A Statement of Intentions

#2 – January 7, 2020

fine print – noun : inconspicuous details or conditions printed in an agreement or contract, especially ones that may prove unfavorable

So I’ve decided to restart my Magic experience.  What made me want to do this, what will it look like, and what do I hope to achieve?  How do I think such a thing is even possible?  I’m so glad I pretended that you asked these questions!

Why Do This?

Did I recently go 0-5 in a draft, or have I been beaten by too many Cavalcade of Calamity decks?  Did Oko, Thief of Fun turn too many of my bomb creatures into elks?  Do I pine for the days before green swallowed the color pie whole?

No, no, and actually, maybe a little, but ultimately still no.

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After a number of years of sporadic playing and purchasing, I wholeheartedly returned to Magic in 2017, and have been enjoying my time with the game since.  I’m not disillusioned with standard, furious at Wizards of the Coast’s play design for recent mistakes, or fed up with foils that still curl after weeks pressed under 40 pounds of books.

Should I be any of those things?  Possibly.  But I’m a casual player through and through, and I refuse to succumb to outrage or bitterness over every issue that incites the Reddit mob.  As much as I love the game, no aspect of it or corporate decision about it affects my overall happiness with it.  I’m deeply cynical about many things, but Magic is not one of those things.  The game is alright.  It has always been alright.  And it will continue to be alright for years to come.  You know – it ebbs and flows and all that polka.

So why am I starting over?  Wouldn’t it have made more sense to do that in 2017 upon my return to the game?  Of course.  But that’s clear only with hindsight.  After a few years discovering what I’d missed during the time I was only loosely connected with the game, I realized that the joy of discovery had become almost entirely tied to new set releases.  I flirted with fervent deckbuilding on Arena, but was soundly rejected when most of my ideas resulted in win rates rarely eclipsing 20%.  And, yeah, I ran low on rare wildcards, which severely limited further experimentation.

I’d also bought, but not opened, quite a bit of sealed product from the years I’d mostly missed.  I could only go so far back before costs got prohibitive (there will always be a span of 2-3 years I essentially missed completely, due to buying little product at the time, opening what little I did buy immediately, and not playing with any of it.)  But what was affordable was bought in at least nominal amounts – enough to get a decent taste of the world/block/era.  And I had grand illusions of my son learning and loving the game, and us then having all this product we could explore together.

Kids always screw up your plans.  Ask any parent.  It’s not the kid’s fault, and it’s for the best (ignore my gritted teeth.)  Kids teach you, from the earliest days, that they will be their own people, your best efforts at selfish guidance be damned.  It’s humbling and necessary.  But also infuriating, when they don’t robotically adore the same things you do in the exact same ways you do.  Idiotic youth.

To be fair, my son likes Magic.  Mostly Arena, though.  We play on paper occasionally, mostly sealed decks we’ve built or various precons.  He’s 12, and 12-year-olds crave screens.  Magic, especially paper Magic, is no match for Fortnite or his latest love, Pokemon Shield.  Maybe in the future he’ll be curious if the original Theros block’s stab at Greek mythology is interesting, or perhaps Kaladesh’s vibrant colors will catch his Xbox-glazed eyes.  He can’t prefer Salamence over Drakuseth forever, can he?

Seeing as how the kid might never glom onto the paper game, what to do with all my sealed product?  I never looked at any of it as an investment, so selling it or holding it to see if it financially appreciates has zero appeal.  My wife might prefer I eBay it (not that any of it is worth enough to put a dent in the retirement plans) but she’s very understanding of my ridiculous and ultimately pointless hobby.

Well then, why not open it?  No matter what anyone tells you, cracking packs is fun.

But still, a voice nagged at me.  Packs should be opened for a purpose.  I just needed one.  Almost a year ago the idea began to form – why not start a new collection?  Why not attempt to recapture my earliest days with Magic, where every pack revealed a new piece of art, or a new beat of a story, or a new corner of a far-flung world?  Where cards had values beyond a price on the internet, as well as homes in my heart for reasons beyond “being good in format x.”

The idea marinated for almost a year, my brain toying with it but never seizing on it.  As this last year spiraled to a close, though, that inertia was antagonizing.  I knew it was time for the concept to blossom, or die.  I decided: do it or don’t, but stop giving it a mental hospice where it resided like Schrödinger’s cat.

So, despite wise Yoda’s insistence to “do or do not – there is no try”, I’m going to try.

Try to rediscover this game I love.

OK, So…How Will This Work?

What will this experiment even look like?  What are my goals? What might put a wrench in the machinery?

Let’s start with some practicalities of how the reset button will work.

• Any and all opened cards I own as of December 31, 2019 are not part of my experiment.  I’m not selling, trading, or gifting any of them.  They’re…archived.  I can refer to them, tell stories about them, or use them outside of my experiment.  But they will not be mingling with my new cards.  No chrono-cohabitation.

• Any sealed product I open in 2020 is part of my “new” collection.  It can be product I already own, or product I buy throughout 2020 (or as long as I fervently cling to this concept.)

• Product will be opened as often as I feel like it, and/or when it suits the needs of this blog.  In other words, when I run out of material to write about, I’ll probably open some packs.

• While cards legal in standard will probably be the bulk of what gets opened, I will not be constrained by format.  Similarly, the form of the product is irrelevant.  Precons, box sets, and ye olde packs are all fair game, as are any sealed products I’ve not listed.

• Every card I open, regardless of source, will be logged in a database that anyone can access here:  The Collection

What’s the Point? 

I’m once again glad I pretended you asked!

• Break the curse of the Bobo Rare.  I’ll delve into this more as I progress, but suffice to say: I no longer wish to open an outsize share of bad rares/mythics.  My hope is that resetting my collection will do the trick.  If that fails, anyone reading along can suffer vicariously.

• Bring back the unbridled joy of discovery Magic used to bring.  Not that it was ever really gone, what with the aggressive new product schedule Wizards maintains.  There’s always been something exciting to anticipate.  But I’d like to move closer to the “new player” experience.  Perhaps I’ll try new formats, read up on lore I missed, or learn the names of contemporary artists I like beyond Seb McKinnon.

• Not going to lie – I kind of hope my son sees me opening packs and weasels his way into the experiment.  Hooked, he recruits all his friends and we have weekly Commander games wherein a decimate a bunch of pre-teens with my superior skills.

And, regrettably, there are…

Questions and Problems

Of course, problems. There are always problems. This is the fine print, after all.

• Will I buy singles?  When Magic was new to me, the internet was not fertile ground for singles purchases.  But neither were easily accessible set lists, and I’m not going to pretend those don’t exist.  So…maybe?  One thing I have never done, and will never do, is shell out the going rate for money cards.  I either open it or lust after it indefinitely.

• What formats will I play?  I’m currently without a playgroup.  I sling some cards with a friend every few months, and my son will play the occasional game, but beyond that, it’s just Arena currently.  So while I don’t have any concrete goals here, I’d love to find a playgroup at some point and expand my format experiences.  I may even summon the courage to visit my LGS on a day other than a prerelease.

• Speaking of Arena…what about Arena?  I’ve been playing it for over a year, and have finally built a decent collection as an almost completely free-to-play grinder.  I could start a new account, I suppose, and reboot electronically as well, but…um…I don’t want to.  When this whole paper experiment crashes and burns, I can just smush the new collection into the old one.  That’s not possible with Arena, so forever splitting my Arena collection sounds stupid.  As does trying to grind out two accounts.  As it currently stands, my plan is to keep Arena separate from this experiment.  We’ll see how it goes.

And the biggest question of all:

• Is it even possible to reboot my Magic experience?  With all the information now available to players, and the fact that I’ve been using much of that information regularly since returning to the game over two years ago, am I digging for water on the moon?  Will I stop reading spoilers for new sets, or refuse to look up card values?  Should I do those things?  The joy of discovering Magic in 1997 can’t possibly be reproduced in 2020, can it?  I didn’t read spoilers or check card prices in 1997, but that’s not because I was adhering to some notion of the purity of discovering the game.  I didn’t do those things in 1997 because it wasn’t possible to do those things in 1997.  Had the internet been more advanced back then, I’d have gladly used it to the extent I do today.

My 20+ years with Magic can’t be unlearned or un-experienced.  If I’m to find some lost joy or wonder in the game, I will have to do it in spite of my knowledge, or perhaps in conjunction with it.  Being able to now more readily identify a bobo rare than when I was young and stupid doesn’t mean I can’t still find value in the experience, or laugh at my wretched luck.  I don’t know how the experiment will go, what I’ll encounter along the way, or if it’ll even be successful.  The end result may be me admitting it’s a snipe hunt.

But someone has to (or at least should) open some of these packs.  This will give me a purpose to do it.  Writing about it will hopefully bring me some joy.  And if it does, Magic will once again have filled me with wonder.

Next up: packs! Sweet, sweet packs!