A Magical Gathering

Part of the enduring appeal of Magic: the Gathering — now in its 23rd year of existence — is that it’s a game that can almost always fit a players’ needs, regardless of where they are in life. When I started playing as a young middle schooler, I wanted a casual game I could play with my friends at recess or late at night on sleepovers. There was little focus on constructing coherent decks — we just played with whatever cards we had, usually sorted into piles of the five colors (so we each had a “red deck” and a “green deck”). I had very little idea what I was doing in terms of any sort of strategy and rarely won, but winning wasn’t my priority compared to just having fun and absorbing the fantasy world created by the cards.

I eventually fell mostly out of touch with my old Magic friends and went through college without playing much, though I continued to keep up a bit with the new sets. When I graduated, I had a lot of free time on my hands, and that was when I got hooked back in. Like many older players who come back to Magic, I rediscovered it as a pure strategy game, like a more complex combination of chess and poker except with elves and dragons instead of pawns or face cards. And while I never took it very seriously as a kid, this time I found myself enjoying the competition and figuring out how to win. I began devouring content on websites like ChannelFireball.com, watching streams on Twitch.tv, and started playing a lot on Magic Online in hopes of improving as a player.

Playing online has its benefits: the impossibly complex rules of Magic are enforced automatically (though, given the state of the software, this is sometimes with varying degrees of success). There are games available any time of day. Some people have also claimed that it’s possible to play online without wearing pants, though this is not something I would know anything about. Most of all, it’s easy to put in a lot of volume to get better at the game, and after months of frequent playing, watching, and reading about Magic, I started to get a grasp of what it takes to win consistently. I began to think about advanced Magic concepts like card advantage, tempo, and other strategical elements that never occurred to me when I was playing it as a kid during recess — as it turns out, the game goes far deeper than I had ever imagined.

What is obviously missing from playing online is the social aspect of Magic, unless you count being called a “lucker noob” by ZappaRules420 as socializing. And since I’ve been kind of looking for things to do now that I have my driver’s license anyways, the paper cards began to call me back. So after a lot of internal pep talks to get over my social anxiety, I decided to head to Mead Hall games in Minneapolis for the Magic Origins prerelease on Saturday night.

I had seen Mead Hall (along with its “Magic social network” site, The Meadery) on Twitch a lot, and heard good things from people who played there. My biggest fear was going to a store filled with kids like I used to be, who weren’t really thinking about Magic in that competitive way. Mead Hall caters to an older player base who I figured would challenge me and help me continue to get better as a player. And hopefully I could also make some friends in the process.

I still don’t know where anything is in Minneapolis, so I arrived at the prerelease 20 minutes late, sweating after walking somewhat aimlessly for about two miles after getting off the light rail (I left my phone in the car and forgot the address — it’s a long story). Fortunately, I had reserved a ticket online, so I still had a chance to build my sealed deck, though in less time than the other players. At the prerelease, you get to choose one of the five colors and receive a “seeded” pack of cards in that color, which will ideally allow you to play it. I went with green, since it’s my favorite: even though I consider myself a “competitive” player now, I still take child-like joy in smashing people with giant creatures, which green specializes in.

In that regard, my sealed pool provided what I was looking for, in the form of two copies of Gaea’s Revenge, an expensive, enormous creature that is extremely difficult for other players to deal with. It became quickly apparent that if I was going to win with my pool, it would involve building a deck that could reliably cast those two huge threats. My green also had some good early blockers, a couple copies of Wild Instincts to help kill opposing creatures, and — perhaps most importantly — a copy of Nissa’s Pilgrimage, which would allow me to accelerate into my copies of Gaea’s Revenge.

At this point, I needed to use one of my other colors to pair with the green. Red and white offered basically nothing at a glance. Black had a cute elf subtheme and also a potential reanimation strategy where I would use my two copies of Gather the Pack to dump Gaea’s Revenge into my graveyard, then bring it back with Necromantic Summons. Unfortunately, it lacked any removal for my opponents’ threats, so I ended up dismissing it pretty quickly.

Blue, on the other hand, gave me three copies of Claustrophobia, a premium removal spell, and also had the most interesting card in my pool: Jace, Vryn’s Prodigy, a creature that “transforms” into a Planeswalker and is one of the main characters of the Magic Origins set. I decided that I didn’t go to the Magic Origins prerelease to not play my potential Planeswalker, so I went with the blue/green build, playing 18 lands instead of the usual 17 to help support Claustrophobia’s double-blue mana cost.

9 Island
9 Forest
1 Sword of the Animist
1 Tower Geist
1 Guardian Automaton
3 Timberpack Wolf
1 Hitchclaw Recluse
1 Negate
1 Jace, Vryn’s Prodigy
2 Gaea’s Revenge
1 Llanowar Empath
1 Anchor to the AEther
1 Orchard Spirit
1 Elvish Visionary
1 Nissa’s Pilgrimage
1 Rhox Maulers
3 Claustrophobia
2 Wild Instincts

My first round opponent is one of the store’s regulars, who kindly puts up with a lot of my first-paper-Magic-game-in-several-years jitters. He’s playing a black/white deck with a lot of efficient creatures, which seems to match up pretty well against me. In game one, I have my first wake-up call when it comes to needing to track details in a game of paper Magic: I have Negate in my hand with mana available, but am unused to having to actually remember my hand vs. reading it off a screen and let my opponent resolve a turn three Read the Bones without really thinking about it. I end up losing the game with the spell left sitting in my hand.

In game two, I start settling into the rhythm of paper Magic more as my old kid memories of how it all works start coming back to me. We end up on a stalled board until my opponent plays Tragic Arrogance, which combines with his Graveblade Marauder to create a lethal threat on the next turn while leaving me with a lone Timberpack Wolf. Fortunately, I topdeck a Wild Instincts to kill the Marauder — trading two cards for one (usually a gross feeling for a competitive Magic player) but leaving the board empty with mana available for my sideboarded Bone to Ash and a Gaea’s Revenge also in hand. I counter his next play (the bomby Sentinel of the Eternal Watch), then untap and smash him with Gaea’s Revenge, which eventually evens the match at 1–1.

In the third game, I get stuck for a bit on four lands, but my deck is able to keep me alive until I draw out of it. By then, I have a string of powerful spells while my opponent draws lots of land. We go past time on the round, each getting five additional turns before it’s a draw, but thanks to Gaea’s Revenge and a timely Jace transformation I’m able to sneak away with the 2–1 win. My opponent and I are both pretty much in agreement that I was lucky to win the match, but I gladly take my first paper victory in several years.

Round two ends up being my most uneventful match. My opponent (also a friendly dude) is on a red/black aggressive-looking deck. In game one he casts Demolish on my only Island, but I casually shrug it off and curve out with big creatures that his deck can’t really deal with, including the finishing Gaea’s Revenge. In game two he keeps a land-heavy draw while I have a turn three Nissa’s Pilgrimage into Rhox Maulers followed quickly by a Gaea’s Revenge that kills him. At this point, a trend is beginning to form in the tournament: friendly opponents who draw too many lands and get crushed by Gaea’s Revenge.

I’m nervous before round three — as you move up the standings in a sealed tournament, the decks you play against get progressively better, and I worry about whether mine can stack up. My opponent has a very good red/white aggressive deck with tons of cheap creatures that utilize the new renown mechanic that lets them get bigger when they deal damage to you. He dumps his hand quickly in the first game, but I’m barely able to stabilize thanks to drawing all three Claustrophobias. I eventually cast Gaea’s Revenge, which plays defense for a couple turns until I build up my board enough to start attacking with it. At this point, I’m at only two life, and my opponent casts an Act of Treason that threatens to kill me. Fortunately, I have my trusty Negate in hand. This time I remember to cast it, and it wins me the game.

The matchup still doesn’t feel great to me, which is mostly verified in game two when he runs me over with a strong aggressive draw. In game three, I end up seeing one land across my first three hands, so I start the game with four cards in hand — basically a death sentence. However, my opponent also has mulliganed, and while I miss my second land drop, my hand starts to come together: I draw my second land to play a Timberpack Wolf, then topdeck an Elvish Visionary that gets me the third land I need to cast Nissa’s Pilgrimage next turn. Meanwhile, my opponent’s aggressive deck fizzles as he draws an estimated 2.3 billion lands, and I end up winning the game easily with another Gaea’s Revenge.

My fourth round opponent offers to intentionally draw because she wants to get somewhere at 10, which I’m fine with after barely scraping by in two of my matches. We each get five packs of the new set for our 3–0–1 finish. Overall, I was pretty happy with my build of the deck — the only change I’d make was possibly switching Sword of the Animist for a Guardians of Meletis. Sword is a cool rare that I wanted to try, and accelerating my mana is very good, but I rarely was in a position where I could afford to spend two to equip and lose a blocker. Guardians would have helped against some of the aggressive draws that gave my deck trouble, especially ones that involve renown creatures. I also felt I played pretty well and was able to adjust to paper smoother than I expected, though it’ll take some time to fully work out all the kinks.

Mostly, the experience reminded me that paper Magic can be a lot more fun than just playing online, and I came way impressed with Mead Hall — not just the store itself, but also the staff and players, who were universally courteous and welcoming to a new guy. It’s a little bit out of the way for me to get there, but it’s worth it to play with the right crowd, and I imagine I’ll be returning there in the near future.