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Editor: Audrey C Quan. Wednesday 22 May 2002.
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 State of the Union
Well now, there is something rather edifying about seeing your words out there on the web. Out of curiosity, I did a search on my name on yahoo, just to see if there were any other references to myself out in the great white noise. As it turns out, I seem to be worthy of notoriety for more than one random event. Yes, my name search returned an article with an "update" on the status of a heavy metal band, a bit on the Aberdeen Central High School class of '92, some transcribed guitar music and some random PT Atlanta listing. For the record, the Scott Hunstad in each of these instances is actually I. Go figure - I am all immortal and stuff.
While I am sure you are all interested in how I managed to single-handedly drop out of a Calculus course in 1994, as reported by Altavista, that would have very little to do with Magical Cards. Perhaps it doesn't matter, I tend to read every tidbit on most magic sites, and if you are still reading this, you probably do too. So, rather than read another sub-par post on how some random deck took 10th place at a FNM, I might as well sharpen the pencil.
What I wouldn't mind spending a bit of time discussing is the state of our local Magic community. By local, in this instance, I mean Sydney. I recently took a three-year hiatus from Magic, which involved a complete disassociation with all things Magic - including Magic players. Not that I had anything against socialising with other Magic players, it is just that sometimes the conversations looked something like:
A: "Did you see that cool combo I pulled with the Blazing Salvo"
So you get the picture, that was ok. After all, we were all pretty much there to play Magic.
Now that I have come back to the flock, so to speak, it is easy to see how things have changed in the three years I was away. This is perhaps largely due to the fact that for the last four or five years many of these people have spent 5-10 hours every week with each other and are more comfortable relating to one another. Great.
It's pretty cool that going to Eastwood on Saturdays feels more like you are hanging out than just going to play a tournament. A bit of Magic, a lot of Coke, a bun from the Korean shop and that's a good Saturday.
But our shiny coating seems to have a few cracks. Let me present three anecdotes:
I take you back to one day about two months ago. I was at the Eastwood shop just having finished a draft. There was some kid sort of standing and watching with his dad, armed with the standard new-kid-100-card deck and a nervous laugh. I nod hello and his dad asks if I wouldn't mind giving his kid a game, with the comment that he was just new and learning the game. Of course I am happy to do so and I grab a deck and wax nostalgic as the kid gleefully (and I mean GLEEFULLY) plays out some bad 3 card combo - bubbling with mirth as he "explains" it to me. We play a few games and he asks a few questions about his deck and how to make it better, etc., scoops up the unwanted draft commons (with more of the aforementioned glee), and him and his dad leave. It was fine. It was even kind of fun. The unfortunate part is that it was UNUSUAL. [Ed - why was it unusual?]
Forward to last night. Got to Broadway about ten o'clock to line up for Star Wars. I'm not a huge Star Wars fan, but not really one to miss out on a spectacle either. Had a couple of hours to kill, so what better way to spend the time than one-on-one drafting with Ben Seck. As you do. So we draft and start playing and a few people watch and I feel like a bit of a dick but hey, THEY are lining up for a midnight showing of Star Wars so I can't be too out of place. Anyway we are playing a bit and a couple of people are watching. One guy seemed to know the game a bit and was explaining a few things to his friend as we were playing. Another guy asked what we were playing to which Ben responded something like "It's a strategy game - kind of hard to follow as we are playing a bit faster than usual" I say nothing, the guy didn't comment further. We continued to play and he lost interest. Now this particular story brings up a couple of points.
Forward to tonight. Playing in the second round of draft after getting pummelled in the first round by Minga's R/G deck (poetic justice?). I notice the people playing next to me, which is pretty strange cause I rarely notice anything when I am playing Magic. In any case, one guy had out a Shivan Dragon and was just casting a Fireball, the other guy was holding a Sword of the Ages, a Mirror Universe, a Nebuchadnezzar, and an In the Eye of Chaos, which in the good old days was the "throw-all-the-expensive-legends-together-to-make-a-deck-deck". They were pretty serious too. My stream of consciousness went from "It's been a while since I have seen someone playing with those cards" to "It's been a long while since I have seen anyone playing a fun deck" to "It's been a long while since I have played a fun deck" to "I used to have, at any given time, 20 or so fully built fun decks" to "I don't even have a fun deck any more"
It would seem that our Magic community has changed dramatically over the past few years of my non-activity. People have tended toward a clique mentality - and so we have the Great Divide. The Sydney Magic scene has evolved into 3 groups -
So merrily we row our boat with our little class structure all laid out for us, and what has brought us down the dark and crooked path? Any number of things, but I would put forward that we are missing a very important group of magic players - Group 1.5 (extended?). This is the group of magic players that are starting to compete at the tournament scene. They probably got into Magic because one or more of their friends play the game. Maybe they have played a while with varying success at their local shop, and consistently get the better end of trades with their friends. They have been playing for probably 1-2 years in total.
I would be hard pressed to name half a dozen of these players in Sydney. After all, how are you ever going to improve your game if no one can even be bothered explaining to you why a first pick Springing Tiger is better than a Gorilla Titan.
So, why the disappearance of these players? A couple of possible causes:
* The closure of King's Comics. This was the premier place to buy Magic singles in Sydney, making it very hard for Sydney magic players to get the cards they need to make decks, keeping in mind that many 1.5 players may not have the facility to buy cards over the net. Without the cards, many players feel unable to compete at the tournament level - which is probably true.
* Thursday night drafts. It used to be that people just came on Thursday nights to play casual games of Magic. Group 2 players could play Group 1 players in a sort of mentor style relationship and learn. With drafting every Thursday, and Thursday being the only night that casual magic is really being played, this no longer happens. If you are a group 1 player, I ask you - when is the last time you have played a "scrub" for fun?
I am quite sure there are others. So, how to revive the magic community? I am sure there are many ways, but it would seem that the most logical would be a dedicated card shop run/staffed by people that actually played the game. A Magical Mecca if you will.
I come from, originally, a town in South Dakota, USA, called Aberdeen. Not much of a town really - a mall, a high school and 25,000 people in total, and one card shop. This card shop had singles and tables and chairs that didn't just get setup for Thursday night. They were permanent shop fixtures. There was Coke and bad sandwiches, a permanent land pile in the corner for drafts, and there was Magic every day. People would drop by after school or work for a game or two, just to test their new deck. Some Uni students would come in between classes, and some people would more-or-less live there. It would also be a pretty rare day to walk in and not see at least 1 or 2 games going on. "Have a game?" was the most heard phrase in the place and the guy who ran the jewelry shop next door started playing magic, so did his kid. The shop owner always had a deck and made some money selling singles, and even more by selling the bad sandwiches.
I propose that if Aberdeen, South Dakota, with a population of 25,000 in a good year can support a shop such as this, then Sydney, with population of 4,000,000 could make a pretty good stab at it.
I'd be curious to hear what it's like in other places...
Cheers,
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