Author: basilisk

  • Vote Monster for a Fairer Innistrad

    If you’ve heard the speeches from the recent Church of Avacyn party conference, you’ve no doubt heard a great deal about how the Monster party wants to kill all humans and feast on their brains.

    But I am here today to offer a different viewpoint: that the Monster party is dedicated to establishing equality for all creature types across the plane of Innistrad.

    As is the case with so many great planes, here on Innistrad Humans – and, predominantly, white Humans – are the single most represented creature type, accounting for about 30% of the population. And up until now, this one race has dominated every aspect of our society – industry, commerce, and, most significantly, religion. The Church of Avacyn perpetuates damaging myths and stereotypes to condition humans to think of other races as unintelligent and dangerous. You’ve no doubt read the statistic that 100% of violent crimes committed by Monster party voters are directed towards humans; but I wouldn’t put too much stock in numbers like that. After all, it is technically impossible to commit violent crimes against most monsters, since we are legally dead.


    Vampires demand to
    be taken seriously.

    Ask yourself: have you ever actually seen a vampire feeding on a human? People tell their children that all vampires are consumed by addiction, unable to contribute to society because they cannot look past their next fix of blood. Worse, people believe that this addiction is somehow contagious, and shelter their families from socialising with their vampire neighbours.

    Now, I am not going to deny that the guests at the parties I have attended at castle Markov enjoy a drop of red now and again, but every vampire I have met has been fully in control of their urges – more than I can say for some humans I have met.

    Now consider, if you will, the treatment my own zombie kinsmen receive. I think it is fair to say that modern Innistraddian society was built on skaab labour, and yet zombie workers earn far less their human equivalents and have to deal with abusive discrimination from their employers. While it is medically accurate to describe zombies as ‘braindead’, it is entirely wrong to assume that our lack of a functioning nervous system impairs our intellect. Zombies can think – and zombies can feel. Many humans mistakenly assume that a zombie’s only motivation is a hunger for human brains, but many of us hunger instead for self-improvement and professional pride. Under our government, human firstborns will be taken as brain tax, but this is more indicative of the economic climate than any hidden zombie agenda.

    The “dead men don’t vote” act of 735 prohibited the spirit population of Innistrad from contributing to the democratic process. But as I survey this crowd today and see the faces of spirits, zombies and vampires gazing back at me, I say – aren’t we all dead? It is time for the government to recognise that a substantial portion of our society and culture is made up of the deceased, and that fact should be celebrated rather than suppressed. Many writers and artists only create their greatest works after they have died and have the benefit of a fresh perspective on life.


    Break through that
    glass ceiling!

    Perhaps worst of all is the plight of the proud werewolf. I remember a time when rural werewolf communities like Avabruck flourished, and residents were able to practise their traditional customs, like fighting, in peace. But under the Church of Avacyn, werewolves are forced to conceal their true natures for all but one night in every month. Instead of expressing their culture, they are made to live a lie if they want to get anywhere in the world. I want werewolves to be proud of their identity, and for their human colleagues not to shrink in fear from the fact that they are capable of hunting and killing them for sport.

    Now, it is true that our candidate, Griselbrand, has served several centuries of jail time. But he is a reformed demon, and I swear to you, from the bottoms of my five decorative hearts, that everyone in the Monster party is committed to realising our vision. Although monsters never sleep, we dream of establishing a new Innistrad where no-one need be staked, or exorcised, or preyed upon. Where humans and monsters can share both the night and the day. Where there is always food on every plate at night – regardless of, uh, the individual’s particular diet.

    Now, who will stand with me for a brighter day – and a blacker night?

  • Press Release: Target to Stock Phantom Boosters

    In a gaming industry first, Magic: the Gathering will have a line of “phantom” booster packs which do not add cards to their owner’s collection.

    APRIL 1, 2012 (RENTON, Wash.) – Adding excitement for players of the Magic: the Gathering collectible card game, Wizards of the Coast, a division of Hasbro, Inc. (NYSE: HAS), announced today that it will be publishing “phantom boosters” as a Target exclusive product. Featuring Baneslayer Angel, Flame Wave, and other mighty spells, these boosters will allow players to bring all the fun of Magic Online’s “phantom events” to the gaming table!

    “Phantom events are a long-standing tradition on Magic Online, with a huge player base.” said Magic Online spokesperson Ken Modo. “With the popularity of phantom events, we felt it was time to bring that excitement and challenge into the real world. No longer will these tense, skill-testing events be available only to online players.”

    “Of course,” he added, “Phantom games come at a price.” Ken laughed and pointed a finger at my friend Larry, who vanished into the AEther, never to be seen again.

    The existence of phantom booster packs will enable players and children to gamble their life’s earnings away with less risk and without wasting unnecessary cardboard.

    “Phantoms have a long tradition in Magic: the Gathering.” said Jace Beleren, famed planeswalker. “Phantom creatures introduced in the Magic 2011 and Magic 2012 core sets have the ability, ‘Whenever this creatures becomes the target of a spell or ability, sacrifice it.’ Keeping with the theme of vanishing under a target, we felt it was fitting to only stock phantom boosters at Target. Get it? Because they vanish? And it’s at a store called Target?”

    Wizards of the Coast is the worldwide market share leader in collectible small pieces of cardboard that you can play games with if you want. Target is a group of several hundred huge boxes scattered across the United States that sells stuff, including these very same small pieces of cardboard.

    Phantom booster packs will have 0 cards in them and will retail for $3.99.

  • Avacyn: Spoiled

    Now and then, GoodGamery publishes real preview cards. In 2010, Wizards provided us with a preview card, Quag Sickness. In 2011, GoodGamery provided our own joke preview card, the random dual land generator. This year, the world will end. However, before that, we have received a new preview card from Wizards. This card is from Avacyn Restored, set to be released sometime soon. Let the spoiler season begin!



    (This card has, of course, been generated randomly for your convenience by the Magical Avacyn Restored Card Generator. To share this specific card with other people, click here and use the share link at the bottom of the page.)

  • Magic: The Gathering Officially Becomes Card Game

    After nearly two decades of quixotic experimentation as some sort of absurd professional sport, Magic: the Gathering, a fantasy-themed paper product sold at supermarkets and toy stores by Wizards of the Coast, a subsidiary of Hasbro corporation, has officially announced its return to its roots – a card game that people play for amusement and distraction.

    Magic: The Gathering had previously been positioned in the consumer market as an obsession, a cultural touchstone, a mark of social denigration, a node of social media activity, a nexus for profound misunderstandings between the sexes, and a global international semi-voluntary product marketing fraternity. Starting in 2012, Magic will return where its journey began – printed colors and text drawn in a random order to fill Mountain Dew breaks during Dungeons and Dragons games.

    “What we’ve done here is create a mind-shatteringly awesome experience that players can really get behind,” said Belene Hergeot, Director of Organized Play Programs and Operations, and the suit sent in by Hasbro to finally end the long years of wasteful charade. “People want to play Magic more than ever before, and they are. We have given them everything they wanted in their fantasies – a card game that can be played with cards. And I know without a doubt we have succeeded spectacularly. This is the reason we are all doing this, for the success and the success and the success of Magic. One-of-kind 3D amazing achievement of IMAX spectacularity they’ve been craving. Dreams fulfilled, hope restored – world spins an axis of bliss and justice. A new age, an age of miracles and glory.”

    “Also, we are cutting the Pro Tour,” she added. “Ponies. Joy-inspired suicide. More ponies.”

    Lott Scarabee, Magic Organized Play Program Manager, with nothing else to contribute to the press briefing, was still required to appear in this article, and read his grocery list. “Bananas, wheat germ, 1-qt. freezer bags with sliders, garlic powder, cheese ravioli, mayonnaise, horseradish, chicken sausage,” he said.

    The rumored initial cause for the decision was Wizards simultaneously awarding World Champion and Player of the Year titles to top Magic players, which were somewhat redundant and confusing. According to industry sources, the criteria for each title did not precisely match the impression made by its name. To resolve this problem, Hasbro fired everyone at Wizards and canceled the electric bill.

    Strategic documents acquired by this website show that millions upon millions of Magic: the Gathering cards already exist – more than enough to to pepper kitchen tables in the company’s target market – from the West Coast of the United States, skipping the middle part, all the way to the East Coast of the United States – for the foreseeable future.

    Since the huge glut of surplus product left over from the speculation by now-obsolete “competitive players” will take years to clear the market, Hasbro plans to lease the subsidiary’s Renton, WA offices to Bone Appetit, a luxury pet food boutique with no revenue streams that will close in three months.

    “This is an example Of decisions that aRe necessary for the nexT generation of Uber-magic playeRs. i’m Excited for these changes, Prepared, Loving Every Available minute i Spend with the Engaging leadersHip rEsponsible for Living our commitment to Players to this extent,” wrote Faron Aorsythe, director of Wizards R&D, on a napkin he slid under the door of a darkened conference room.

    According to industry rumors, other Wizards leadership did at some point develop financial calculations on cost savings and expected turnout rates that supported the decision. As of press time, their identities, whereabouts and even the truth of their existence were unknown, much like the mythical Sasquatch.

    Magic will join other big names of the just-a-card-game (JACG) industry, including Uno, Fluxx, and Underage Drinking, all of which trail industry titan Unopened Bicycle Poker Deck Left On Top of Your Bookshelf That You See Every Day but Don’t Bother Using or Putting Away, which holds 85% of the global market.

    “This is a great change that everybody here is totally behind,” said Magic Designer Nenny Kagle. “It will really focus the game on where it needs to be and give our players what they ask from a card-game experience. Also, our new Hasbro media relations associate Louis DeParc, who writes our press releases, is the awesomest. He is totally cooler than me, and I definitely should have let him borrow my Phyrexian costume for Halloween, instead of being a jerkwad about it. Which I am. Jerkwad, jerkwad, jerkwad.”

    Calls to Tina Gaffney, longtime Wizards of the Coast Spokesperson and author of

    The Case of the Missing Jell-O: A Dack Fayden Mystery

    were traced to a cell phone in the employee bathroom of a Toronto-area Tim Horton’s. They returned no comment but the soft sound of adult weeping.

    “You know, we make Candy Land, too,” said Hasbro CEO Ben Goldner. “And nobody gets to be King Shit of Candy Land. They’ll get over it.”

  • Stridin’

    They see me blockin’

    They hatin’

    Controllin’, they tryna catch me stridin’ dirty

    tryna catch me stridin’ dirty

    tryna catch me stridin’ dirty

    tryna catch me stridin’ dirty

    Attackers think they can see me lean

    I’m so tall it’s easy to be seen

    When you see me stride by you can see the gleam

    And I shine in this deck and on the sea

    In triple Scars draft I’m like “hold up”

    Make the poison decks clock slower

    x-4 for 2 man, thought I told ya

    Give a Cystbearer the cold shoulder

  • The Flavor of Innistrad

    It’s no surprise that Hasbro’s recent unveiled publishing deal with General Mills had a big effect on the top-down design of Innistrad. In week two of the Innistrad previews, Mark Rosewater talks about the influence that the five monster cereal tribes had on the set’s development.

    Remember that the set was always going to have a lot of creature types that only showed up in ones and twos. We just had to figure out which one we could blow up into another major race. In the end, I was swung by breakfast cereal. In 1975, General Mills put out five monster-themed cereals: Count Chocula, Franken Berry, Boo Berry, Fruit Brute, and Yummy Mummy. Obviously, General Mills was trying to go with the most popular monsters. Vampires, zombies, and werewolves were all represented.

    Breakfast cereals have actually had a big impact on M:TG for years – I am sure you all remember Fruity Pebbles, Cocoa Pebbles, and Trix (famous decks), as well as Lucky Charms (a nickname for the Demon’s Horn cycle). For Innistrad it was pretty clear that Wizards of the Coast had decided to invest themselves fully in the breakfast cereal industry, but it ended up not working out for some reason. Normally you wouldn’t be able to see fully-rendered test cards like these, but our expert hackers were able to extract the following 5 tribal Planeswalkers from deep within WotC’s developer databases, along with some juicy developer comments:

    TL: Innistrad’s spirits are blue and white, without any real mechanical identity. This fits in well with what we usually try to do with planeswalkers: Having them make no flavor sense whatsoever. This is a home run in that department.

    TL: The main aspect of Innistrad zombies is that they say “Zombie” a lot on the cards, because market research showed that our most zombie-centric demographics would often forget what kind of card it was by the time they finished reading it. Someone designed this planeswalker, and then we threw that word in each ability and moved it around at random until the sentence made grammatical sense zombie.

    TL: Blah blah blah, something something, here’s a planeswalker that costs six.

    TL: Rawwwrrr! Werewolves! Yeah, I don’t know either, but creative called us like “hey can you make a planeswalker that regenerates werewolves” and we were like “what that’s stupid, regeneration sucks” and they were like “well you suck” and we were like “well no YOU suck” and then they said that if we don’t make one that they’ll stop Catherine from bringing in cake on Fridays and those cakes are really good and sometimes she’ll write a message to us in the frosting like “thanks for all the hard work guys!” and generally she’s just really sweet to us when she comes by with the cake (last week it was chocolate) so we said okay. Regeneration matters now, people! Really!

    TL: Rules change with Innistrad at FNM level and below: If a player targets a creature for the sole purpose of gaining life, no one is allowed to respond to that ability. I mean, come on. That would just be mean. The lil fella’s just trying to gain some life, would y’all chill out a bit? It’s pretty adorable.

    …and that’s the end of it. I wonder if we’ll end up seeing these unique new Planeswalker personalities in any upcoming sets?

  • GP Montreal Postmortem

    pt I – escape from montreal: a text adventure

    You find yourself in a modern-looking train station that, due to lack of windows,
    could be hundreds of feet below ground or directly under the foot of some Francophone
    Godzilla, and you would be none the wiser until your life ends in its footprint.
    You’d still be none the wiser after that happens, being dead. There are several
    blocked-off escalators heading down, various exits, some fast-food restaurants in
    English and French, and an advertisement that incorporates the map of the country
    in the sign (and while the novelty of being in a foreign country has mostly worn
    off at this late juncture in the trip, seeing a slightly smile-shaped archipelago
    instead of the USA used in such promotional capacity is a bit odd for the few seconds
    it takes to consider the normalcy and obviousness of the sign). What do you do?

    > check inventory

    You have a wallet, a train ticket, a phone, an iPod Touch, and a soft cloth suitcase
    with a bunch of overstuffed zipper pockets, a faux-leather handle, and a clip for
    the shoulder strap that you really wish you’d taken the time to find before
    leaving. The bag feels a bit lighter now than it did on the way into the city, despite
    the addition of two mediocre Sealed pools, but tell that to your bright-pink hands
    that’ve had to carry the thing around from hostel to street to metro car to
    staircase to the actual metro car you were supposed to be on in the first place
    to escalator to train station.

    > check train ticket

    AMTRAK – 69

    MTR -> PGH

    9:30AM

    $62

    > check time

    I don’t see a ‘time.’

    > check phone

    Fat lot of good that’ll do you, the flippo’s down to a flashbar having
    been “looking for service” the entire time it’s been in this country.
    There’s some useless and expensive pseudo-internet thing, a pitifully short
    contact list including the parent you’re currently on speaking terms with,
    the one you’re not, and that girl from the bar friday because you’re
    dumb enough to get contact information from someone despite not having an actual
    way to contact them. Phone also says 9:35AM, whatever that means.

    > where is amtrak ticket counter

    Over thataway.

    > go thataway

    You’re at the Amtrak ticket counter. There’s a French Canadian gentleman
    that looks like the real-life inspiration for De Niro’s character in Meet
    the Parents. You go up to the counter and (see how easy I’m making this for
    you? I’m such an accommodating game, not making you type all those detailed
    commands to accomplish simple tasks) show him the ticket, asking if the train has
    left already (oui), then if there’s another one today (non).

    > reason with

    He’s French.

    > make puppydog face

    Nothing doing. What are you trying to accomplish here, anyway? There isn’t
    even another train today, like I already told you. Sheesh.

    > ask for refund

    He refunds the ticket to your bank account (it’ll be processed in about
    two days and have five or six dollars subtracted from the initial cost), and smiles
    at you and advises to try the bus station, giving explicit and easily-understood
    directions to it, after looking up the schedule for Greyhound busses (his company’s
    competitor, might I add) at your request. And you thought he’d be a jerk!
    Ha ha. I can’t actually feel emotion, but if I did it would probably be mild
    bemusement at you. Let’s move on.

    > go to bus station

    You’re at the bus station. Technically, you were supposed to give a bunch
    of detailed commands about opening doors, spending your last six dollars going back
    and forth on the metro before realizing it was in walking distance (since you weren’t
    listening to the kindly French Canadian gentleman), but I really feel like we’re
    developing a bond here. We’ll make it through this, you and I.

    > buy ticket

    Hokay, wooo, well, I know we were getting along really well, but this is moving
    a bit too fast for my taste. I’d prefer if we’d slow it down a little,
    here, I’m getting uncomfortable. I have a reputation. I’m respectable.
    I have dignity. This is my job, my livelihood as a fictional text-based adventure
    game we’re talking about here. So yeah, well, how about you try waiting in
    line first while I recoup for a second.

    > wait in line

    Thank you. You’re a good person, despite everything that’s happened.
    Not all of it was your fault. You wait in line. Doo de doo. Now you can go up to
    the counter and buy a ticket.

    > go up to the counter and buy a ticket

    Well, you go up the counter and attempt to buy a ticket, but your debit card gets
    declined and I’m not really the world’s foremost financial detective
    here, but I’m going to guess that fits roughly in the column of “things
    you don’t want to happen.” I’m sorry. Not like, sorry that I did
    anything wrong, because let’s face facts it was 100% your doing, whether you
    remember causing it or not, but I’m sorry that it had to happen to an on-balance
    alright guy.

    > check wallet

    You reach into your wallet and calmly try to slide out that crisp hundred, making
    your most Stringer Bell-esque expression, only to find three $1 bills. Oh, wow.
    What in heaven happened there? That’s just… well you’ll probably want
    to get around to finding that thing. It WAS right there, though, you saw it in there
    on Friday evening, and you certainly don’t remember spending or breaking it
    any time since then. You duck your head so you stand, like, 6’2” tall,
    and walk off glumly. That’s not a biased description. I’m sure you could
    ask a lot of people how you walked off and a large number would say “glumly,”
    so that’s as close to objective as we can get here. I’m not trying to
    be mean. Even your most adverb-abhorring Strunk and White disciple would say you
    were basically glumming up the whole station, right then.

    > consider options

    Well, you have no money, no car, no ticket home, and no working phone, so this
    seems like a situation that you have to puzzle through yourself. That’s kind
    of what you’re supposed to do with this sort of thing, hence the whole “adventure
    game” presentation we’re dealing with. I’m just here to assist,
    not do everything for you. Do you really expect me to just hold your hand through
    yet another self-made crisis? Take some responsibility. Either that, or call your
    mom on the payphone or something.

    > call mom on payphone

    What? Sweet lord that wasn’t a serious suggestion. My apologies. I’m
    not very good at sarcastic humor, so let’s just chalk that up to a tragic
    misunderstanding, move on, and you can choose an actual solution that’s not
    just running over to GameFAQs for your life decisions. So, okay. Right. Just type
    “cancel,” we’ll do something else. I’m sorry for chewing
    you out before. That was a mistake. I apologize. You can type “nah”
    or “no” or just an action to do something else, if you’d prefer
    that to “cancel.” I’m understanding that way.

    > call mom on payphone

    Oh dear. You’re really going forward with that. Right, so, let’s discuss
    our relationship. I don’t think we can do this any more. It just hasn’t
    been working out. We’re very different. I’ll give you a Game Over here.
    Or maybe you “Win.” That’s right. You’ve “Won.”
    Congratulations. You’ve finished Escape From Montreal. Good job. I’m
    clapping for you. Really. Please don’t contact me.

    pt II – former best friend

    In high school, I was in debate. I was sitting in that classroom one day at the
    computer, browsing MTGSalvation, and a kid named Eri I had talked to a little bit
    recognizes the site; we start talking about Magic. Outside of Magic tournaments,
    I had never met anyone who played Magic above a strictly casual level.

    We started testing for upcoming tournaments; we didn’t have the cards, so
    we used commons with the same casting costs or wrote names on bits of paper and
    stuck them in sleeves with cards of the same color. I was a lot better than him.
    Somehow, I was able to pull little mental tricks on him to make him misplay and
    throw away the win, which I’ve never even attempted on anyone else. For brief
    moments I caught glimpses of why people harped on Fact or Fiction constantly.

    We played Standard; we played Extended; we played Mental Magic; we played Solomon
    draft with random commons; we Solomon drafted with whatever rares were in our shoeboxes,
    then played the games by Type Four rules; we played Lorwyn*3 draft on Magic Online.

    He was a little under a foot shorter than me. He had other friends, I did not.
    He smoked a lot with people from our high school and elsewhere. I didn’t do
    anything like that, but I was still a little jealous that he would go out doing
    things and not invite me along. The jealousy faded a bit when his family situation
    deteriorated (his parents were divorced as well), and he moved in with my family.
    We played more Magic.

    I got hired by the Obama campaign (we had been interns together, but I showed
    up to make calls and knock doors more often than he did) and when I was working
    in San Antonio, I got a call from my parents that they took him to the hospital
    for alcohol poisoning. In the car on the way there, he kept trying to open the door
    and climb out onto the highway. When I got back home, he had to go to AA if he wanted
    to stay in the house. I walked him to his first meeting. I hoped none of the people
    watching us go up to the door recognized me. I don’t know whether he went
    to any others, but he certainly didn’t stop drinking. The liquor cabinet would
    mysteriously be minus half a bottle of vodka, two inches lower on this bottle and
    that. All in one night. It’s impressive that he lived through it, if he really
    did.

    He was a smart kid. While I did debate, he did extemp(oraneous speaking), and
    he was good at sounding convincing for nine minutes at a time. He was a good liar,
    good at looking people in the eye without overdoing it, avoiding the usual body-language
    clues. His lies, though, were truly awful. Got himself into situations that he could
    talk himself out of, but why was he in that situation in the first place? Leaving
    a Heineken bottle behind the toilet. Not thinking of doing something like refilling
    vodka bottles with water, since it’s not like my parents would have been able
    to tell the difference until they have a drink from it years in the future. Not
    noting the organization and orientation of the various bills in my stepfather’s
    wallet when he goes through it. Not thinking about the consequences of leaving my
    wallet empty in a completely different place.

    It’s difficult for me, even years later, to think about someone (especially
    a Magic player) that gets wasted on various things on a regular basis without thinking
    about Eri, and it’s become fairly important to me not to become him.

    pt III – viet-thai restaurant

    I sigh as I push aside the menu. “Why are we in here? Are there even any
    good players here? I bet this place isn’t even
    in the
    SCG guide to the city. Of course, if it had been up to Verhey, we would have somehow
    found a
    Cheesecake Factory.”

    Verhey laughs and shifts in his seat.

    “Look who just came in,” Black says. “Is that Mascioli?”

    I crane my head over. “No, can’t be. Isn’t Mascioli working
    with Channel Fireball people now? I heard he got Wrapter to design his last Standard
    deck.”

    Verhey shakes his head. “You’re thinking of Bertoncini. That’s
    some local guy. No one.”

    The local comes over and taps me on the shoulder. “Hey, Ocho, nice job on
    that last M12 walkthrough, real good stuff.”

    “Uhh, thanks,” I respond.

    I’m feeling a little embarrassed by this, so I decide to show everyone my
    new altered card. I get out my custom-painted oversized deckbox (Justin Treadway,
    $850) and slide the card on the table, waiting for reactions.

    “What’s that, Chinese Simplified?” West asks, obviously interested.

    “Korean. Just got it off someone at an upstate tournament.” I try
    to act nonchalant but can’t stop smiling. “Apparently, he was under
    the impression that Natural Order was no longer good in Legacy. Thought I was doing
    him a favor taking it off him.”

    “I didn’t even know Visions was printed in Korean.” Verhey picks
    the card up gently between his fingers, turning it over. “Great condition
    on the back.”

    “What kind of alter is that? Acrylic?” Black asks.

    “Yeah. Pretty nice, huh?”

    “That is nice, Mason,” West
    admits. “But look at this.” He slides out a metal 75-card holder from
    his beige Gap shorts, pulls out a card, and slaps it down.

    “Portuguese foil Meloku,” he explains as we stare at it, “only
    misprinted in the first edition. Quite short-run.” I feel a moment of panic,
    looking at the perfect centering of the card, so difficult to find with foreign
    foils. The art altering has left the text box completely untouched. I start sweating
    as West continues. “Italian alterer… no website… in-person commissions
    only…” Black picks it up, strokes the smooth corners, not a hint of a scuff
    or scratch on any side of it, ignoring mine completely now. How can he possibly
    think it’s better than mine? No one even plays Meloku any more.

    “But wait,” Black says, pushing West’s card back to him, “mine.

    It’s something I’ve only seen once before.

    “Is that… the one from eBay?”

    “Not the exact same, no, I had this beforehand,” Black says, leaning
    back in his chair. “There probably aren’t more than a handful of foil
    Russian Dark Confidants around, though. I considered getting that one, too, cornering
    the market, so to speak.”

    “It’s… great,” I manage to stammer out. When did Black get
    such a nice card? The alter on it doesn’t even seem to change the thickness
    at all, as if the paint was every bit a part of the card as the print was. The sleeve
    on it is somehow a deeper black; it feels heavier, everything adding to the card’s
    allure. I’m trying not to show my jealousy; I can feel my face getting redder.
    The local’s entire table is probably watching us now.

    “So are we going to get some of this Viet-Thai or what?” Verhey asks,
    obviously feeling the same way I am. Even with the sudden change of subject I can’t
    take my eyes of Black’s card.

    The waitress comes over and looks at me first. She’d probably like to start
    flirting. “Yeah, I’ll have… uh… V-1 or TS-3… whichever’s
    better.”

    “V-1 or TS-3?”

    “Whichever. I don’t care. You choose. Whatever tastes better,”
    I snap at her. She scurries away with our orders.

    “Black, I think there was someone at the GP with one of those in their binder.
    Unaltered, of course,” Verhey mentions, to take away a bit of the impact,
    but it’s a bit too late. “They invited me to… play

    games
     with them.”

    “Oh, I think I saw them,” I say, waving my hand. “What were
    they even
    playing? It had to
    be limited, they weren’t even using
    sleeves.

    “I… I don’t think they were playing a format…” Verhey says,
    glancing off to one side. “It looked like just… Magic.”

    “What do you mean, ‘just Magic?’ They must have been playing
    a format,” I say. Verhey’s lack of knowledge is irritating. “So
    what was it? Pauper cube? Rath cycle draft? Bring your own sealed?”

    “I don’t… think that it
    was limited.”



    “Well, what kind of constructed was it, then? Modern with…

    proxies?
    ” The word disgusts me. “Ice age block constructed?
    Peasant? EDH? Planechase with auctioned preconstructed decks?”

    “No… I think they were just… playing casual.

    The table is momentarily silent. We all stare at the myriad assortment of water
    glasses that’ve been accruing due to the incompetence of the waitstaff.

    “What do you mean, ‘casual?’” West finally asks.

    Verhey looks at him, brow down for a few seconds. “I’m not exactly
    sure. I think they just brought decks from home.”

    I’m suddenly angry at him. “What do you mean, brought them from home?
    Where’d they get the lists? Who’d they test them with? Did they at least
    win some daily events on Magic Online? Are they tuned at all by Thompson or Sacher?
    Did they get the lists from…
    Flores?” My
    hands are shaking, rattling the fork in my chicken and noodles with peanut sauce.
    “Abe
    Sargent?”

    “They… they… made the decks themselves.

    We all look at each other, dumbfounded.

    “How do you do that?”

    pt IV – hostel, night one

    I stayed in a hostel because it was $22 a night. Stepping out of character for
    a second here, if you’re in some foreign city and don’t know a soul
    and need somewhere to stay for a tournament or anything, really, stay at a good
    hostel and you’ll have a great time.

    Here is what happened: I walked into
    the hostel. I was shown around by an extremely cute French Canadian woman around
    my age that spoke French to me before I could muster out the French for “I
    don’t speak French,” then she apologized and talked to me in English.
    Then she pointed out the sangria. I had some sangria, and it was tangy, and chatted
    with the Australian women also around my age (maybe a couple years older?) that
    were having sangria as well. If this were fiction they would have hit on me, but
    it isn’t and they didn’t. They invited me out clubbing with a few other
    people, and I said no because I had to get to bed in order to play the first day
    of the tournament the next day. Then I asked myself exactly what I was doing with
    my life that I had just turned down clubbing with Australian women because I needed
    my sleepytime in order to play a card game. Then some French guys (as in French
    French) and one woman who was just Parisian gorgeous- whole other world from normal
    gorgeous- asked me if I’d like to go out clubbing with them. I said no because
    I had to get to bed in order to play the first day of the tournament the next day.
    They said oh please come out. I said no. They said please again but more heavily
    accented this time. I said well alright. We went to a small bar/club (still not
    sure exactly what it was) where a fairly competent DJ was playing a bunch of hip-hop
    that everyone including me was singing along to. In front of the DJ on a little
    set up above the small dance floor was a binder’s front page worth of girls
    who, a few shouted words later in the evening, I learned were from McGill; I will
    be sending my application in promptly. One of the French guys offered his hand up
    to one and she came down to dance with him and then I did the same with another
    girl but she turned out to be rather shy and frankly just not a very good dancer
    so I switched over to the girl he had invited down, which no one seemed to mind
    in the slightest, and I was still holding the drink that another French guy had
    bought me, vodka tonic, quite nice of him, possibly a bit weak because it just tasted
    fantastic in that way that either means a weak drink or a great evening, and I’m
    dancing with this girl and there are a bunch of details that absolutely fascinate
    me but will repulse a good deal of my readership, and most of them involve the manner
    in which we’re dancing and I’m putting my hands on her sides and her
    hands are going on my legs and even up around my pockets and we’re kissing
    in the middle of this dance floor and for once I have absolutely no thoughts about
    who can see me and Montreal is the best. I hold her hand and take her to an area
    near the door where it’s a bit quieter, we have a brief conversation so after
    all that I can hear what her voice sounds like. I leave.

    The next morning. The sun is shining. I can’t lose.

    pt V – favorite comment at the tournament

    “At PT: Nagoya I dropped at 1-5, so Ari Lax got me a Loxodon Wayfarer.
    For some reason he had on him one that was Japanese foil, and the artist was onsite.
    So he got it signed and gave it to me with ‘CONGRATS ON PT NAGOYA, CHRIS!’”

    “Wow. Remind me never to do badly at a Pro Tour.”

    “I don’t think you’ll ever need to worry about that.”

    pt VI – traders at magic tournaments

    Since the birth of the now-threatened Legacy card bubble, traders out to make
    a profit rather than find specific cards for their decks have shot up in number.
    It’s unclear whether there are more capitalist-minded traders due to the increase
    in columnists that write about nothing but card prices and trading advice, or whether
    those writers are a symptom of the trend toward trading Magic for financial gain;
    the two seem to have arisen simultaneously, egging each other on like children making
    fart noises in front of their increasingly annoyed parents.

    At the heart of the trading card game is a tension between people trading the
    cards and the game. While tournament players often take it for granted that players
    can find every card they need for every tournament, and never have to compromise
    their deck due to any circumstances outside the game, the traders fervently embrace
    the limited supply of cards, replacing the game of playing Magic with the metagame*
    of exploiting others’ lack of knowledge about card prices (or lack of planning
    in not getting the cards ahead of time). The tournament players think the traders
    are universally bad at Magic, and with few exceptions that’s generally true.
    The traders don’t say much of anything, because they’re making good
    money at this and very few of the players are.

    These traders only really exist because of a few facts about the cards:

    1. They are worth money. I’m getting the super-obvious out of the way here,
    but stick with it after your obligatory eyerolls, I have a destination in mind for
    this one.

    2. A whole assload of trading happens at big Magic events. Lots of players, people
    bring cards, etc. Duh-territory once again.

    3. Despite points 1. and 2., money is not allowed to be exchanged for cards, other
    than at authorized and overpriced onsite dealers.

    Here’s the important part that I had to string y’all along thus far
    to discuss: the fact that everything is exchanged card-for-card means that traders
    have the maximum possible information advantage over the general playerbase. They’re
    not exactly merchants, because if someone goes to buy something, that person hopefully
    knows roughly what the money in their pocket is worth. Traders set prices on both
    their own merchandise and the currency used to buy it.

    The thorny area is when we talk about traders “ripping someone off.”
    The whole subject makes for rather awkward dinner conversation. There are traders
    that are pretty blatant about it, just lying about what cards are worth in order
    to get an advantage. These guys are pretty bad news from just about everyone’s
    POV, but most traders are at least a bit higher up on the morality ladder than that.

    Now let’s talk about The Supreme Question of the Expert Trader.

    “What Do You Value This At?”

    While I’m unsure if it’s up to Oxford standards grammatically, it’s
    an innocent-seeming but fairly insidious phrase once we think about the implications.
    The issue here is that the person asking already knows the answer, or else they
    wouldn’t be able to afford a Standard Pauper deck once they’re done
    at a tournament. The trader is only interested if their customer thinks that the
    trader’s cards are worth more than they really are, or that their own cards
    (the customer’s) are worth less. The fact that it was the customer that suggested
    the price is pretty much irrelevant, since the trader fishes around until they get
    a nibble of incompetence from the customer, then decides to do that trade. Somehow,
    this is viewed as being more okay than claiming all one’s cards are worth
    a brazilian dollars, because rather than directly conning someone, they just wait
    to accept until the person cons themselves.

    Trading at a limited GP like Montreal is probably not as profitable, since there
    aren’t many players that will desperately need certain high-value cards immediately.
    I packed my meager binder, but didn’t trust myself with it onsite, so really
    this entire essay has next to nothing to do with Montreal and we’ll move on.

    *N.B. the use of the word to emphasize that this game-above-the-game is not the
    same thing as the “metagame” as most often used in the community; despite
    the mental intrusiveness of using a word for something notably different than its
    community-accepted definition, there is no extant word that can fill the same role
    in a less confusing manner. Rosewater and others have talked about how their internal
    usage of the word refers to all the community interactions and anything taking place
    around the game that isn’t the game itself; Magic has a multitude of metagames
    including deck construction intended to defeat a known field (traditional usage
    of the word), trading, writing essays about the game and rebuttals to those essays
    if the original author had his head in an anatomically inappropriate location, basically
    everything that occurs on Magic internet forums, etc.

    pt VII – on the oft-discussed topic of hitting on girls at magic tournaments
    (the subject of articles such as Darwin Kastle’s recent “Dating and
    Magic” at gatheringmagic):

    Don’t. Do you not interact with any women at all? There are places where
    you can talk to attractive women without a 100-to-1 ratio against you. Places include
    “bars,” “clubs,” and “life in general.”

    pt VIII – round one, against Charles-William

    Here are some of the advantages my opponent has over me.

    1. His first name is two first names. This is twice as many first names as I have.

    2. His hair has two parts in it, with a sort of semi-fauxhawk emerging above his
    head, composed of marvelously combed sandy-blond (highlighted?) hair. Mine looks
    terrible.

    3. He is French-Canadian, speaking twice as many languages as me.

    4. I can feel someone watching over my shoulder.

    5. Aside from the hair and all that, overall let’s just look at the facts
    here, this is a guy whose face is just way better-composed than mine. Prominent
    cheekbones but not to a creepy extent. He is someone I would expect to see on TV
    and someone sitting near me would make some crack about him being gay, then we would
    be depressed.

    6. The reason we’d be depressed is that we know, in our hearts, that he’s
    probably not gay. He’s probably quite straight. He probably gets laid way
    more often than we do. He is the guy leaving with the girl who blew us off.

    7. He is the guy your girlfriend had drinks with on Friday while you were playing
    Magic.

    8. To be blunt, I’m not in much of a fit state at the moment. Excuses, excuses,
    I know.

    9. Clothes. They fit. Having clothes that actually fit tends to be rather underrated,
    especially among Magic-playing circles.

    10. The body those clothes fit is actually, like, go ahead and use your imagination
    on this one and you’ll be correct.

    I had no chance in this tournament.

    pt IX – a half-remembered phone conversation between myself and the
    person I was in a long-distance relationship with

    “Well… I… I play Magic.”

    “You mean, every now and then?”

    “Well, no. Quite a bit. I’m playing this weekend.”

    She sighs. “Okay. So, a few rules. First, you will not try to teach me how
    to play. Second, you won’t even try to talk about it to me. At all. Third,
    you will never, ever, ever ditch me or cancel plans in order to play. Got that?”

    pt X – hostel, night two

    I’m bad at Magic so I take stock of what matters to me. I break out the
    two-liter of fairly nice vodka I brought in my bag. I don’t remember drinking
    of it any before this. I need to get to sleep. The vodka helps with that. Unfortunately,
    after running the common area fridge out of flat Sprite I try to take a shot with
    no chaser; I’m extraordinarily bad at this and run to the bathroom. I’m
    too preoccupied to check for anyone watching me. I think I’m okay as I’m
    facing the sink, and throw up the unidirectionally delicious chicken and noodle
    in peanut sauce into the sink. It doesn’t drain. Like, at all. I don’t
    mind much of anything at the moment. I reach my ET fingers down and kind of push
    the chicken and noodle chunks around the drain; unfortunately it settles rather
    quickly, but if I keep a circular motion going, it eventually sucks down some of
    the liquid into the pipe. This will probably stay here a while. After five minutes
    (???) I realize that, at the current rate and with the current technique, it will
    drain all the liquid and none of everything else; this will leave for whatever janitorial
    staff the possibly-ickier situation of a mass of solidish gunk. I resign myself
    to this and make sure no one sees me leaving. Above almost all else, I’m embarrassed
    that what caused the situation isn’t that I’ve had too much alcohol-
    I’m quite comfortable with the amount that I’ve had- it was just drinking
    it incompetently. I firmly commit to further practice, to avoid such unfortunate
    incidents in the future.

    I take the bottle back up to the bunk bed. In the bed below me lies Captain Sleep
    Apnea of the good ship HONK. This is what I brought the bottle for in the first
    place. Sleep arrives soon.

    pt XI – most recent long-term romantic relationship

    In April, I taught my then-girlfriend to play Magic. In a lot of ways, she was
    probably the type of person that male nerds really want to go out with and/or invent
    for their dreadful gaming-themed webcomic: she was really into anime, wore short
    skirts, and we watched 24, played Pokemon, etc. I got her to watch Burn Notice with
    me; she was not as successful in trying to get me into Gossip Girl (there are some
    plots so uninteresting even constant swigs of vodka don’t help). Teaching
    her to play Magic was probably not the best idea, since she could swing into horrific
    depression for no reason whatsoever. All the bubble-round losses I’ve seen,
    the people I’ve outdrawn on Magic Online, all the people losing in Sealed
    to Grave Titan for the third round in a row, it was nothing compared to this massive
    amount of tilt. My mental line connecting playing Magic with not getting laid had
    never been better-established than it was after those games.

    I built a few decks for us to play, including a mediocre WR aggro that I piloted
    myself, giving her the far superior UBR control with just a few win conditions in
    it. In the previous game, she had won with Niv-Mizzet (which she correctly referred
    to as “Dragon Wizard”). As we shuffled up for the next game, I noticed
    there was one card set aside. She dealt herself an opening seven by putting six
    cards on top of that card. I asked if she had snuck Niv-Mizzet into her opening
    hand, which she denied. I asked her to show me her hand, then. She reveals six cards
    from her hand.

    A few days later, I broke up with her because she had been sleeping with another
    guy. It was disorienting talking to my other friends who knew her, because she had
    told each of us inaccurate information about one another.

    I think what hurt the most was that this wasn’t some drunken spur-of-the-moment
    whim, despite how she presented herself as a spontaneous person. Her spontaneity
    was always backed up by a multi-week itemized schedule consisting of major and minor
    goals; the fact that her target was someone she referred to as a womanizer would
    help out her story later on.

    It’s easy to villainize people in retrospect. Despite my thoughts then,
    she’s not an evil person. We had a good relationship. She just set out some
    goals, then accomplished them. Following that, she created a narrative about our
    relationship, then sold people on that narrative. Mine happens to be different.

    pt XII – advice for those choosing to drink during magic tournaments

    Try to take it easy. While I understand how tempting it is to sneak off a few
    drinks every time your opponent outdraws you, it’s easy to fall victim to
    the end-of-day hangover by the later rounds, and that’s one of the worst ways
    to end a tournament.

    pt XIII – unfinished pseudo-theory article making some sort of tortured
    connection between magic and literature when, if we’re honest with ourselves,
    there isn’t that much of an overlap community-wise between the groups of people
    that “seriously care” about these two things (magic theory and literary
    theory)

    A game of Magic can be viewed either as a traditional narrative or as a dialogue,
    and either view will explain what players find “fun.” One player does
    something, the other responds (in both game language and English), the first player
    responds to that, etc. One player makes threats (act one), other player attempts
    to deal with them (act two), they succeed or fail (act three). Combo decks don’t
    do anything like this. Non-combo deck does something, combo wins. Or, even worse,
    non-combo deck does nothing, combo wins. Nearly every player has the narrative/dialogue
    ideal set up as what a Magic game should be; if the game ends up varying from that,
    the complaint is that they weren’t really playing Magic. Normal decks have,
    built into them, cards that move the game along from one act to another. Aggro’s
    one-drops and control’s removal spells move from the first to the second.
    Burn and six-mana bombs move from the second to the third, or end the story right
    there.

    Combo decks are built as monologues. To monologue, talk endlessly about and to
    oneself, is far too self-centered, confrontational, and anti-social for the group-
    and community-oriented game Wizards is pushing Magic toward. If the combo deck interacts
    in a game, it’s going to be intermittent, stilted, with long, complex passages
    that aren’t doing anything more than playing out what was inevitably decided
    by subtle, nearly invisible choices in the prologue.

    It’s not pleasant to think about, but not every game of Magic between “normal”
    decks ends up reaching that ideal, either. People get manascrewed and do nothing.
    Sometimes the three acts get all jumbled up in who did what when, sometimes an act
    gets removed entirely, sometimes they happen in the wrong order, and nearly always
    the story of what happened in a Magic game gets summarized to a more palatable,
    shorter version.

    When a game of Magic turns into a narrative after the fact, nearly all the choices
    that happened along the way get removed; the person constructing the story ends
    up accidentally fictionalizing what happened, by making it seem like there was only
    one possible outcome, or no decisions to make along the way to a single branching
    path. When games get long and somewhat interesting, there’s never only a single
    fork in the road. We just ignore what doesn’t fit into the story.

    Any tournament report by a player that isn’t very good has an unreliable
    narrator.

    pt XIV – the channel fireball
    people at gp montreal

    If it’s not obvious from the website and coverage, the Channel Fireball
    guys are the elite clique at a GP. While the SCG people might have their matching
    t-shirts that look like someone hit the wrong zoom button in MS Paint, the CF guys
    have their classy matching black with the little logo. They mostly sit around with
    other CF people. The main difference is that, at a Magic tournament, other than
    tournament games there’s a surprisingly small amount of Magic actually happening.
    CF people are always playing Magic, and there’s almost always people gathered
    around watching them.

    Here is What I Learned about How to Get Good at Magic: just play a life-consuming
    amount of Magic. When you go somewhere for Magic, don’t stand around chatting
    and gossiping, play more Magic.

    I didn’t get in close enough to do true character studies, but LSV is most
    accurately described as “bouncy.” His words have a near-melodic bouncing
    quality to them. When standing, he bounces on his black and white Adidas Sambas.
    When talking, his head bounces along with what he’s saying; laughing gives
    him a similar appearance.

    pt XV – a conversation with a parent, upon calling when I realized
    I had no money and no way to get back home [excerpt]

    “Remind me why you’re there in the first place.”

    “I can get a writing job after this, but look, this isn’t really the
    time to talk about that. I’m paying god knows how much per minute to call
    long-distance on some payphone. I’m sorry, I know I screwed up, but-”

    “You got letters from the bank.”

    “…”

    “I opened them. You’re overdrawn. Negative one hundred thirty dollars,
    after multiple $38.70 charges for debit payment on an already-overdrawn account.”

    “I don’t know how that happened. I checked before I left. I had an
    entire paycheck in there. Look, please, I’ll pay you back…”

    “Right, and how will you do that? If I remember correctly, you’re
    already supposed to be giving us $200 a month. That hasn’t happened in a while.
    Plus we already paid for your classes. The ones you wouldn’t have to take
    if you’d stayed sober long enough to show up last semester. How much does
    all that cost you a month, anyway?”

    “Look, please, just this once. Last time.”

    Sighing. “Fine.”

    Jesse Mason

    killing a goldfish

    @KillGoldfish