Wow, I'm so surprised by the number of people who converted from Yugioh! Wizards must be pretty happy about that.
Dr.Worm,
Interesting to see that your strategies seem to polarize around the same archetypes. We spoke earlier about wanting to be "well rounded", and I feel this is the case here as well.
Salmonman78,
You sound almost like a Vorthos player; more in love with the game than the actual playing of it itself.
Narvuntien,
Thanks for writing that up! You really hit on a very important aspect of magic very early on. Most types of decks want to interact favorably over others, so it's very important to design the deck with those cards in mind. It took me quite a few years to realize this. Only after adding those cards did I start to win more often. your Johnny side also resembles myself: I love to use underused cards and beat people with them.
Well I do love the game but I would say I am very motivated to win. Like Narvuntien though I want to use the cards other people not appreciate and win on my own terms. Seeing someone's face as they get slammed by a 13/18 Nyx-Fleece Ram, or Aegis of the Gods becoming hexproof vs a red deck just makes my day.
The biggest part of it I have to say is the fact I am able to play it with my son and he digs it as much. He's 12 now and has been playing alongside me since the New Phyrexia launch(when I got back in as well). He is my testing buddy and we prop each other up if either is having a bum streak. Proudest moment was once not too long ago when we met each other in the Final Round(Top 2). I made him earn that damn win lol!
Interesting to see that your strategies seem to polarize around the same archetypes. We spoke earlier about wanting to be "well rounded", and I feel this is the case here as well.
You hit the nail on the head, I always prefer to take the more generalist approach. I am a long time RPG player (Pen and paper, video games) and even if I try and force myself to play a min/max uber killing machine I always end up taking it down a broader path. When I played D&D type games I play the scout, or thief, or ranger, or even cleric mostly because they can be jacks (or janes) of all trade types. When I played Star Wars I played the Han Solo type smuggler who has to be good at a little bit of everything. No matter the game I spread my points around rather than focusing on one thing. Translated to magic I like decks like D&T which can easily be control or beatdown depending on the matchup. Same with Rock. When I go uber control like with Standerd WUB I cannot stand to play the deck the way most people do, with the win condition essentially being wait the player out. I have to throw more creatures in the deck, like Blood Baron and a couple other small utility creatures to spread out my threat net. It is so ingrained in me that I rarely see how it steers me in play and deck design.
I like control, but a deck can never be just one thing for me. I think that is why I don't dig red as a serious base color, because I see it as more one-dimensional than the other colors, even if that one-dimension is very effective when splashed in with other colors.
if you haven't done so you should listen to MaRo's drive to work podcast on the various colors and how they have changed. It's pretty interesting.
I don't even remember when i started playing, it was around the release of 7th edition. I basically played pre cons, and would play whatever my dad happenned to pick up that week. My friends and i all basically picked a colour and went with it, with my dad taking green. I fell in love with white, and "my deck" was basically a bunch of plains and white cards that i thought were super cool. It ended up being a stack that i could barely shuffle, with Commander Eesha and Worship, two of my favourite cards as a child, and even to this day for nostalgia purposes. My trip with white basically culminated with my mono white equip/metalcraft deck that i played during zen/scars. Fun times.
Now, having returned to magic last july, i started getting "serious." So i built a white weenie aggro deck for theros standard. But i also started branching out into other formats, and finally walked away from my home on the colour pie when i decided to build a twin list. Now, this past year I've enjoyed branching out, building U/G edh lists,R/G monsters, mono blue lists, even manaless dredge. I've now blown apart my white weenie standard deck and have generally avoided white. I still love the colour, and i will one day make a commander eesha edh list for my old school self. But these days, I've been joying the blue part part of the colour pie, especially combined with her enemy colours.
The chaos of RUG is just so interesting. to me, it really plays like the elements aren't meant to go together, unlike any of the other wedge decks.
The biggest part of it I have to say is the fact I am able to play it with my son and he digs it as much. He's 12 now and has been playing alongside me since the New Phyrexia launch(when I got back in as well). He is my testing buddy and we prop each other up if either is having a bum streak. Proudest moment was once not too long ago when we met each other in the Final Round(Top 2). I made him earn that damn win lol!
Yea, it is great. My son started MTG at about 10, with some Pokemon and Yugioh before that, and not only has it created a life long bond for us, but at the time his reading skills were well below grade level and in large part due to magic he was reading above grade level by the end of the year. I wrote a little essay on it a couple years back and if you are interested this is the updated version
When I first became a parent at the young age of 21 I had no idea how I would impart this trust, information, and what little wisdom I thought I had. Would I sit down like some sit-com dad and tell him the facts of life and that he could always come to me for any reason and all would be well. That sounded absurd even to my young mind, so I worried a lot about how I could be the father that I wanted to be. I am now the father of a 19 year old young man, and I have learned that you can try to guide your kids to choices that you feel are wiser than the choices you made, but ultimately they have to have their own experiences. They will make mistakes and they will do stupid things, no matter what you teach them and no matter how you restrict them, and there is little you can do about it. The parental role is to give them all the information and provide reasonable restrictions, and to teach them not to fear telling you something that they have done that is against your wishes. That honesty is the hardest part, and only comes if they do not fear your wrath and your punishments make sense, otherwise they will hide all the important things from you out of fear and shame and when it all comes to a head you will have a disaster that will have far reaching consequences. All of this I largely learned and imparted by sharing my interests in gaming with him.
When it comes to gaming and parenting, I never once sought to make my child in to a gamer, but he saw me having fun and wanted to be a part of it. To be honest, he was the one that brought me back in to gaming. I had put aside my RPG books long ago, mostly due to the fact that my core group of Gamers had all dispersed after high school, and I got married and had a kid when I was 20 (all planned). I was far too busy learning to be a father in the early years to even think about trying to find new people to game with, and after a while it just felt like too much effort.
In that time I had been exposed to Magic several times. The first was by way of my brother-in-law in 1994- he had caught the bug and had tried to get me to play with him, but while I had heard talk of the game I had blown it off as a fad and a money sink. Then my wife and I went on vacation with he Mom and Brother to the San Juan islands, and on the ferry ride over I relented and let her Brother teach me Magic. It was pretty fun, but to be honest my mind was not 100% in the game and it was only the fervor of this kid (I think he was 15 at the time) that kept me playing for the whole vacation. I did not fully understand the game, and shortly after the trip my wife gave birth to R and everything became about him.
The coming years brought more exposure to the game by way of one of my old gaming friends- A had started collecting in college and taught me to play again a few time, but still it did not stick. Then Pokemon happened. On his own my son had caught the Pokemon bug playing with his friends at about age 5 or 6. R wanted me to play with him, so I let him teach me the game using his cards. It was pretty fun for me, and I loved having something I could do with him on his terms. I bought some cards for myself, though more for him, and soon I had a small collection and was making decks myself. While that was going on my buddy, A, had finally gotten magic to stick with me and I started very casually picking up a precon here and there in 2001. I still was not playing any card game seriously, but I was playing a lot more Pokemon with R than I was Magic.
R eventually heard about a new game, he was about seven or eight at the time, that was called Yu-Gi-Oh. He had exposed me to the Anime first, and even though I was a long time Anime fan I could not stand the screaming and goofy posturing of Yu-Gi-Oh. I actually used to like watching Pokemon with R when he was younger, but this new Anime was not for me. By the time R got in to playing the card game, I had pretty much gotten hooked on Magic. I was playing when I could, and casually collecting, but still I did not really try to teach R Magic. He was a very slow starter when it came to learning to read, and while he had memorized all his Yu-gi-oh cards, he still had a lot of trouble with the finer points of new cards. I played a little Yu-gi-oh with him, but never really liked anything about the game (aside from face down trap cards) so I never bought my own cards and only played the game when he really wanted me to.
In 2003 R started to get interested in Magic. His reading had improved and he liked the look of the cards, and was frequently asking me what they did or said. I offered to teach him, but I think the reading aspect made him anxious about it until it became clear the this was a reading exercise he could do with me that was a lot more fun than reading some Goosebumps book. I started by teaching the him the mana system- what mana was as opposed to lands, and this was not as hard as I thought thanks to his experience with Pokemon. He still sometimes reverted to Pokemon rules, but picked it up pretty quickly. Then I made some simple creature decks, as basic creature combat was simple and familiar from other games, and we played a few games with just that.
After he had that down I added in creature pump, land search, and card draw to the decks and we played a few games. He was picking things up pretty quickly, all things considered, but he was young and it took a little time. Finally I added in things like counters, burn, and removal to further understand the stack, and after a few games he was good to go. His reading trouble kept him from experiencing a wide range of cards, as he kept to the ones he knew well, but by the end of that school year his reading skill had increased significantly, and by the start of the next school year (ie over the summer) he was reading at grade level, and that would never had happened if it had not been for Magic and the Pokemon gameboy games. In that time he was not thinking about practicing reading, instead he was just playing in a reading rich environment and he picked it up. After that all the other TCGs went by the wayside. R was playing Magic with me and my adult friends, and eventually his cousin, G, and his friends. G's parents (my Aunt and Uncle) saw how much fun I had playing with G and R, and saw the benefits it had on our relationship, so they asked to be taught the game too. It was pretty great as the five of us had a great time playing taunting each other (all with humor and fun) and it further strengthened family bonds.
In the years to follow I taught many of R's friends to play Magic, and still play with them when I can. As a result I know all of his friends, and they are comfortable around me enough for me to really get to know them. I have way more social contact with R than I would if we had no activities in common, and I have proven to him that I really mean it when I tell him he can tell me anything and I will not get angry*. He is still a 19 year old guy who lives on his own, and there is plenty that he does not share with his old man, but when the rubber meets the road and stuff goes wrong between us we know there is safe neutral ground in the cards that will lead to reconciliation and more talking. It is an unbelievable test of my willpower and resolve to raise R into a good, thoughtful, responsible, and contributing member of society and I cannot even imagine doing that without Magic: the Gathering. We have played RPGs with his friends, and mine, and we play video games together as well, but Magic has been the constant thread that has held us together in rough seas and calm.
After much of his life spent gaming, R is not the fat gamer stereotype, he is not inactive, and he is not bitter about past mistakes. He has had a couple of stupid trades, but to be honest all of them were because he placed a great value on the card he wanted regardless of the monetary value. Sure, from a monetary perspective he got "screwed" in the trade, but he never cares because he wanted the card in question and ends up having a lot of fun playing it. He does not feel victimized by trade sharks, and looks back at all of it as a positive learning experience. I think that by not allowing your kids to have the independence to do what they want with their possessions you are cheating them out of experiences that shape them as they mature. When R came home when he was younger an told me about this awesome trade he made to get some almost unplayable fatty by trading off his Umezawa's Jitte I was so angry. It was a trade with someone older at the shop that was frequently there, so I could have gone back and menaced the asshat in to at least not doing it again, if not even reversing the trade, but I did not. Not out of some lack of will, because some hulk-esque rage bubbles up from inside when I hear that someone has done something to one of my kids. No, I held back my murderous urges for two reasons: 1) I respected his right make his own mistakes (within reason) and learn from them, and 2) He was stoked about the trade. He had a ton of fun trying to make a deck that would make the best use out of the fatty, had even more fun playing the deck as many times as necessarily to get the fatty out, and was fracken elated when it finally happened and he won by getting me down to something like -21 life. I never saw him have that much fun with Jitte, and frankly he never even cared to use it to it's full potential, but with the new card he was **** of the walk. I told him that the guy had gotten the card that was worth the most money, and that he had kinda taken advantage of him, but he was undeterred and did not care.
Eventually (and sooner than you think) your kids will be out in the world making important decisions for themselves and if they do not have the wisdom that can be taught only by experience then they will just get victimized worse. By sheltering young people you are not keeping them from being taken advantage of, you are just putting it off till a point in life where the stakes are higher. After all, would you rather your kid get cheated out of Sword of Feast and Famine now, or they get cheated out of their savings later on in life. It is a lesson that has to be learned by experience, and cannot be learned by way of talking or teaching. *I am not at all perfect in this regard, but I try very hard.
I tried to get it published but no one wanted it. It probably needs a good editor. EDIT: No, dear me, it REALLY needs a good editor.
When I started playing Magic (Tempest-era) I was very into green and ran elves & Fatties before Urza block came round, I discovered Pestilence and my love of all things black went from there. I went through a pure artifact phase, and a Blue phase for a while but my main decks have always been Black.
I love it because it can deal with anything if you're willing to pay a high enough price. There's always a solution if you're willing to find it and the number of times I've sat opposite someone who thinks they have a lock only to pull out some awful thing that might hurt me but definitely kills them.
There are two cards that for me sum up why Black is the best:
Kaervek's Spite
With this card you have Blacks total disregard for its own safety and the expense of win. Other colours worry about pillow-forting or otherwise keeping themselves alive while they do their thing, Black just wants you dead and gone and doesn't care if it gets hurt as long as it is still alive at the end.
Soldevi Adnate
Everything is a resource to Black. You invest your mana in creatures and artifacts but if they aren't cutting the mustard anymore or are otherwise not helping fill the plan then Black still gets some value from them. To paraphrase Azax-Azog - "You serve the plan, your pieces would better serve the plan elsewhere."
Another thing that makes Black so much fun is that it can rub along with any of the other colours nicely - some of the other enemy pairings can get a bit clunky but Black & White? Black & Green? Lots of excellent things happening there. With its ally colours it just goes nuts - Black & Blue control, Black & Red aggro are things to fear.
Given the option, I'll either play GRW or GRB. I like the options that RG gives me, with the versatility of either white or black depending on what the deck is trying to accomplish. I avoid Blue if I can, because I want to play a fair game, and what Blue does best, it does by breaking parity and leveraging advantages. If I'm playing seriously, I'll play what I think will win. In casual games, I think that a game where everyone gets to do stuff is a lot better than a game where people are locked out of playing the game, whether that's due to fast combo, prison, or permission-style decks. I want to see what my opponent can do, not see if I can keep them from doing anything.
Interestingly, despite my post history, the cards I hate more than anything in blue, in Magic overall, aren't countermagic, but theft spells. I started playing in Revised, and saw several variants of Control Magic-Counterspell.dec. The deck is only fun for the person playing it, and I play to enjoy the game, not to make people rage. I did go through a period of several years where I constantly rebuilt a Blue-Black deck which won with Psychic Venom as its only wincon, countering and destroying all threats and forcing damage with Power Sink and Mana Web. It worked well, but I decided eventually that, most of the time, I'd rather have a good game than a high win rate and angry playgroup.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Cards are game pieces, and should be treated as such, easily replaceable.
Cards are not money, investments, or a retirement fund, and should never have been treated as such.
Wizards made a mistake caving to speculators once, and we still pay for that mistake 2 decades later.
"Entitled:" the entire ad hominem fallacy condensed into a single word. It doesn't strengthen your argument to attack motivations, it just makes you look like you don't understand the argument.
The colors I play tend to revolve around what I can afford to play. I tend to like fast strategies, so aggressive decks like Rakdos Unleashed or Boros I like. I also like to play B/W control/midrange, even though essential White cards (such as Brimaz) tend to make me frustrated with the pay to win mentality.
Blue is a color I've never been able to get the hang of. Playing reactively is just something I'm not good at, because in order to play reactively you have to have the cards in hand with which to do so. Blue cares a lot about the cards in hand and in its library.
I find it incredibly touching at the thought of playing with your children. It's something I really look forward to one day. Being able to pass on the knowledge and the collection. I'll tackle that short essay a little later today. I'm a little worried about having to stop playing for a few years while my job and my family picks up. I'm in my last year of studies and these preoccupations are just starting. M:tG is so important to me.
Kalsifer,
I too still have the basic skeleton of my Nightmare deck, which has changed countless times but still follows me through my life. Just a pet deck, just for nostalgia purposes. I find it funny how my girlfriend loves to play that deck, which is now mono-black and full of ugly zombies and nightmares. I never told her how important that deck is to me. Good for you for branching out and exploring the game even further.
Skanedog,
I also see black as a very versatile colour, but I've come to realize that White is even more versatile as a support-colour. I still prefer black in many cases, though, just as a preference.
Lakanna,
I totally agree. I love my egg deck combo, but it's basically me taking 15 minutes on turn 2 to win, and it's extremely boring for my friends. Part of the reason I don't play it much anymore, unless I know the deck I'm going up against can handle it. I also understand how Control Magic-type spells can be really frustrating for newer players.
Wow DrWorm, that last paragraph really hits home. My own son has made a blunder or two regarding trades and has now taken it on himself to always come get my phone to check values.
Though I will say the toughest times for me are when he makes a goof in a game like this past FNM, Top 4 facing the guy at the shop who always wins. He had him at 6 life and forgot to pop Domri's Ult to get the win. He was tearing up a bit(not bawling but still had some tears) afterwards but I couldn't just protect him from feeling it. They have to learn to deal with the various things like this, because it does transfer to many other aspects. He was fine a moment later vowing to not let it happen again and went to shake his opponent's hand. I love my shop, except for the guy who plays Maze's End. He's a douche to my kid and I was glad to smash him one round with a hexproof 20+ power ram.
Well, I started Magic in mono-W. I was constantly getting my rear handed to me on a platter by a somewhat-durdley Kamigawa-based spirit deck that went infinite late game. I had problems with other decks, but this was the worst. Eventually I did manage to beat it with a faster WB token deck.
I started to pick up interest in blue by looking over Caw-Blade lists during Mirrodin Besieged standard, and later by trying to build WU Haunted Humans when Innistrad block popped in. Nowadays, all decks I build usually contain either W or U. W because I've gotten used to the value I can get from the removal, the boardwipes, and stuff like Sun Titan. U because it helps me stop other people's degenerate nonsense whilst helping my degenerate nonsense get online, especially in EDH.
I almost always play white, for a number of reasons.
The most basic one is because when me and my bother and cousins first started playing (5 of total, during revised), we all bought a starter deck and traded amongst ourselves, dividing up the color pie. It seemed the easiest thing to do to players being so new to the game. I got white, I think because I liked Savannah Lions. I can still remember my first trade: I traded a Thicket Basilisk to my brother for a Personal Incarnation and 3 Plains. Oh, to be young again.
Although my early Magic days started me down the path of White, I've stayed there because it fits my playstyle and my personal philosophy. Playstyle-wise, I like to be aggressive, so white's efficient small creatures are perfect. On a personal level, I believe in law and order (I work in law enforcement) and justice, building communities, and treating everyone fairly -- all things white cherishes. And the two overlap in my favorite constructed deck: Hatebears. Hatebears is all about making everyone play fair...and by that, I mean my (white's) version of fair.
Thanks for sharing your article. I thoroughly enjoyed reading about Magic helping you keep a great relationship of trust with your son. I think the bad trade should have been a bit more evident in why the trade was bad. These kinds of things happen all the time in real life, as you well said. The way you wrote it, it doesn't seem like the message hit home like it should have. I know I would have been beside myself if someone had told me what I had traded away was worth 100x more than what I got.
Towishimp,
I love hearing the stories about people starting to play magic in those early sets. It's so funky how the game has changed. I also rolled my eyes on the "fair on my terms" comment. So typical of a white mage...
Thanks for sharing your article. I thoroughly enjoyed reading about Magic helping you keep a great relationship of trust with your son. I think the bad trade should have been a bit more evident in why the trade was bad. These kinds of things happen all the time in real life, as you well said. The way you wrote it, it doesn't seem like the message hit home like it should have. I know I would have been beside myself if someone had told me what I had traded away was worth 100x more than what I got.
Part of the point, however, was that I was viewing the trade under my value system, and he was viewing it under his. To him the card he got was worth more than the card he traded away because he did not care about the monetary value. I think I need to tear the essay down and create a clearer through-line for it. Thanks though.
I actually started magic when a friend talked about Duels of the Planeswalkers 2013. Since I heard about Magic but never really cared about it and played I decided to give it a try and I was instantly hooked. The deck that was the fun for me was Lilianas mono-black deck called Obedient Dead since I soon noticed that I have way more fun when I can disrupt what my opponent wants to do than just playing stuff of my own and hope it's enough. Especially cards like Murder, Public Execution, Mutilate, Infest, Plague Wind, Innocent Blood and Mire's Toll got me really excited.
I then decided to give Magic Online a try since I wanted to get into "real" magic. Fortunately for me a big rotation was happening and Return to Ravnica got released which was the best moment to join Standard.
I then proceeded to read up on the different guilds since they were an important part of the block and two guilds instantly became my favorite and those were Azorius and Dimir. Both want to control everything. They just use different methods to reach that goal.
Azorius uses the law to keep everything under their control while the Dimir on the other hand operate behind the scenes and use darker methods like espionage, smuggling, burglary, counter-intelligence and assassination to reach their goals.
That is also when I learned to appreciate white and blue as colors since those colors also have plenty of tools to stop what the opponent is doing with wrath effects and counter spells.
I then build then my beloved Esper Control deck which everyone should know who played at that time with its infamous win condition in form of Nephalia Drownyard.
I did try briefly a Selesnya midrange deck but it just confirmed that I just dont feel comfortable playing a deck that has no ways to stop what the opponents wants to do so I sold it off again.
Since that Im a control player and only play decks that have tools to say no to stuff.
Logically green and red are therefore colors that I abhor since the gameplay that these colors produce is not something I want to be doing. A have no problem using those colors as support like I do in my Modern UWR Control deck but I will never touch typical green stompy decks or a red aggro decks.
Blue and Black are definitely my favorite colors since I just like everything about them. Flavor-wise and gameplay-wise.
White is the distant third favorite since I like the the wrath effects and the removal and the rule-making stuff like Moat for example but don't really like the weenie strategies of white with combat tricks and all that stuff.
I have an automatic anti-green bias in draft. No removal, no evasion, thirdrate card draw, more too-niche-to-ever-see-any-serious-use cards than any other color (and most TNTESASU cards in other colors are rare and thus almost never show up in limited), and often you pay six mana for a below-curve vanilla. More often than not, green's defenders tell me "Ya gotta try this three-color combo deck!" Yeah, while you're doing that, I'll be over here doing 20 damage to you, kay?
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Card advantage is not the same thing as card draw. Something for 2B cannot be strictly worse than something for BBB or 3BB. If you're taking out Swords to Plowshares for Plummet, you're a fool. Stop doing these things!
Reprint Opt for Modern!!
FREE DIG THOROUGH TIME!
PLAY MORE ROUGE DECKS!
Dr.Worm,
Interesting to see that your strategies seem to polarize around the same archetypes. We spoke earlier about wanting to be "well rounded", and I feel this is the case here as well.
Salmonman78,
You sound almost like a Vorthos player; more in love with the game than the actual playing of it itself.
Narvuntien,
Thanks for writing that up! You really hit on a very important aspect of magic very early on. Most types of decks want to interact favorably over others, so it's very important to design the deck with those cards in mind. It took me quite a few years to realize this. Only after adding those cards did I start to win more often. your Johnny side also resembles myself: I love to use underused cards and beat people with them.
Mr.Dizzy & Dr.Worm,
STRIP AND VIOLATE!!!
UGTurboFogGU
BRSacrificial AggroBR
16The Paper Pauper Battle Bag16
EDH
BRRakdos, Lord of PingersBR
GTitania, Protector of ArgothG
UB Ramses OverdarkUB
Sig by Ace5301 of Ace of Spades Studio
The biggest part of it I have to say is the fact I am able to play it with my son and he digs it as much. He's 12 now and has been playing alongside me since the New Phyrexia launch(when I got back in as well). He is my testing buddy and we prop each other up if either is having a bum streak. Proudest moment was once not too long ago when we met each other in the Final Round(Top 2). I made him earn that damn win lol!
Standard
WBGWBGABZAN AGGROWBGWBG
I like control, but a deck can never be just one thing for me. I think that is why I don't dig red as a serious base color, because I see it as more one-dimensional than the other colors, even if that one-dimension is very effective when splashed in with other colors.
if you haven't done so you should listen to MaRo's drive to work podcast on the various colors and how they have changed. It's pretty interesting.
Reprint Opt for Modern!!
FREE DIG THOROUGH TIME!
PLAY MORE ROUGE DECKS!
Now, having returned to magic last july, i started getting "serious." So i built a white weenie aggro deck for theros standard. But i also started branching out into other formats, and finally walked away from my home on the colour pie when i decided to build a twin list. Now, this past year I've enjoyed branching out, building U/G edh lists,R/G monsters, mono blue lists, even manaless dredge. I've now blown apart my white weenie standard deck and have generally avoided white. I still love the colour, and i will one day make a commander eesha edh list for my old school self. But these days, I've been joying the blue part part of the colour pie, especially combined with her enemy colours.
The chaos of RUG is just so interesting. to me, it really plays like the elements aren't meant to go together, unlike any of the other wedge decks.
Goblins
EDH
Derevi
When I first became a parent at the young age of 21 I had no idea how I would impart this trust, information, and what little wisdom I thought I had. Would I sit down like some sit-com dad and tell him the facts of life and that he could always come to me for any reason and all would be well. That sounded absurd even to my young mind, so I worried a lot about how I could be the father that I wanted to be. I am now the father of a 19 year old young man, and I have learned that you can try to guide your kids to choices that you feel are wiser than the choices you made, but ultimately they have to have their own experiences. They will make mistakes and they will do stupid things, no matter what you teach them and no matter how you restrict them, and there is little you can do about it. The parental role is to give them all the information and provide reasonable restrictions, and to teach them not to fear telling you something that they have done that is against your wishes. That honesty is the hardest part, and only comes if they do not fear your wrath and your punishments make sense, otherwise they will hide all the important things from you out of fear and shame and when it all comes to a head you will have a disaster that will have far reaching consequences. All of this I largely learned and imparted by sharing my interests in gaming with him.
When it comes to gaming and parenting, I never once sought to make my child in to a gamer, but he saw me having fun and wanted to be a part of it. To be honest, he was the one that brought me back in to gaming. I had put aside my RPG books long ago, mostly due to the fact that my core group of Gamers had all dispersed after high school, and I got married and had a kid when I was 20 (all planned). I was far too busy learning to be a father in the early years to even think about trying to find new people to game with, and after a while it just felt like too much effort.
In that time I had been exposed to Magic several times. The first was by way of my brother-in-law in 1994- he had caught the bug and had tried to get me to play with him, but while I had heard talk of the game I had blown it off as a fad and a money sink. Then my wife and I went on vacation with he Mom and Brother to the San Juan islands, and on the ferry ride over I relented and let her Brother teach me Magic. It was pretty fun, but to be honest my mind was not 100% in the game and it was only the fervor of this kid (I think he was 15 at the time) that kept me playing for the whole vacation. I did not fully understand the game, and shortly after the trip my wife gave birth to R and everything became about him.
The coming years brought more exposure to the game by way of one of my old gaming friends- A had started collecting in college and taught me to play again a few time, but still it did not stick. Then Pokemon happened. On his own my son had caught the Pokemon bug playing with his friends at about age 5 or 6. R wanted me to play with him, so I let him teach me the game using his cards. It was pretty fun for me, and I loved having something I could do with him on his terms. I bought some cards for myself, though more for him, and soon I had a small collection and was making decks myself. While that was going on my buddy, A, had finally gotten magic to stick with me and I started very casually picking up a precon here and there in 2001. I still was not playing any card game seriously, but I was playing a lot more Pokemon with R than I was Magic.
R eventually heard about a new game, he was about seven or eight at the time, that was called Yu-Gi-Oh. He had exposed me to the Anime first, and even though I was a long time Anime fan I could not stand the screaming and goofy posturing of Yu-Gi-Oh. I actually used to like watching Pokemon with R when he was younger, but this new Anime was not for me. By the time R got in to playing the card game, I had pretty much gotten hooked on Magic. I was playing when I could, and casually collecting, but still I did not really try to teach R Magic. He was a very slow starter when it came to learning to read, and while he had memorized all his Yu-gi-oh cards, he still had a lot of trouble with the finer points of new cards. I played a little Yu-gi-oh with him, but never really liked anything about the game (aside from face down trap cards) so I never bought my own cards and only played the game when he really wanted me to.
In 2003 R started to get interested in Magic. His reading had improved and he liked the look of the cards, and was frequently asking me what they did or said. I offered to teach him, but I think the reading aspect made him anxious about it until it became clear the this was a reading exercise he could do with me that was a lot more fun than reading some Goosebumps book. I started by teaching the him the mana system- what mana was as opposed to lands, and this was not as hard as I thought thanks to his experience with Pokemon. He still sometimes reverted to Pokemon rules, but picked it up pretty quickly. Then I made some simple creature decks, as basic creature combat was simple and familiar from other games, and we played a few games with just that.
After he had that down I added in creature pump, land search, and card draw to the decks and we played a few games. He was picking things up pretty quickly, all things considered, but he was young and it took a little time. Finally I added in things like counters, burn, and removal to further understand the stack, and after a few games he was good to go. His reading trouble kept him from experiencing a wide range of cards, as he kept to the ones he knew well, but by the end of that school year his reading skill had increased significantly, and by the start of the next school year (ie over the summer) he was reading at grade level, and that would never had happened if it had not been for Magic and the Pokemon gameboy games. In that time he was not thinking about practicing reading, instead he was just playing in a reading rich environment and he picked it up. After that all the other TCGs went by the wayside. R was playing Magic with me and my adult friends, and eventually his cousin, G, and his friends. G's parents (my Aunt and Uncle) saw how much fun I had playing with G and R, and saw the benefits it had on our relationship, so they asked to be taught the game too. It was pretty great as the five of us had a great time playing taunting each other (all with humor and fun) and it further strengthened family bonds.
In the years to follow I taught many of R's friends to play Magic, and still play with them when I can. As a result I know all of his friends, and they are comfortable around me enough for me to really get to know them. I have way more social contact with R than I would if we had no activities in common, and I have proven to him that I really mean it when I tell him he can tell me anything and I will not get angry*. He is still a 19 year old guy who lives on his own, and there is plenty that he does not share with his old man, but when the rubber meets the road and stuff goes wrong between us we know there is safe neutral ground in the cards that will lead to reconciliation and more talking. It is an unbelievable test of my willpower and resolve to raise R into a good, thoughtful, responsible, and contributing member of society and I cannot even imagine doing that without Magic: the Gathering. We have played RPGs with his friends, and mine, and we play video games together as well, but Magic has been the constant thread that has held us together in rough seas and calm.
After much of his life spent gaming, R is not the fat gamer stereotype, he is not inactive, and he is not bitter about past mistakes. He has had a couple of stupid trades, but to be honest all of them were because he placed a great value on the card he wanted regardless of the monetary value. Sure, from a monetary perspective he got "screwed" in the trade, but he never cares because he wanted the card in question and ends up having a lot of fun playing it. He does not feel victimized by trade sharks, and looks back at all of it as a positive learning experience. I think that by not allowing your kids to have the independence to do what they want with their possessions you are cheating them out of experiences that shape them as they mature. When R came home when he was younger an told me about this awesome trade he made to get some almost unplayable fatty by trading off his Umezawa's Jitte I was so angry. It was a trade with someone older at the shop that was frequently there, so I could have gone back and menaced the asshat in to at least not doing it again, if not even reversing the trade, but I did not. Not out of some lack of will, because some hulk-esque rage bubbles up from inside when I hear that someone has done something to one of my kids. No, I held back my murderous urges for two reasons: 1) I respected his right make his own mistakes (within reason) and learn from them, and 2) He was stoked about the trade. He had a ton of fun trying to make a deck that would make the best use out of the fatty, had even more fun playing the deck as many times as necessarily to get the fatty out, and was fracken elated when it finally happened and he won by getting me down to something like -21 life. I never saw him have that much fun with Jitte, and frankly he never even cared to use it to it's full potential, but with the new card he was **** of the walk. I told him that the guy had gotten the card that was worth the most money, and that he had kinda taken advantage of him, but he was undeterred and did not care.
Eventually (and sooner than you think) your kids will be out in the world making important decisions for themselves and if they do not have the wisdom that can be taught only by experience then they will just get victimized worse. By sheltering young people you are not keeping them from being taken advantage of, you are just putting it off till a point in life where the stakes are higher. After all, would you rather your kid get cheated out of Sword of Feast and Famine now, or they get cheated out of their savings later on in life. It is a lesson that has to be learned by experience, and cannot be learned by way of talking or teaching. *I am not at all perfect in this regard, but I try very hard.
I tried to get it published but no one wanted it. It probably needs a good editor. EDIT: No, dear me, it REALLY needs a good editor.
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Black all the way.
When I started playing Magic (Tempest-era) I was very into green and ran elves & Fatties before Urza block came round, I discovered Pestilence and my love of all things black went from there. I went through a pure artifact phase, and a Blue phase for a while but my main decks have always been Black.
I love it because it can deal with anything if you're willing to pay a high enough price. There's always a solution if you're willing to find it and the number of times I've sat opposite someone who thinks they have a lock only to pull out some awful thing that might hurt me but definitely kills them.
There are two cards that for me sum up why Black is the best:
Kaervek's Spite
With this card you have Blacks total disregard for its own safety and the expense of win. Other colours worry about pillow-forting or otherwise keeping themselves alive while they do their thing, Black just wants you dead and gone and doesn't care if it gets hurt as long as it is still alive at the end.
Soldevi Adnate
Everything is a resource to Black. You invest your mana in creatures and artifacts but if they aren't cutting the mustard anymore or are otherwise not helping fill the plan then Black still gets some value from them. To paraphrase Azax-Azog - "You serve the plan, your pieces would better serve the plan elsewhere."
Another thing that makes Black so much fun is that it can rub along with any of the other colours nicely - some of the other enemy pairings can get a bit clunky but Black & White? Black & Green? Lots of excellent things happening there. With its ally colours it just goes nuts - Black & Blue control, Black & Red aggro are things to fear.
Interestingly, despite my post history, the cards I hate more than anything in blue, in Magic overall, aren't countermagic, but theft spells. I started playing in Revised, and saw several variants of Control Magic-Counterspell.dec. The deck is only fun for the person playing it, and I play to enjoy the game, not to make people rage. I did go through a period of several years where I constantly rebuilt a Blue-Black deck which won with Psychic Venom as its only wincon, countering and destroying all threats and forcing damage with Power Sink and Mana Web. It worked well, but I decided eventually that, most of the time, I'd rather have a good game than a high win rate and angry playgroup.
Cards are not money, investments, or a retirement fund, and should never have been treated as such.
Wizards made a mistake caving to speculators once, and we still pay for that mistake 2 decades later.
"Entitled:" the entire ad hominem fallacy condensed into a single word. It doesn't strengthen your argument to attack motivations, it just makes you look like you don't understand the argument.
Blue is a color I've never been able to get the hang of. Playing reactively is just something I'm not good at, because in order to play reactively you have to have the cards in hand with which to do so. Blue cares a lot about the cards in hand and in its library.
I find it incredibly touching at the thought of playing with your children. It's something I really look forward to one day. Being able to pass on the knowledge and the collection. I'll tackle that short essay a little later today. I'm a little worried about having to stop playing for a few years while my job and my family picks up. I'm in my last year of studies and these preoccupations are just starting. M:tG is so important to me.
Kalsifer,
I too still have the basic skeleton of my Nightmare deck, which has changed countless times but still follows me through my life. Just a pet deck, just for nostalgia purposes. I find it funny how my girlfriend loves to play that deck, which is now mono-black and full of ugly zombies and nightmares. I never told her how important that deck is to me. Good for you for branching out and exploring the game even further.
Skanedog,
I also see black as a very versatile colour, but I've come to realize that White is even more versatile as a support-colour. I still prefer black in many cases, though, just as a preference.
Lakanna,
I totally agree. I love my egg deck combo, but it's basically me taking 15 minutes on turn 2 to win, and it's extremely boring for my friends. Part of the reason I don't play it much anymore, unless I know the deck I'm going up against can handle it. I also understand how Control Magic-type spells can be really frustrating for newer players.
UGTurboFogGU
BRSacrificial AggroBR
16The Paper Pauper Battle Bag16
EDH
BRRakdos, Lord of PingersBR
GTitania, Protector of ArgothG
UB Ramses OverdarkUB
Sig by Ace5301 of Ace of Spades Studio
Though I will say the toughest times for me are when he makes a goof in a game like this past FNM, Top 4 facing the guy at the shop who always wins. He had him at 6 life and forgot to pop Domri's Ult to get the win. He was tearing up a bit(not bawling but still had some tears) afterwards but I couldn't just protect him from feeling it. They have to learn to deal with the various things like this, because it does transfer to many other aspects. He was fine a moment later vowing to not let it happen again and went to shake his opponent's hand. I love my shop, except for the guy who plays Maze's End. He's a douche to my kid and I was glad to smash him one round with a hexproof 20+ power ram.
Standard
WBGWBGABZAN AGGROWBGWBG
I started to pick up interest in blue by looking over Caw-Blade lists during Mirrodin Besieged standard, and later by trying to build WU Haunted Humans when Innistrad block popped in. Nowadays, all decks I build usually contain either W or U. W because I've gotten used to the value I can get from the removal, the boardwipes, and stuff like Sun Titan. U because it helps me stop other people's degenerate nonsense whilst helping my degenerate nonsense get online, especially in EDH.
WU Grand Arbiter Augustin IV
RWU Numot, the Devastator
WUB Oloro, Ageless Ascetic
WB Athreos, God of Passage
The most basic one is because when me and my bother and cousins first started playing (5 of total, during revised), we all bought a starter deck and traded amongst ourselves, dividing up the color pie. It seemed the easiest thing to do to players being so new to the game. I got white, I think because I liked Savannah Lions. I can still remember my first trade: I traded a Thicket Basilisk to my brother for a Personal Incarnation and 3 Plains. Oh, to be young again.
Although my early Magic days started me down the path of White, I've stayed there because it fits my playstyle and my personal philosophy. Playstyle-wise, I like to be aggressive, so white's efficient small creatures are perfect. On a personal level, I believe in law and order (I work in law enforcement) and justice, building communities, and treating everyone fairly -- all things white cherishes. And the two overlap in my favorite constructed deck: Hatebears. Hatebears is all about making everyone play fair...and by that, I mean my (white's) version of fair.
Modern: GW Hatebears/midrange, WGU Knightfall/evolution midrange stuff
Standard: nope
Legacy: W Death & Taxes
EDH (not Commander!): W Avacyn, Angel of Hope, GR Ruric Thar, the Unbowed, WGB Anafenza, the Foremost, WU Hanna, Ship's Navigator
Thanks for sharing your article. I thoroughly enjoyed reading about Magic helping you keep a great relationship of trust with your son. I think the bad trade should have been a bit more evident in why the trade was bad. These kinds of things happen all the time in real life, as you well said. The way you wrote it, it doesn't seem like the message hit home like it should have. I know I would have been beside myself if someone had told me what I had traded away was worth 100x more than what I got.
Towishimp,
I love hearing the stories about people starting to play magic in those early sets. It's so funky how the game has changed. I also rolled my eyes on the "fair on my terms" comment. So typical of a white mage...
UGTurboFogGU
BRSacrificial AggroBR
16The Paper Pauper Battle Bag16
EDH
BRRakdos, Lord of PingersBR
GTitania, Protector of ArgothG
UB Ramses OverdarkUB
Sig by Ace5301 of Ace of Spades Studio
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I then decided to give Magic Online a try since I wanted to get into "real" magic. Fortunately for me a big rotation was happening and Return to Ravnica got released which was the best moment to join Standard.
I then proceeded to read up on the different guilds since they were an important part of the block and two guilds instantly became my favorite and those were Azorius and Dimir. Both want to control everything. They just use different methods to reach that goal.
Azorius uses the law to keep everything under their control while the Dimir on the other hand operate behind the scenes and use darker methods like espionage, smuggling, burglary, counter-intelligence and assassination to reach their goals.
That is also when I learned to appreciate white and blue as colors since those colors also have plenty of tools to stop what the opponent is doing with wrath effects and counter spells.
I then build then my beloved Esper Control deck which everyone should know who played at that time with its infamous win condition in form of Nephalia Drownyard.
I did try briefly a Selesnya midrange deck but it just confirmed that I just dont feel comfortable playing a deck that has no ways to stop what the opponents wants to do so I sold it off again.
Since that Im a control player and only play decks that have tools to say no to stuff.
Logically green and red are therefore colors that I abhor since the gameplay that these colors produce is not something I want to be doing. A have no problem using those colors as support like I do in my Modern UWR Control deck but I will never touch typical green stompy decks or a red aggro decks.
Blue and Black are definitely my favorite colors since I just like everything about them. Flavor-wise and gameplay-wise.
White is the distant third favorite since I like the the wrath effects and the removal and the rule-making stuff like Moat for example but don't really like the weenie strategies of white with combat tricks and all that stuff.
On phasing: