Player Psychology
As the spoiler season of the new set, Dragons of Tarkir, came to a close, each aspect of a person was revealed in their own method to evaluate the newest cards as they are previewed and in the process of being printed. These cards represent an aspect of the game that almost anyone can enjoy, and find joy in.
A Timmy is a player that wants to “go big, or go home,” in the most literal meaning to exist. These players are the one that will play in a manner that no other player can deal with. They use the game to experience in with the most powerful cards and the most powerful spells with regard of setting up a position of visceral appeal. The biggest effect to game is the one that comes from the most expensive, resource-wise, in the game, leaving a devastating effect on the whole board. The point of winning isn’t to just win, but win in a show of power and dominance in their own cards. Timmys will often succumb to their own arrogance and fall face flat against people who are already prepared for the objects and obstacle a Timmy will set forth.
Spikes are the ones that win. They are the ones that use the most promising mean to win, the most notable method to winning: The most notable and accomplished deck in a proper, competitive environment. Their appeal is in the adrenaline rush of winning and the rush of a competition. Accomplishing this is set up by outplaying the opponent at each crossroad of decision and reaching the finish line with glory. Winning is the only thing these players have in mind as long as they are pushed to winning. Spikes are the players that care about nothing else, and are often the ones that are looked at as cancerous to the growth and environment of Magic: the Gathering as they fall prey to the adrenaline and emulsified judgment that comes with winning.
People find method to self-expression in just about anything done. Playing Magic: the Gathering is no different to this, and this is what a Johnny represents. To each degree in a Best out of Three match, Johnny will use style to win a game, and finding something out of the ordinary to get such a job done. These players will choose a deck best suited to winning in style, a deck they have come up with on their own in the end. It is about showing off the creative aspect to magic, a Johnny’s creative side. Self-expression of what the players are able to accomplish and deliver. Johnny players are those that lose too much to themselves and their work to express themselves.
As Spikes, Timmys, and Johnnys are featured to the join of playing; Melvin and Vorthos are featured on the z-axis where the others will be featured on the y or x axis.
Melvin players are those that appreciate the smaller things to the creature of Magic: the Gathering. The interactions, abilities, and delicacy put into the creation of a game instead of playing a game of magic. Mechanics featured and the interactions that each card has in ability with another. The creation of a game from the Development aspect is their means to playing a game, and the means to appreciate what is the creation of something so elaborate as what goes into the development of Magic: the Gathering.
Vorthos are featured on the other end of the z-axis, as they are worked into appreciated the lore of a story. The dramatic fall after the suspense and build up of to the conclusion of a story. The flavor of the multiverse as each new set comes into the minds and the story is developed. The art, flavor text, and each aspect of a card tell their own story that plays a role into the story. These players are the ones that appreciate what goes into creating an everlasting effect on the story and continuity of that story. Each aspect is secondary to the story itself, but they are also underlining to the creation of the story.
Normally, these two players are out of the scope of competitive playing, and are featured as characters to the world itself. The hermits of Magic until something, Preview or Spoiler season, calls to them. These players are that group of people hiding in the background of a dark alley way trying to sell drugs or alcohol to kids, but in a more positive outlook. Instead of drugs and alcohol, they are telling stories and appreciating what comes into focus as a world in unveiled from the shadows of Wizard of the Coast’s Research and Development team.
These players are seen as a Timmy, Spike, or Johnny as they sleeve up their deck for the Friday Night Magic scene in preparation for a tournament. But Melvin and Vorthos are as important to the creation of a competitive environment as they push the envelope for what is expected or a reveled with or against. The creation of new, elaborate decks or the means to play into a certain situation all account for both the story and finer details of this trading card game.
But each of these players are what create the competitive tournament scene on each level. To the tabletop, casual gaming area where everyone can play what they want, how they want. The Friday Night Magic scene where competitive means casual as a method to unite each player together. They enter the Regular Rules Enforcement Level, or Regular REL where the judges take action for misplays and issues against the ruling, but don’t pressure the players into making the right call when it comes down to knowing the rules or not. The Competitive REL scene is where each area is questioned, and met with the means of being rewarded or degraded for their call. These levels represent a level of a person regardless of their psychographic and playing tendency, and were each person works to improve and accomplish what is desired: becoming a better player. And the best players all have the same goal in mind and use the same method to winning. They learn from each option and plan how to strive toward victory in their own means.
The first round of a tournament is the rise of and fall of success for each player, as they draw the opening seven cards and look upon their fate; mulligan their hand or to keep and hope for the best against the opening.
There is a different method to each person’s playstyle as there is with their own deck of choice, and sound reason for the sixty card mainboard with an up to 15 card sideboard.
The tools are accessible for each player, but there are different ways for a player use these tools to their advantage. How approaching the game is what puts people in their places, the calibre they play at and the ability to change a state of the game within a given situation.
Mr. Johnny himself, Jon Finkel, is notarized as the strongest and most successful player in the game, with a record of 14 Top 8 placements in the Pro Tour level, the most grossing amount of top eights for the amount of players to play at the pro tour. Jon Finkel is known as Mr. Johnny for how he plays the game, choosing decks that often would lose to themselves by fizzling out of an engine of a combo or not being able to get far enough with the resources themselves, but then he is also the player that enjoys such sentiments in the game where a deck works, and the choices of the game reflect how much work a player would put into winning. Jon Finkel uses this his decks to reflect his reaction to a game, to a format, to and the boundaries that surround him in an environment by letting himself become his worst foe and best enemy.
Stanislav Cifka is known for doing just that as he was featured with the most outstanding with record in the Pro Tour of October, 2014, going for the win with the infamous and most time strenuous deck, exotic to the Modern format at the time. The deck was a mechanic itself known as Second Breakfast or Eggs, for the tools to crack themselves and refuel an engine until there was finally a drawn and powerful win condition to close out the game. Choosing a deck out the outer scale of people’s knowledge, while also using his own ability and intellect to appropriate his win.
Spikes are seen everywhere, and the “best deck” is not always the right choice. These players work to win, and will set themselves up to be in the best position to win. As the tournament doors open and people walk to their seats, facing down a new foe, comes the spark that ignites a Spikes true passion. Everyone experiences a moment of Spike, and every player has some element of Spike in themselves with the idea that they are going to win. Each player who takes their army and resources to the battlefield is a spike in their own manner, and encases the idea of what a Spike represents.
Luis-Scott Vargas is one of the best players to consistently take himself to a tournament on any level, preparing to win, but not letting his delusion fall short of his own ability. This player is one who attempts any type of deck with the knowledge that this deck would the best one set up to take down a tournament and the percentage of match ups that is expected for a tournament. As a player, LSV reflects the idea of spike to the highest degree, with the drive to win and letting himself be put into a position to be in the best position to do just that.
A player who goes big and is big in the world of competitive playing is Lee Shi-Tian, as he is a person who the most Pro Tour top 8s without a single win, falling short behind most the accomplished of players and leaving out of contention for the Hall of Fame, separating him from others. That doesn’t stop this machine as he takes his focus to playing decks that are able to “Go big” against the field and leave people in a sandstorm of their own ability to be unprepared for what Lee Shi-Tian strives to accomplish. He is just sent home as his Top 8 moment comes to an end as he loses to those who are prepared in the quarter-finals, not reaching the Top 4 or the finals themselves.
But each player has the same method: learn from each opportunity and take it to become a better player. That is what comes together for the community to exist even when we are divided by methods, styles, and demeanor toward Magic: the Gathering. The passion and motivation to learn, as it is the best weapon that people were given to change and adapt to such a world.
Learning is a step in the right direction. Using the tools that people learn to become better is right direction itself. To use such tools means to be able to look at each opportunity as a learning tool. These people are the ones who know themselves enough to know what they did wrong and find a different direction to their outs in a game, match, or any struggle that they face. These choices are what either hurt them or strengthen them at the crossroads.
Players choose their own type of deck. Players use Magic: the Gathering as a release into a world of spell slinging, as planeswalkers against other planeswalkers. The players who attribute to their own success are the ones that are able to put themselves forward into the line of success. Decks that suit them as a player, in some form or another. These type of decks are what lead to success, and what shift the idea of good players and ones who are able to win tournaments, to be featured on the pro tour, to win a grand prix. Those are the best players are ones who are praised for their accomplishments and the ones that people look up to, so that one day the good players could one day be the best players.
Those who transverse from plane to plane along side the multiverse learn about themselves from what they do and who they meet in their travels. The take the worse and the best of whatever they face into account as an opportunity to reach the next tier of competitive Magic: the Gathering playing. From one step to the next is a degree that pushes each type of player to work to strive and work to become a better player. For each player, there is a level of equal performance for these players to test their skills, and work for a new goal in their mind.
The crossroads is where they mean a demon, selling their soul to a certain decision and finding out what the outcome of their decision becomes.
The mind is the biggest tool to any course of action, planning out what will be done and finding a route around any problem that might occur. In Murphy’s law, “Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong”, is where people work to strive passed and find a route to success. Those who are prepared are the ones that are able to get a step over those who aren't.
Each player has something about them that is the same with another. The person at the top tables with the best win record has something the same with the person sitting at the lowest, or already dropped from the tournament as each loss lessens their chance to win the event. Even the players who just want to do whatever they want. in regards to the legal boundaries of what a format or tournament provides, has something similar to the person that cares about their own method to winning.
These players are divided by how something is done, and how each person will work to accomplish something toward the direction of getting it done. Their differences are what separate themselves from one another, but the community comes together on one degree itself and the same goes for each player out there; They strive to have fun with the game; finding new means and methods to having fun, and put in the work to have fun.
Even is a Johnny doesn't play the best deck or a Vorthos uses a deck of his own creation to win a Grand Prix or be featured on the Pro Tour, the community comes together for the love and passion of something that Wizards of the Coast, under the direction of Hasbro, has created. The world of Magic: the Gathering is both a story told their the sets and the cards, as well as an experience for the spellslingers to tap down their mana sources and call to their side an army of powerful and effective cards against other planeswalkers.
Magic: the Gathering is more than just a game, as it is an environment and a world all its own for the players, the tournament hands, the judges and the spectators to experience with one another. Magic: the Gathering brings everyone together despite their differences to celebrate the joy of themselves with the joy of knowing who they are, as they win or lose a tournament or as the come by to just as the game comes to a close.
I have been able to use this game for myself: to get better and to be apart of something that puts me forward with other people, and to be a part of a community that changed the way I looked at what I do and what I play a role in. I am a Johnny, as Magic: the Gathering is a form of self-expression, but I can appreciate everything about the game and I do appreciate everything that Magic: the Gathering has done, has practiced, and will continue to mold as it only grows and as the community itself grows as well.
