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And that's a pretty good question.

I was walking by a local park one day and stopped to watch some kids playing soccer. They were probably about 10 years old or so. It was an organised event with parents and uniforms and orange drink and nose picking. They were having a grand time as I watched for about ten minutes and saw Team A score no less than 7 goals on Team B. In fact, Team B never even got past midfield. Clearly outmatched and outclassed, Team B was having a grand-old time - some of them were even attempting to play soccer, with others playing "let's sit on the ground for a while". They most certainly expected to lose.

I was in the hallway during the Judgement Prerelease - can't remember exactly which flight or round, but I was standing there doing a bit of trading when the doors burst open and this kid ran out and over to his friends…

"I just played Ben Seck!" He cried.
(insert random utterings of "ooh" and "wow" here from friends)
"How'd you go?"
"In the second game, I got him down to SIX!" boasted the kid.
(insert more "oohs" and "ahhs" here)

One would assume that Mt. Everest had been bested. Certainly this kid never expected to win the tournament.

But he was there, and Team B was there as well. Happily getting their ass handed to them in the name of competition.

And now to be brutal:

Every Magic shop/community has "randoms". A random being defined as a person who is ever-present at Magic tournaments and drafts, whilst never having any real chance of winning that tournament/draft. Another definition of Random is Dave Cornford, but for an entirely different reason. Or at least HE thinks so. Only jokes.

In the harshest sense, randoms are rating point food - and the lifeblood of the game shops. After all, these are the people that actually buy boxes and Stalking Bloodsuckers. Magic is an expensive pastime if you win a lot - it is a black-hole-from-which-money-never-returneth if you do not.

A friendlier term for this phenomenon might be "Beginner" and in fact, with rare exception, all of us have been "randoms" at some point during their magic career. I remember this Gauntlet of Might deck I had once… 4 Gauntlets, 4 Shivans, 4 Ball Lightnings, 4 Bolt, 4 Fireball, 4 Mana Flares, 4 Dragon Whelps… I loved that deck. Spent a lot of effort trading to get it all Beta or black bordered. Spent many nights softly cooing at the deck laid out on the coffee table. Spent many tournaments losing! How could this be? My deck was red and fiery and fat and I could fireball you for 20 or kill you with one attack from my Shivan. This assumes however, that I am not dead from your unstably mutated flying men or bloodlusted kird ape or, heaven forbid, your one counterspell. Yes, while I chuckle about those days of Magic, I cannot look past the flashing neon Random sign that was firmly attached to my forehead.

Some people remain in that phase ad infinitum. I look at some of the piles of would-be draft decks I create and I wonder whether I have grown out of it. In fact, after taking 3 years off and coming back to a game that had "suddenly" introduced such things as the stack, I was the picture of randomness. I even liked drafting Whipkeeper.

But I digress - I am attempting to get to the point of winning expectations. Surely sitting down at a table with Kai and Maher and the like, the average player does not expect to win the draft in fact they would expect to lose. And yet they are still there, drafting and spending and drafting. "Laughing and Lying and Laughing" - G Costanza

It would seem that there are a number of reasons/motivations for playing Magic - and most people would have some mixture of the following:

1. Winning
2. Prizes/money
3. The Social Aspect
4. The lure of competition
5. Hardcore Gamers - read addict
6. Community aspect (part of a team, belonging)
7. It impresses the ladies - this is apparently only relevant to Scott Smith as he is wont to say, that "chicks dig angels". So it goes.

I would order the importance of the list above as 4, 1, 3, 6, 2, 5 with 7 being a distant seventh - in fact my wife is decidedly unimpressed most of the time. I even dragged her to a draft for the first time ever on Saturday. She had that smile on her face that is often seen on a mother whose kid is trying to show them something that they think is incredibly amazing. Like how fast they can drink a glass of water. Even winning the draft did not elicit the "you're my hero" response that all gladiators would expect with victory… more of the "can we go now" response. Ah well.

Competition - "it's not so much whether you win or lose…". Tell-tale signs of a competition junkie range from staying up til 4am one-on-one drafting - as often as possible - (ahem) to going to the DCI web site at 10:01pm on Wednesday nights because the ratings are updated at 10 (ahem)

Winning - related to but different than competition. It would seem, for example, that certain players, specifically from Melbourne and more specifically donning black t-shirts are really there for one reason - to win. Magic becomes very serious and phrases like "preserving ranking" are often uttered. This is not a criticism, it's number 2 on my list of reasons as well. If you feel that any tournament in which you don't win is a waste of time, then you probably fit into this category

Social - Thursday night drafts are a time to get together and play and eat and laugh at Scott Smith (really, I'm not bitter). Magic has created for many people a set of at least de facto friends and a social environment with a higher tolerance level for acceptable behaviour and bodily odours. If you would rather spend your time on Modo than down at the shop, chances are, this item is not high on your list.

Community - This is related to social, but is more towards the "Cheers" aspect of Magic. The local shop becomes a place to hang out, with an atmosphere that is consistent and comfortable. The Sydney Games Centre fits this bill for the greater Sydney area - with a variety of Magic and people hanging around from Thursday to Sunday every week. I can shamelessly direct you to www.sydneygamescentre.com to check out what's happening there as I am in no way recompensed by the shop - other than the utility gained in taking part in the community there.

Prizes/Money - This is of less importance to me personally as I have a job (a RL job - not just playing modo), but the occasional PTQ cheque does not go amiss. For a lot of Magic players - particularly those unemployed or Uni students, winning a box at a pre-release is a pretty big deal - that equates to 12 drafts that they don't have to shell out $$ for.

Hardcore Gamers - For these people Magic is convenient because generally speaking, there is always something available for them to play - getting a group of people together for D&D might require planning and happen only weekly, but Magic is nearly every day

Ladies - well, I'll leave that to Scott Smith

I'm sure I have missed a few categories of why people play Magic, such as "To get away from my kids" or "Because I have a cardboard addiction", but I believe that covers the majority. Happy to hear about your motivation

Scott Hunstad

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