So I’m a geek. I came to this conclusion at a much earlier age, but since discovering my inner geek I’ve engaged in a number of activities including, but not limited to:
- Doing well in school
- Reading “for fun.”
- Buying comics books
- Not playing team sports
- Regularly geeking out over gadget launches
- Playing video games, and being good at them
- Discussing the finer points of Star Trek/Wars plot lines with friends, and
- Playing Magic: The Gathering, a collectible trading card/strategy game
That last point is the subject of this brief blog post. I think I may finally be (for the second time) toning down my Magic “addiction.” This is a big change for me, as Magic has been a large part of my life for the past 2 years, and I credit it with helping me reconnect with my best friend Nate as well as helping me meet new people when I moved from Humboldt County to Sacramento. Magic was also a way for my fiancé and I to spend time together, and provided common ground for my former Big Brothers Big Sisters “little” Brian and I to connect.
I was thinking back to when I first started playing and how much fun I had with Magic when playing casually in my living room with friends, usually playing multiplayer games and such. A lot of camaraderie is built when you’re playing with the same group of folks over and over again. After we left Humboldt County and moved to Sacramento, a lot of things changed. We went from 4-5 regular people to play with, to just my fiancé and I.
We kept the hobby alive like this for awhile: we played each other, made new decks, tried new strategies, but in the end we just needed more folks to play with. We then started to attend Friday Night Magic tournaments. We had a blast there, and I even placed 1st more times then I was expecting. Eventually the card set we were used to “rotated” out of being tournament legal, and new sets were released to replace them. Here’s where things started to change.
I began to feel like Magic was being “dumbed down” by Wizards of the Coast, the makers of Magic: The Gathering. Suddenly cards weren’t as powerful to play, and many of the strategies we came to know and love were seemingly forgotten, replaced with new rules and cards meant to make it easier for players to understand the game. Sure, every Magic player wants more players to join in the game, but when the flavor and fantasy of the game is taken away and replaced with simplified rules and fewer strategies to use, the game suffers.
I kept playing throughout this change. I had faith that buried somewhere in the 1,000 plus cards in the tournament library available to me, there was some strategy, some super-cool deck that was a silver bullet for all the other decks at the Friday night tournaments…but no, this wasn’t the case. It felt as though every deck I made had some sort of rock-paper-scissors answer to it. It would go like this: my deck (rock) would always beat scissors, would occasionally stall against other “rock” decks, and without fail would lose against any “paper” deck. This kind of play made Magic feel less like a skill-oriented game, and more like the luck of the matchup. In other words, it was no fun.
A few weeks ago, my fiancé Tara decided that she might sell off some of her cards for store credit at our local comic book/Magic store. She could then use this money on products at the store, or for a unique form of Magic called drafting. I think this is a brilliant idea, and have found the whole notion of not having to buy the latest cards, or to spend hours reading blogs and “Magic Pros” articles on the latest decks and strategies. Suddenly I had no urge to be following the 10 or so professional Magic players on Twitter. I didn’t want auto-renewal of my Star City Games Premium account. I even removed bookmarks for MTG Salvation and the Daily MTG websites from my Firefox.
Each of these actions I approached with a great amount of hesitation, as though I was going to get in trouble for backing off of this hobby that has been a big part of my life for the past 2 years. And with each simplification came a greater sense of freedom. Sure, I can still play Magic. I still have all my cards. I could go to a tournament, or I could not. Suddenly I felt like I had choice! How weird is that.
My plans are to keep my casual decks, and some of the special collections and sets I’ve put together, but to sell off through eBay and at my local store many of my less sentimental or less valuable cards. I think I’ll keep most of my Standard tournament legal cards so I can still attend the occasional Friday Night Magic tournament, but I’m in no rush. I like having Friday nights open to whatever I want to do, Magic or not.
