Art by Wayne Reynolds Remember the old advice "If you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything?" Every once in a while I speak without thinking. It's been known to happen. My emotionality has been a problem many times in my past, and while I have a much better grip on things now, I still occasionally slip up and say what I'm feeling rather than thinking it through. Sometimes I think I'm being clever. Sometimes I just want to express myself. But when it happens, and I look back on what was said, I realize I was a bit of an ass. Case in point: I uttered the following words at my friendly local gaming store during the last rotation. "If you run a decklist from some top player on the Internet, nothing personal, but
I hate you." For a bit of background on why this is the wrong way to approach competitive gameplay in general and Magic in particular, you should be familiar with Timmy, Johnny, and Spike.
Here's an article on these guys and what they mean to the average Magic player. When you get down to it, not everybody is going to fall entirely into a single category or type, nor is it reasonable to assume other players will play the game you play it. When it comes to Magic, I'm a bit of a Johnny/Spike. That doesn't mean Timmy players are wrong, nor are those who go fully Spike and are just in it to win it.
Neither I nor any other person has the right to tell other people how to play their games. Provided you're not being a jerk, cheating, or otherwise making the game deliberately unpleasant for other people, play the game however you want to play it. Some players just want big, splashy things to happen or to pull off an impossible combo. Others are interested in building their decks in new and interesting ways just to see how they play. And still others just want the glory of victory. All of these are fine, and none are invalid. For me or anybody else to say otherwise is just ludicrous. It's probably part of getting older. When I first started playing Magic almost twenty years ago, there was no Internet to speak of. Folks had to take what cards they had and build what they could. When Scrye magazine or The Duelist arrived with some decklists and advice, such articles could be cited by aspiring professionals and enthusiasts of the game. How are "net decks" any different? In hindsight and examination, I can tell you they really aren't. All that said, all I can do is apologize for speaking as I did and hope I didn't outright offend anyone in doing so. The only basis by which anybody can truly come down on how you play the game is if you're making everybody around you miserable while playing for reasons outside of normal frustrating from losing. Basically, as long as you're obeying Wheaton's First Law, you should be fine.
Blue Ink Alchemy
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