It’s 6h00 on a Sunday Morning. My 5-year old son is watching Captain Flamingo on the Tube. I’m looking at the blog’s stats ,still somewhat bemused to have at least 58 unique visitors day in day out (I need to go to California, apparently they dig me over there!). I’m also touching up on typos and grammar mishaps here and there. I’m fighting the urge to spend hours on Facebook (do drop in if you are a FB addict, I’m Philippe-Antoine Ménard) and I’m writing this post…
Thing is, I shouldn’t be doing all that, I should be reading the Lorwyn Spoiler over at MTGSalvation.com…
Yup, it’s yet another Magic The Gathering Prerelease Weekend. I’m cashing in all my husband points to get to game twice in the weekend. Thanks hon!
I’m not half bad at Magic. Not as consistently good as Yan, but I should say I’m Strong among the Weak. I’ve won at least 2 such Pre-release tournaments as well as one or 2 Friday Night Magic. I know the rules really well…. well enough to overturn bad rulings from Judges. But what do you expect? I’m a crunch junky and Magic is Crunch heaven!
Thing is, I’ve been getting worse and worse at that game in the last year. Granted the current collection (Time Spiral) just doesn’t work for me as Ravnica and Kamigawa did before. (Clueless about what I’m saying here? Look here, massive link!).
Magic is a complex game that needs a lot of mental and emotional focus to win consistently. If you lose one, your game is shot. I’m currently lacking in both departments.
Aside: Yan and I share the joys of the Best Player Syndrome in our game group. While Yan beats me at deck design and Mental focus, I’m a better politician so I squeeze wins by having the others think he’s a bigger threat than I. He He! However, I do get distracted and have a weakness to Jedi Mind Tricks, so I often throw a ‘Certain-win’ away.
Aside Two: Always Always Always kill Yan first in a multiplayer Magic game. If you don’t know why, Yan does! My ignoring this cardinal rule explains a significant chunk of my ‘lost’ games.
It seems that this Bloggy thing has also cured me from more than my World of Warcrack addiction… it has had the side effect of diverting my mental energies from Magic. So I’m going today to see if I can ride to success on Raw talent alone. Now I have a Spoiler to read. It’s 6h30, I have an hour and a half to do it and take a shower (Havast Gamer funk! I stab at thee!).
Wish me luck.
Jedi mind trick! Do I love thee!
Your sure you want to kill me? 😉
“I should say I’m Strong among the Weak”
False modesty alert… From my experience, our ChattyDM is much better than he admits. He’s just too damn nice for his own good.
He’s always sharing his experience by giving very good pointers to his enemies (except maybe to Yan) and always giving us all the details of his mistakes as he plays them.
It’s like a general sending a reluctant herald to the enemy saying.. “Guys, I’ve left a big breach on my southern flank. That was such as stupid move I thought I’d let you know…” The herald then returns to his army sobbing.
Some might think this is a classic ambush scenario… ok… Sometime it is, but you can usually see it right in his face.
Your sure you want to kill me? 😉
That was Yan’s answer to ChattyDM enforcing his rule #1. Kill Yan first. Turns out, doing this gave the victory to somebody else in the following turn.
Always the poet huh PM?
I have a very strong competitive streak that has, at times, soured our casual games in the past.
About 2 years ago I decided that I’d be competitive in tournaments and ‘friendlier’ in our casual groups.
Add a few beers and I become everyone’s favorite overly-talkative Jedi Mind Trick target 🙂
Anyway, at today’s pre-release, I ended up in 1st place out of 45 participants. Which seems to prove… well nothing really except that by not caring so much about winning, I might have been able to keep my cool and a tighter rein on my emotions…
Oh and I had an unfair deck, one of those you dream of opening every time you do a sealed deck. 🙂
Good times!