If only I drew my Twincast; or a few more lucky breaks and I'd be CEO of Google

While I wasn't optimistic about Lorwyn, I still wanted to get over to the pre-release. Unfortunately, I had to work that weekend.

But a Magic pre-release is always fun, albeit a bit hectic and claustrophobic. Everyone is pretty much starting out at the same level. It's where you find out which cards that look good on the spoiler don't work out so well in play, and vice versa.

There are a few things about the Lorwyn pre-release that I didn't miss:

1) People who get miffed when you don't know what a new card does.
I always seem to get one or two opponents that think my asking, "Can I see what that card does?" is equivalent to, "Can I lock you in a sepetic tank for 10 hours and make you listen to the new single by Britney Spears in an endless loop?" Usually in a huff they'll give me an astonishingly incorrect and/or incomplete explanation of what the card does or push the card to my side of the table and give me that look.

I'm sorry, but I already spend far too much time playing and thinking about this game. I'm not going to study it meticulously like I have a chemistry final the next day. And I've got a job and other non-Magic interests. Besides these pre-releases are often early enough that I'm usually more asleep than awake.

2) The post-match handshake.
I'm a firm believer that a handshake is the proper thing to do after a match, even if the match was one-sided on the level of Bambi vs. Godzilla. Others might disagree, but in polite society I'm not crossing any personal space boundaries by offering my hand out and saying, "Good game."

Now I realize that I'm well above the age curve when it comes to Magic players (34) and that many of the people I'm playing against may not have yet realized how important in the real world a good handshake is when meeting people. But all I ask is one simple, simple, simple request: If you're shaking my hand please apply some semblance of pressure back. There are few things as weird as shaking someone's hand and it's like holding a dead fish. Frown Unless you're the Queen of England and expect me to kiss the back of your hand, please shake back. Thank you.

3) The guy who you beat that has to tell you just how close he was from destroying you.
Make no mistake, the game of Magic has its fair share of luck, especially at a pre-release. What pool of cards did you get? Did the other player happen to get his super-ultra-mega rare in his opening hand twice in the match? Despite only running two colors, did mana of one color sink to the bottom of your deck? In short, stuff happens.

I don't mind if someone says, "I was just hoping to draw cardname and then I would have had a shot," or, "Every time you played cardname it just wrecked my board." It shows, politely, that luck is a factor and some games can swing either way on just one card (again this is especially true in a pre-release).

But the number of polite people I meet at these things is never greater than the people who play the woulda-coulda-shoulda game. For example there are the guys that assure me that if they had cardname that they would have won, guaranteed, as though there was absolutely no way I could respond to it. And you can't utilize logic with them. You tell them what you had in hand to answer back as they'll just tell you what plan B was, then plan C, etc.

I wish I could remember the cards involved, but there was one guy who told me during the Guildpact pre-release that if he just drew two particular cards, played a card in his hand, and combined it with a card in play that he'd have an unstoppable combo, but that he was "%&@$ing unlucky."

The other example of the woulda-shoulda is the guy who complains about how lucky you are. It wasn't at a pre-release but a Time Spiral block draft. I picked up a bunch of red direct damage spells and green thallids and other red/green spells that made token creatures. It was quick but also had enough chump blocking to last in a drawn out game. The guy I was playing against had a mishmash of seemingly random white and black creatures. I won, and the guy said that I was lucky that I happened to draw those spells that destroyed his creatures and made saporlings. That'd be like saying it was lucky that Michael Jordan managed to get that last second shot off or Jonas Salk happened to come across a working polio vaccine. That's what they worked at and what they were trying to do.

In short, all I ask is that you think of your opponent at least half as much as you think of yourself. I don't expect to be praised to the heavens if my awful deck happens to eke out a victory against your much more cohesive deck. I don't expect you to even have an engaging conversation with me as we're waiting to start. My simple request is to set your level of jackassery to no greater than Defcon 3. Please let me know what you think.
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muchsarcasm

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