Subject: Re: Playing for Fun Date: Mon, 15 Jun 1998 08:56:23 -0400 From: Ken Lignelli To: fkusumot@ix.netcom.com CC: Crnicoloff@aol.com I liked Cathy's article on Playing for Fun. I think that most serious Magic players made the same evolutionary path that was described - learning that good decks are fun to play. But, being the Master of Fun myself, I think I can take it even a bit further. What do you do when you make a new deck? Well, first you think of its theme, or what tournement level players call its "Road to Victory." Weenies, Burn, Control, etc. Usually you will make your decision based on a single card or a few cards that form a combo. Examples are White Weenie with Armageddon, Red Weenie with Fireblast and Cursed Scroll, Control with Gaea's Blessing and Gerrard's Wisdom recursion, etc. Then you break out your cards and make the deck. This usually happens in less than 5 minutes. Once you've chosen the initial card list, the Tuning process begins. The Tuning process starts by going over the choices you just made, and replacing certain cards for other cards that are 'strictly superior' to the ones you first chose. Examples of this are replacing Pikemen with White Knight, replacing Orcish Artillery with Fireslingers, and replacing Powersinks with Counterspells (these are just examples, cope... :) ) The second part of Tuning is playtesting the deck and seeing what modifications need to be made based on its performance. This is long and involved, so I'll skip it for now. Fun decks are generally built in a completely different fashion. First of all, you make your fun deck by looking at the cards you never use in tournement play and choose an idea from them. Secondly, you go out of your way to choose the most bizarre cards you can, just to freak-out your opponent. Mana Flare/Zur's Weirding/Shivan ? Sounds like a fun deck to me. But then you make sure that the rest of the deck is built solidly. Counterspells, Incinerates, Impulses, etc. Sure, you'd never play this bad boy in a tournement, but it won't just lose games because it stinks, either. Generally, you never Tune a Fun deck. Once you choose the cards, you just play it. So what if Dismiss would be better than Counterspell in this deck? It doesn't matter. The point is to challenge yourself to play cards you wouldn't usually play and still win games and have fun. Ken Lignelli KenL@snet.net