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From a Magical Madman!

Welcome one and all to my column 'Rogue Tendencies'! I though I should start off by telling a little about myself and how I think in regards to Magic. This may help the readers of future articles in this column understand why I come up with the ideas I do.

When I started writing articles for MTG Paradise I wrote another article similar to this one which stirred up quite a lot of controversy and resentment. After over a year of writing articles, I think my attitude to the game has changed a little.

First of all, I live in Adelaide, Australia. I started playing Magic back in 1994 about 2 months before Legends was released. It all started when I went to my regular gaming sessions at The Dragons Lair (closed down now unfortunately but I think the owners went on to open Game Quest) playing Battletech tabletop, Werewolf and Rolemaster. I was 15 at the time and had been playing RPGs for about a year. We had a few players not turn up to games and when I asked the GamesMaster why he told me they were off at Tactics (another shop that closed down but the owner went on to bigger and better things) playing this card game called Magic.

A few weeks later a Magic tournament was held at The Dragon's Lair. I watched a few games and while I didn't understand how it all worked I was intrigued by the variety of colours, tapping of cards and general fun people were having. I decided it was time to buy some cards and try it out. I bought a starter and a booster and took a look at what I had.

Somehow I had managed to pick up 2 Tundras! Looking through the cards I realised the colours I liked most were red and green - red for destructive power and green for its big creatures. My first trade consisted of trading all my black/white cards I had picked up for all green/red cards a friend of mine had picked up. It worked out to be a fairly even deal and it allowed both of us to build a deck.

I put together a deck consisting of all my green, all my red and a couple of artifacts with all the mountains and forests I had. I tried to read the rulebook to learn to play but it was too confusing. A friend of mine (a guy who later went on to date my sister for a few years) sat me down and taught me how to play.

He explained that before each game you shuffle and then offer your deck to be cut. This is done as good etiquette. Then you draw seven cards for your starting hand. I won't go any further as the rest is pretty self explanatory. I started to play more (even stopped RPGs for a while) and became a regular at Tactics on Friday nights and sometimes Saturday afternoons. I have fond memories of seeing Oliver Okks arrive in school uniform like me and players like Nathan Russell chatting away with Dale and Andrew (the guys at Tactics) at the counter as I bought cards.

After a few months of playing and trading (you haven't played multiplayer until you've played with 20 people!) I decided to play in a tournament. At this time there was no DCI as it is now - more a list of guidelines from Wizards of the Coast in regards to tournaments with a banned/restricted list.

I paid my entry fee and sat down to play with my red/green deck. I felt pretty good and didn't know what to expect. I knew the tournament was single elimination and 45 card minimum decks (they all were in those days), but I was completely unaware of the calibre of deck I'd be facing. Sure enough I had paired up with an experienced player running a mono-white balance deck (blanace was still unrestricted). To cut a long story short I had my butt handed to me in under 15 minutes and I went over to play and trade with the other people who had been knocked out in round one too.

I didn't play in a tournament for a long time after that. It wasn't that I was scared of what might happen. I was just not interested in playing for prizes when I was having fun just playing casual games.

A little after the tournament I was playing casual and a guy needed some cash to get home. He had a huge wad of cards and wanted to sell them for $5. I was going to buy a booster but decided to buy the cards as they were all blue and I was getting pretty tired of having my huge fireballs powersunk for one. I took the cards and built a deck. In the first game I played I learned the power of control. One game I had only 1 life left, took control of the game and won it.

During Ice Age Block I started to play tournaments again. At this stage there was no Type 1 or Type 2 but tournaments were now swiss draw instead of single elimination. I liked this new idea as you got to play all day win or lose. Around this time I began to play RPGs and Magic at Australian Game Wizards (finally a place that still exists!). The tournaments weren't sanctioned but they were fun. As an example, at the opening day tournament of Australian Game Wizards, we had to build Highlander decks (only one of any card excluding basic land) which could only run creatures if they were 0/1 or 1/1. We sat down to play and anxiously waited to be told to begin. We were told that tournaments at Australian Game Wizards will be a little different and oh, to look at the date - it was April 1st! There was a further twist to play - each round you had to swap decks with your opponent!!! The look on the big tourney players' faces was priceless! I finished fourth by the way - my deck wasn't bad but being handed power decks to play all day helped my cause immensely.

My next tournament was in Mirage/Tempest/Urza's Saga blocks. I started playing tournaments mostly because a friend of mine had gotten into the game and I could go with him. My small playtest group used to play at Hungry Jacks after Tactics closed each Friday until around 3am. Its interesting to see how my fellow playtesters are faring today - one of them was Chad Kwok - one of the higher ranked players in South Australia nowadays.

I stopped playing tournaments because of the Regionals qualifier I went to. I was playing a Pox/Megrim rogue deck that did well and shattered the dreams of many people - including a fellow by the name of Jake Hart. The abuse I copped for playing such a 'broken degenerate' deck or winning with a 'stupid megrim deck' was worse than the best efforts of a sailor - and that was from a pre-teen! This made me think about why I bother to play competitively as there was no fun left.

Back in early 2003 I was at Sports Card World buying some cards for casual play and talked to another player who told me about MTG Paradise. I went home, hopped on the net and set up my account. The first person I was intorduced to was Chaoslord. She told me about how online trading worked and we even conducted a trade there and then. I've been trading online ever since.

After a couple of months I started to look at playing Type 2 tournaments again. From what I could see of the internet community the arrogance and bastardry that drove me away seemed to have lifted. I started playing at Sports Card World with an elf deck and had my butt handed to me all over again. When the Mirrodin Pre-release came up I went and people knew me from online! Lee (Tournament organiser) said thanks for coming at the end and hoped to see me at more of his tournaments.

I'm still going to Lee's tournaments. The way he looks after us and the promotion of respect for newer players is fantastic. Lee now runs Infinity Games in Rundle Mall which has become my preferred shop to play. No offense to any of the other shops out there but Lee does look after the players well and can relate to my situation of having a young family - he has one too.

I have joined the band of playtesters and regular players in the Northern suburbs. Most of these people are online regulars at MTG Paradise, others not so. We have become a good playtesting think tank as well as the recent pooling of commons and crap cards to play Iron Man. We all play better because we teach each other new lessons. I may be an old dog but I can still learn new tricks.

With State Championships looming myself and John Reiman are running playtesting sessions the week before the tournament. Some of us will go to John's house, others to mine, some to both. Whatever cards we need will be lent to those who need them in the group.

Lee Wilkins, another MTG Paradise regular, often pops around to play a few games. We have both become better players because of this. Sure our ideas on deck construction differ but we tend to agree on more than we don't. He is such a nice guy and I'd do whatever I can to help him inside or outside Magic.

Right now this is what Magic is for me - a fun friendly group of like minded people who want to do as well as they can and have a ball trying. I am not a professional player and I doubt I ever will be. I am a fan of the game who likes to try different things rather than conform to net decks.

I would rather help out a new player than hinder him. I also know that I have a lot to learn from the new players out there. They will see things different to me. I also have something to gain from experienced players. I may have been playing for 10 years but little of that time has been devoted to tournament level play.

To all the rogue players out there I hope I can give a few ideas on how to break those unplayed cards. In turn I'm sure they will teach me a little in return. I like to think that any card that people say is unplayable bay still be viable if someone finds a use for it.

At the Mirrodin Pre-release I pulled a Tooth and Nail. I told a few people I thought it would be a viable card in the future. I was told I was wrong. My arguement was that Mirrodin has a lot of mana producers so it could easily be played in the right deck. People still didn't believe me. Now look at Tooth and Nail! I never built the deck but I picked it as being a potentially abusable card.

My aim in this column is to being new ideas to the table and perhaps revive some old ones. I like to get people think about things and keep an open mind.

That's all for this time. Stay tuned for my next article in a couple of weeks.
Joe Tobin (Aytakk2)