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Magic - Can you quit?

With talk of Greg Cantori leaving the Magic: The Gathering scene, I thought I would talk about my own imposed six-month absence from the game, and let you know my opinion of the new Constructed Formats.

I remember my last game clearly. It was the Prophecy Pre-Release and my last game was against Corey Hill. We had been friends for a while and playtested together. It felt good that both of us were playing off against each other for 1st and 2nd place, as I was still undefeated all day and Corey was close but had a draw early in the tournament. Corey won the first game and that’s where we left it. Why spoil a day with a 2-0 loss? At least we won a box each. I can remember going home and opening the entire box that night with my wife helping, that is, taking cards she wanted or liked.

Now that day is gone and was over five months ago and I have not played a game since. Being in the Defence Force I have been taken all over Australia and the world. This does not help my self-admitted addiction to Magic a bit. The last six months have been tough. I was going to play in the Nationals, I had even had my deck built and in Canberra all I had to do was show up but I couldn’t get away from my medical studies in Albury for the long weekend. From there I was deployed overseas straight to here, East Timor, which is sunny except from 4 to 6 when the rain falls.

As the Townsville TO I have missed many tournaments which I helped plan. In my absence I have had to hand the control over to other people to run. I have been to every prerelease since Tempest, including Portal III. By the way, if anyone has a PR card for Invasion they don’t want, send me an e-mail [Got it covered--Darryl]. So missing Invasion was a big thing for me. I still did my homework on the set in the days before hand to help my wife, who did get to go.

I will miss tournaments in the near future, too. GP Sydney: I'm an Aussie player and I can’t even make the GP in my home country. My wife wants me to go to a wedding for one of her friends on the same weekend. It's also our own wedding anniversary. So this leaves my comeback to Magic to be the last Extended Tournament in Canberra for this year. I can say I can't quit this game yet.

Missing these tournaments has inspired me to try even harder to be a better player, by studying more for the game instead of just playing. The absence I think has added to my love of Magic. There is now not a day that goes by that I don’t think about my return or a new way to use the new cards. Even though I still have not seen one card from Invasion, just spoilers, I have come up with several ideas for decks. I don’t think many Invasion cards will be used in the Extended format. Don’t get me wrong there will be some great cards there. Standard are where the big changes will be.

Mana ratios will become more of an issue to think about. I have spent what seems like hours trying to perfect the ratio for my decks and just out of interest the least amount of land I have had in a 60 card deck is 12 and the deck won the tournament. The most in a 60 card deck was 28 and I finished third in the tournament. Now with some cards requiring several different basic land cards in play we may see more land search than non-basic lands. My big question is: when is Strip Mine coming back or a similar card to Dust Bowl to remove basic lands?

The new Dual Lands, although not as good as the original, seem to be a great new addition to Standard. I expect we'll lose pain-lands, but in the meantime there are eight lands that tap for two allied colors each. Rumours say three-color land is on the way. With what downfalls though? Untap, Pain, Sac, etc? It can’t be that bad, look at City of Brass: 5 colors and only 1 damage per use.

Well this ends my thought on the new mana issues. Greg, you will miss the game. I would also bet you will be back, so don’t get rid of your cards. Even turning up to Limited Tournaments will feed the Magic bug in all of us.

I will once again be playing Magic soon, but with greater knowledge and power. So watch out Canberra I will be there next month looking for victory. See you all there!

Peter Allan
manaweb@hotmail.com