Subject: Is Magic Dead?
Date: Thu, 24 Sep 1998 22:12:16 EDT
From: ScMana@aol.com
To: fkusumot@ix.netcom.com

Magic here (Memphis, TN) isn't dead. Yet. It's definitely dying though. Since
about Grand Prix Atlanta, a lot of the older consitent tourney winners have
quit, all for their own reasons. It's starting to get to the point where the
"veterans" are the people who played in a tourney before Stronghold. Why? Some
people are just getting sick of the game. Some people don't like the formats.
A few people have quit so they can concentrate on Starcraft, or every once in
a while school. When I played in my first DCI tourney at the store I go to
(Gamemasters- (901) 752-3904, thank me later Shawn), we got somewhere between
20 and 30 people. Consistently. Now, some weeks we're struggling to get 8
people to play in a Booster Draft, we've even gotten to the point where
tourneys have been delayed as much as an hour so we could convince someone
else to play to get an 8th person. I'm a big fan of the DCI, and I support
tourneys here definitely, even though I don't play in them that often (I've
only played in one or two since Day 2 of the Junior Super Series), mostly
because I don't like the formats (Extended is the biggest mistake the DCI has
ever made with the exception of "Team" tourneys), but also because the
competition was too harsh for a Class D tourney for a while, which is starting
to change due to the large number of people quitting and the "chumlies"
replacing them. Soon I'm gonna be getting back into tourneys (Sunday) because
people here are starting to treat Magic like what it is: A GAME. The damage
has already been done though. A lot of these people are gone for good, and
this area is in need of veterans right now. I went up to a friend at school
yesterday who hadn't played in a tourney since the Stronghold prerelease, and
I told him, "You're getting back into Magic. I know you don't have any Exodus,
I'll lend you whatever you need for decks. I know you're into L5R more now,
but the fact of the matter is we need more experienced people like you now to
set a standard." When I first played in a DCI tourney here, I had just played
in my first one up at GameCamp '97, a JSS qualifier. I came down here with a
Red/Green Flanking deck with no Jolrael's Centaurs (I didn't have any) that
Mark Justice helped me make, and I expected to do well. I got my ass beaten
in, and it took me a few months to recover from my first few tourneys and my
less than winning performances at them. But I learned, mostly because after
the thrashings I took then at the hands of many people who have now quit, but
set the standard for me back then, I learned. I metagamed my decks better.
After about 2 months, I came up with "Mono-White Gaea's Blessing" (ok, so it
had 2 forests). It was basically a White Weenie with a twist- Thran Tome and
Gaea's Blessing combined to give me recursion. I made Top 8 of a tourney (man,
Top 8 here, that was a while ago) after a tense match where I had just enough
mana to drop a Zhalfirin Crusader and redirect all 8 Aether Flash damage to my
opponent twice (he was at 10 when I got that idea.) My luck stopped first
round of Top 8 though when I ran into a Sligh that dropped 4th turn Wildfires
BOTH GAMES. Not happy. But I learned. And that's the kind of experiences I'm
giving newbies now, because nobody can rise in skill if they just keep beating
people worse than them. You have to have a challenge, and that's what I'm
trying to give people, but at the same time, I'm being challenged. I've had
the same deck (constantly evolving, but same idea) since January, and many
people consider it a deck to beat in Memphis now seeing as how I consistently
make elimination with it. On non-tourney days, people usually come up to me
and ask me to playtest with them because if their deck can consistently beat a
deck that's part control, part aggression like mine, they're doing good and
they know it. I'm not trying to brag, but I want to give a message to everyone
out there who's a veteran in their area: help out the newbies, because without
them there's no future to the game. We made that mistake here, and at a recent
Grand Prix Trial with a $250 cash prize, 10 people showed up, $20 entry fee.
That means the TC lost $50, plus the cost of the room, plus a day running a
tourney. Truthfully, we could have gotten a lot more people, but we made the
mistake of just feeding off scrubs for more DCI points, and not helping them
get better. And it cost us. I'm hoping that we get more people for the
upcoming Urza prerelease, and I'm fairly sure we will, but that GPT still
hurt. I judged it and I could tell the head judge wasn't too happy with the
turnout, and I can't blame him. We, the veterans all have to work to preserve
this game to keep it the intellectual sport it's considered now, and not let
it pass away like another certain game that was popular around here a few
years ago (POGs, LOL). Play competitively, sure, because people like that are
what made you good. But still be friendly and help scrubs out. They may beat
you some day in the finals of a PTQ, but they'll remember that if it weren't
for your help they could never have made it there.

Scott Rosen
Level I Judge (going for Level II Sat. Again.)
DCI #794992
ScManaTC on Efnet mIRC

"I would play Prosbloom, but I can't get the CadBlooms to stick to my shoes"-
Mike Graham on the Long incident

"Man, I can take a good deck and make it suck!!!"- Jason Potter on his version
of Prosbloom, after going 0-3.

"DCI- DUMB CRACKWHORES being IDIOTS"- Me, on the Long incident