Monday, October 8th, 2007
Cold Sad World: Cardboard Elves

Magic the Gathering. To many it's a fun leisurely pastime, to other its a mark of a nerd, in the same realm as a Dungeons and Dragons players handbook or the complete Babylon 5 DVD boxset. To me, well it's a way to waste my money and examine the cold sad world of lonely geeks much like myself. So when an opportunity presented itself to wake up in the wee hours of the morning, travel all the way to Connecticut and spend all day playing simulating dragon battles on pieces of cardboard with numbers on top of them. I couldn't say no.

Hopefully I'd make it back in one piece.

Magic the Gathering is a card game invented by Richard Garfield, a Ph.D. of wizardry or something. I don't really care to look it up. Aside from Magic, which he didn't even really make correctly (the game was incredibly unbalanced until years after he was taken off the development team) the only other thing he produced of note was a really shitty board game about robots nobody really likes. But somehow his dumb game about wizards and elves fighting has made him, as well as many other people a bunch of money. The game is simple. You have a deck of cards of at least sixty in number. A little less than half of those cards are land. You can play one land per turn, and most produce one "mana" of a specific color (either Black, Red, White, Green or Blue). The rest of the cards are spells, which cost a certain amount of mana to play. So, if I'm for instance holding a card that costs (2)(G), I have to have at least three land to tap to play it, at least one of which must produce green mana. From there you play creatures and sorceries, all in a valiant effort to reduce your opponents life total from 20 to 0. It's simple to learn, impossible to truly master.

What we would be attending was the Lorwyn prerelease. Lorwyn is a new set of Magic cards, something they come out with about once every two and a half months to keep the money rolling in. What's even better is that they make it so the most popular formats can only use cards from the latest sets. It kind of makes sense from a design standpoint, because the farther back you allow cards the more potential for game ruining combos to emerge that can win the game on turn one (it can happen in some of the other less strict formats). However it also means that there will always be tribes of players buying booster packs, trying to get the newest most-powerful cards to destroy their opponents. I myself am no real exception. I was tricked into trying the game when I started working at the game store, and quickly found myself hooked. I now have no less than two or three decks kicking around, and even play in weekly tournaments.

It's a sad state of affairs, but fuck is it addictive.

Daybreak

So it's like 5 o'clock in the goddamn morning and I have to travel all the way out to the other end of Amherst to pick up Chris Tourloukis because he had to try and bang this girl from Mount Holyoke instead of just sleeping at my house which would've made things much easier. I've never been up this early in my life. Tourloukis hangs out at the game store where I works, snot-nosed arrogant punk who's better at Magic than most of the people there. Kind of an odd thing to be pretentious about but it works for him. He's kind of like Bobby Fischer without the crazy.

Here the crew sets off in search of adventure. On your right is the stalwart Jeff Schlayer of Beasts, who was prepared for a long day of face-rocking. The silent killer Jason follows behind, not much of a talker but quick on the draw. While the rough and tumble rebel of our group, the young Andrew Mertes, sets out in search of something to sate his mighty hunger. Not just any meal, no, but the pure unspoiled blood of Magic newbies, who would be driven beneath his powerful will.

He would later settle for hash browns.

After getting lost a bunch and arguing over the merits of MapQuest versus Yahoo, we finally found the place - a shitty little hotel in the middle of Connecticut called "The Colony at Vernon." It's a really fucking weird name that sounds like the kind of setting for a science fiction novel. Like, an evil base on the moon where a horrible corporation has reduced the populace to mindless drones, each driven by the pursuit of worthless trinkets to ease their loneliness. Actually, aside from the part about the moon, it's not too far off.

Welcome to the colony, children....

10am and the place is already starting to fill up. Here we see various grown men in jean shorts waiting to get their fix. You should see what certain foil rares will do to these people.

Greg is an old buddy of mine, and pretty much the big Magic guru in our area. He's also an official DCI sanctioned Magic judge. This means that he spends all day wearing this dumb shirt, answering questions about how certain cardboard dragons interact with other certain cardboard dragons, and then gets paid in packs of cards. He's really living the dream.

Here the crowd starts to show up as the first "flights" get started. Basically a flight is a swiss-style pairings tournament, with about forty people taking part. Multiple flights happen over the course of the day, and they offer a discount if you pay for two of them. That's what we were all doing, plus you get a shiny exclusive card just for signing up (more crack for the addicts). The format was sealed deck, wherein you get two booster packs and a tournament pack (a big pack of cards basically equivalent to three normal booster packs of cards) with which to make a deck. This way everybody is on an equal playing field. You open your cards, hope you got enough decent ones to win your games, and have thirty minutes to make a deck. What a thirty minutes it can be.

Here's the table I was at to assemble my deck. You can see Jeff all the way down the other end. I didn't pull anything truly spectacular, though I felt I had enough cards to manage a solid Green/Red deck, splashing some white for removal and a Brion Stoutarm. For those of you who don't know what the fuck I'm talking about, basically I put a bunch of cards into a pile and prayed for the best.

1st Round: Cowboy Kid
There was a bunch of kids with these cowboy hats at the prerelease. I assumed they'd come as a group, though it could be that a bunch of nerds just made the same fashion mistake all at once (wouldn't be the first time). He was a nice enough guy, though my Kithkin beaters made some pretty short work of him. He stalled on two land our second game, so it wasn't even really fair. Still, we parted ways amicably. Actually, I was pretty excited. The last time I went to a prerelease, I wasn't able to win even a single round. But here I had started off with a win! Things were looking up.

Round 2: Smiley Joe

And then this kid shat all over my face. Goddamn it was not even close. He had elves raping me from every fucking direction. I took my beating and sighed. I was 1-1. In order to win a prize, you had to have a record of at least 3-1. I was still in the running though, as long as a quiet hispanic kid in a baseball jersey didn't show up and fuck everything up.

Round 3: Quiet Hispanic Kid in a Baseball Jersey
Goddamnit. God fucking damnit. I had it won, I had this kid on the ropes. I had a big fucking vigilant giant knocking in his teeth, pushing him into the red zone and boom, he drops one fucking flying mage asshole and the whole thing goes to shit. With a 1-2 record I couldn't win anything in this flight. It was time to drop and hope for better luck in the next one. I signed up for my second flight and dicked around while I waited for it to start.

The hall is really starting to heat up... with the burning vigor of magical combat!

This is RK post, which is a weird name for a person but whatever. Point is RK post draws Magic cards for a living. I'm assuming he probably illustrates the covers of various fantasy magazines once in awhile to supplement his income, but most people know him as "The Guy that drew Morphling." This man and other Magic artists are hailed as gods by the players. Not because of their artistic ability, no, but for their ability to raise the second hand value of cards exponentially. Sure, Lightning Angel sells for $4-$5, but you've got a set of Lightning Angels signed by RK post himself? Shit, you could get yourself at much as $8 for one of those. Here I pretended to be a fan so RK post would in fact sign my Lightning Angels and smile for my picture. Thanks for the extra couple bucks man.

Tam, local Magic judge and fancy man around town poses in front of the illustrious Manchester Room. Tam would later tell us a great story about the girl he totally banged after the prerelease for like seven hours straight. I attribute Tam's irresistible manly charm to his roguish ponytail. No woman can resist the allure of a level-one judge.

Here Jason shows some fools the business. Jason rocks the powder blue sleeves, as they show a level of quiet sophistication not often found in the Magic arena. Excellent choice kid.

My second flight began a little better than my first. I got some good rares in my packs, nothing to really play here but some cards I wouldn't mind finding room for in later decks. I quickly assembled a force of black and green elves and hoped for the best. I didn't get as many pictures this time but here's the basic rundown.

Round 1: The Bro
Fuck. I lost to some bro asshole with a snide grin and a backwards hat. The whole thing felt like a bad 80s teen comedy.

Round 2: Shaky McGee
This kid really, really, sucked and beating him doesn't even really count in my book. I think he kept a one land hand against me, which is like the number one way to lose a game of Magic before it even begins. Honestly, he was trembling the entire time we were playing. Dropping cards and whatnot. I've felt my heart race when I'm in a tight spot but jesus christ, just because my elves are attacking you really hard just calm down.

Round 3: The Photoman

Ok, I lost again, but to be fair it was some bullshit. I kept a hand with lots of land in it but didn't draw a goddamn forest for about twelve turns. By the time I finally had all the pieces in place the game was over. This guy was actually a reasonable chap however, took a picture of me with his expensive looking camera gave me his flickr address which I promptly lost. Hopefully he kept my card. It's always good to make friends with the kid who messes up your face in a game of Magic cards. That way you can steal their cards when they ain't lookin'

So fuck it, I suck at Magic cards and everybody was a winner except me. Theoretically I did fine, opened some cards I liked and only ended up spending like $80 for a day of dicking around and playing cards. Wasn't all bad. But for now it was time for the soldiers to go home...

BUT FIRST - SOME MOTHERFUCKING APPLEBEES

Fuck do I hate Applebees. Everything is overpriced and horrible tasting. I felt bad for our waitress, as we all resisted the urge to make ironically dumb Magic jokes.

"Oh jeez! I counter your drink with my Force of Will! LOL."

I guess this picture of Jason doing something incredibly retarded with his arm was worth it though. Looking at this photo, none of us could figure out how the hell he put it in that position, or for what purpose. I guess a bad case of Magic elbow or something.

In conclusion, Magic the Gathering is a waste of time and money, and a horrible trap for nerds like myself. If you've ever thought to yourself a collectable card game could be fun, quickly go outside and breathe into a paper bag. Hopefully the urge will pass.

Until next time,
Chris Gesualdi