One Year of Playing Magic
Ah, I can't believe it's already a year since that fateful Friday night when I walked through the door of Two Stompas and saw Magic Community for the first time. I can't lie, it was a love at the first sight and I still feel the same way today, if not stronger.
As a Magic player, I am mainly a Timmy. I played Magic to experience something new. Drafting really helped me at that. Every pod of draft is a new experience. Every pack opened offers a tons of possibility, not to mention the smell of freshly opened Magic card, it never gets old.
Everytime I win with my draft deck, it always felt original because I picked all of the card in my deck personally. All of that contributes to my addiction to drafting which made me able to stay up all night just to crack more packs.
I believe everyone in Two Stompas felt the same way. It's no wonder that Stompas player doesn't need to open an electronic device when playing a BFZ Jap Draft in the Top 8 of Aethernity Cup yesterday. It's also no wonder that a Stompas player won the tournament because drafting is simply a part of our life (shoutout and big congratulations to Nuriz!).
Anyway, Drafting is my first experience of playing Magic and it is a neverending experience. I'm so glad that experienced it first because the other side of Magic is a completely different animal. Yea, I'm talking about competitive Magic experience.
To be honest, I'm not much a competitive player. As a kid, I grew up as a timid character that never tries to be better than others. Yes, I did study all night just like the other kid, but I did it because I had to, not to get a better grade than others. Even when I did got better grade, I didn't feel any satisfaction because I didn't experience anything after that. It's just a number and a score after all.
However, I do still want to keep up with competitive Magic because it is an entirely new experience. Everytime I walked into a tournament, I always felt nervous. My hand trembles, my heart racing, and I kept thinking, "Have I brought the right deck to this tournament? Is my sideboard going to work? Am I gonna go X-3 and drop?"
You see, competitive Magic is entirely different with an exam. In an exam, you are only facing a cold paper, but in Magic, you are actually face to face with a real person that is trying to defeat you in any way possible. The little Timmy in me is very scared with that kind of thing.
When that happened, I always took a deep breath, very deep breath. My opponent will usually wonder what was I doing, but I'll ignore them because that ritual is very very important to me as to keep me relaxed throughout the game. But, when I did win a game, I will feel a great satisfaction because I have just went through my worst fear.
That kind of experience is so priceless that I am willing to do many things to feel that again, that includes: researching, reading Magic articles, playtesting, and etc. Still, all of that effort was not to be better than others but to experience that kind of satisfaction that I can't experience anywhere else.
The other side of me is a Johnny. When I played Yugioh, I liked to build a deck that is different from others just to prove that I can get good result with my own original build. One of my first inventions was the inclusion of Genex Neutron and Jain in Quickdandy along with many backrows, effectively turned a deck that used to be a synergy-value into a beatdown deck. It was a great success and I managed to get to Top 64 of NATS even when the metagame was swarmed with Inzektors and Dino Rabbits.
One of my biggest achievement in deckbuilding was a Towers Turbo that I used to Top 32 in SH7. At that time, there was no Qliphort build like that in internet. My article regarding that deck went on to be the most viewed article in this blog. Few months after that, a Towers Turbo deck topped an ARG Circuit and it went viral. Into the Void was tripled in price and Apoqliphort Towers got banned in the next banlist. Whether my article has any contribution to that, I guess I don't know. But the point is, I managed to be one of the first person who build and play a Towers Turbo deck. That was very sweet.
However, I still can't fully express my Johnny-ness in Magic. It turns out that building an original Magic deck is much much more difficult than building a Yugioh deck. In Yugioh, you just need to put cards into a deck and make them as synergystic as possible. But in Magic, you have to also figure out the correct manabase for the deck so you can actually play the cards.
Currently, I simply can't build a manabase on my own. Even after reading St. Chapin's Next Level Deckbuilding, I still don't get it. It is much easier to build a manabase for draft deck because most of them are only two colors and I only worked with basic lands. However, when dual and tri-land came into equation, it really becomes different. With so many options, I have to figure out which options can maximize the deck's potential and I am so overwhelmed with that.
One of the best manabase I have seen is Gerry Thompson's 5-Color Bring to Light Deck. His manabase is so effective that it went on to be templated by Ali Aintrazi which latter templated by me to build my 5-Color Dragonlord that I used to win my first PPTQ. Why is it effective? Because I never got mana-screwed in every game I played. Still, building that kind of manabase from a scratch? I just have no idea.
My first original Magic deck was R/W Tokens that got me 0-3 at Game Day. Yeah, it was a bummer. However I swear, one of these days, I'll build a great original Magic deck that is competitive worthy and I'll repeat my success in Yugioh. That's the spirit.
So well, this post was supposed to be my reflection of my one year worth of experience playing Magic. This post could have been ended with a single line of me saying Magic is so much fun that I can't stop playing it but it turns out to be this long article of utter nonsense. Well, I am not a good writer after all. Lol. Until next time :)
As a Magic player, I am mainly a Timmy. I played Magic to experience something new. Drafting really helped me at that. Every pod of draft is a new experience. Every pack opened offers a tons of possibility, not to mention the smell of freshly opened Magic card, it never gets old.
Everytime I win with my draft deck, it always felt original because I picked all of the card in my deck personally. All of that contributes to my addiction to drafting which made me able to stay up all night just to crack more packs.
I believe everyone in Two Stompas felt the same way. It's no wonder that Stompas player doesn't need to open an electronic device when playing a BFZ Jap Draft in the Top 8 of Aethernity Cup yesterday. It's also no wonder that a Stompas player won the tournament because drafting is simply a part of our life (shoutout and big congratulations to Nuriz!).
Anyway, Drafting is my first experience of playing Magic and it is a neverending experience. I'm so glad that experienced it first because the other side of Magic is a completely different animal. Yea, I'm talking about competitive Magic experience.
To be honest, I'm not much a competitive player. As a kid, I grew up as a timid character that never tries to be better than others. Yes, I did study all night just like the other kid, but I did it because I had to, not to get a better grade than others. Even when I did got better grade, I didn't feel any satisfaction because I didn't experience anything after that. It's just a number and a score after all.
However, I do still want to keep up with competitive Magic because it is an entirely new experience. Everytime I walked into a tournament, I always felt nervous. My hand trembles, my heart racing, and I kept thinking, "Have I brought the right deck to this tournament? Is my sideboard going to work? Am I gonna go X-3 and drop?"
You see, competitive Magic is entirely different with an exam. In an exam, you are only facing a cold paper, but in Magic, you are actually face to face with a real person that is trying to defeat you in any way possible. The little Timmy in me is very scared with that kind of thing.
When that happened, I always took a deep breath, very deep breath. My opponent will usually wonder what was I doing, but I'll ignore them because that ritual is very very important to me as to keep me relaxed throughout the game. But, when I did win a game, I will feel a great satisfaction because I have just went through my worst fear.
That kind of experience is so priceless that I am willing to do many things to feel that again, that includes: researching, reading Magic articles, playtesting, and etc. Still, all of that effort was not to be better than others but to experience that kind of satisfaction that I can't experience anywhere else.
The other side of me is a Johnny. When I played Yugioh, I liked to build a deck that is different from others just to prove that I can get good result with my own original build. One of my first inventions was the inclusion of Genex Neutron and Jain in Quickdandy along with many backrows, effectively turned a deck that used to be a synergy-value into a beatdown deck. It was a great success and I managed to get to Top 64 of NATS even when the metagame was swarmed with Inzektors and Dino Rabbits.One of my biggest achievement in deckbuilding was a Towers Turbo that I used to Top 32 in SH7. At that time, there was no Qliphort build like that in internet. My article regarding that deck went on to be the most viewed article in this blog. Few months after that, a Towers Turbo deck topped an ARG Circuit and it went viral. Into the Void was tripled in price and Apoqliphort Towers got banned in the next banlist. Whether my article has any contribution to that, I guess I don't know. But the point is, I managed to be one of the first person who build and play a Towers Turbo deck. That was very sweet.
However, I still can't fully express my Johnny-ness in Magic. It turns out that building an original Magic deck is much much more difficult than building a Yugioh deck. In Yugioh, you just need to put cards into a deck and make them as synergystic as possible. But in Magic, you have to also figure out the correct manabase for the deck so you can actually play the cards.
Currently, I simply can't build a manabase on my own. Even after reading St. Chapin's Next Level Deckbuilding, I still don't get it. It is much easier to build a manabase for draft deck because most of them are only two colors and I only worked with basic lands. However, when dual and tri-land came into equation, it really becomes different. With so many options, I have to figure out which options can maximize the deck's potential and I am so overwhelmed with that.
One of the best manabase I have seen is Gerry Thompson's 5-Color Bring to Light Deck. His manabase is so effective that it went on to be templated by Ali Aintrazi which latter templated by me to build my 5-Color Dragonlord that I used to win my first PPTQ. Why is it effective? Because I never got mana-screwed in every game I played. Still, building that kind of manabase from a scratch? I just have no idea.
My first original Magic deck was R/W Tokens that got me 0-3 at Game Day. Yeah, it was a bummer. However I swear, one of these days, I'll build a great original Magic deck that is competitive worthy and I'll repeat my success in Yugioh. That's the spirit.
So well, this post was supposed to be my reflection of my one year worth of experience playing Magic. This post could have been ended with a single line of me saying Magic is so much fun that I can't stop playing it but it turns out to be this long article of utter nonsense. Well, I am not a good writer after all. Lol. Until next time :)
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