Casual Magicking

Shoddy Assembly Required

#4 – January 17, 2020

cheapjack – adjective : of inferior quality

I wish I could claim the first deck I assembled following my reboot was…fun? Interesting? Awful? It was none of those. I’d barely started processing my Collector Booster misfortune when my son informed me he’d already built a deck and was ready to battle. Not wanting to turn down paper Magic with the kid when he was interested, I hurriedly flipped back through my cards to see what could be built fast. Like, in 2 minutes fast.

(As a reminder, you can see my rebooted collection here. Sorting on the “Avg.” column will order everything based on market price.)

Knights looked well represented, and The Circle of Loyalty looked like great fun.

Aside: I know WotC was looking to riff on the Arthurian Round Table, but wouldn’t it have been more interesting if they’d gone with a different shape for the symbol of knighthood in Magic? Maybe The Obtuse Triangle of Allegiance? Or The Truncated Icosahedron of Devotion?

Anywayhow…knights were in too many colors and I didn’t have time to sort that all out. Green, though…I got three solid green rares. I took them, and 20 other green cards, added them to 17 Forests, and shuffled. Like a proper new player I didn’t look at my mana curve, or creatures/spell balance. I took a mass of cards in the same color and played them. And I stomped my son. Twice.

In the first game he played turn 2 Fabled Passage, turn 4 Questing Beast. Within a minute of playing against him, it was obvious his ELD bundle had been far more generous than mine. Bear in mind that my wife gave us these bundles, and she could just as easily have put my name on the gift tag for the bundle my son got. But of COURSE that didn’t happen.

A QB with more abilities than Lamar Jackson, and a land that’s as awesome as it is beautiful – kid did well!

If it sounds like I’m being a bit of an ass, I want to be clear: I’m happy the kid got good stuff. For several days he kept talking about how great his bundle was. That was awesome – for him, for his interest in the game, and for me. If his bundle had coughed up a weak pool, I would have been really disappointed, regardless of what I opened.

That said…couldn’t the kid’s fortune have been at the expense of some stranger in Rhode Island, instead of me? Why couldn’t we BOTH have gotten great bundles?

And this is where I admit that despite my unfortunate Collector Booster contents, I still got some fun stuff. And I used it to shellac the kid. Both games he dropped turn 4 Questing Beasts, and both games I removed it easily and steamrolled whatever limp defense he could muster without the QB. Not bad for what had to be the shoddiest deck-building effort I’d ever undertaken.

A few days later we played more games with different decks, and the kid got his revenge. He saw that his pool had the makings of a great blue/red “draw two” deck, and it was fearsome. Early in our first game he dropped The Royal Scions and then giggled maniacally while I stared slack-jawed. He wrecked me that game, and the next, as my painstakingly-assembled knights deck offered zero resistance.

Like most planeswalkers – a joy to play with, a nightmare to play against

I switched to a white/green adventure deck with all the best stuff from my original sloppy green creation retained, and all the chaff removed for some competent white playables. I did manage a win before getting crushed one final time.

At that point he was eager to show me what else he got in his bundle, and see what I’d gotten. His Collector Booster contained a borderless Castle Locthwain and a foil borderless Linden, the Steadfast Queen. Linden’s not a chase card by any means, but as a borderless foil it’s gorgeous.

Castle Star Destroyer and the Queen of Cumbersome Frippery

His standard packs had a perfectly respectable range of rares, including Gilded Goose, Feasting Troll King, foil Stolen by the Fae, Escape to the Wilds, Emry, Watery Tart, and Happily Ever After. The high end pulls certainly make up for a few bobos.

Looking at this initial foray into Magic in 2020 and the initial signs that the Curse of the Bobo Rare persists, I’ve found what I hope is a loophole. My reboot started January 1, but our ELD bundles were purchased in 2019. Perhaps the Curse only applies to product bought during my previous reign. Theros: Beyond Death releases soon, and positively shimmers with hope. Just as Elspeth seeks to escape the Theros underworld, so too do I seek to escape my cursed fate. I’ll be going to a prerelease Saturday night, and the kid and I will be doing a 2HG prerelease Sunday afternoon. This could be a glorious new beginning. Right? Right.

Old thought patterns are hard to break, though, so I’ve already started preparing myself to see this bobo at one prerelease or the other:

Conceptual illustration of me opening my Theros: Beyond Death prerelease kit

Fate’s Fetters

#3 – January 14, 2020

cursed – adjective : being under or deserving a curse

It’s only a few days into 2020, and already I’ve experienced a sizeable setback in my reboot goals. Catastrophe! Despair! Tears!

Actually, no tears, but definitely despair.

I’m already asking: why am I doing this again?

I’m reminded of the wise words of Homer Simpson:

I’ve opened a couple (read as: a massive amount) of terrible Magic packs over the years. But last night was, perhaps, my finest (read as: most egregious) moment in pack-cracking history. But I’m jumping ahead. I opened my first Magic packs! Let’s see how it went. Surely this introduction provides no hint of the results.

My wife gifted both my son and I one of these for Christmas:

The contents would be my first ever Magic cards, and I felt a bundle would be the perfect place to start my reboot. Ten packs of the latest expansion, plus a Collector’s Booster that would undoubtedly brim with awesomeness. I asked the boy if he’d like to do a bundle battle – we each open our bundles and build a couple decks from the contents – and he was game.

I stripped the plastic from the package, disassembled the components, and selected the first standard booster in the box. There was crinkling, there was ripping, and there was…my first Magic card:

What a strange, strange card. We’ll start with that name. “Smitten”? It’s descriptive, I suppose. No other Magic card has ever used the word. “Curry” too, is a novelty for Magic. As an English major, the card earns my earnest approval for its use of language. I was also sure that “marry” had never made its way onto a Magic card in any capacity. I was wrong. The infamous Uktabi Orangutan referenced marriage (by monkeys, no less) 24 years ago.

Smitten Swordmaster’s art is…fine? I dig the purples. The swordsman, though…something about him nagged at me. The face, the hair, it’s like he’s some weird conglomeration of Shrek villains.

I didn’t realize the Swordmaster had a goatee until I enlarged the art. Still, I stand by my initial impression

As for the card itself, it’s…fine. I could’ve done much worse with my first Magic card. Playable, with an Adventure that has potential to be strong in the right deck. I’ll give it a C+/B-.

The rare in my first pack was another black knight card with Adventure:

Full and fair disclosure: the spear shafts in the horse bother me more than the arrows in the rider. What honor-less monster stabs a horse, even an undead one?

This – this is NOT a bobo rare. I’m thrilled. Ecstatic, even! The Magic gods have smiled (evilly, perhaps, but a smile nonetheless.) Mayhaps the curse of the bobo rare will be lifted!

The remaining standard boosters are somewhat less gracious. I do get two mythics, and while they are both white (crud), they’re passable (meh):

I get some solid green rares, though one is systematically being banned in various formats and may soon be unplayable anywhere outside of my kitchen.

Green, for lack of a better word, is good

The remaining packs were fair and representative of Magic as a whole. A dragon! A castle! Another black(ish) knight! And, unbeknownst to me, a gloomy portent of what lurked in my Collector’s Booster.

Blue pitched a rare/mythic shutout, so that’s as good a reason as any to hate the color, right?

All that was left was the Collector’s Booster. Good stuff surely awaited. And it began with this foil:

Cute pigs. Pigs that, in gameplay mechanics, are meant to be killed and eaten. Flavor-wise, this is awful. And the card – awful! And its foiling – awful! Next.

A vanilla white knight. The foiling was, admittedly, sweet. A beautiful, useless knight. With what looks like a shield made of construction paper.

Then I find this beaut:

My fortunes have shifted! A foil showcase card! Not a particularly great one, sure, but it looks purty. Whatever it is.

The next six foils are all…fine. Dwarven Mine, Witching Well, Crashing Drawbridge, Fierce Witchstalker, Slaying Fire, Keeper of Fables. I like seeing a cat – Magic has cats?! – and all look quite nice in foil. Plus they seem playable in a sealed deck.

Next are three showcase cards. I am neither elated nor disappointed:

In what Wizards calls the “ancillary slot” I get Mace of the Valiant. It’s a rare, so – huzzah!

It’s worth $.30, so – oof.

The two “money” slots are up next. This is where a Collector’s Booster pays off. This is where the curse of the bobo rare can be obliterated. These next two cards will forever color my new Magic experience.

I slide away the Mace, eager to see my spoils.

You know what happens.

Of course you do.

I wish I could say I did too, but I didn’t. I honestly had high hopes here. I allowed myself, for the first time in probably two decades, to be optimistic about what a Magic pack would bestow. So imagine my shock to see…this:

This isn’t just a bobo rare. This is THE bobo rare of Throne of Eldraine. The card no one ever wants to see. As my borderless rare.

I’m horrified. I may be “new” to Magic, but I know this is putrid. I waste no time tossing it aside to see what my foil/mythic will be. I know it won’t be worse. Can’t be worse.

You know what happens.

Of course you do.

This time, I did too. I really did. I both knew it wasn’t possible, and knew it was inevitable.

My foil rare was…

No need to imagine this in foil – it still sucks

No. No no no.

Please, no!

I look at them again.

Both are still Sundering Strokes.

“Oh, fudge.”

Except I didn’t say “fudge.”

I didn’t say anything. My kid was 10 feet away.

I momentarily forget what the last card in the pack is, and look at it in desperation. Maybe it’s something cool?

It’s just a double-sided token. Despair sweeps over me. I’m well and truly stunned at what I’m looking at.

What’s that?

You want to know what my token was?

I don’t think you do.

You do? Really? Alright, fine. It is, quite frankly, better than the two cards that preceded it:

I have literally nothing to say at this point

If this isn’t the worst Throne of Eldraine Collector’s Booster anyone has ever opened…it’s in the running.

With a little time, I imagine I’ll regroup. I have decks to build from my cards, after all. So we’ll get to that next time. Until then – weep for me.

If anyone doubts my story, here is photographic proof of my accomplishment. This is my cat Kiya (whose name means “jovial lady”) expressing her enthusiasm at being stroked twice.

“Hilarious, Dad. Now get this trash away from me”

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

I suppose it’s time to put it in writing

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.

As obnoxious as cardboard gets, but not reasons for my reboot

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.

A sample deck win rate, presented by my Arena tracker

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!

Not Always Good to Be King

#1 – January 1, 2020

rediscover – transitive verb : to discover (something lost or forgotten) again

Yes, I’m really starting my first blog post with a dictionary definition. It’s important. And I’m an English major. We do that kind of thing. Just humor me…

Urza’s Saga, the 15th Magic: The Gathering expansion that was released in October of 1998, was oozing with great cards. Iconic cards. Cards still adored, and feared, over 20 years later.

Citanul Centaurs was not one of those. But I opened 5 Urza’s Saga boosters that contained this awful rare.

Recantation is another terrible rare from Urza’s Saga. I pulled 4 of these atrocities from booster packs.

Gaea’s Cradle, from the same set, is NOT a bad card. In fact, it’s so good that at one time (in 2018), near-mint copies of it were valued close to $500.

Am I the only one that sees eyeballs instead of dandelions?

I opened zero of these from Saga boosters.

Scoria Wurm, a coin-flipping card in a game with very few of those and a long history of player mockery of the coin-flipping mechanic (this ain’t Pokemon!), is worth a surprisingly-high 47 cents. I opened 5 of them. And if that weren’t insulting enough, an even worse and less valuable coin-flipping rare from the same set, Viashino Sandswimmer, taunted me – nay, haunted me – from the backs of seven $2.99 packs.

I gave several Sandswimmers away years ago, thinking I was committing some altruistic, generous gesture by donating a couple of my extra rares to players with smaller card pools at their disposal. While I hope they found their way into some silly coin-flipping decks…I know better. Apologies, unfortunate recipients.

Terrible pulls at $2.99 pack. Imagine paying the going rate for a sealed USG booster and getting one of these?

While unheard of in recent years, Urza’s Saga featured an astonishing 110 unique rare cards. Your chances of getting any particular rare (which were then, and still essentially are now, one per pack) were exceedingly slim. I didn’t track how many Urza’s Saga packs I bought while they were available for retail price, but my best guess is probably in the range of 250.

I can account for some: I know I bought 3 sealed booster boxes (36 packs each), played in a prerelease tournament where I built a deck from 6 packs (which somehow was decent enough to win me 7 or 8 more), and I went through at least another 20-25 making sealed decks with a group of guys I played with weekly while living in Seattle. Beyond that, who knows how often I would pick up a pack or two “just because.” The total bought might be closer to 300, which I admit is a staggering amount of Magic packs to have EVER bought. When you consider Urza’s Saga is just one of 80+ sets I’ve bought packs from…well, best not to consider that.

Just to set the record straight – not that it does much to make this all look less sad – I believe I bought more Urza’s Saga packs than any other set I’ve spent (wasted?) money on…by a large margin in most cases.

Based purely on volume of packs purchased, random chance should have awarded me an average of 2 to 2.5 copies of each rare in the set. By the time I stopped buying Urza’s Saga packs, I had opened at least one copy of every single card in the set, including every rare. Except for Gaea’s Cradle. The card was absolutely understood to be exceptionally powerful from the moment it was first birthed into existence, and it has always been among the most valuable cards, if not THE most valuable card, in the set.

So you see my point here, right? I was blessed with 7 copies of Viashino Sandswimmer, 5 copies of Scoria Wurm, 4 copies of Recantation, and 4-5 copies of several dozen more nigh-worthless rectangles from Urza’s Saga. But never once did I get the joy of opening not just the greatest card in the set, but one of the greatest cards in the game’s history. And, as made abundantly clear by now, a card with a rather high return on investment if you were lucky enough to get one in a $2.99 booster pack and hold onto it for awhile.

I opened at least one copy of 109 of the 110 rares from the set. And the one card I don’t get turns out to be among the most valuable cards ever printed.

This wasn’t even the first time I’d proved pitiful at pack-cracking. Nor it would not be my last.

You see, my friends, I…I am the King of Bobo Rares.

For more than two decades I’ve worn that self-ascribed moniker with a strange mixture of shame and grim responsibility. It really is true – heavy is the head that wears the (bobo) crown.

But that reign ends now. I will no longer be shackled to this strange fate. I have decided my Magic fandom needs a reboot. I’m starting over.

I’m doing nothing drastic like selling off my collection or forever swearing off sealed product in favor of buying singles. No, no. Nothing so sensible or, frankly, so dull. Instead my plan is to start anew in 2020. New year, new decade, new Magic experiences, and a new Magic collection. And while I’m at it, no more monopoly on bobo rares! This king wants a new crown.

From this point forward, Magic will be new to me. Or as new as it can be to someone who’s been playing it on and off since 1997. The next pack I open will be treated like my first Magic pack. My next deck will be my first. My next game will be the first of many, many, many losses.

Can I rediscover the game? Can I go home again? Can I write about it all with enough joy, humor, or bad pulls to convince anyone to follow my journey?

Next time I’ll lay out my goals and conditions for my “reboot.” I’ll try to make it more interesting than it sounds.

Full and fair disclosure: long before a copy of Gaea’s Cradle was worth hundreds of dollars, I traded for one. Two, actually. One of which I foolhardily loaned (and mailed, via the USPS) to some rando in Wyoming who assured me it arrived unharmed. What he could possibly be doing with it is beyond me – I could never actually PLAY with a Magic card that’s still worth over $300.