Small town vs. Big City

A few months after the turn of the millennium, BD hired on with our store.  Fresh from the halls of the small roman double pizza, he was delighted to discover a hotbed of Magic activity in our store.  BD is from New York City, and it took about 90 seconds for him to bring this up upon meeting him.

One night as Sean and I were arguing the merits of Dark Ritualing into Nightmare on turn 4 versus playing Shivan Dragon off of 5 mountains and a Lotus Petal, BD interrupted us.   "I guess I gotta show Podunk, Missouri how Magic is really played."

When Sean and I both started laughing, he said in a very serious tone, "Wuddya two sweethearts laughing at?"

Don't get me wrong.  BD was a funny guy.  He was always ready for a good time. But he also thought that Rolla had nothing on NYC.  He was right on everything except Magic and the male-to-female ratio.  (The University of Missouri: Rolla skewed both statistics absurdly.)

"Hold that thought, boys.  I got my mutha mailing me my cards.  We'll see who's laughing then."

Sure enough, a few days later, BD arrived at the store all grins.  He invited all the card players back to his place for beer and Magic.  Sean said he couldn't make it, but after BD went out on a delivery Sean passed me his rare binder with instructions to "Just Win, Baby!". 

I felt like King Arthur after the Lady of the Lake passed him Excalibur.  I felt like Ponce de Leon upon finding the Fountain of Youth. 

I was finally holding Power. 

When you're a 21 year old college drop out turned pizza delivery driver, it's the small things in life that get you through, ya know?

Frosted Flakes FTW! (Or Sparxmith punts the game)

Breakfast is the most important meal of the day

Until the 1920's, the Average American ate oatmeal, cream of wheat, or grilled toast & cured ham for breakfast.  At that time, however, two companies were working to change the American diet by changing their appetites.

 

Kellogg's and Post were the two biggest names in grains, obvious rivals, and partners in this attempt.  Through consistent and innovative marketing, by the end of the 1920's, cold cereal in milk was an American breakfast staple.  (Which is kinda impressive, when you think about it.  Imagine if Monsanto and Dole managed to convince everyone that lunch should always be pineapple salad in cream cheese over rice.  Staggering, really.)

October 21st, 1929 saw the stock market crash.  The next year saw more American  companies go out of business than had gone out of business in all of the years since the Civil War, combined.

Post did what everyone else was doing and what conventional wisdom said to do.  It cut back on spending, withdrew advertising, and attempted to wait out the storm.

The Kellog Company did the opposite.  They spent a fortune on advertising.  They doubled investments.  

The results are still felt to this day, over 80 years later.  The Kellogg Co. remains the number one producer of breakfast cereal in the world.

Why did Kellogg make the choice they did?  From the outside looking in, the decision seems to be a conscious choice to find opportunity in the face of adversity.  (Alternatively, it was desperation driving them to succed.)  Necessity is the mother of invention, and Kellogg succeeded splendidly.

Fear itself:

In 2006, I was living in Kansas City and playing Magic as a semi-pro.  I played 40 hours a week (or more) with another 20 hours devoted to poker.  

This was the time period when I made the biggest mistake of the biggest game of my Magic career.  In an Extended GPT, I was running Goblins over the more popular choice of Affinity.  After 5 rounds, I was 5-1-1, with a good chance of making the cut.  (The typical tournament format is known as "Swiss", where everyone is randomly paired for the first round and then for each subsequent round, players are paired up against other players with the same record.  After a certain number of rounds, all but the top 8 players are eliminated.  Tie-breakers are frequently used to sort players that are just above or just below the cut off place in this format.)  If I win, I'm in.  If I lose, I'm out. 6 wins for day 2.  2 losses for elimination.

My opponent is playing Affinity.  And he's piloting it very well.  However, I had anticipated 50% of the field would be playing it, so I devoted over half my sideboard to beating it. I figured this would go loss, win, win.

He wins game 1 quickly, but if he had not won when he did, I would have had lethal damage on my next untap.

Game two, I cast  Siege-Gang Commander on turn 3, all of them hasty little buggers because of Goblin Warchief.  Piledriver came down turn 4, and I won in spite of the hate card (Chill?) he had just played.

Game three, my opening hand contains mass artifact hate (Meltdown?).  He can kiss all of his artifact lands good-bye.  This will be an easy win.  His turn 1 play is Duress.  There goes my answer.  The game progresses much more like game one.  We go back and forth, racing to the finish.  I'm at 4 after he attacks. 

He's at 2.

There are no creatures left on the board other than his Arcbound Ravager with 3 counters and my Goblin Warchief.

I have no cards in hand.  He has 1.

I top deck Incinerate.

My eyes sparkle, my mouth widens into a smile.  The fear within me finally receding.

I tap a couple of mountains...  "I cast Incinerate.  Pass priority." 

"Targeting?" he asks as he begins straightening up his cards.

Fear clouded my mind.  Here I am am, staring down his Arcbound Ravager, terrified to speak.  An eternity passed before I blurted out, "Arcbound Ravager". 

"I'll respond by activating Aether Vial, putting Arcbound Worker into play.  When you pass priority back, I'm going to sacrifice it to Ravager bringing it up to 5 counters."

My heart sank.  I passed priority back, declined an attack, and lost when he top decked Shrapnel Blast.

Because my opponent was at 2.  And I cast an instant that deals 3 damage.  Targeting his creature.

He then cast an instant that dealt 5 damage...targeting his opponent.

Because I was tharn....paralyzed...afraid to lose...I couldn't think straight.

He wasn't.

He won.

Lesson learned.  Sort of.

Today's lesson is don't be afraid to lose.  Fear will affect your ability to see the proper play.  It will cloud your mind,  causing you to focus on the wrong things.

Kellogg's isn't the best cereal in the world, but they're still #1.  My deck had the win in front of me, but I still missed the cut.

Without fear there is no bravery, for it is only by overcoming fear that we become brave.

A few months later I sold my collection. Because I was like Moses, who got to within sight of the promised land and dropped dead before making it.  The fear at the tournament continued on permeating my existence for the few intervening months.  I was on tilt, feeling like a fraud.

10 years has taught me alot about fear.  I will still make play mistakes. 

But I'm no longer afraid to lose.  Nor should anyone be.

The Battle of Trafalgar

Decided schematic advantage:

On October 21st, 1805, the British Royal Navy under Admiral Lord Nelson engaged Napoleon's fleet off the southwest coast of Spain, near the town of Trafalgar.  Admiral Nelson devised a cunning plan of attack that utterly devastated the much larger combined forces of France and Spain that he stalked.

Pic Related.

The customary order of battle at the time required each fleet to lay broadside to one another, and then fire all guns and cannons before closing to board the opposing ships.  This type of battle, while bloody, was a superior plan over the previous custom of general ship to ship melee.  (It allowed signaling between command and the individual ships.  Where as, in a general melee, commands could not be trusted to be received once melee began.)

The British Admiral ordered his fleet into two lines and then penetrated the Franco-Spanish fleet's line at two equidistant points.  This rendered the ships not at the point of penetration largely irrelevant until they could be maneuvered into position.

In addition to the strategic advantage of this, it also allowed his ships to fire on from both sides for a brief period of time before steering left or right and firing broadside at ships that had all their guns pointing in the wrong direction.

The results were impressive.  Napoleon's fleet lost 22 of its 33 ships and an estimated 16,000 men, while the British had zero ships sunk and only 1500 casualties.

Decided schematic advantage indeed.

Showdown at the CK Coral

In 1999, I was working as a pizza delivery driver.  The pizza was reportedly better and you can blame the ingredients.  (The celebrity chef is now BFF's with Peyton Manning, if that helps you figure it out.)

Sean was assistant manager.  JJ was the GM.  JJ refused to play Magic, but we often played chess during the lulls in our shifts.  It was a terrific place to work and fun times were had by many.

The money wasn't great, but good enough that I spent about half my tips on Magic.  Sean would sell me cards out of his binder, or I'd go to either one of the card stores in town and buy everything I could afford.

I was dating a coworker, but when she dumped me in December I laughed because now I had even more money for cards.  It was her loss for not waiting until after Christmas.

Around that time, CK hired on as a driver to help pay her tuition at UMR.  She was cute, funny, smart, and completely different than my Ex.  One thing led to another, and I ended up inviting her back to my place to watch movies after work.  She let me know that she had plans with her boyfriend, but she'd love to come over the following night.

Being the suave, debonair gentleman that I am, I gladly accepted the rain check which made her smile.

The next night, she came over to watch Fight Club and introduced me to Baron Munchausen.  She also played Magic with me until 4 a.m. 

She broke up with her boyfriend less than a week later.

Good cards and bad Magic

In 1998, I was living in Rolla, MO, home of the University of Missouri: Rolla.  At the time, UMR was host to the dwindling remains of a historic Magic community.  The first world champion of Magic, Zak Dolan, was an alumnus.  Many of the world's best players once resided or played regularly in TJ Hall.   Unfortunately, I arrived about 3 years too late to ever get to meet that group.  Fortunately, Zak and his peers left a legacy in Rolla that continued for quite some time.  One of my coworkers, Sean, learned the game from grandmaster Zak.  

Once he found out I played magic, he offered to teach me how to play.  I laughed and told him to have a deck with him on our next shift.

"Whatcha playing?" I asked as I walked into work.

"The Deck, " he replied, shuffling up a deck that had sleeves.  (Why does he have sleeves on his deck?)

"No, what's the name of the deck?" I asked.

"The.  Deck."

That time I heard the capitalization inherent in the title.  I laughed nervously.

"Well, I'm running white green beat down.  Prepare your butt for a spanking," I taunted.

We set up.  I won the roll to go first.  (Why is he using dice?  We just cut and high mana goes first!)

My opening hand consisted of  2 Plains, a Llanowar Elf, a Fyndhorn Elder, my prized Crash of Rhinos, the Robin Hood like Land Tax, and Swords to Plowshares.  I didn't like the lack of a forest, but I knew my Tax would fix that problem.

I play:  Plains, Land Tax, "go". 

My skill in Magic before I met Sean.

"Wait... wait... I have a response."

I was dumbfounded.  (What's a response?)  (How can he do anything when he has no land in play?)

"Force of Will, pitching Counterspell.  I go to nineteen." Sean smirked mirthlessly as he said this.

I lost a few minutes later.  

Sean made good on his offer to teach me to how to play. He introduced me to Power.  (Capital "P".)  The 9 most powerful cards ever printed.  (Or so I thought at the time.)  Cards so game breaking that they're still referred to as the Power 9.

I was introduced to "card advantage", "investment cost", and "the stack".  Sean spent countless hours over many months' worth of shifts, drilling into my head the importance of card advantage, tempo, utility, and knowing "why", "how",  and "when"--not just "what" . 

It was like training with Bruce Lee.  I never stood a chance of winning a contest, but I learned alot during every conversation.

In the beginning...

Everyone remembers their first time finding something that fundamentally alters their world.  I recall the day I got my first kiss (to Michelle at age 9), bought my first car, quit my first job, and dropped out of college.  Those were October 10, 1989, March 4th, 1998, November 20th, 1995, and February 17th, 1998 respectively.

But sometimes the alterations aren't so obvious.  Sometimes we can remember the event clearly but don't know when it actually happened.  Magic: the Gathering is that way for me.


The First Time
Sometime in '95 or '96, my cousins (Brandon & Shannon) invited me to a sleep over.  They are identical twins that remain two of the most important people to me emotionally, even if I seldom get to see them.

(c) Christopher Rush

That night  they introduced me to a new game.  Brandon started teaching me the rules while Shannon started getting things ready.  We were lying on our bellies on the floor casting spells, summoning angels & consorting with demonic tutors.  One champion, Eron the Relentless dominated the battlefield until the Wrath of God descended from the heavens felling him.  Shannon followed up on B.'s play by summoning a goblin from the Mons tribe and then invoking Armageddon.  That one little raider poked me in the eye 8 times before I could do anthing.  On the ninth poke, I was forced to retreat from the field of battle, leaving B. & Shannon to settle the match between them.

In the mean time, I began looking through their cards.  Shannon told me to build my own deck with his cards.  Being a red blooded American patriot and a PFC in my high school's JROTC program, I noticed that I could make a "red, white, and blue" deck.  Weighing in at over 140 cards, I took every good card I could find and began shuffling.

8 hours later, with nary a wink of sleep or victory in sight, I was already addicted.