Subject: Keep the Deck Listings [Unsolicited] Date: Thu, 25 Jun 1998 17:09:04 -0500 From: "Kilgore, Timothy M." To: "'fkusumot@ix.netcom.com'" Deck listings on the Dojo are a valuable resource to a wide range of people for a variety of reasons. Pro's can see what the field is looking like. Veterans can find pieces of engines to incorporate into something new. Newbies can have a tournament viable deck if they own the cards. I think that the latter is what has everyone bent out of shape. Little Tommy Topdecker can visit the Dojo, slap together an approximation of a strong deck, and then proceed to make it hard for "better" players to qualify. That's the simple explanation. It's not the truth of the issue, mind you, but it is simple and easy to understand and pick on. I think that in order to understand the Dojo effect, you have to look at it with a little different perspective. I am new enough to the game that perhaps I can fill in some of the missing pieces of the Dojo effect. You see, I 'grew-up' on the Dojo. A year ago, I was not playing Magic. I decided to get the PC game. Within 2 weeks I bought my first 2 starter decks and a handful of boosters. Surely this huge pile of cards would be enough, eh? I told a few friends about it and, as it turns out, one of my buddies had been playing Magic since The Dark. He brings over a LOT of cards and proceeds to teach us how to really play the game. He always stressed the fun element, and for that Leo, I thank you. After a few weeks of this, all of my friends are tiring of the game. I am buying boosters like a mad man and they don't want to play any more. I find out about a local tournament and visit. I think that it's going to be for ante or something, I'm so green. Week after week I get my ass handed to me, but I am learning all about timing and fast effects while my poison deck gets trashed again and again. And I am still pouring money into cards. I am buying a lot of boosters and starter decks. I can still remember when I finally got enough land for a two-player game with players using the same colors. Wow, 50 plains. I am reading The Duelist and using Scrye. After three months, I am starting to get a little more sophisticated and squirm a lot longer before being beaten by better players. The State Championships are around the corner. I need a deck. So I browse the Internet and chance across the Dojo for the first time. I find and fall in love with Stompy. It has a lot of cards that I don't own, so for the first time I buy singles. 'Goyfs were needed and I made the acquaintance of a fine gentleman name Ron who owns the Gathering Ground. Ron helps me get the deck together and tells me about other events. While I didn't realize it then, I was connected to rest of the world now. Sanctioned events were now to be a part of my future. I build Stompy. I adjust Stompy to have one less Elf and replaced him with a Hurricane. Then I play test with a group of veteran players and they school me over and over. They discuss strategy and tactics at a deeper level and I absorb all of it that I can. I go home and practice against other decks and play with it until I know the deck inside and out. The State Championships arrive. Stompy was awesome. Hurricane saved my ass 3 or 4 times. I get beaten once and along the way I beat one of the guys that I play tested against and I feel bad about that. We go into the finals where I encounter another Stompy deck that is very similar to mine. I make a mistake and I lose in the finals. So I end up tying for 3-4 spot. Not bad for someone who hadn't been playing for more than 4 months. Since that time, I have gone to 4 or 5 Pro Tour Qualifier and a couple of Pre-releases. With each event, the decks have become more and more mine and less and less based on decks from the Dojo. As it stands now, it has been several months since I thieved a deck from the Dojo. So I credit the deck listings with giving me a competitive enough of a deck to experience some wins while I was completely green. Later a deck listing became a rough frame-work into which I would pour in an increasingly larger number of different cards. And now deck listings are little more than a way to see an engine or a combo that I had missed. The truth of the Dojo effect is that it is increasing both deck building and playing skills. While anyone can ready-mix a deck, some people improve the decks or make it suprisingly different. Others steal an engine and build something even more lethal around it. The cumulative effect is that you have better players playing better decks than you did just a year ago. Deck listings are just training wheels for the builders and innovators of tomorrow's decks. If you don't like them, don't read them. While they are a less valuable resource to me now, I know that they helped me improve my game at all levels and I would not deny that resource to those that really need it. And missing Baron Harkonnen, Turbo-Zvi, Fruity Pebbles, and other beautifully crafted decks would a real shame. Tim [Chumlys: Term used by people with inferiority complexes to describe people without inferiority complexes. Generally can be transposed with 'the person that beat me' in most cases. Associated with an over-inflated sense of self, authors and magic players that use the term generally should be ignored since they are usually promoting themselves while denigrating everyone else. This has nothing to do with this article. Do not be confused, I just hate the term and the inbred little jerks that have popularized it.]