveness of the tournament structure depleted the fun from the game? I did not post under that string, because I went over most of it back in February with the Atog War that started the War Mill. I will go over a history of my time playing Magic, and what it is like for myself, and try to answer the questions cited above. September 2, 1994. I am at a friend's house for his birthday party. His uncle from California brought him a starter deck of revised, with a few boosters, for his gift. His brother also had some cards, so I had them teach me how to play the game. The three of us knew very little about the game, and I had the usual questions like "Why can't I attack your Craw Wurm with my Hill Giant?" and "It says you need to tap when you attack, but which lands do I tap?" Like I said, we weren't that keen on the rules at the time. What I most remember about that night was how my friend Fireballed me and would have destroyed me but for the trump card in his deck that I borrowed: Fork. Once I played that baby, I turned the loss into a tie. It stands as one of the more memorable moments that I've had in playing Magic. September 3, 1994. Having stayed at my friend's house over the night, we head out to the local mall, where I purchased my first(and only) Revised starter of Magic. I recall that the two rares were Eye for an Eye and Cockatrice. Eye for an Eye was just as cool as Fork in those days, and I also had an atog... Now, this was my freshman year at high school, and I quickly showed my little clique of friends how to play, though some dispute that I was the first. I am the last to continue playing, though one of them has recently picked it up again with Tempest. We played every day during lunch, and often during classes when things were too boring. We killed each other by various methods, often altering the rules (Carebear [I won't kill you if you don't kill me], First turn All- Lands [play all lands in our hand on the first turn], etc.) Thallids were deadly, but Farrel's Mantle was deadlier. Those were the good old days. I had a frightening experience when my whole 3X5 notecard box containing my entire collection (the Starter box could no longer hold my collection anymore) disappeared after leaving it in the media center once. I later got it back, contents intact, by a friend of a friend who had noticed it and picked it up. In German class, I made an (what I call ) amazing trade: One Nevinyrral's Disk for a stack of neat Fallen Empires uncommons and rares, plus a bunch of other stuff over an inch and a half thick. Damn, I'm smooth. Flash forward to June, 1995. The last days of school have come, finals are upon us. We have a finals exemption policy that I always took advantage of. I didn't go to finals because my grades were high enough and I was exempted from it. We sat in the library and (what else?) played Magic. Here I encountered the first act of thieving I'd seen. While a group confused someone, that someone's collection of the Dark (not quite complete, but close) "disappeared." Sadly, I was part of the distracting group, and took as my cut a Scarwood Bandit and a Knight of Thorn. I later confessed to the owner and there are no hard feelings, though he never got the cards back (even the ones I took, he wouldn't accept them back.). The final day of school that year, I surprised my friends with the two packs of Ice Age that I had gotten the night before. They had just been released, and each pack had cost 5$ (the guy was an evil price gouger). I remember that I had at least a Goblin Mutant and a Naked Singularity in those packs, and all was good. During the summer, I went to VI-Khan (the mascot was a Viking). It remains to date the first and only convention I have gone to. It was very memorable for me. I won at a gambling table an autographed Beta Mox Sapphire for 3$, which, not playing blue, I sold within an hour or two for the amazing price of 70$. I played an Ice Age sealed deck tournament, but had to leave because my dad had to get back to town (we were in Colorado Springs as opposed to my home town of Pueblo) so he could go to work. I remember that I was losing badly anyway, but I had these cool cards: Zuran Orb, and Amulet of Quoz. The next day I returned to play an Iron Man tournament (I went up the previous day to play it, but it had been moved), which amazingly, I won. The decks were made of donated commons to our store (which sponsored it) and a pack of either 4th ed. or Ice Age (booster). I took a 4th ed and used (amazingly enough) a Green Mana Battery to save my skin on more than one occasion. Unfortunately, I didn't know you could tap it for green mana without there needing to be a charge counter on it...That would have made things so much easier. In the meantime, I saw such neat things as Legends (hey, Lady of the Mountain can be cast with either Red or Green mana!) and cool Arabian Nights cards (like Drop of Honey). Chronicles came out and I turned much of my attention to collecting a set (way back when the pack's suggested retail was 2$. Everything here is retail (an exception was Fallen Empires, which sold for 1$ most of the time instead of 1.45$). School returned, but the fervor over the game was much diminished. Things begin to grow boring around this time for all of us, and few decide to stick it out. I begin to play in local tournaments a bit, and my friend's parents open up a gaming store (The Game Warden) that I now live at (more on this later.) I participated in their tournaments more than at the old store, because the guy there gouged cards as well. The GW was much better about prices. The old store (Shoe's Cards and Comics) finally received its ten cases of Fallen Empires, and, since 3 expansion sets (Chronicles, Ice Age, and Homelands) had come out already, no one wanted Fallen Empires, they sold boxes for $20. Having a spare $20 in my pocket, I snagged a box and was 2 cards short of a complete set (alternate pictures and all). The rest of the year passed without note, most of my friends had stopped playing, though I had met new people at the Game Warden to play with. Flash forward to June 1996. Again, it was finals time, and I was extremely bored, sitting in the lunch room with some former players, and I said something along the lines of "these cards are worth nothing to me, want me to prove it?" My friends were dubious, and they didn't believe I'd do something stupid. I proved them wrong by signing my Fork, as well as writing on it a rather neat phrase: "I am the mighty Atog God of doom from Hell." I then proceeded to allow them to sign it as well. That Fork has its own place in my Magic History. But then, I leave out Atogs... My freshman year, I had decided that Atogs were the coolest card on the planet, and amassed the biggest collection ever seen in Pueblo of one card: All 30 atogs that I had were revered by me, but eventually I gave them away. Later I traded several dual lands for numerous atogs, and by the time I wrote on the Fork I had collected over 100 of them, hence, I was the Atog God in question. One might say, this was the first sighting of Jake the Atog God. Summer comes again, and I split half a box of Alliances with my friend (the same one who got me started), and I again collected a set of cards, this time Alliances. I practically lived at the Game Warden that summer (1996), playing cards and collecting Atogs. They were becoming increasingly scarce and hard to find. I finally win my second tournament, and get a whole set of Homelands (wheee!!! It's out of print! Cool!). By the way, I've never played in a sanctioned tournament. The friend whose parents owned the Game Warden finally got disgusted with his cards, and gave them to me, doubling my collection and giving me a nearly complete set of Dark in the process (I recently finished the set.). Another friend also gave me his cards, and so my collection exploded and I needed a monster box to contain my collection. I recently gave away 3 800 count boxes of commons that were in excess of four for every cards I owned, and it barely made a dent in my collection. Towards the end of summer, I happened across some silly little page on the internet called Beyond Dominia. I was searching for a place to talk about Magic since my friends didn't really care much anymore and found the Rumor Mill. It was the beginning of a beautiful friendship. That fall, I played in a rather bad team tournament. We played for several hours (three) for the final round only to eventually lose. I was rather miffed that the winning team wouldn't split some of the prize after the grueling contest. I did NOT want to go home empty handed after something like that. I did not get my way, and so I began to lose utter faith in the game. What resulted was the Atog War in the Rumor Mill, a way for me to argue and let loose my feelings of anger because of that tournament. I began to go to the Game Warden no longer to play the game, but to see the people I hung around with. I made internet friends and enemies with people in the Rumor Mill over the Atog War, though most are gone and the most notable enemy is probably one of my best internet friends now, among others. (Yep, that's you, Cup.) I became a sanctioned Arena Judge and proudly judged for Arena events until the concept became boring. We never played by the "official" sanctioned rules because they sucked. I was not really pleased with this decision, since all Arena players were supposed to do the same format. Flash forward again to early February 1997. I found myself entangled in yet another team tournament. I remembered the horrors of the last team tournament, and did not wish to have them revisited. I planned with a friend the night before and constructed similar R/W control decks. Unfortunately, I found out how ugly Turbo Stasis was when some people from Colorado Springs came down and mopped up. No one who played them finished a match in under 2 hours. Since there were two control teams using blue, their match up lasted four hours (the two teams were finalists and split the prize). Again, I was not pleased with the outcome, not because we never made it to finals, but because that team deliberately wanted to slow the tournament down. Tournaments became a chore from here out. At around the same time, the Reprint policy was released by Wizards of the Coast. I am a major hold out for at least all the cards in revised to be reprinted, as well as unlimited and all the old four expansions to be reprinted. This truly added to my aggravation, and so I launched Atog War 2 in Beyond Dominia's Rumor Mill. It blossomed into a wonderful debate about the validity of the reprint policy and the current T1/T2 structure at the time. The war contained pseudo roleplaying elements that were later integrated into the War Mill, which resulted from this war. I was learning HTML at school in preparation for creating the media center's web site. I created my own webpage (it has undergone at least 2 facelifts already since then) and made my move from the Rumor Mill to the War Mill in March, when it opened. A guild structure had come into being the week before the official opening and the beginnings of the War Mill society were already in place when it opened. By this point, my life was being dominated by Beyond Dominia. I also began to contribute fan fiction. The Game Warden moved a block down to a much larger location. I, along with Coag (the Mighty) became the maintainer of the War Mill in July of 1997. We made a few changes to the page, such as fixing silly spelling mistakes and getting a banner created, but otherwise just maintain it by deleting old posts when the mill gets too big to load quickly. I was also involved in a few attempts at reform and organization in the War Mill, but these efforts proved fruitless. The one true highlight of the summer was meeting Livonya (Mary Van Tyne) at the Colorado State Fair after a barrage of late night discussions that created a tightly knit (knight!) friendship between Livonya, Coag, and to a lesser extent, Cup, and myself. I began selling my cards in a consignment book at the Game Warden in order to provide some income, and I got a job folding laundry, so I rarely went to the Game Warden in the summer of 1997, and missed several tournaments. I also missed VIII-Kahn that summer, as well as VII- Kahn the summer previous. My actual life of playing Magic crawled to a stand still, though I still bought cards out of habit. By the end of summer, I had completed or acquired sets of the Dark, Fallen Empires, Homelands, Chronicles, Alliances, and I was on the verge of completing a Mirage set (which I recently completed as well). Zach finally got his driver's license (I don't have one yet and I'm 18, ugh), so when school started we went to the Game Warden after school on the nights he had to work (this is the same guy whose parents own the store). Most recently, I've participated in two tournaments with decidedly non-tournament quality decks, and in both went 2-2 in double elimination. Both times the two losses were back to back. With Tempest out, Zach decided that it was good and chose to play again, so we play our own little variant now after school. Occasionally we'll open a pack of cards and throw in the cards of the color we're using (we threw together a red deck and a black deck made of Tempest cards.) We played a little tournament of five sets with 5 matches in each set (twenty five games at max) to determine which was better in three out of five sets. Red won, and I decided that the game could be salvaged after all.
Now that we've gone through my life story of Magic Association and Addiction, I will attempt to examine the moods and feelings I have and had about the questions I asked earlier. Is Magic fun? I will say yes to this. The game itself is a fun, enjoyable thing to do, but there are limitations here. My friends and I all play by a T1 standard. Since until recently none of us had big card like TimeWalk and Moxen, it was a fairly decent standard to go by, and still is. To date, there are certain people that I don't get along with well (one of the winners of the first team tournament is one) that I refuse to play against in a casual setting because of bad memories that are in my mind associated with them. I also refuse to play against people who use blue in their decks unless I am assured they don't have counterspells, and I do not play blue myself. As such, I limited my options amazingly, and these limits constricted the fun that I had. The fun for the past two years was wiped out almost completely. With the tournament structure switching from T1 to T2 also upset me. I would rather have all cards reprinted and available so that I can use them (or at the least acquire them) than have them all become obsolete, as the T2 structure dictates. As per T2, most players now are T2, and ruthless ones at that. It was difficult to find a player for a T1 game, and that also limited my options further. I went through a major period over the summer of 1997 where I almost exclusively refused to play against anyone. My online friends badger me constantly to play, but I still hold firm to that ideal. I would go to the Game Warden on my days off and drag my 20 or so pounds of cards with me, but had no compulsion to play. I would trade if I thought I could get something for a set, and tried to sell what I could. The game was no longer fun for me by this time, but merely a chore to get rid of, a needless addiction that my pack-rat mentality could not dispose of. With Tempest, and that little 5 set tournament my friend and I threw together (red came out on top eventually), I began to relive the old days when I was not so preoccupied with the rules as I had become with my Arena Judge status. Doing fairly well in a tournament setting with crappy decks also boosted my self esteem, even though I wasn't finishing in the top two or three as I was used to. I have begun to fall into a new age of game playing. Without the overly hyped need to win that comes with the competitiveness inspired by the evil tournament structure dictated by those freaks at DCI, (you can't tell that I hate them, can you?), I have begun to rediscover that the game is fun. The competitiveness and cut-throat nature is, while bringing new light to this game in the form of Pro-Tours and World Championships, destroyed the fun for me. Only when I removed the winning need did I find things to be fun again. Now, hopefully, I've given those few of you who were brave enough to read down this far a bit of insight into the mind of a Magic player as chronicled as closely as I can remember from the early days, and have helped you all to understand some of the feelings that go on in the minds of those closely and yet distantly associated with the game. I have never gone to a Pro-Tour Qualifier, never plan to, have never played in a DCI sanctioned tournament, don't plan to, but keep up with all aspects of the game as much as I can. I have never built a "stock tournament deck" such as "Turbo Stasis", "Necro", "Sligh", "Counterpost", etc. I know what they are, but dislike that they exist. Originality does not exist in the DCI tournament structure except around the release of a new expansion set. Think about it. All commentaries are the opinions of the author, and do not necessarily reflect those of Beyond Dominia
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