December 10, 2020
headspace – noun : the volume above a liquid or solid in a closed container
In my late teens and early 20s I would make near-weekly sojourns to the record store. My son wouldn’t even understand that concept, as there aren’t many of those still in existence and I haven’t been in one in years. But before Napster and iTunes and Spotify (or whatever other lit/dope/sick app the youngins spin these days for bumping eargasms) you bought music physically.
I would return home with 3-4 CDs after most trips, as I was consuming music at a frantic pace in those years. And whichever disc I wanted to listen to most was the one I played last.
I told myself that this strange behavior was born from how I ate meals: one food at a time, with the favorite saved for last. Even if that meant my Mom’s vomitous salmon loaf had to go down first so I could choke my way through the less gag-inducing three bean nightmare…
In the present day, I can see that that analogy was just how I explained away odd conduct I didn’t really understand.
And while I outgrew eating my food one item at a time, or saving the best part for last (when it’s cold?) I still have a tendency to want to delay gratification for suspect reasons.
So my booster pack advent calendar has been a psychologically revealing experiment. While – in theory – I want every pack to contain something awesome, I know most of them will cough up bobo rares. And as I pull each day’s random pack from my decorated shoebox, I find myself secretly hoping to pull out the packs from sets that are largely devoid of value.
Hour of Devastation. Journey into Nyx. Oath of the Gatewatch. Fate Reforged.
The odds of getting anything solid from any of those sets is staggeringly and depressingly remote.
Seriously…have you looked at what you can open from Born of the Gods? There’s only 1 rare in the entire set worth more than $1.90, and only 5 of the set’s 35 rares are worth more than $1. I’d like to get this pack out of the way early, please!
Even the oldest pack in group of 24 that began this weird holiday adventure, Dark Ascension, has a slim chance of containing something useful (financially or for gameplay.) And that was the pack I yanked on day 2. Not surprisingly, it contained a bobo rare:
To be fair, it looked like a fun and interesting card on first glance. But then I realized it lacks the key rider tacked on to similar cards in recent years: “you may spend mana as though it were mana of any color to cast that spell.”
Without that language present…a definite bobo. The 20-cent pricetag and lack of deck representation on EDHREC confirmed this just isn’t useful outside of limited play.
So anyway…not only am I quietly rooting for my early packs to be salmon loaf – those almost guaranteed to be busts – when I do reveal a pack with potential – such as Core 2020 – I’m half-heartedly wishing for something iffy. As if that will magically guarantee later packs will be stuffed with foil mythics and chase rares.
This is – obviously – not logical or healthy behavior. And it’s exactly the kind of mindset that this advent calendar experiment was meant to help me confront (and start to overcome.)
Nine days in and I’m clearly still having difficulty breaking my lousy pack-cracking outlook. But you know what else I’m having?
Fun.
Opening packs has been FUN!
Even when I open shoulder-shruggers like Silent Gravestone and Precinct Captain.
But…and this is a big but (no rapping allowed!)…I’ve done quite well so far. In nine packs I’ve already opened four mythics. As mentioned in my last post, Avacyn, Angel of Hope kicked off the jolly holiday season, and has been followed by these solid finds:
Add two foil rares, one of which is actually playable:
After 8 days – the first of which started with one of my three Masters packs – I moved to the middle third of my advent calendar, and happened to select another Masters pack. Inside was this very grey (but great) gem:
As this horrific year drunkenly staggers to a merciful end I’ve resolved to build my first Commander deck at the dawn of the new year. And this feels like a perfect inclusion to just about any deck I might build.
Oh, and it’s a $35 card.
All told, the rares and mythics in my first 9 packs have netted me over $75 in value. There’s no way I average better than $8 a pack from the remaining 15, but even if they’re littered with bobos, I’ll have opened more mythics than can usually be expected from 24 packs, and added a number of truly excellent, and undeniably playable, cards to the collection.
Now if only I could convince myself to crack some of the Commander Legends collector boosters I’m sitting on…
Casual Magicking 