Third Person


I know handshakes that start with face slaps and end with back flips. I have taught two cats how to fetch beer, and one cat how to make beer. I am both the particle and the wave. I am Super Smooth.

"But Funky," you ask, "How can I be Super Smooth?" Now some might tell you it is all about the grit of your sandpaper, but Funky won't give you that old jive answer. No, the key to being Super Smooth is to roll with the good, roll with the bad, and always keep your cool. Worry is the antithesis of Smooth, knocks you out of your groove, and makes coming up with a third rhyme really hard. Spellwild Ouphe is a shing example of the smoothness to which you should aspire. He draws heat like a Peltier and pulls in the positivity like a Tony Robbins convention. Every time he hits the table he knows he's in for a wild ride, so he settles back and enjoys it. Funky Approves.

Some might say that smoothness is its own reward. Funky does not subscribe to such limited thinking. We can reward the Ouphe for smoothness ten times over. This card puts itself out there and asks for a little attention, and it is the least we can do to oblige. So come on into my El Camino with genuine Pleather seating and let Funky take you for a ride.

The first place we want to look is the enchanted land of...Enchantments. Huh. Scans better in my head. Green has a history of enchantments that invert the Jenny Craig paradigm. They make people fat. And we are in the golden age of surgical enhancement. Witness the fat suits:

Wurmweaver Coil
Shape of the Wittigo
Verdant Embrace
Moldervine Cloak
Blanchwood Armor

We have Enchantments that shrug off Disenchant (Shape), that recur (Cloak), that build board position (Embrace) and that make Wurms (See how Funky tests your reading comprehension). And all of these move for less than retail when aimed at our paragon of smoothness. If we're trying to maximize our beatdown potential we'd go for the Cloak or the Armor. But let Funky level with you. Funky has played with Blanchwood Armor. Funky has played the hell out of cloak. Trudging over the same beaten path is easy on our blue suedes, but it doesn't do much for the smooth that hides within our souls. So let us get boots muddy. Let us play them all.

In the amazing world of synergist sorceries we find Thrive. Thrive stays crunchy in milk. Sadly we have reached the extent of its virtues. We will be leaving sorceries for another deck.


There are a few instants we can play with. Might of Oaks, Stonewood Invocation, and Wildsize all have their appeal. While Might and Invocation are clearly hum with power Wildsize hangs because I want to try cycling it for . It is the smooth thing to do. Sadly these too must wait for another deck, for reasons abundantly clear in the paragraph which follows.

We have our smooth operator, and we have the threads to deck him out. But ten outfits for one man is too much, no matter how smooth the man. We need to round up a crew. A player such as this rolls with the ladies. And we are fortunate to have many ladies who appreciate the quality threads he covers himself with. Ladies that look mighty fine wearing them on their own. They are enchanting. Even smoother? They are Enchantresses.

By name they are Gatherer of Graces, Yavimaya Enchantress and Verduran Enchantress. They play nicely together, and two of the three can form frightening engines of beatdown. Smooth. Silhana Ledgewalker tags along as a hot (Note the smooth double meaning) target for an enchantment, inviting risk free enhancement and implict evasion.

Now the magic happens.

Smooth
The Operator 4 Spellwild Ouphe The Ladies 4 Yavimaya Enchantress 4 Gatherer of Graces 4 Verduran Enchantress 4 Silhana Ledgewalker The Boons 4 Utopia Sprawl 2 Utopia Vow 3 Shielding Plax 2 Wurmweaver Coil 2 Shape of the Wittigo 2 Verdant Embrace 2 Moldervine Cloak 1 Blanchwood Armor	The Boonies 22 forest

The Ouphe is there to roll on the cheap. Half of your enhancement hits him for , making Verduran Enchantress his flaxen haired lady friend. Together they can burn through your deck like a barbecue gone tragically wrong. And if she brings her sister? Things get wild. If you don't have the operator in play there are no bad choices amongst the remaining targets. Which is why these very special ladies were invited to this very special party.

So you go pick up some operators. Grab some fat suits from the quarter rare bin. Spring for the enchantresses at a buck a pop. Learn from the Ouphe, and roll with the good, roll with the bad and keep your cool. Win or lose, they will respect the smooth.

And if the smooth is a bit flashy?

All the better, baby. All the better.


Second Person


I know you. You like long walks on the beach. You like movies with Godzilla. You had your first kiss with Suzy Berkman underneath the bleachers during your ninth grade spirit day. You love Flamenco dancing. You hate supply side economics. You once ate a whole turkey for Thanksgiving because a freak poultry accident killed your grandfather. You slept for four days after that, waking only to curse Carmen Miranda and cut rate herring. You fear retribution from the turkey's family and wonder when the bloodshed will stop.

You like playing red. Not all the time. And not with your friends that wear black and quote Kafka. But when you crack open a nonalcoholic Saspirilla and invite over the boys from the warehouse you always reach for the red deck. You like it because the decisions always seem to be easy. You never sit there wondering what is in your opponent's hand.

You really don't care. You're the one playing red. They're the ones that have to care.

But sometimes, when it's late, your eyes get heavy and your mind gets slow. You want to keep on playing but you just can't focus. Even red gets too hard to play. Before drifting off into dreamland it hits you. You need an easier red deck. You need a deck that can play itself. A deck that any spectator could sit right in and take over with. You pass out and dream of leaf mold and Pontiacs.

The next morning you wake. All day during your shift at the pickle factory your mind races. You have to make red easier. And then, while cleaning the brine tank, it all becomes clear. You can just suspend everything. No more worrying about your hand. Just put everything on the board and let your opponent figure it out!

But what to use? Two colors are hard to keep track of. Best to stay with pure red. They have all the cheap suspenders anyway. Pardic Dragon, Greater Gargadon, Keldon Halberdier,Shivan Sand-Mage and Epochrasite are all discount beaters who force your opponent to do the math for you. Arc Blade and Rift Bolt both give you cheap burn and minimal opportunity to screw up. Rift elemental, Jhoira's Timebug and Fury Charm all clean off the time counters when there are too many to keep track of.

Play Burny For Me.
The Boys 4 Pardic Dragon 4 Greater Gargadon 4 Keldon Halberdier 4 Shivan Sand-Mage 4 Epochrasite The Burn 4 Rift Bolt 4 Arc Blade	The Meddling Kids 3 Fury Charm 4 Rift elemental 2 Jhoira's Timebug The Land 2 Keldon Megaliths 21 mountains

You test the deck for hours on Magic Online, only paying attention during your attack phase. You find that no deck that you ever shuffled up was so simple. You realize* there is only one thing left for you to do. You put your Sarsaparilla in the fridge and call up the boys. You're throwing down tonight.

* things you also realized

You know that if Pardic Dragon is suspended you can remove the counters in response to your opponent casting a spell. If you can clear him before the trigger resolves he will escape limbo and come in for the beatings.

You love her, but you need more space.

You can chain Sand-Mages with just about anything, to make a fearsome force for fighting.

The chafing you feel from Speedos is not worth the framing effect.

You mind Wrath quite a bit less when you have an army waiting in the wings.

That everyone's first kiss was with Suzy Berkman.

Fury Charm on a Gargadon makes everyone but you unhappy.

You actually can destroy artifacts if you read your cards all the way to the end.

Your favorite series of plays with this went something like:
Turn 1 Suspend Sand-Mage
Turn 2 Suspend Sand-Mage and Halberdier
Turn 3 Suspend Pardic Dragon and play Rift Elemental
Turn 4 Rift Counter from Sand-Mage 1, bringing Sand-Mage 2
Sand-Mage 2 cleans Halberdier
Rift Counter from the Dragon.
Swing for 17
You lost to Wrath on the next turn due to your inexcusable greed.





First Person

I beat Worship at Regionals.

There is a schism in the magic community between the casual and the competitive. I figured this out when I joined a new playgroup a couple years ago. I showed up with a RedDeckWins that was legal circa 2001. In duels I did not drop a match, playing everyone and anyone. My games only took three minutes or so, so I would beat them senseless ten times in the half an hour it took the other people's decks to finish one game. Then we played a star game that I was out of in about four minutes, taking one guy with me. I then whooped up on him for the forty five minutes it took the game to finish. It was joyless killing, like a cat crushing a moth. I left that night certain that they would never invite me back.

But they did. This time I came prepared with a reanimator deck. All it did was drag its feet until I could get some giant stomping monster in play and start bashing heads. I dropped more than half the games I played, but I found myself having fun. Within me there was still the calculating monster that knew RDW outs against everything, that loved the tiny decisions that you had to make to get the best and only acceptable outcome.

But I began to find a different, entirely separate form of joy. One that came out when I pulled off a particularly neat trick, or surprised everyone with some card they had never seen work before. It was the thing that had pulled me into magic ten years before, when Ice Age and Homelands and Alliances all interacted in strange and mysterious ways.

I started making other goofy decks. They usually had an edge to them and built to a Eureka moment when everyone else realized they were screwed. But they had an appealing imagination that made them fun to play with and against. And from this comes the Flashy Play that I occasionally write for this site. It seems a bit out of place, since MTGS caters to Spike, but I think it works. I don't expect every blood thirsty tournament tested player to shuffle up a Chorus of the Conclave deck, but I try to let them know what it feels like.

Back to Regionals.

Before we started playing I told Olwen that I was going to win with manascrew and play skill. I was three quarters kidding. I certainly intended to win games on manascrew, but I knew that I could eke out a game or two by being clever. I was, for a time, a very good player. Not in the international sense, but in the local. I won or placed in a lot of tournaments, top 8ed a couple PTQs, had a couple Moxes and a Lotus from a particularly good run at ComicTown, and was generally thought of as a tough draw. I also have a State Championship Plaque from 1996, where I crushed a field of eight grownups and five juniors (To be totally fair to myself I beat a JSS winner, a couple longtime PT players, and a current employee of WOTC. So it was not purely cake). I was a lot like the people who read this article, a medium sized fish in a medium sized pond who had some moments that were memorable.

And I beat Worship at regionals. I was playing a modern red deck wins which I had not tested with. I originally wanted to play a Red/Black Mindslicer/Greater Gargadon deck I had tested online, but RDW had the massive advantage of card availability. A deck with four rares maindeck is not too tricky to scrounge on tourney day. I figured the Gargadon would stop Tendrils and win the Gruul mirror. The rest of the deck was just a cheap enhancement to a block deck.

Matchups are everything. It’s a cliché, but it’s true. My first match of Regionals was against a multicolor monstrosity that ran four Loxodon Hierarchs and four Lightning Helix. And Worship. The second game, the only one of the three that had any drama, he played a fourth turn Hierarch. He played a fifth turn Worship. I responded with a topdecked Blood Moon. His sixth turn featured a suspended Greater Gargadon. Mine consisted of a Seal of Fire and attacking with some dudes. He declined to block with his Hierarch. We repeated this dance until he was down to three and his Gargadon had less counters than he had land, ending my attacks. The Hierarch just sat. Keeping Worship, and by extension my opponent, alive. I kept my two weenies back.

I drew a Rift Bolt. But there wasn't any point in using it. We waited some more. I drew a Scorched Rusalka. The Gargadon had three counters left. I knew I could not win against a perfect player. So I had to assume he was an imperfect player.


I played the Rusalka

He had no response.

I Rift Bolted the Hierarch.

He had no response.

I sacrificed the Seal targeting the hierarch.

He sacrificed Hierarch to the Gargadon.

And right then I won. I shouldn't have. If he had paid a bit more attention to the board and not been hypnotized by "draw go" I wouldn't have. But I did. I smiled a little smile.

I attacked with my two weenies.

He sacrificed two land to Gargs, putting the "last counter is removed" trigger on the stack.

I sacrificed everything to the Rusalka to do three to him, right on top of Gargs trigger. And I won. I was genuinely happy. I beat Worship with mono red. That shouldn't happen.

This isn't a Regionals article about my triumphant return to mid tier competitive magic. I went 1-2 drop, losing the other two matches because I did not play quite as tight as I did in my first match. If I had tested a bit more I might not have made the mistakes I made, but that was the risk I took by playing an untested deck. I found it acceptable at the time, and I find it acceptable now. This isn't an article about how the difference between 1-2 and 3-0 is being able to see the world in a grain of sand. That article has been written before by better players with more at stake than a little pride.

This is just an article about finding joy where you look for it. The thing we all have in common is that we play this game for fun. All different kinds of fun. So shuffle up and have some.