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by Jacob Montanez Where Has All The Fun Gone? I've seen the game termed "Magic: The Addiction." I've watched people buy booster packs (nay, boxes of boosters) like rats on cocaine. I've done many things with the game: rules variants (very odd), team games, free-for-all multiplayer, booster draft, Type X tourneys, sealed deck, Iron Man. Even though I've done all of these, today I have less fun playing the game than when I first started. I couldn't help but think why. My answer, of all things, is that the game has matured. It has become more than a game; for some, it is a lifestyle, a means of earning a meager existence. I'd like more than anything to claim that I have not changed in four years of playing, but that would be a lie. I'm no longer the young, teenage freshman who found in the game a means of connecting with all those fantasy books I read at the time. As the game matured, I grew apart from it. It was gradual at first, then tapering off rather quickly after the arrival of Mirage. A few spurts with Weatherlight and to a lesser extent Tempest showed to me that I had interest in the game, but those outbursts were shortlived. Over this time, some good changes and some bad have affected my perception of the game. The foremost of these is the change from just "game" to "competitive sport." This change was apparent to me when WotC decided to create a new tournament structure called Type 2, using only the most recent cards, i.e the current basic set and the most recent 2 expansions. At the time, I'm sure this consisted of Revised, Dark, and either Fallen Empires or Legends. Since all I had at the time was Revised and FE, I wasn't much bothered by it, but I could see change coming. In retrospect, I didn't anticipate how far sweeping that change would be. In the meantime, my friends and I played our variants, such as "first turn all lands" and "carebear" (waiting until someone had cast all the creatures in their deck before attacking), building up hordes of thallids and thrulls and whatnot. The game was fun. But soon, we met "others" from outside our tightly knit group of about 6-7 people, and things changed. We needed to be able to play on the same level or get our butts collectively handed to us. They informed us of such things as "Scrye" (you mean they have prices? Shivan's worth HOW MUCH??--At the time, the Shivan Dragon was THE card to get, though I didn't care much for it) and the DCI. We gathered up (it IS called "The Gathering...) and learned what we could about "tournament rules." Soon, a few of us (myself included) began to focus solely on the rules (I *am* the rules. :) and as a result, the game became less fun. The rules lawyers always "knew" what to do, when to do it, and so forth. We began quoting errata from our heads, noting how certain changes affected the playability of the cards. It became much less of a game than a competition of who knew more about what everything did. Our fun was collectively ruined; my friends didn't like that I and a few others knew all the rules, and I myself didn't like how much the rules began to intrude upon my games. Eventually, most of my close friends quit the game, giving me all their cards in the process. As nice as it was to have a suddenly swollen collection, it still served as a constant reminder of what I, and what the game, had become. A burden too big for its own wrapper. Soon the "Pro-Tour" came about (from what I know, there had already been the World Championships and such for a year or so), and this only caused my friends to snicker more at what it had become. For me, I think I gave up the game when I received those cards from my friends. I still bought cards out of habit, but didn't care anymore what they did. Ask me in any chatroom, and I'll most likely tell you that any set that's come out in the past two years has sucked royally. There's just no more fun in it. I can't keep up memorizing the cards, the "big" cards don't seem that interesting to me. The sets come out faster than the gestation period of most amphibians. That in itself is another problem. In my nice youth, I could get money from my parents without caring where I spent it, and could dwell on how much I could beg for to buy another booster. But as time went on, I found expenses to mount again, leaving me less and less money. Now, I have to pay for gas, insurance, and college, and money is extremely tight. I barely have enough to eat, let alone buy cards. I tell myself I'll have enough to get in on the next expansion, but I know I wouldn't want to, even if I tried. I can't participate with those who *have* been buying all the expansions, and the sickest part is when I see them buying boxes upon boxes of each set, something I've never done nor had the money to do. The only full box I'd ever bought was Fallen Empires, and that's because the store sold them for $20, a relatively affordable sum, though I had to hold off getting the comics I otherwise would have bought. So by now, everyone who plays these days plays by a DCI standard. Due to their purposeful phasing out of T1 (or "Classic" for those who choose to use their new terminology), I'm forced to play on the "standard" level, which is T2. This is made difficult by the aforementioned inability to keep up with the new expansion sets. I get online and complain about this, and all I ever hear is "go home and play there." Not very good advice. Like my parents care what the game is about, and my brothers are either too stupid or don't care either. I play the game to be with friends, but if I can't bridge to their level of cards (no, I don't think the cards are better, I just don't have them and can't compete in the "standard" field), it's difficult to play. I'm stuck in this horrible rut that I'm in between groups. I'd call myself a T1 player, but now that I've seen higher power cards trickling into my area, it's difficult to compete with my lowly Revised power cards, but my Revised power cards are exactly what keeps me from playing against everyone else, who have now reverted to the inane T2 standard. The adoption of the "play or draw rule," while a long time in coming, has finally arrived, and now I have to deal with that crap too. I could potentially try Extended, if only they'd just give it normal T1 restrictions and bannings from Revised on. I'm not looking for people to sympathize with me. Where I am at as a player, I've brought upon myself, but I'm also somewhat a victim of circumstance. Adapt or die. So far, I've been unable to adapt, and so for me, the game has died out. This is not to say I'm a bad player. That's the worst part of it. Like I mentioned before, I had more fun when we played our silly variants than before everyone switched to and embraced the tournament standard and mindset of a tournament player. I'd rather play my silly Fairy deck, or my Primate deck, or my Antiquities Theme deck, or whatever than use or play against Stupid Red Burn or a Necro variant. And when I do, I get my butt handed to me, which isn't fun. So I do what changing I can. I've "come up" to the level of a tournament player (as much as can be done in my town, anyway), and am one of the 3-4 "contenda's" when I choose to participate at a tourney. Usually that only happens when I goad someone into letting me in for free, or to pay for me to get in. I stopped long ago using my own decks, because typically, unless it was my one tourney deck, I'd be losing, and not having at least some fun, especially when I'm dead by turn three and I've only got one fairy out. I've turned to borrowing someone else's deck and beating them with their own construction, solely on the fact that I'm a better player than they are, no matter how advanced their silly "tournament" deck is. I even offer to use their worst deck against their best, and they refuse to do so, because of one thing: They're afraid they might lose, even knowing what is in their decks, and I've never seen it before. I was accused the other night by Jokerman in chat of being a scrub simply because my goal at Magic was not to win. I do not like winning in a cheesy manner. After my LD summer (the one in which Alliances was around), I burned out on all the "metagaming" (there isn't any) and the horrible faces of my opponents as they knew they'd never cast anything in time to stop my Ernham Djinns or Balduvian Hordes (of course, there was the time my opponent StP'd TWO Balduvian Hordes that I'd gotten out on turns 2 and 3...then won). Fun is knowing I don't need to have my own cards to play, that I can borrow a random selection of land and cards (as long as their the appropriate color of lands and such), and typically defeat, or come extremely close when the odds say I shouldn't, my opponent. Knowing I've won a hard-fought, or losing a hard-fought, game just simply is that much more fun than losing as quickly as possible. Locks are no fun, (Stasis...ACK) just typical beatdown with some odd strategy is fine by me. It is now the looks on hardened tournament players staring in disdain at their "unbeatable" deck losing to one of their less-than-inspired ideas that tempts me into playing. Someday, maybe I'll put all my knowledge of rules and such to better use, or even forget about it completely. But until then, I'll remain dissatisfied with how DCI zombifies the playing community, since I observe it growing worse every day, and only play the random game with the near-guaranteed win. All commentaries are the opinions of the author, and do not necessarily reflect those of Beyond Dominia
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