goals – Wheel’s Blog

Demonic Tutor

This year, Lobstercon was not only the biggest Old School tournament of all time at 320 players, but also the first time a Giant Shark has been up for grabs in the US. I have been shark hunting for a while at this point and regardless of if there’s a shark on the line or not, Lobstercon is circled on my calendar months in advance because it is the preeminent American Old School event.

On Thursday morning I set off from Phoenixville to Newark Penn Station to scoop up Paul and Svante before setting our sights on Boston. The drive went relatively smoothly and the chats were as good as anticipated. We stopped at our Airbnb to drop off bags and pick up Thomas before heading over to meet up with friends for dinner and ante.

Dinner was solid and soon thereafter we jumped into the ante action. I had never played ante before with Thomas, but his reputation precedes him as a strong player who plays fast and tight; my favorite combination in an opponent. The culminating moment of our first game was when Thomas who was at 6 life cast Demonic Tutor, Jeweled Bird, and Contracted. After he anted a second card he activated his Bird but I shattered it. Thankfully for Thomas he had drawn a second Bird which saved TWO Volcanic Islands… Thomas passed the turn and I drew a Chain to go with the Bolt I had been holding and finished him off.

Thomas and I played two more games of ante after that for significantly lower stakes than our first one. He punished my Wheel of Fortune the one game with Blood Lust + Berserk to kill me out of nowhere which was not on my bingo card for the night.

After my three game set with Thomas, we both set off to find new dance partners. I paired up with Shawn who I have had some really fun games with in the past. We first met at the Friday night meet up for Lobstercon 2019 and became fast friends. We jammed countless games of Dibatog vs Shops and I really enjoyed his company. Since then we have gotten to hang out at Chalice, Glorycon, and in Seattle for some of the events Shawn hosted.

Our first two games saw us trade Birds which is far and away the most common outcome in a game of Ante 40k. Despite just swapping Birds, our first two games were interesting. In our first game I opened with Mox Ruby, Sol Ring, Badlands, Jeweled Bird but didn’t have much follow through and eventually succumbed to Shawn’s midrange onslaught. The second game was noteworthy because Shawn Tutored for a Bird in the mid to late game because he “knew his ante card was a Badlands”. I don’t think he had seen it before it was saved, but it was in fact a Badlands and he died shortly thereafter.

Our third game was a memorable one. Shawn won the die roll and had a first turn Library which would’ve been devastating if not for my Black Vise. He was able to Shatter it before it dealt too much damage, but my deck coughed up another Vise which turned up the pressure until he Shattered it. From the early game I was holding a Wheel of Fortune which I was tempted to cast several times when I still had several cards in hand out of fear of Mind Twist, but I decided to play it slow.

After dumping enough of my hand and letting Shawn sculpt his with Library, I fired off the Wheel. I drew into another Vise and dropped it. At this point Shawn was down to 3 and could sense that he was soon to be dead. He cast and activated a Bird, but I Shattered it. In the hopes of finding another Bird he decided to cast a desperation Contract from Below. He could’ve instead cast a Wheel of his own but decided on Contract out of fear that he would draw me into the burn I needed to finish him off. The downside of Contract of course is that you have to ante an additional card. Frequently this downside is mitigated by drawing into or activating a Bird to save both cards, but I could tell from Shawn’s body language that he hadn’t found a Bird. I was holding the lethal Fireball and my heart started to race as I waited to see what two cards in Shawn’s deck would be changing ownership.

The two cards were an Unlimited Sengir Vampire and a Beta Demonic Tutor. Winning a normal Beta Tutor in Ante40k is wild, but this Beta Tutor was so much more.

This card has been on quite the journey. Michelle Maggi got it signed by Richard Garfield and altered by Douglas Shuler and then sold it to Kalle who played it until he traded it to Schwartz as part of a deal to get his 4th Alpha Underground Sea. Schwartz being an ante legend decided to play it unsleeved in ante and lost it to Shawn at Lobstercon 2023.

As I type this now it still doesn’t feel real. Over the last few years I have spent a lot of time and money hunting for Garfield signed cards and commissioning alters from artists only to win a card which is signed by Garfield and altered by the original artist in ante.

Upon winning the Demonic Tutor my appetite for ante that evening had been satiated. I figured it would be basically impossible for me to top it and with a long day of Magic ahead of me I called it quits. Thomas, Svante, Simon, and myself headed back to the airbnb, ultimately succeeding in the parking game after spending about 20 minutes deciding whether my car would fit into various street parking spots nearby.

The combo of the long drive and excitement from the evening left me with a lot of shoulder tension which delayed sleep, but before I knew it Friday morning rolled around. I skipped a formal breakfast to prioritize resting more, journaling, showering, and stretching before heading to the Dante.

For the main event I chose to play The Deq. I’ve been honing my skills and tuning my list for the better part of 3 years now and was really happy with where I landed. I knew the event would be challenging, but looked forward to the opportunity to test and learn more about myself.

During the player meeting my friend Marc came up to me and asked if I had an extra Library. I told him I had an extra in my ante deck but it wasn’t with me, though I could get it if needed. He asked me if I minded and so I jogged to my airbnb, fetched the Library for Marc and jogged back.

After my jog I had a nail biter match against White Weenie after my Game 1 Timetwister drew me into all lands and then drew a fortunately timed Mind Twist in round 2 to get me to 2-0. In the third round I faced Nick and lost a game 1 I thought I had in the bag. I had Library while he mulliganned to 5 and proceeded to open with Workshop Lotus Triskelion and following it up with a Factory and Su-Chi. Despite having a Library I didn’t have a white source and quickly died despite having Balance and Divine Offering in hand. In game 2 Nick slammed a Blood Moon and thought it would seal the game which it did. Unfortunately for him, his Moon gave me a ton of Mountains which let my Shivan Dragon breathe a lot of fire. Two turns after I cast it he was dead.

The third game of my match with Nick saw me lose to one of my favorite cards. I answered his first turn Sage of Lat-Nam, but drew rather poorly off of the Timetwister Nick cast on turn two. Live by the sword, die by the sword. I have ran away with far too many games off the back of Timetwister to be upset about that one, but was a bit salty about losing Game 1 with a Turn 1 Library vs a mulligan to 5. Thankfully I washed away the salty taste in my mouth with a Lobster roll after round 3 and got to go out for a quick walk to clear my head and help me digest.

Round 4 saw me defeat Jay on Olle’s Dibatog list from Raging Bull. In game 2 I resolved a Braingeyser for 6 with BEB on his REB which allowed me to cast Mind Twist for hand and Shivan Dragon on the following turn which sealed it. In Round 5 I faced off against Matt in a The Deck mirror except he was on UWB with Sinkholes main and Hippy out of the SB. In Game 1 I had a turn 1 Library but no countermagic to stop him when he Mind Twisted me first for 3 and later for 3 more to take us both to parity. The Braingeyser he drew two turns later broke that parity and gave him the game. I got way ahead on life in Game 2 because Matt had 3 Cities of Brass, but struggled mightily to close the game. In hindsight I was probably being overly aggressive because I was down a game which can be a death sentence with The Deq. We had about 15 minutes left for Game 3 and for whatever reason I had it in my head that I needed to win outright rather than in Orb flips. I mulliganned to a weak 6 card hand that needed mana and a very specific hand from Matt to be successful. He had Turn 1 Lotus Hippy which my hand did not line up with and I succumbed quickly. In hindsight I should’ve boarded more defensively, but had I lost the game in Orb flips I would probably be singing a different tune.

At this point with 2 losses and 4 remaining rounds I knew my chances of making Top16 were slim to none. I’ve played enough Magic to know that my tiebreakers would almost certainly not be good enough, but at the same time I came to play Magic and that I did. In Round 6 I won Game 1 despite going to 0 cards in Library. On the last turn before decking I used Recall to cast Time Walk, Regrowth it and cast it again and then Timetwistered. On my first Time Walk turn I cast Braingeyser for 7 and on my second I was more ambitious, Regrowing it and casting Geyser for 10 which drew me into Time Walk and a Mind Twist for 7 which sealed it.

Round 7 had me face off against Hans who I have now played 3 Lobstercons in a row. In game 1 I misplayed by Timetwistering instinctively because I was up on permanents instead of just Stripping his only land and burying him. As I was shuffling I realized my mistake but karma did me in. I was proud of myself for stopping the spiral and winning games 2 and 3 to salvage the match win.

Round 8 was a fun one. In game 1 I stabilized at 3 life against Will’s Lion Dib Burn deck for legitimately 15 minutes. It took all 5 counters, Mind Twist, Regrowth, both Recalls, and 3 Factories to stem the tide, but I played tight and caught some lucky breaks which enabled my last Factory to deal 4 points of damage so I could Fireball Will for 20 with 3 cards left in Library.

The last round of Swiss was a full circle moment where I faced off against Marc. Our first match was wild. I mulliganned to 5 and this was my start:

I followed up Timetwister with Emerald and Chaos Orb and was holding Mind Twist and Balance when I passed the turn feeling that I was 95+% to win the game. Marc had other plans. He fought fire with fire playing Sapphire, Ancestral, Lotus, Mox, Savannah, and Mind Twist for 4 of my 5 cards leaving me with just an Abyss in hand. Luckily Marc was on a UWG Erhnamgeddon list which was held in check by Abyss for two turns until I drew Recall to get back Balance and take us both to 0 cards. From there Marc was stuck on 3 mana with an Abyss preventing him from deploying creatures while I drew a Book into Regrowth for Mind Twist eliciting a concession.

Before and during our match I joked that I wanted my Library back and that Marc was going to beat me with my own Library which is exactly what happened in game 2. I fought like hell, but in the end the card advantage proved to be too much.

I closed out the day by raining down power on Marc in Game 3. I drew lots of extra cards with Braingeyser, cast a Timetwister which drew me into my previously destroyed Abyss and ultimately I prevailed.

After starting 3-2 I rallied back and won the last 4 rounds to finish 7-2 which was good enough for 20th place which was closer to Top16 than I would’ve expected. We left the venue, I went and picked up my wife Lucy at the train station after she had taken the Amtrak up to Boston after school that day.

On Saturday I woke up and felt compelled to read a bit of the book I had brought with me, Inner Excellence. I shared a passage which made me think of Pez Unholy who I know shares an interest in personal growth and had made Top16. My hope was that this passage might be beneficial to him as he continued on his journey for greatness.

Lucy and I went over to the venue in the hopes of finding people to eat brunch with. Mike and Eric joined us for a nice meal At Cafe Luna and then we walked back over to the Dante where I watched the rest of the Top16 because Pez was still in contention for the Shark. Throughout his run I told him to “expect nothing” which was the central theme of the passage I had shared with him.

As one needs to when one wins a giant Magic tournament, Pez ran hotter than the sun in the finals by opening up with two Black Vises on turn 1 in both of the games where he was on the play, absolutely decimating Jonas. I’m extremely happy for Pez; he and I have been friends for several years at this point and despite having a zillion Top8s and close calls, he hadn’t won a big event up to this point. He certainly picked a good spot to do so!

After congratulating Pez I went with Lucy, Mike, and Jeff over to Harvard to get a Lucy centric tour. It was highly entertaining for me to hear about various memories such as, “This is where I got mauled by a cat” or “This is where I used to sometimes get egg sandwiches from a food truck”. We walked around a bunch, got Indian food as is our custom when in Boston and then made our way back to the Dante once again. Lucy decided to call it a night while I went back out into the night to play in the Ante40k rodeo.

I jammed some games at my airbnb with Nicky and Noah because State Park was still serving dinner which meant that we couldn’t get a table to play at. By the time we returned the ante was fully underway and I ended up playing a long set with Mark who was borrowing Shawn’s deck. Mark is a tremendous player, but luck was not on his side. He kept getting me into slightly precarious situations only for me to find my way out of them and into a win. I won all 4 of the games we played but only took home Birds for my efforts. Still fun to play with a player of his caliber; it’s never been easy to make the Finals of a Pro Tour, not even in 1998.

Shortly after Mark and I finished playing State Park closed for the night which prompted the ante contingent to move onward. Unwilling to accept that the night was over, Simon and Scott played a match of sidewalk Triple A.

Following some sidewalk Magic and me making sure Shawn made it safely into his Uber home we walked back to our Airbnb. Simon, Svante, and I swapped tales of the weekend for longer than any of us had intended to because we knew that Simon would be leaving quite early to fly home. I packed up and got far too few hours of sleep before we went to a really tasty Brazilian Cafe for breakfast.

Shortly after breakfast Thomas headed to the airport while we met back up with Paul who accompanied us to the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum which has become a Lobstercon tradition for Lucy and I. The Gardner has a powerful aura to it which is hard to describe. Maybe it is the way in which the collection was meticulously curated combined with the museum itself being so interesting; regardless, it is absolutely worth a visit if you haven’t been.

With our obligatory trip to the Gardner under our belts we stopped for caffeine and embarked on the journey home. Lucy drove most of the way back to Newark Penn Station because of my lack of sleep and I mostly bantered back and forth with Paul and Svante about a wide range of topics. We discussed our favorite moments from the weekend, how to tweak Paul’s deck going forward, the amount of Magic specific jargon that we regularly use among other things.

We dropped Paul and Svante off in Newark and started the final leg of our journey. Both of us were emotionally and physically drained, but we made it home safe and sound.

Looking back on the weekend, Demonic Tutor was certainly the card of the weekend for me. Not only did I win an absolutely incredible Demonic Tutor in ante on Thursday, but I also got to be Pez Unholy’s demonic tutor with the passage I sent him on Saturday.

No matter how much time and energy you put into preparation you cannot control the outcome of every game that you play; variance will rear its head from time. This weekend was a helpful reminder that even when I fall short of achieving my goals, I can always support and help my friends on their quest for eternal glory.

Cyrille’s Bolt

In late June of 2023 I stumbled across a unique Graded Lightning Bolt that my now close friend Jacob was selling. It was a unique card because it had been a part of Cyrille de Foucaud’s legendary collection and was played in his deck for the first Magic World Championship in 1994 where he made it all the way to the Top4 before losing to Bertrand Lestree. The idea of owning a piece of Magic’s history was tantalizing and made it a snap buy for me.

Purchasing this Lightning Bolt from Jacob was the genesis of our friendship which has continued to grow in the time since. Jacob cracked the Bolt for me and sent it along with the tag and an Emerald City Trolls sticker.

Later in the summer of 2023 I negotiated a deal for a set of Richard Garfield altered Blue Power which were also from Cyrille de Foucaud’s collection. I will write a post about them sometime in the future. Throughout this process I enlisted the help of my friend Benoit who is the foremost expert on Garfield cards. Benoit was invaluable in helping me craft my correspondence, negotiate a price, and ultimately execute a deal. Thanks a ton for the help with that one!

After acquiring more cards from Cyrille’s collection I became interested in getting in touch with him to find out more of the backstory on them. With Benoit’s help, I sent Cyrille an email, got one reply back confirming I had the right person, and asking if I had WhatsApp. After I responded saying that I did have WhatsApp and would love to catch up, I never heard back.

With the help of my friend West I dug into the old coverage archives and found a few gems about Cyrille and his past. I was eager to learn more, but didn’t hear back.

Over the past year or so my friend Simon has floated the idea to me that it would be really cool if I could get Cyrille to sign the Lightning Bolt a few times. I wholeheartedly agreed, but aside from the email that he never responded to I was unsure how to get in contact with him. After Simon brought it up at the end of 2024, I shared this problem with Benoit who had an out of the box solution. Cyrille owns a jewelry store in Geneva which is where our mutual acquaintance Francois lives. Maybe they know each other and Francois can assist with getting the signature.

I knew Francois because he and I had played a match at Winc0n in 2023 and then randomly shared a cab to the Gothenburg airport at n00bcon last year. I reached out to him with minimal expectation that it would turn into anything but funnily enough he had bought a watch from Cyrille a few years ago. Francois was happy to facilitate, I just needed to send the Bolt to him and ideally retrieve it at n00bcon this year.

I randomly had the urge this week to reach out to Francois to see if he’d had any luck getting in touch with Cyrille having not exchanged any messages since the end of January. In a strange coincidence, Francois messaged me back a few hours later to say that he had actually been to see Cyrille and get my Bolt signed earlier that day!

In addition to having an aesthetically pleasing signature, Cyrille had shared some fun anecdotes from the past including how a guy at Origins 1994 had proposed to him that he could purchase 20% of the entire Beta print run for $120,000… For those doing math at home that works out to $187 per complete set of Beta…

I cannot wait to see Francois at n00bcon to retrieve my precious Lightning Bolt and hear some more of Cyrille’s tales from the early 1990’s. If I’m lucky I someday might get in direct contact with him, but that will have to wait for a future blog post.

Huge thanks to my friends who have helped me out along the way with this journey. Jacob, Benoit, West, Simon, and Francois all helped me in their own way and without any one of them I think this pipe dream would’ve fallen apart.

My Aesthetic Evolution

With collecting I have mistakenly thought I was “done” many times and now accept that will likely never be the case. Each time I change directions it plays out pretty much the same way. I am getting close to finishing my goal, I push to finish it and then when I do I feel empty. To cope with the emptiness I quickly pivot by setting new and more difficult goals for myself. The piece of advice I give to others is to make your collection goals stretch out as long as possible. The journey is far more enjoyable if you take your time rather than rushing to the destination.

Over time my aesthetic preferences and my collection have changed fairly dramatically. A prime example of this is City of Brass:

Coming from Vintage I had a love for Japanese cards. I had been to Japan in 2016 and over the years had cultivated a collection of every playable card for Vintage Workshops in Japanese over the years. When I started playing City of Brass in Old School in 2018 I used Japanese FBB 4th Edition Cities. Before I played a single game I ordered 4 of just about every inexpensive Japanese card I could find that might be playable in Atog. Throughout 2018 I acquired pretty much all of the playable Japanese Old School legals cards, some format staples not printed in Japanese and 40 Collector’s Edition Duals. At the time I thought I was done, but I wasn’t even close.

In 2019 I found myself with an invite to n00bcon. I was thrilled to have the opportunity to go to Sweden and throw my hat in the ring, but my Old School collection was setup for American rather than Swedish reprints. With n00bcon on the horizon I turned as much of my collection as I could into Swedish legal. Thanks to the generosity of Scott Bradley and Mano I was able to borrow some cards so I could play at n00bcon, but I was hoping to make that a one time thing. Due to solely playing Workshops in Vintage for 10 years I didn’t own Duals, but had Beta Power. In 2018 I picked up a full set of CE duals and they would remain that way for the time being because I couldn’t afford Beta duals, but because I liked the aesthetic of having my whole deck black border everything else transitioned over to English. And so as with many other cards, I found a set of Arabian Nights Cities of Brass and sold my FBB set.

Sometime in the dark age that was 2020 I set a goal of playing at n00bcon on my birthday in 2021 with a deck that was entirely my own and ideally fully black bordered. The circumstances which enabled these fever dream to become reality were unique. I had reacquired my original Unlimited Black Lotus at Eternal Weekend in 2019 which allowed me to essentially trade my Beta Black Lotus for 4 HP Beta Volcanic Islands and also due to COVID I was spending significantly less than before and thus could afford to purchase a Beta Blue Dual every month or so. Before I knew it my collection was fully black bordered and Swedish legal aside from my Black Lotus (which I will write about in a separate post at some point). While COVID pushed n00bcon to be virtual rather than in person, I am happy to say that I did achieve my goal of playing my own cards in n00bcon on my birthday.

Lion Dib circa 2021 (Year of the Dingus)

At this point I was inching closer to the point where I had everything to play all of the tier one decks with Swedish reprints. I eventually got to that spot and quickly realized how much more I enjoyed the journey than the destination. I was at a crossroads collection-wise as I owned 32 Beta Duals, but didn’t see myself ever wanting to play Savannah or Bayou in Sweden and thus wasn’t sure I should push myself to upgrade them to Beta. On one hand, the idea of 40 before 40 was appealing, but on the other I didn’t want to commit so many resources for no reason other than to take a cool picture. No shade at anyone who has 40 Beta Duals, I just decided that was not for me.

In 2021 during one of my late night compulsive Facebook scrolling sessions I stumbled upon a playset of four season altered Arabian Nights Cities of Brass. I thought the price was fair and didn’t hesitate to pull the trigger.

I have always liked signed cards, but these Cities represented a turning point in my collection. From there I went deeper and deeper into the alter rabbit hole. I attend a lot of Old School events and many of them have Magic artists in attendance which gives me a lot of opportunities to get my cards altered. Over the last 3 years I have started to prioritize events with artists over those without when all else is relatively equal.

At the outset, I decided that if possible I would avoid sending cards to artists; instead getting everything done on site. By taking this approach I have made the process much more fulfilling than it would be if I had done it via mail through an intermediary. I get the experience of meeting the artists, can share with them my enthusiasm and passion for the game, hear their feedback on my ideas for alters, and create a lasting association that ties each card to a specific moment in time. The process certainly takes longer than it otherwise would, but for me that is a pro rather than a con because I know it will be that much more satisfying when I eventually arrive at my destination.

After setting out to get my cards altered, I found a new side quest which has captivated me ever since. At n00bcon in 2022 I was the soberest person in the room at 2am and thus asked to be the scorekeeper for the Ante40k World Championship. Similarly to how I became hooked on Old School after spectating at the Eternal Weekend Old School event in 2017, I left n00bcon knowing deep down that I wanted to get into ante. In hindsight I am not sure why it took me 10 months to get an ante deck together, but at Arvika Festival in 2023 I jumped into the pool and haven’t gotten out since.

For the uninitiated, the way that Ante40k works is that you build a Swedish legal deck which must be worth at least 40,000 SEK ($3,764) and then play games of Magic for ante. The ante cards are all restricted except for Jeweled Bird and each player antes the top card of their deck before the game begins. Whoever wins gets the card that the other person anted or in many cases, a Jeweled Bird which saved their ante card. When you lose a card it is customary to alter it to memorialize the occasion. Some of the alters are good and others are bad, but the end result is that you can win Swedish legal cards which have the added benefit of a good story associated to them.

At n00bcon in 2024 I didn’t win a shark, but I had a very productive weekend playing Ante 40k. That weekend I returned to the Ante40k World Championship as a player rather than a scorekeeper. I lost in the finals to a very deserving Jonnie Myrbacka but over the course of the weekend I managed to win a City of Brass, Badlands, Moat, Unlimited Sol Ring, and Su-Chi. The alter that Mike Frantz did on the City of Brass I won from him was cool, but by virtue of his level of inebriation and the fact that we both wanted to get in as many games as possible in the Ante 40k World Championship it was rushed. When I got home I knew I wanted to do something to embellish it and make it my own because there was no way I wasn’t going to be playing that City of Brass in all of my decks going forward.

As of writing this my aesthetic hierarchy for a card that I play looks something like:

Needs to be Swedish legal
Ideally is black bordered
Has an event stamp, alter, or changed ownership in an ante game.

For me, every card should have its own story. I know at this point that I never will be “done”. I may get to stopping points where I am content with not adding anything more to my collection for a long while and eventually the churn will slow down. Each person is on their own individual journey with their own aesthetic preferences and goals. What is right for me is likely not right for you and that’s OK. Enjoy the journey, savor the hunt, and be happy with where you are along the path.

My Goals as a Player

I am playing for the long game. I aim to play Magic for the rest of my life and will work to keep improving as time passes by. Over time I have learned to treat my losses not as failures, but as chances to learn and grow. Every mistake can teach me something and so I strive to learn from them.

I know that I will never be perfect as a player and that is part of what appeals to me about Magic. That said, I can work to hone my craft and improve my decision making to try to get ever closer to the perfection which eludes me. Even though I make less mistakes than I did before I still do make them and will continue to. I used to get painfully frustrated by my mistakes and still do at times, but by reframing them I have learned to live with and accept my fallibility. No one is perfect and so there will always be new material for me to review and learn from.

People often ask me about winning a Giant Shark and many seem to think that is my ultimate goal in Old School. I would be lying if I said I didn’t want to win a Shark, but for me it is a checkpoint along my journey, not the final destination. I travel around the world to play in the biggest tournaments because they are the most challenging. That has led me to play in six Shark tournaments up to now, but this fall I passed up Winc0n which had a Shark to go to Uthden Troll Cup which doesn’t so I could experience that event for the first time. I want to keep getting better above all else and if I keep at that for long enough then it seems likely that I will someday find myself with less than fifteen cards in my sideboard, but who knows when or if that will occur.

In that vein, the only person that I try to compare myself to when it comes to Magic and life in general is past versions of myself. It can be fun to debate “who is the best player without a shark” while chatting with friends, but at the end of the day it means nothing. I know I am a strong player; I have put years of work into getting to that point. I also know that at all times I am either getting better, getting worse, or staying the same. I am constantly working to avoid the urge to compare myself to others and focus instead on continuing to get stronger because over a long enough time frame my hard work will bear out.

Over the years I have found that devoting the amount of time and effort that I do to Magic is only worthwhile if it is fun. Right now I am having a great time tweaking decks, working on sideboard plans, playing the game, and traveling to events, but who knows if that will always be the case. I have burnt myself out on Magic in the past by doing too much of it and thus know that there is a delicate balance for me between being rusty and being burnt out. The result of this is to be more selective in the events I choose to enter because I want to keep Magic enjoyable for me so that I will want to continue playing for the rest of my life.

Beyond just being an immensely deep and complex strategy game that I enjoy playing, Magic has introduced me to a world of like minded individuals, many of whom I am lucky to call friends. As I continue to play I want to keep making new friends while also maintaining relationships with the ones I already have. Times change and people drift in and out of each other’s lives. Magic has led me to make so many lifelong friends and I want to keep that train rolling for as long as possible. Life is more fun when you have other people around to enjoy it with.