Casual Magicking

March 30, 2020

doom – noun : 1993 first-person shooter developed by …. wait …. how is this what initially comes up on Google?

Have you ever become really (I mean REALLY really) invested in a single Magic deck? Not necessarily financially, mind you. I’m talking about a more emotional investment. It becomes a deck you’ve played dozens or hundreds of time, learned its nuances, tweaked it over weeks or months or even years to make it an unstoppable juggernaut (or just a fantastic play experience.)

I haven’t. Or, I hadn’t, up until the past month or so. Not in all my years of playing had I ever crafted a deck I adored so much that I treated it like a child, nurturing it and helping it grow and thrive. Sure, I had “pet” decks that I kept intact for long stretches of time, to be pulled out on occasion. But none of them lodged in my heart like an adopted shelter cat that curls up in your lap when you’re sad.

Arena allows me to play Magic almost daily, and with my son happy to just dabble in the game for 30 minutes or so every few weeks, it’s Arena where I get my ongoing Magic fix. Though I’m a free-to-play grinder, I’ve learned to squirrel away gold for months in order to “buy” scads of boosters when new sets are released. Theros: Beyond Death was the pinnacle of this strategy. When it was released I spent 100,000 gold to get 100 packs of it, and I then quickly set about making use of all those cards.

As I’ve mentioned before, Enigmatic Incarnation was the THB card that won my heart initially, and the deck I built around it is still favorited on Arena. I played it extensively for a few weeks, but as is pretty typical for me, I yearned to try other things. Repetition – in music, movies, TV, games – has been anathema to me since I was a teenager. How anyone listens to the same song twice in a row baffles me. People who put a single song on “repeat” are, to my line of thinking, utter psychos.

After playing it extensively for a few weeks, Enigmatic Incarnation gave way to a Boros control deck I played for awhile. Taking one of the most aggressive color combinations and using it to play slower, grindier games was refreshing. Control tends to be synonymous with counterspells, so blue-less control was a joy to play and (I hope) something different for my opponents to play against.

After a few weeks of that my wanderlust awoke and I went trawling for something new. And I found it in something old:

Doom Foretold.

This is a quintessential control card, belonging in the “resource denial” category. Lots of people built decks around it when it was released in Throne of Eldraine, including me. I went with the predictable Dance of the Manse deck, wherein you fill your own graveyard with artifacts and enchantments while preventing your opponent from building out their own board or fully advancing their strategy. Once you hit 8 mana, you can play Dance of the Manse to return 6 artifacts or enchantments from your graveyard to the battlefield, getting whatever bonuses those cards naturally bestow, and turning all of them into 4/4 creatures. Stalling the opponent long enough to get to 8 mana was often the challenge, but a resolved 8-mana Dance of the Manse, if not immediately followed up by a board wipe from the opponent, was typically “virtual good game handshake” time.

Though these sorts of decks never made it to the upper echelons of constructed play, it was frustrating enough to play against that I started seeing not-infrequent concessions to a resolved Doom Foretold. People like keeping their stuff. A card that forces them to sacrifice something every turn requires strategy and patience to endure. I started to feel bad playing that deck, and retired it. Not sure I’ve played it in 2020, honestly.

When I recently saw a Mardu (white/black/red) list that used Doom Foretold, I was intrigued. It still used the somewhat-reviled Doom Foretold, but took the strategy in an intriguing direction thanks to some Theros: Beyond Death cards. I tried the list out, and found it reasonably enjoyable to pilot. It was capable of winning often enough to trot out regularly, and I even beat some tier 1 decks on occasion. Having played my Dance/Doom deck enough last fall to have some idea of how to get the most out of Doom Foretold, I kept playing this new Mardu deck because it felt somehow familiar, even though it plays quite differently from the old Esper (white/blue/black) Dance/Doom deck.

Decklist, as I play it, can be found here: Mardoom

Did you know that if you play a deck often enough, you’ll actually learn how to play it better? Not in the “avoid doing something dumb” sense, but more in the “making the best play in the moment” sense. This shouldn’t be a shocking revelation, I know, but for perhaps the first time in my life, I’ve played a deck enough to build a substantial connection with it. I’ve never stuck with a single deck long enough to learn not only how best to play it, but how to adjust play patterns depending on what the opponent is doing.

I’m not sure why Mardoom (as I so cleverly call it) has been so satisfying to play. It’s competitive but certainly not good enough to regularly beat tier 1 strategies (white/blue control and Simic flash, in particular, just tend to demolish it.) But I recently beat what looked like a fully optimized Temur Clover deck, and I was happily bewildered by that. If I had to speculate, I think I enjoy Mardoom because:

• It doesn’t strike me as particularly oppressive to play against. I’ve never had a mirror match with Mardoom (in fact, I’ve never played anything like it on Arena), so what do I know? But I don’t counter any spells, nor do I use any planeswalkers (the worst of which are indubitably miserable to play against unless you’re running a tier 1 deck yourself.) While I’m certainly trying to win, I want me and my opponent to have a fun and fair game of Magic (when possible.) If you’re troubled by this attitude, then this may not be the deck (or blog) for you.

• Its win conditions are not entirely “meta”. I run three copies of Archon of Sun’s Grace, a card I’ve seen in a number of relatively powerful white/blue control decks. In Mardoom, though, it tends to play decoy more often than true threat. Once it drops, most opponents will do what they can to remove it (for good reason.) It eats a lot of removal but otherwise doesn’t affect games as often as you’d think. Beyond that, though, Oulaws’ Merriment and Starfield Mystic are cards I see in other people’s decks only occasionally, but are both frequent win conditions in Mardoom. And God-Eternal Bontu is a card I don’t recall seeing other people play, like…ever.

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• It runs cheap, wonky stuff like Treacherous Blessing (which, to be fair, belongs in absolutely any Doom Foretold deck) and The Akroan War. Truthfully, The Akroan War should probably be cut if I want a more tuned/optimal build. It can be a blank, or relatively useless, in some situations. But it gives me so much wicked glee to steal something critical to my opponent’s plan. Then sacrificing the stolen troop to a Doom Foretold or Bontu can be rapturously joyful. And it genuinely shocks me how often my opponents will use their own removal spells to kill something of theirs that I’ve stolen, even when it’s something rather innocuous like a Murderous Rider that I’ve nabbed because I’m floundering and trying to buy a turn or two to find answers.

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[Full and fair disclosure: The Akroan War has tilted many an opponent, but has also been the source of my largest goofs. Stealing the wrong thing, attacking with the stolen creature instead of holding it back as a blocker, stealing something tapped when I forget that The Akroan War doesn’t untap its target – if you can botch a line of play with The Akroan War, I’ve done it. Many, many times. That’s part of the charm of the card too – learning how to best use it. Even if there are likely dozens of cards that would be better inclusions, The Akroan War is perhaps the ideal balance of grinning fun and grimacing challenge, and I feel like I’m becoming a better player (oh, so very very slightly) each time I use it to try and turn the tide of a game.]

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• The deck presents lots of interesting choices. Knowing the right moment to play a Doom Foretold is tricky. Tricky enough that I still get it wrong too frequently (but I’m learning.) When playing this deck my life total becomes a secondary concern as well as a resource, which is quite new to me. I run a lot of shocklands that get played untapped, and I often have to pull the trigger on a Treacherous Blessing without any immediate way to remove it. On occasion I’ve even had two Blessings in play when I’ve panicked and gotten truly desperate to find answers (the second one unfurling into a Bontu feels particularly triumphant.)

• Being somewhat unusual, opponents frequently make mistakes against it. Though not common, I’ve had people spend removal to get rid of a Oath of Kaya instead of something more threatening on the board, probably because they expect that I’ll be dropping a planeswalker at some point. I also see opponents play something critical when the only permanent on my side of the board is a Doom Foretold. I then proceed to flash in Omen of the Forge at the end of their turn, or even during my upkeep, so that I can keep the Doom Foretold out another turn and force them into sacrificing their essential permanent.

• Answers! Oh, beautiful beautiful answers! Doom Foretold does not discriminate (much) – any non-land, non-token permanent is fair game. Do you know how good it feels to play it when my opponent’s only permanent is a THB God? The deck also has burn/direct damage, life gain, Banishing Light to take care of troublesome permanents, board wipes for anyone choosing to go wide (or play Dream Trawler), and enough card draw to provide hope for an answer even when all hope seems lost.

• Multiple threats: the worst (read as: the best) control decks run lots of counters and/or removal and only a few resilient threats. Games against those decks can last metaphorical eons as the control player sits back, counters or removes anything marginally threatening you attempt to do, and accrues card advantage while doing nothing to actually win for turn after turn. When they’ve finally exhausted your pathetic attempts to play meaningful Magic, and you’re neck-deep into a miserable slogfest, they play Dream Trawler or a similar untouchable or endlessly recurrable threat, and finally work on tearing down your life total.

No one will mistake my deck for a proactive creature jamfest but I have Bontu, Starfield Mystics which have gotten as big as 6/6 or 7/7 if left unattended, and the Archons that can pop out pegasus babies when I (infrequently) untap with it. When those fail, Outlaws’ Merriment will vomit out expendable tokens that can eventually overwhelm an opponent. And while never the primary plan of attack, I’ve finished off opponents at 1 or 2 life by playing a Doom Foretold when they have an empty board.

Games with Mardoom feel highly variable on my end, and my hope is that it presents an interesting challenge to my opponents. I know that Doom Foretold has its haters, as I get the occasional early concession when I play one that forces a player to sacrifice something near and dear to their hearts (usually Heliod in mono-white lifegain.) But it doesn’t monkey with people’s lands, doesn’t stop the opponent from playing their cards, and can be effectively played around (trust me – an opponent flashing in something expendable on their upkeep to protect a permanent I was banking on sniping really irks me.)

Mardoom is what I like to call “Middle Class Magic” (a topic I think I’ll explore more in the near future.) It’s not an optimized tier 1 deck, or even a kludgy simulacrum of a tier 1 deck for someone missing key cards. Nor is it what I think of as jank. There’s no janky theme underlying what I’m trying to do, or janky cards being run for the giggles or memes. Mardoom is an attempt to balance tier 1 chutzpah with casual nonchalance. I want to win, I want to do so in my own (i.e. non-meta) way, and I am fine running relatively strong (i.e. non-janky) cards to do so. I’m avoiding anything particularly oppressive, but also eschewing intentionally weak sub-themes or cards. Efficient removal, including board wipes, are fair game, but I feel no need to ruthlessly optimize the entire list in an attempt to win more games.

Mardoom isn’t as strong as it could possibly be, but I do think it’s as fun as it can possibly be.

March 24, 2020

redeeming – adjective : compensating for some fault or defect; bringing about salvation or redemption from sin

I’ve argued (perhaps not eloquently) that only rares can be bobos – uncommons and mythics don’t qualify. I’m not going to alter that opinion today, but I am going to amend it slightly to say a non-rare “pull” can be a bobo, as I’ll illustrate today.

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If you’re not familiar with them, Secret Lair drops are small bundles of reprinted cards from Magic’s past, illustrated with new art, and sold by Wizards directly to players.

Every drop thus far has included a random War of the Spark planeswalker card with stained glass art (these special illustrations were used for an online trailer for the WAR set, and weren’t used on the planeswalker cards you could get in boosters. The stained-glass versions of these cards are unique to the Secret Lair drops.)

The March 8 Secret Lair drop was for International Women’s Day, and the drop featured stunning cards of 5 powerful and/or iconic female characters from Magic’s history:

I bought the drop, not only because the cards were beautiful, but because $25 from each purchase went to a worthy charity (WAGGGS.) As with previous drops, a random planeswalker card was included with each set, and I was very excited to see who I got. I was sure it would be a female ‘walker, and there are scads of great female ‘walkers in WAR.

You know where this is going, right?

Of course you do. Would I be writing this if I’d gotten one of the fantastic ones? You know better.

So…yeah. I got Arlinn, Voice of the Pack.

Not to sound like an ingrate, but…craaaaaaaaaap. It’s an uncommon, but receiving this in my Secret Lair feels an awful lot like opening a bobo rare.

Yes, all of the stained glass planeswalkers are spiffy, and they are all technically “free” since they are not officially part of the drops and are therefore “extras”. I’m happy to have gotten one. Really. They’re beautiful, they’re unique, and they add extra value to each Lair.

But did I have to get this particular one? Out of all the awesome planeswalkers I could have gotten (and many other people did get), I pull Arlinn?

Alright, time for me to buck up and make the best of it. Today I will defend Arlinn’s honor, and find reasons to cheer her inclusion in my Secret Lair.

Let’s give Arlinn a constructive critique by examining each of her qualities.

Gender: Female

I start here not to be sexist, but to point out that all of the random planewalkers people received with the International Women’s Day Secret Lair drop were female (except Ashiok – that seems a strange inclusion.) I’ll be judging Arlinn only against her female brethren, since male ‘walkers were (logically) excluded from the drop. For context, of the 33 stained glass planeswalker cards people have received with Secret Lairs thus far, 18 of them depict females (not counting Ashiok.)

Color: Green

Green is currently the undisputed king of colors in Standard. So that’s a great start. If I was going to get a female WAR ‘walker in the strongest color in standard, it was either Arlinn or one of these options:

Nissa, Who Disrupts the Metagame, or Vivien, Champion of Smoke Beasties

Let’s compare play values for these ‘walkers:

Nissa: A scourge in standard, played in many top decks. Incredibly difficult to deal with, as she can tick up to 6 loyalty the turn she’s played, and creates a creature with vigilance so it can whack the opponent and still defend Nissa. Also allows for serious ramp/mana generation. Her ultimate, though rarely used, is pretty stellar if you can hit it. Nissa is a true all-star and format staple. I despise playing against her on Arena, and don’t play WITH her because I know how awful an experience it can be to play against her. A beast.

Vivien: Doesn’t protect herself (though she can fetch some protection, if you have spare mana to cast it right away.) Her -2 ability is decent, especially if Vivien lasts long enough to use it multiple times. And if she gets removed, you can still play whatever creature(s) you’ve exiled. The +1 ability is fairly weak but giving reach to an existing creature can help keep her onboard. The static ability can be useful, but I find that she rarely survives long enough for it to be relevant beyond a turn or two. When I’ve used her on Arena, she seems to draw more hate than her abilities would seem to warrant. And I’ve whiffed too often with the -2 to consider it impressive. She’s fair to middlin’. Not a beast (though should be, for purely flavor reasons.)

Arlinn: She…uh…makes wolves. And if you’re playing other wolves or werewolves (none of the latter in standard, and only a handful of the former) she gives them +1/+1 counters. So…pretty useless, frankly. As an uncommon ‘walker she gets only the single minus ability, and her static ability, while designed to nicely synergize with her minus ability, is otherwise worthless. Basically she’s a card for limited, or something to use if you are foolish enough to try and build a wolf/werewolf tribal Commander deck. Sad.

This is not going well so far. What else can we look at…

Casting Cost:

Six mana is a lot for a planeswalker, even a good one. What do you get for that investment? Let’s take a look at the 6-mana planeswalkers in WAR:

Liliana, Dreadhorde General
Kaya, Bane of the Dead
Ugin, the Ineffable
Tezzeret, Master of the Bridge

Interestingly (or not), Ugin has not yet been included with any of the Secret Lair drops. He’s male, so wouldn’t have been an option for this drop anyway. Tezzy, the buy-a-box promo for WAR, is also male (and was never given the stained-glass treatment.) Therefore, we’ll look only at Liliana and Kaya.

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Liliana: If you’re going to pay 6 mana for a ‘walker, you want it to be a game-changer when it lands. Liliana does that. She can create protection for herself (that even draws you a card if it’s removed), she can clear away threats, and her ultimate is of the “I win” variety. Liliana is typically worth the investment, and I’m not sure I’ve ever regretted spending 6 mana for her.

Kaya: Being able to exile any creature, even ones with hexproof, and do it twice (if she survives) is potentially huge. Considering that’s essentially all Kaya does, however, she’s quite narrow. She’s mostly a limited card, and an expensive one (to cast) at that. Slow and narrow is not a great combo, but the ability is great if you have targets and can use it twice.

Arlinn: She…uh…makes wolves. Granted, her high starting loyalty potentially allows you to create three 3/3 wolves if she survives a few turns. But if she’s quickly removed, you’ve paid 6 mana for a 3/3 wolf. That’s…no bueno. Her static ability is so narrow as to be nearly irrelevant. When Throne of Eldraine was released, I tried to create a wolf tribal deck on Arena, and included a couple copies of Arlinn. Great flavor, and tribal support! Of course I included her! Sadly, those were the first cards I cut from the deck as I refined it. Even in a deck built around the tribe she supports, she was too slow and too costly to include. Very sad.

Financial value

Financial value will, of course, be tied strongly to play value, but scarcity may play a part. I saw people on Reddit posting which walker they got in this Secret Lair drop, and I was the only one to post Arlinn. Maybe I’m one of the lucky few to get her, and that’ll prop up the value? Let’s take a look at the planeswalkers people reported getting with this drop, and their estimated financial value at the time of posting:

Liliana, Dreadhorde General	$97.50
Narset, Parter of Veils	$64.45
Nissa, Who Shakes the Metagame	$47.29
Chandra, Fire Artisan	$26.25
Vivien, Champion of the Wilds	$23.50
Jaya, Venerated Firemage	$15.88
Kiora, Behemoth Beckoner	$14.35
Nahiri, Storm of Stone	$14.53
Ashiok, Dream Render	$13.81
Saheeli, Sublime Artificer	$12.03
Vraska, Swarm’s Eminence	$11.98
Tamiyo, Collector of Tales	$9.99
Samut, Tyrant Smasher	$8
The Wanderer	$7.62
Kasmina, Enigmatic Mentor	$7.18
Arlinn, Voice of the Pack	$6.69
Kaya, Bane of the Dead	$6.07
Huatli, the Sun’s Heart	$5.76

So…Arlinn’s not quite last, I guess. And $6 and change ain’t nothin’. Still…quite sad.

What’s left…art? Sure, let’s try art. There’s got to be a positive here somewhere…

Art

Potential female ‘walkers for this drop are shown wielding fire, phasing through walls, commanding zombie armies, or causing rocks to levitate (to name just a few examples.) Arlinn…stands in front of buildings. The stained glass treatment actually does the original art a massive disservice, as the glowing eyes of her pack are severely muted or just missing. Even the wolves are nearly imperceptible in this version of the card:

Assuming you don’t dislike the basic concept of the stained glass illustrations, this may be the only ‘walker that looks objectively worse in stained glass form.

Uber-sad. Not one positive quality to be found.

Wait.

Wait, I’ve got it!

With Arlinn out, playing Ferocious Pup gives you a good boy capable of taking on all manner of tokens (soldiers! goblins! squirrels! squirrels? SQUIRRELS!) and living to nip again.

Who would leave a puppy to be slaughtered as a chump blocker? Not Arlinn!

I knew I loved her…

March 19, 2020

unqualified – adjective : (of a person) not officially recognized as a practitioner of a particular profession or activity through having satisfied the relevant conditions or requirements

As someone with a degree in English, I’m naturally curious about numbers, data, trends, statistics, variables, and probabilities.

OK, look, not every English major can, or wants to, teach. I’ve worked with computers for the entirety of my post-graduation life. My first job out of college (not counting teaching baseball fundamentals to shockingly uncoordinated children during a summer program) was doing computerized data entry. The money was decent (as in, it was greater than $0, which is what I was making before I was hired) and I learned a lot…like how it was better to work the night shift so I could avoid the boss and listen to awful metal music without annoying any coworkers.

But thus began my love of data.

That’s a lie. I’m not actually sure where my love of data started, since I don’t actually love data. With one notable exception:

After returning to Magic in 2017 I started tracking every Magic pack I opened in an Excel spreadsheet. Each entry included:

• Date the pack was opened
• Rare or mythic in the pack
• Value of the rare or mythic on the date it was opened
• Value of the rare or mythic on the date I last checked
• Foil (if any) in the pack
• Value of the foil (if any) at the time it was opened (and current value when last checked)
• Where the pack came from (booster box, bundle or fat pack, single booster, etc.)

It was fun – depressing too, but fun – to maintain this database for a time, though I didn’t add to it often because I didn’t open packs often. There’s a story there, but I’m not ready to tell it.

Yes, withholding stories is becoming a recurring theme on this blog, and yes, I am intentionally building up a backlog of stories to tell. Some I’m not quite sure HOW to tell, and some are more serious and will require a different approach that I’m not ready to wrangle with quite yet. In time…

Anywayhow, back to the database. Though I wasn’t opening a plethora of packs, I was logging the ones I did open faithfully. Then last July my son and I went to a Core Set 2020 2-headed giant prerelease where we combined the cards from the 12 packs we received to build our decks. When we got home, we took turns choosing which cards we wanted to add to our respective collections. I wasn’t sure how to log what cards I ended up with from that prerelease…so I just never did. Nor did I log anything I opened after that because…I don’t know…the database wasn’t up to date, and I didn’t want it to be half-assed and missing entries?

Consequently, the spreadsheet hasn’t been updated since last July. I bring this up not to reinforce how nerdy and pathetic my behaviors are, but because the spreadsheet contains the following entry:

That was, until a few weeks ago, the last Hour of Devastation pack I had opened. Back in July that infernal Apocalypse Demon so infuriated me that I chose not to open any of the remaining HOU packs I had lying about. Why was I so angry at a demon? Was it because it was a bobo rare? No. I mean, it was, but that’s not why I was angry. I’ve opened plenty of bobos and never let it stop me from trying my luck again.

I was upset about that demon because, prior to that pack, I’d opened 22 packs of HOU. And out of those 22 packs I had gotten exactly ZERO mythic rares. That lousy demon made me 0 for 23.

So today, my friends, I am going to delve into the statistics behind this ignominious accomplishment/crowning achievement. What makes me think that I, with my useless-but-expensive B.A. in English, can undertake such a daunting mathematical undertaking? Fury. And hubris. But mostly fury.

Let’s get started!

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The odds of opening a mythic rare in a booster pack (in HOU, as well as now) is “approximately 1:8”, or 12.5%. The odds of opening zero mythic rares in 23 booster packs is, therefore, .0023684%.

Crazy, huh?

What do you mean, “that can’t be right”?

Do I have to show my work? What is this, middle school?

Alright. Fine. You want more details about how the answer is .0023684%? Here is the equation I used to reach my mathematical conclusion:

For the mathematically deficient, the above can be used to determine the percentages of getting no mythics from opening various numbers of packs, leading to the following results:

Odds of opening no mythics in:
1 pack: 87.5%
2 packs: 76.5%
3 packs: 67%
5 packs: 51.3%
10 packs: 26.3%
15 packs: 13.4%
20 packs: 6.9%
23 packs: .0023684%

What do you mean, “that’s still not right”? The trend is obvious and the results incontrovertible. You can’t argue with math, friends.

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Alright. Fine. I double-checked the numbers, and that last one is just a little off. “Traditional” (i.e. lame) math actually says there’s a 4.6% chance of opening 23 packs without getting a mythic. So I was pretty close initially.

Besides, the math just obscures the point I’m trying to make: I’d opened 23 packs of Hour of Devastation WITHOUT GETTING A MYTHIC!

Whatever number you want to attach to that, it’s absurd. Unheard of. Unprecedented. In what universe does something with a 4.6% chance of happening ACTUALLY HAPPEN?

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Fast forward to a few weeks ago, when I opened two more HOU boosters in order to build an Amonkhet-block sealed deck. The first pack I opened contained this:

Twenty-four packs, no mythics. We’re down to a 4.0% chance of pulling that off. Pack #25 is, naturally, a foregone conclusion. We both know where this runaway train is headed. I open it, no longer caring what I get, even starting to root for a standard rare so I can continue this comical parade of ignominy. Here’s what I see at the back of the pack:

It’s not just a mythic. It’s a GOOD mythic. Among the best cards in the HOU set. I actually kind of wish my son had gotten it, since it would be a fun addition to the remarkably solid “draw two” deck he built from a sealed pool of Throne of Eldraine cards. But he got no mythics in his AKH-block cardpool, while I got a planeswalker and a GOD.

The HOU mythic drought ended with a raining crescendo of locusts (well, one huge one, anyway) and I’m conflicted. I’m happy to get the card, don’t get me wrong. And this is positive momentum towards shattering the bobo-rare shackles still clinging to my ankles. But a streak is over, and there’s a sadness to that. That streak was special. I mean, yeah, it was “specially bad”, but it also felt right somehow.

No one remembers baseball players with career batting averages of .230, but spend your career below the Mendoza Line*, and you WILL be remembered. And I wasn’t just cracking packs at a below-the-Mendoza-Line rate here. I was in a 2019 Chris Davis, 0-for-56 slump. It was ghastly, and it was glorious, and I was strangely sad to see it end.

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Coming soon – the kid actually built his deck! How will two grizzled gladiators (read as: total incompetents) fair in a AKH-block sealed pool showdown?

(It’s clearly not possible to hype up a sealed deck match with a 12-year old. I apologize for lamely trying.)

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* Apologies to non-American readers; let me know if there’s something analogous in football/cricket/rugby/curling.**

** Apologies to readers from countries whose national sport wasn’t listed; let me know what I should be referencing when I pretend to know lots about sports in future posts.

March 12, 2020

casu marzu – noun : a traditional Sardinian sheep milk cheese that contains live insect larvae (maggots)

I’m not right very often, so you’d think I’d revel in those moments when I am. You’d be wrong (like I so often am.)

About a week and a half ago my son claimed he wanted to do a new sealed deck, and he chose to do it with Amonkhet block packs. It was close to his bedtime when the decision was made, so we each took 4 packs of Amonkhet and 2 packs of Hour of Devastation and went our separate ways. I went to the home office to start up some awful music (the only kind I listen to, mind you) and take a look at my spoils. My son went to his room to ostensibly open his packs and go to sleep thereafter.

My deck was built the following evening. My son’s has yet to be made. Some possible explanations for his delinquency:

1. The “sealed deck” notion was a ruse he used to get his hands on packs (this is what I initially suspected.) The kid loves opening Pokemon packs, but has never built a deck with the thousands of cards he owns, and hasn’t played more than a handful of Pokemon TCG games in his life (and none in at least 5 years.) Opening packs may very well have been the endgame all along.
2. His brain seized up once he realized what he got himself into. AKH block is a total unknown to him (as it apparently is to me) so he may have been overwhelmed with reading dozens of new cards and figuring out what to do with them.
3. He opened no mythic rares, and lost interest in the whole endeavor. He did admit to getting no mythics in his packs the morning after we opened them. And to my son, mythics are magical (lowercase ‘m’.) To him, opening 6 packs and getting no mythics is probably like going to Disneyworld and spending all day in line for Space Mountain. Except when you finally reach the end of the line, you somehow end up on It’s a Small World instead. And your boat stops moving halfway through. And the dolls don’t stop singing. And you really need to pee.
4. He forgot.

I considered detailing my highly scientific, extraordinarily complicated deck-building process (see mythic, play mythic!) but there’s a story I want to tell about something I opened in a HOU pack. Since I’m not ready to tell that story, I’m instead going to point out a few things I noticed as I perused the cards from my packs. Bear in mind that these are essentially “new player”-level insights (see my previous post, if you don’t know why.)

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Based on the cards I opened, white’s flavor is as scintillating as a stick of 1980s-era baseball card bubblegum after about 30 seconds of chewing.

I won’t play dumb and pretend I’m not aware of how much everyone has been ragging on white’s specious playability recently. I won’t flog that dead Crested Sunmare. But my total disappointment in my AKH-block white cards is not related to any of that hullabaloo. I truly have no idea how white rates in AKH or HOU. In fact, I think the best card I opened from my 6 packs is white. My grievance is purely with flavor. The best art among the 13 white cards I opened is this:

It’s…a camel. Really? Who plays Magic to beat on their opponents with camels? OK, that actually sounds pretty awesome. But still…dumb. I actually opened two different white camel cards. I suppose I get it – Amonkhet is a world based loosely on Egyptian mythology, so…deserts. And with deserts you get…camels, amiright? I could get pedantic and point out that camels were never part of Egyptian mythology in the first place, but at least Wizards didn’t create a race of anthropomorphic camel-people.

No, white primarily gets humans, which are mostly boring from a fantasy perspective. AKH block also features white-aligned zombies that are stand-ins for mummies (surprisingly, “mummy” is not a supported creature type in Magic. And yes, I’m aware there’s a single silver-bordered mummy. I’m not an idiot.)

Outside of a single bird creature, the white cards strike me as overwhelmingly bland. The art is bland (lots of whites, browns, and grays, with only a smattering of yellow to pop), the creature assortment is bland, and the cards do almost nothing interesting. My white creature base looks potentially solid, but there’s absolutely nothing about these cards that make me want to actually play with any of them. I know “vanilla” has a specific connotation in Magic, and I did end up with 2 vanilla white creatures. But these cards? These are VANILLA. I don’t know if my white cards are playable, and I have no interest in trying to figure it out.

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Green, on the other hand, has so much going on I couldn’t NOT dig it. The creature base is an embarrassment of variety: jackal, hippo, snake, beast, naga, lizard, hydra, antelope, and yes…camel. If you’re a fan of tribal synergy then that mess ‘o crap isn’t for you, but I think it’s NEAT.

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Beyond that…four of my green playables have Cycling, which I loved when I first saw it in Urza’s Saga 22 years ago and I have never NOT loved. The idea that I can pitch something I don’t need or can’t use to perhaps topdeck THE ANSWER (but probably just get a land, unless I’m cycling to GET a land, in which case I’ll draw a 6-mana creature I can’t play) is beautiful. Is green good in AKH-block? No idea. Does it look like it’ll be fun to find out? Hell, meet yeah.

The other colors fall somewhere between cottage cheese white and pepper jack green. To extend this ludicrous metaphor, we’ll describe my black cards as Swiss, blue as Gorgonzola, and red as Leicester. And if you try to tell me red should have been pepper jack, I will ignore you, because that would just be dumb.

Unnervingly, I get a fourth camel, in black, which naturally means it must be a zombie camel. I’m ambivalent about it, which means it’s a design flop in my eyes. Surely I should love a zombie camel, or hate it. I can’t be bothered to do either. Do you think the artist that was given this card to illustrate was elated, or mortified?

Outside of white, my biggest sorrow is that the only cat I get is an artifact. Lame. But it makes my deck anyway.

I’m quite interested to see how my deck plays. Whether I’ll get to do so depends on my son eschewing a screen for the 20-30 minutes it would take him to read his cards and smush some together. So…perhaps not likely.

Next time, a lesson in statistics from an English major!

March 6, 2020

nascent – adjective : coming into existence; emerging

For perhaps the first time since rebooting my Magic experience at the start of the year, I’ve finally come close to feeling like a truly new player.

I returned to Magic, after a fairly prolonged absence, in 2017. Amonkhet came out in 2017. Great opportunity for a narrative connection and wistful reminiscing, yeah?

Yeah, no.

While I don’t recall buying it, my Magic collection included a sealed booster box of Amonkhet.

At some point in the past I also opened some Amonkhet boosters. Not a vast quantity, but probably 10-15.

And I even own a full set of AKH (at least 1 copy of every card in the set.) I acquired it via Magic Online redemption – the last gasp of my spoils from being a Magic Online Adept many years ago. Yes, I have a few stories to tell about that. No, I’m not going to tell any of them today.

While I never bought a full booster box of Hour of Devastation, the small follow-up set that’s part of the Amonkhet block, I have a sealed Fat Pack from it. And I opened a decent number of HOU boosters back in ’17-’18. There’s a story about that as well, but again – not telling it today.

And while Arena no longer features cards from the Amonkhet block, I played with some of them during Arena’s Beta, when they were available to tinker with before everyone’s account got wiped (after the wipe, Amonkhet was not made available.) No interesting story there, really.

So what IS today’s story? It’s this: for once in my life, having a crap memory seems to have paid off.

Evidence suggests I should be, at the very least, nominally familiar with Amonkhet block cards. Well, holy hell, did none of them look familiar when I opened packs from those sets! Literally none of them.

My son’s interest in Magic is flagging. He’s played Arena, his preferred method of playing Magic, twice since Christmas. But he still likes cracking packs. He recently expressed interest in building sealed decks, which I knew was his weaselly way of conning me into letting him have some packs to open.

It worked.

I let him choose the set/block he wanted to try, and he chose AKH block. I wasn’t sure how many packs of each set to use, but decided on 4 from large set AKH and 2 from small set HOU.

Six packs later, I was looking at a stack of 75 cards that I SWEAR I’d never seen before.

A blue/green Nissa planeswalker? With X in its casting cost? Is this thing fake? No way had I ever seen this before.

And yet, I knew I had. I filed one of these goofy things in a binder of my Amonkhet cards, along with one of EVERY OTHER CARD IN THE SET. How do I not remember any of them?

(There’s a pun here somewhere that combines “amnesia” with “Nissa”, but I just couldn’t get it to work. I tried. I really did.)

Feeling so clueless about something I should be familiar with is kind of funny. But…also not funny at all. What the hell is wrong with me?

That was not meant as a setup, so don’t answer that.

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Rather than consider the possibly serious ramifications of this kind of mental block, I decided to pretend this is a good thing. I get to experience AKH block as a new player, just like my son will experience it. Nothing looks familiar, and it’s pretty flippin’ cool. I’m excited – to assemble a deck, to see how the cards work – and to experience Amonkhet again for the first time.

This feeling reminds me of my first ever prerelease experience – Tempest! In 1997! Oh wow…the Tempest prerelease…now THAT is a story.

But not for today. Today… today I get to feel like a new Magic player (who hopefully doesn’t have early-onset dementia.)

March 2, 2020

genuflect – verb : lower one’s body briefly by bending one knee to the ground, typically in worship or as a sign of respect

So you opened a bobo rare in a Magic pack. Now what?

If you’re like me, you might curse, or grumble, or close your eyes and ever-so-slightly shake your head in disgust. Cue disappointed sigh.

What then?

Maybe you throw the card in a box. Maybe you file it in a binder. Maybe it goes in one of a dozen tall stacks of cards you intend to catalog in your meticulously-tended online collection tracker. (That last one is just me? Not surprising.)

Or maybe…you put it in a deck!

My Theros: Beyond Death prerelease pack from nearly a month ago contained this promo:

This is a build-around bobo. Rarely will you be able to cram this into a sealed deck and do all that much with it. I had no use for it at the prerelease, and I wrote the card off as beautifully-illustrated trash.

Even after opening 4 copies of it on Magic Arena within the first few days of the THB set being available, I ignored it.

But some bobos whisper to you, like a subtle cardboard siren pulling you towards rocky deck-building oblivion. After opening 5 copies of the card in paper and digital, I couldn’t deny that Enigmatic Incarnation had lodged itself in my frontal cortex like a chucked ninja star. I kept stealing glances at the prerelease foil (it really is a gorgeous card), and though I had no idea what to do with it, I became sure I COULD do something with it.

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My favorite deck I ever built functioned a bit like a Swiss army knife, allowing me to fairly easily and consistently cough up a litany of ever-costlier creatures with varying abilities. Whatever the game situation required, I had a creature in my deck that could assist, and I just needed the game state to allow me to drag it onto the battlefield. Enigmatic Incarnation looked like it was designed to do something similar.

So I did what any new player in 2020 would do.

I netdecked.

As I mentioned previously there are people who will brew with even the worst rares, so it’s not surprising that I found various builds for Enigmatic Incarnation decks.

I shamelessly copied one into Arena, tinkered with it because it used some cards I didn’t have (and wasn’t willing to spend wildcards on), and threw it to the wolves who stalk the “Play” queue on Arena. And it was a JOY to play.

That said…

Aggro crushes it.

I’ll end up saying that about every deck I ever play in Arena (or paper, for that matter), so if ever I forget to mention it, here’s my canned disclaimer about ANY deck I play:

Aggro crushes it.

That said…

If I’m not playing against aggro, the deck is delightful to play and capable of claiming victory not-infrequently. It does several things I adore:

1. It is full of “utility”, meaning it packs answers to a variety of threats.
2. It provides frequent opportunities to make meaningful decisions about what the heck to do at a given moment.
3. It usually survives till at least the mid-game, making even losses feel worth the time investment to play it.

I say all this not to convince anyone to build or play an Enigmatic Incarnation deck. It’s not THAT good. I say all this because everyone opens bobo rares, and a playset of 25-cent build-around bobos can still make for a fun play experience.

A good king must know his kingdom and seek to make the most out of the resources available. Some kingdoms are blessed with vast rare mineral reserves, or swaths of pristine forest. My kingdom is typically littered with clay and salt, but that just means I’m making floor tiles and tortilla chips instead of microprocessors or 2x4s.

Enigmatic Incarnation has become my favorite Theros: Beyond Death card. But make no mistake. It’s still a bobo. It’s only fitting I would fall in love with it.

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Next time: back to cracking packs and tempting fate…

February 18, 2020

inutile – adjective : useless; pointless

Silent Submersible is a bobo rare. It may be the best example of one from the past several years. It’s a failure in every conceivable way. Not only is it a rotten card, but it’s a flavor disaster.

A silence submarine that, within the gameplay itself, has no form of evasion to help me draw that card? This thing can be blocked by a zombie, or a drake, or a squirrel token? Oof.

Not every bobo rare reaches this level of atrociousness, and many of them are oozing with flavor. Flavor fails are just icing slathered atop a steaming heap of cardboard chunder.

So how do you identify a bobo in the wild? Below are my own personal criteria for identifying a bobo rare:

Bobo rares have no financial value

I don’t mean these cards are literally worth nothing. Even the worst rares can fetch a few pennies from someone who doesn’t have a copy, or finds something to like about the card (even if they just enjoy the card’s terribleness.) I simply mean the card isn’t something you’d ever try to sell on eBay or at your local card shop. Oh, I suppose people put up playsets of just about anything on eBay, but hoping someone will give you a buck for four copies of Hazoret’s Favor doesn’t alter my underlying point: these cards have no appreciable financial value and no one’s madly scouring for one in your trade binder.

At the most basic level, Magic cards earn financial value through play value, scarcity, or some combination of the two. Now, this is where things can get a little complicated (well, crap…)

Sorrow’s Path, released in The Dark in 1994, is universally known as one of the worst rare Magic cards ever printed – surely a bobo then, right? Let’s take a look.

It’s a card that people want to own just because it’s awful. I have one. I don’t remember how it came to rest in my collection many years ago – I never got to open a pack of The Dark – but I know I got it cheap and I know I bought it based on its putrid reputation. Who doesn’t want to own the cardboard equivalent of cat vomit?

But you know what? A near-mint copy might net you $4 or $5 today. That’s not because of play value, folks. There just aren’t that many of these things. Granted, $4 isn’t a lot, but it’s not nothing. And while its infamy has likely propped up its value a bit, it’s also quite old and therefore not especially plentiful. It has a little financial value.

There a number of crummy rares from The Dark that, were they to be released in a new set, no one would pay 25 cents for. That’s true of all Magic’s early sets. Have you seen how really, truly, supremely awful some of the rare legends are from the original Legends set? And have you seen how much you’d have to part with to buy an original version of some of them? That’s the Reserved List for you. I’m going to avoid the topic of the Reserved List, except to say a number of old cards that have never been reprinted have value simply because they are old cards that have never been reprinted (and never will be, unless the Reserved List is abolished.)

So where does that leave Sorrow’s Path and other old rares?

A lot of them undoubtedly were bobos when their respective sets were released. Who was happy to open Wood Elemental, a creature that annihilates your lands in order to be played, in 1994?

I have no doubt players were slower to recognize atrocious cards back then, but I doubt Wood Elemental was ever anything but junk. It was a perfect bobo rare in 1994 (yes, I know, I’m not done defining them; we’re getting there) – and yet a near-mint copy is currently valued at $12. So because it has financial value, is it disqualified as a bobo rare?

Well…no.

Do you know how much sealed English Legends packs go for? I don’t know the floor, since I’ve seen sold packs on eBay that were listed as “$140 or best offer” that went for some unlisted best offer. Assuming nothing lower than $125 will get you a Legends booster, how would you feel if you idiotically decided to open it, and the last card in that pack is a Wood Elemental grimacing at you? There are a decent number of Legends rares worth less than $12. Would you smile at the good fortune of seeing Wood Elemental and think “at least it’s not a $6 Voodoo Doll?”

Based on ROI, Wood Elemental is a bobo. If you’d paid the going price of a Legends pack in 1994, opened Wood Elemental, and then discovered 26 years later that you could theoretically get $12 for it…well, that’s not the worst thing in the world, I guess. But I guarantee Wood Elemental is, was, and always will be one of the least valuable rares from Legends. That its scarcity allowed it to appreciate after several decades doesn’t sway me. It is, was, and always will be a bobo rare.

On the flip side, you have Lion’s Eye Diamond, which I mentioned in a previous post. LED was a terrible card in 1996 – a definite bobo rare. It took years before people found a good use for it, and once they did, the card’s scarcity caused a huge price hike. Lion’s Eye Diamond was pulled from the pit of bobocity by usefulness. While the average player would have no idea what to do with it were it to be reprinted in a new set (which is impossible since it’s on the Reserved List), it would NOT be a bobo were that to happen.

So what was the point of all that babbling?

I, for one, am not willing to wait years to see which cards deserve the bobo label based on how much or little they’ve been played over time. Therefore, I want to establish that a card’s bobocity is not static. If I open a 50 cent rare in 2020, it is definitely a candidate for bobo rare status. Due to modern print runs, such a card is never going to be scarce, so any value it ever has will be based solely on playability. If someday that card is worth $10, that’s because it found some play value. And you’ll be able to argue that it has shed its bobo status and evolved. But it was a bobo when it was opened.

So are all cheap rares automatically bobos? Not necessarily. So what else do we look at when passing judgment?

Bobo rares have minimal play value

Let’s be clear: every card has some play value. In limited formats (sealed deck, draft, etc.) almost every card ever printed is “playable.” Many would still be awful, but you could play them and maybe even get value from them. Once the limited games are over, though…useless card. Thus, minimal play value.

So what about constructed play? Google any bad rare, and chances are good that people – probably many peoples, actually – have tried to build a deck around it. Some of those people even enjoyed the exercise of doing this (masochists, every last one of them.) In casual play groups, there are surely decks designed around terrible rares that can pull out victory with something more than total irregularity.

However, finding a not-lame use for a bad rare doesn’t automatically elevate that rare above bobo status.

If it takes serious effort to make a rare only slightly viable, then it’s probably a bobo.

Really, it comes down to general playability. Opportunistic Dragon is a fairly-costed 4/3 flyer for 4 mana, with a sometimes-relevant ability. And no one plays it in Standard, because this is just not what most decks with red in them want from a 4-drop creature (if they even want a 4-drop creature.) The card is among the cheapest rares in Throne of Eldraine, but I wouldn’t rate it’s bobocity level all that high, since it has some amount of general usefulness. And it’s a dragon, and dragons are cool.

Just as a card’s status as a bobo is not fixed, nor is the level of bobocity cards can have. A card like Opportunistic Dragon has a neato creature type and some generic play value as a creature with evasion. You can put it in any deck capable of casting it and it might provide value, regardless of whatever else your deck is trying to do.

Pale Moon, however, has such an extremely narrow use that it’s essentially never worth a slot in any deck. You can’t throw it in a blue deck and be sure it will do anything.

So while Opportunistic Dragon and Pale Moon have similar financial values, and I’d consider both bobos, I’d consider Pale Moon a far, far more egregious bobo.

This leads to my last point:

Bobo rares are cards you never want to see in a pack

If you buy a booster, even a discounted one, and are thrilled that your purchase nets you a rare that’s readily available for less than $1, you might want to rethink your purchasing habits. The only difference between that and being happy your five $1 scratch-off tickets netted you $2 is that your Magic purchase bestowed upon you a permanent reminder of your rotten luck.

I know there’s some unquantifiable value to the act of opening a booster, beyond what the cards are worth financially. And if you can open junk and find enjoyable uses for it, “more power to ya” or something. You got some value for your purchase, and that’s not nothing. But if you’re thrilled to see a bobo rare in your pack, you’re doing this wrong.

Even as a collector that loves to acquire at least one copy of every card (within financial reason), I’d much rather open a $10 rare I’ll never play than a 50-cent rare I want for a deck. I can scarf up stacks of bobo rares to help me grow my collection or build decks and spend very little doing that. If I never open that $10 rare in a pack, I’m stuck buying it on the secondary market, or simply resigning myself to never owning a copy.

If you’re opening packs just for the pure joy of doing so, like me, then you damn well better be hoping to win the lottery with each foily tear. Hope for the best but expect the worst, I say. I’ll accept the consequences, or stop the behavior.

And I’ve yet to stop, even though I adamantly maintain that I suck at this particular behavior. Maybe for me, there’s value in being…

The King of Bobo Rares.

February 12, 2020

unbidden – adjective : without having been commanded or invited

I previously talked about beginning to understand the concept of a “bobo rare” before having a name for such cards. Now I’ll start actually trying to define what a bobo rare is. Note that I say “start” because the full explanation turned stupid long and I knew I couldn’t inflict it on anyone wholesale.

Upon discovering Magic, I began buying any Magic product I came across. New cards were exciting. Always. I even enjoyed opening duplicates of Fallen Empires commons if I got a version with art I didn’t already have.

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After some number of months of happily opening boosters of all sorts of sets, and always being thrilled with what I got because there was always something new, I eventually began to group some of these cards into “decks” (term used quite loosely.) To do that, some rudimentary card evaluation had to be done, though it was done with my admittedly terrible grasp of (or complete ignorance of) basic Magic concepts. Such as what makes for a good Magic card.

Soon being “new” ceased to be an automatically positive attribute for a rare card. I began wanting to open “good” rares I could put in decks instead of “new” rares I might never want to play. And when I opened something useless or clearly bad, especially if I was seeing it for the second, or third, or sixth time, that experience began to grate. And eventually that experience came to be known in my brain as “opening a bobo rare”. You might know it as “feelsbadman” or whatever the kids are saying these days.

The moment I heard a bad rare referred to as a “bobo rare”, I instantly understood the concept. But what makes a rare a “bobo rare”? Truthfully, defining a bobo rare isn’t nearly as much fun as simply declaring a card a “bobo rare”.

Carnival of Souls? Bobo!

Mudhole? Bobo!

Tombfire? Bobo!

See? Fun!

But what really qualifies as a bobo? Some initial caveats I’d like to cover first:

Commons and uncommons: being as they are (and always have been) quite plentiful compared to rares, these are never bobos. Occasionally a common or uncommon will be strong enough to transcend the rest of their ilk and attain value above the rabble. But it doesn’t work in reverse. In any given set, virtually all the commons will be valued within a few pennies of each other, regardless of how “good” or “bad” they are. For all but the earliest sets, there are simply too many copies in existence for good commons to fetch a premium over the rest.

Uncommons are quite similar, with an average uncommon and a terrible uncommon from the same set being worth about the same amount. There are uncommons you will be happy or unhappy to see in a pack, but unless you’re using that card in draft or sealed deck, they’re rarely little more than nice bonuses to whatever your rare is. There are all-star uncommons, but no bobo uncommons.

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Foils: being shiny doesn’t mean diddly over squat. A foil bobo is just a bobo with a bow. It’s worth a little more, but if you were going to be fortunate enough to open a foil rare, there are lots of cards you’d rather have seen. Alternate or extended art, as are becoming more commonplace with the recent advent of Collector Boosters, also mean zilch when the underlying card is trash.

Mythic rares: these didn’t exist until 2008, and their introduction certainly added a wrinkle to my bobo rare concept. Mythics do, of course, have the same range of outcomes as other card types: strong or weak, flavorful or bland, exciting or groan-inducing. If you get one in place of your rare, is that automatically a good pull? The average pack has only a 1 in 8 chance of containing a mythic. And with very few exceptions, the worst mythic in a set will be likely be worth as much as an average rare from the same set.

In my pack-cracking past simply not getting many mythics, or opening only the lower-valued or less-useful mythics, went hand in hand with my curse. But when defining a bobo rare, I don’t think mythics, even the worst of them, ever count. I’ve certainly opened a pack with a mythic and wished I’d gotten a better one, but I’ve never opened a pack with a mythic and wished it had been a bobo rare.

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Source: bobo rares are only bobos if you open them from a pack. If someone gives you a terrible rare, well…you got a free rare. Try not to whine about it.

If you buy or trade for one, that’s just on you. If you didn’t know it was a bobo, then you have some learning to do. Hopefully the cash or cardboard you forked over was of commensurate value.

With those items out of the way, I will finally move on to what makes a rare a bobo. Next time.

February 3, 2020

bobo – noun : An imitation of something, particularly a well known product, usually lower in quality than the original

Some years ago, I submitted an article to a well-known Magic website that published (and still publishes) content daily. I titled my article “The Curse of the Bobo Rare”, and it was accepted by their editor.

The article they posted on their website, however, replaced the word “bobo” with “crap”, both in the title and throughout the text. I was disappointed. I felt – still feel – that the word “bobo” has a particular quality to it that “crap” or “junk” or “chaff” don’t quite capture.

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In the late 90s I lived near Seattle for a few years and found a group of guys that met weekly to play Magic. One of the group had posted an article about The Basement League on a now-long-defunct Magic website called The Dojo. The members of The Basement League met every Wednesday night for casual Magic, and that is where I first heard the term “bobo rare.” I adored the term the first time I heard it, and it has stayed with me to this day.

I called a card a “bobo rare” the other night, and my son asked me what that meant. Well, what got called a bobo rare in The Basement League was never discussed, analyzed, or debated. You just knew one when you saw one. But if I’m going to use the term on my blog, I suppose I ought to make an attempt to define it.

But not quite yet. Some history about why I use the expression feels relevant. I’m going to start my tale several years before my relocation to Seattle and eventual adoption of the term.

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Ventifact Bottle was possibly the first rare I identified as an exceptionally lousy rare to get from a pack. A friend of mine who was dabbling in Magic was with me at a game store one evening, and decided to buy a pack of the latest set – Mirage. She immediately opened it there at the counter, and looked through it excitedly.

“Which one is the rare?” she asked. I pointed to it. Ventifact Bottle.

Her Magic knowledge was but a sliver of mine, but after reading it she knew it was an awful card.

What happened next is unfortunate. And entirely my fault.

I believe – really, strongly believe – that if I’d said “oof, that’s the worst rare in the set. Sorry you had such rotten luck” she’d have shrugged it off. Instead I told her “well, every other rare in the set is better – you should get another pack, you’ll get something cool.” Her disposable income was quite limited, but she took the leap of faith and immediately doled out the cash for a second pack.

Her rare? Ventifact Bottle.

As far as I know, she never bought another pack of Magic cards.

She learned.

I never have.

To my substantial relief, I only opened a single pack that contained the mutated roast turkey that is Ventifact Bottle. But even in those early days I was cursed with many awful pulls from Mirage. Yare, Brushwagg, and Acidic Dagger were all encountered too frequently. All were terrible then and are still terrible now.

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To be fair, time and distance has relegated almost all of Mirage to “pitiful” status. So much of the set (which was well received and perfectly playable when it was released) has been invalidated due to power creep that only a handful of cards from it have any current financial or play value. The rest – even seemingly strong cards when released – are bizarre curiosities that would never see print now.

Despite how old the cards are, and how much of the set has never been reprinted, only 9 cards from it are valued above $5. Three of those are tutors (cards that allow you to search your deck for a card of a specific type)…and uncommons!

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Most Mirage rares are now in “garbage” territory. A sealed booster of the set will likely set you back at least $40, even though only two cards in the set are worth more than that. But even if you paid retail at the release date – $2.99 – your odds of the entire contents of the booster being worth more than $3, even today, are slim. Even the “good stuff” from Mirage is now virtually all useless trash.

But make no mistake – in 1996/97, plenty of rares in Mirage were far more desirable than others. As a casual player, there were cards I thought looked bad and that were, in fact, bad, and cards I thought looked bad but whose financial value told me otherwise. And then there were plenty of fun cards that I actually wanted to open.

Ventifact Bottle was never desirable, by anyone, at any time. It was never finding its way into a deck of mine, and that made it a card I never wanted to see in a pack. Thus, a bobo (even if it would be a few years before I’d know to call it that.)

Canopy Dragon, though never a good card, held at least casual play value once upon a time. I wasn’t disappointed to open one. So…not a bobo.

That pretty much all Mirage rares are now chaff makes what I opened back then rather irrelevant. The good rares that I opened once, and the bad rares I got again and again, are now all just useless cards I will likely never play. Any value they have is purely nostalgic.

There was one puzzling Mirage bobo that was especially head-scratching. A card I was happy I only ever saw in a single pack:

You sacrifice it, and pitch your entire hand, for 3 mana of one color? Who would ever play this? Why would you ever want to do this? What idiot came up with this design?

Crap rare. Chaff. Bobo. Use whatever term you prefer. It was unplayable rubbish.

And then, one day, it wasn’t.

A near-mint copy is currently valued at over $200.

At least I opened one.

#5 – January 24, 2020

perplexed – adjective : completely baffled; very puzzled

I predicted that my Theros: Beyond Death prerelease foil promo card would be this bobo rare:

I was wrong.

Allure of the Unknown was, however, a foil rare in my first pack I opened from my prerelease kit.

My prerelease foil promo card was this bobo rare:

I do love the art of both cards, and they both look like they’d be gorgeous in foil. Sadly, they aren’t.

I was only guaranteed one foil rare in my prerelease kit, so there’s something to be said about getting a second one from a pack. And the thing to be said is this: of course I would get the worst card in the set as a “bonus.”

Lest I appear too grouchy, I did also find these in my kit:

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Two mythics! Thassa is among the best cards in the set, while Kiora Bests the Sea God is a potential bomb in sealed deck (though also, I feel I must mention, the least valuable mythic in the set, as of the day I’m writing this.)

The temptation of two such powerful cards was too great to resist – my sealed deck would include blue.

Red and white were immediately ruled out – both colors were shallow, with no real synergies and no great cards. My other rares were a Temple of Abandon (a fine card, but not one that was going to guide my deckbuilding) and these:

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Treacherous Blessing, as the name implies, was a potentially strong but dangerous card to include. I’d read up on the set prior to the prerelease, and I heeded the advice of better limited players than I, who all recommended not playing it without multiple ways of removing it.

Due to both my green and blue pools lacking removal, I decided black was the only viable option to pair with blue.

I made the wrong choice. Not by choosing black, but by letting mythic rare bombs lure me into playing blue. I knew the rest of my blue cards were weak, but I was sure that if I could survive until I got one of my bombs, I could win.

I never survived long enough to draw a bomb.

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My first round opponent sat at the wrong table, and the player who was supposed to be at that table had simply taken his prerelease kit and gone home. Since my would-be opponent had already started playing someone else by the time his error was discovered, I was “given” a bye for the round. It counted as a win (yeah!) and I got to sit for 45 minutes and fiddle with my deck (boo!) I was convinced that the extra time helped me tune my 40 cards. Based on how poorly the thing ended up functioning, I think it’s safe to say that was 45 minutes truly and utterly wasted.

In the five games I played with my “improved” deck, I never once saw Kiora Bests the Sea God. In the fifth game I had Thassa in my opening hand, played it on turn 4, and my opponent laughed and exiled it immediately after I passed the turn to him.

I was savagely slaughtered in the 4 games I lost. I put up no credible defense in any of them. The lone win was a pretty enjoyable back and forth battle that I won via attrition.

At 1-2 and heading into my last round, I admitted to myself the fatal error in my judgment: playing a terrible set of blue cards because of my fantastic mythics was dumb.

Blue came out. Green went in. It wasn’t a huge upgrade, but it gave me a solid creature base, which is vital to winning in sealed deck.

My last opponent was miserable. He was operating on 4 hours of sleep (or so he claimed.) He’d played in both the Friday night and Saturday afternoon prereleases before also signing up for the Saturday night event (the one I attended.) In 3 prerelease kits he’d gotten, plus the prize packs from the previous events, he’d not opened a single mythic rare. He admitted to being more of a collector than a player, so I understood his disappointment. Mythics are hard to come by, and the good ones fetch hefty prices. Not getting any in 20+ packs is unlikely and sad, and greatly increases the financial burden of completing a set. I know this first-hand – I have a similar run of still-ongoing bad luck with Hour of Devastation. I’ve opened 23 packs from HOU, and the law of averages suggests I should have 3-4 mythics from the set. I have none.

This last match was definitely the best of the night, mostly because I won. My opponent did me several favors. After winning the first game, his deck or his cognitive ability collapsed. He made several blunders, including keeping a 1-land hand in game 3 instead of mulliganing. Truth be told, I felt bad beating a guy who was barely functioning and, though pleasant throughout, clearly not in a good place emotionally or mentally.

If that had been the whole of my prerelease experience, I’d have chalked it up as satisfactory. Some decent cards, a 2-2 record, and three prize packs that netted me a second Kiora Bests the Sea God, another rare scryland, a foil Aphemia, the Cacophony, and Atris, Oracle of Half-Truths.

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After my son and I totally blew the Throne of Eldraine 2-Headed Giant event at the last prerelease, mostly due to atrocious deckbuilding on my part, I was determined not to make the same mistakes. We prepped quite a bit by watching some great YouTube videos and talking overall strategy. Sunday afternoon we made our way to the LGS for what I was sure would be a much better 2HG showing.

We’d barely gotten through the front door when the employee at the counter, looking exceptionally frazzled, asked us if we were there for the 2:00 2HG event. I told him we were and he responded…

“We’re full.”

He added “it’s been a crazy weekend” but that didn’t lessen the sting. We’d been to the two previous 2HG events on Sunday afternoon, and they’d never been that busy. He scribbled his initials on a couple business cards and gave them to us, telling us if we came back the following weekend, we’d get “a couple of boosters or something.”

They’d run out of prerelease kits, so I understand there was nothing else to be done. If this is a sign that Magic’s popularity is growing…great, I guess. I’m happy for the game and for the store. But I’ll be returning to the store this weekend to ask what we could have done to ensure we were registered in time to play the event. They only take registrations in person, so perhaps I’d just needed to ask on Saturday if I could sign us up for the Sunday event.

My son handled it really well, but I was devastated. I felt like a horrible father for not considering that the event might fill up, or for thinking to ask about registering the day before when I was in the store.

We returned home and built Guilds of Ravnica sealed decks, so Magic was still played. But I don’t think either of us had our hearts in it.