Subject: [MISC] re: girls in magic/vampires and klingons Date: Wed, 10 Jun 1998 23:21:01 -0400 From: dave brillhart To: fkusumot@ix.netcom.com I’m kinda bored tonight so I thought that I might write down some thoughts of my own about a few topics being discussed on that most excellent of all MTG discussion forums, The Dojo. First of all – Girls in Magic : Maybe it’s just me, but I think there are a bunch of girls (or women) that play magic. The first exposure to magic that I ever had was a lady at work telling me about her collection, and how she was selling some of it for big bucks. This amazed me, that people would pay money for these cards. Later, after I was playing a bit – I would hear details about her super – impressive collection of really old cards (P9 set, etc.). The first chance that I ever had to play the game was a girlfriend that had some crappy ice age and homelands cards showing me the basics. Later, a female roommate was to teach me more about it – and we would play 2 hour marathon multiplayer games involving much vodka swilling and ridicule of the other players (using power cards like scryb sprites, carrier pigeons, etc.) It was when I first started my first feeble attempts to play in a sanctioned tourney that I was to notice the lack of women players. Make up your own reasons why they aren’t there in the card shop – but they are pretty rare when you see them. The ones that do show up seem to be pretty cool and open-minded though. I think it would be great if a lot of women would be there at the next tournament I go to, and really I think most of the guys out there feel the same way. If you are a lady and reading this – why not give it a try? I don’t expect it to really happen, but you never know. I’ll never forget going to the pistol range (which is normally as male dominated as card shops) and meeting a women’s competition pistol team – ALL of which were much better marksmen (or markswomen – whatever) than me – really it was pretty cool. Secondly – Vampires and Klingons – Okay, let’s admit it, magic players are mostly sort of geeks. I’m kind of a geek, and more likely than not - you are too. Don’t get defensive about it. It’s not a bad thing. Really, being sort of a geek is a good thing – I know computer geeks that make $2,000 a week. Many geeky people have very fulfilling and happy lives. The question is, HOW much of a geek are you? Are you in you late twenties, live in your parents basement, actually memorize parts of the Klingon dictionary, and have seen every episode of star trek, Babylon 5, the X-files, etc.?? Not many magic players are like that really, most are sort of geeky, but not really geeky. Lots of them are pretty socially adept, and confident. In my opinion, the more serious magic players are only geeky in a cool intellectual way. It’s a whole different breed of geek than the star trek convention no-life geek. Don’t confuse these two brands of geek. To get get more on topic to the original post, I do think that WOTC and the Duelest are a bit off on what the average competitive magic player really wants. I think that most really serious players and most older players would be just as happy if WOTC dropped the whole storyline bit altogether. I don’t care for it a bit myself, I could care less about gerrard, squee, and the whole bunch. The question is why do Wotc and their undoubtedly super humongous market research division give them the idea that this stuff will probably sell? Well they are probably right – it probably will sell more cards with the storyline that without. Most people that are really into magic dislike the storyline, but they are only a small minority of people that go into the stores and buy a couple packs of whatever expansion is current. Same with the Duelist – it’s kind of a lowest-common denominator thing at work here. Magic will probably never be exactly the way that you – the serious player will want it to be. You just aren’t a big enough part of the market. If I had my way – all the cards would be drawn by Kaja and Phil Foglio and maybe there would some sort of sick humor in the card titles and flavor texts. Magic would be more like Illuminati or XXXenophile or something like that, but in would appeal to about 1/100th of the market it does now. WOTC really knows what they are doing. They aren’t making zillions of dollars by being unaware of their market. The thing is – substance free super hyped things go away after a few years, while fringe cult – appeal things tend to stuck around for the long term. The Spice Girls will be history in a year or two – if they aren’t already – but Black Sabbath will probably be listened to in 100 years. Magic needs to keep some sort of fringe geek super-freak appeal – or all the kids playing it will grow up and forget it. Green in Exodus (not really)– Wow – I really misjudged this set when I first saw the spoilers. I thought is was going to be really good. I’m an awful judge of cards when I first see them. When I first started playing I though that fireblast and swords to plowshares were horrible and that orcish oriflamme was a power card. It’s like that whenever I see a new set, it’s like I just started playing magic again. I though spellbook looked pretty cool, also I though monstrous hound was alright too. Obviously there are a few really good “chase” cards in this set, a few fake chase cards (ones that look great – but later don’t seem so cool – a la time warp or balduvian horde), several playable cards, a bunch you would never play in a tourney, and a bunch even worse than that. It will take someone’s advice for me to see which cards are really good. It’ll take a month before I really have a really good opinion on the set. I should hold off on trading till then. I think that for some reason that we the card-buying public can’t understand it is impossible to make a really good green card (other than a quirky deal like blessing). Maybe it is a delicate balance of power between the colors – and if you gave green decent cards, well then green would start to stomp everything else. It would be like if you gave red some 6/1 shadow guys with protection from white and blue. Seriously, green is pretty one sided – and it would take a lot of work to bring it out of it’s situation. So what? I’m going to do like Jamie Wakefield and start playing decks with lots of fat black creatures. Why not? It’s more fun anyways. Catch you later, Dave Brillhart