Well, the inevitable finally happened.
As readers of this blog might recall, I dabbled in Magic the Gathering at one point in my life.
Said point took place well after the Ninja Turtles started to suck, and just before Pokemon and Dragon Ball Z would cause Japanese language class attendances and White guy/Azn girlfriend biracial relationships to spike 10 fold.
Whatever man, you know it’s true.
Anyway, as mentioned in previous articles, the bulk of my Magic card pile (I can’t call something I don’t care about a “collection”…) is made of old crap inherited from my older brother and his friends.
Like me, my brother dabbled in Magic cards, though unlike me, he saw fit to dump his inventory the moment he lost interest.
Me being me, I held onto the shit, not because I wanted it, but mostly because I was too lazy to find a proper way to dispose of it.
That being said, one of my friends recently began prodding at me to bust out my old cards and throw down with him.
Given that I honestly haven’t had much to do outside of look for a job and write this goddamn blog, I decided to accommodate him.
Thus began my weekly habit of sitting down to extraordinarily casual games of Magic with my buddy.
By “extraordinarily casual” I mean I play with my outdated, ghetto-ass cards, and basically served up to my buddy as a thoroughly outclassed sparring partner for his future tournament matches.
If ever there was a jobber of the Magic the Gathering universe, it’d have to be me.
While I lose probably 80% of the time, one thing that I’ve gotten out of the experience, besides y’know, fun, is the fact that playing with weak-ass cards has taught me a lot about polishing diamonds out of shit-bricks.
That is to say, I’ve learned to look for, and find value in cards that aren’t inherently valuable.
With this fact tucked away in my mind, last week I bit my lip and decided to tag along with my buddy, and join a Draft tournament.
In case you don’t know already, a Draft in Magic is essentially what it sounds like.
Basically, you buy some booster packs, you take 1 card of your choosing from each pack, and then swap the remainder of the contents of said pack with the person to your left.
From there, everyone takes 1 card from the pile given to them, and then continues to pass the remainder on.
The process continues until every card has been exhausted.
Given the random nature of booster packs, you can probably see now why I (grudgingly) decided to join in on a Draft.
Truth be told, it wasn’t an easy decision for me, as the Magic community isn’t exactly what I’d call “my crowd,” nor is the game really my favorite thing in the world; but sometimes you’ve gotta’ do stupid shit to have fun with your friends… Even if sometimes I just wanna’ scream at the top of my lungs:
That being said, from what I can tell I actually drafted some pretty good stuff, (it’s an Innistrad draft) including my very first Mythic Rare, and at the end of the day I decided to put together a green and red deck.
I don’t know any of the fancy terminology used to describe strategic stances or functions in Magic, but by my reckoning the deck I made turned out pretty badass!
I don’t know if “badass” is the right word, but for what it’s worth, as you may have gathered from the title of this post, I actually managed to defeat my friend in my first match!
I beat him pretty solid both times I won, however I well and truly fucked up during the second round, resulting in one of the face palm-ier moments in my Magic career.
The point is though, I’m a winner today, and it feels good to know that.
By the way, here’s my deck in case you’re curious about what’s in it:
Mountain x 8
Forest x 9
Ashmouth Hound x 2
Kessig Wolf x 1
Feral Ridgewolf x 1
Hanweir Watchkeep x 1
Stromkirk Noble x 1
Darkthicket Wolf x 1
Orchard Spirit x 1
Villagers of Estwald x 1
Grizzled Outcasts x 1
Woodland Sleuth x 1
Ambush Viper x 1
Essence of the Wild x 1
Curse of the Pierced Heart x 1
Traitorous Blood x 1
Brimstone Volley x 1
Furor of the Bitten x 1
Prey Upon x 1
Ranger’s Guile x 1
Moonmist x 1
Spidery Grasp x 1
Spider Spawning x 1
Blazing Torch x 1
I apologize if the massive block of bold text above went entirely over you’re head.
Please understand, winning is not something I experience with much frequency, so just try and play along for tonight.
Please?
Oh fine, here’s some Batman for your troubles:
Filed under: Comics, Games, Movies, Uncategorized, Wrestling, Batman, Brooklyn Brawler, card, Comics, DC, draft, game, Greenlake Games, Innistrad, jobber, Magic the Gathering, tournament, trading