Who Am I?

I know it has been a while since my last post...sorry. Life happens. Anywho, Ryan and myself were talking the other day how am very competitive and many of my decks fall into the metagame. Ryan's decks on the other hand often don't represent a portion of the metagame but are nontheless still good. I would say his one exception to this is Polymorph. Then we noted how a player evolves as they progress through Magic. As a player moves from begginner to seasoned veteran often the decks a player makes change in quality and play style. So that is today's topic of discussion.

In magic players are often categorized based on three stereotypical personality traits. They are: Timmy, Johnny, and Spike. Timmy is the person who loves to the craziest, biggest, most awesome thing happen (I think we all have a little Timmy inside us, *smile*). A great example would be when you hard cast Emrakul, the Aeons Torn, take an extra turn from his ability and the annihilate ur opponent. Trust me its sweet.

Johnny loves the combos. He can't wait to find new card interactions and then build a deck around it and finding new ways to support the combo. In my opinion Louis Scott-Vargass, one of the best Magic players, is a Johnny at heart even though he plays competitively. I mean the guy piloted Grape Shot Elves, which is a deck that can combo out for a turn 2 win. Its legit. Another cool combo deck is the Open the Vaults deck. RDW (Red Deck Wins) used use cards like Rite of Flame and other mana accelerators to play Deus of Calamity on turn 1 or 2. Its pretty scary to facedown a 6/6 trample that forces you to sack a land whenever he does 6 or more damage to you, especially that early.

Spike is the tournament player. He is the type of person who wants to win and win big. Spike players are all about creating that deck that is like a work of art or a muscle car that you build in your home garage. They are constantly making changes to adapt to the counter strategies of other players. They learn how their opponents play and try to anticipate their moves. In an almost chess-like fashion they play around cards that their opponent might have in their hand, waiting for that moment when they tap-out to play a card, then dropping that hopefully game winning bomb of a card.

For me I am a Spike. But I wasn't always this type of player. Now that you are aquainted with the types of players I will recount my own progression as a Magic player to try and shed some light on the subject. I started out as a Timmy, as I believe most players do. The first deck I ever played was a monogreen Big Creature deck that my friend at school Howie had. I remember playing Krosan Cloudscraper for the first time. I thought it was so AMAZING!! I mean Krosan just stomped all over every other creature. I was sad when he got kill spelled a few turns later.

But as I played more I started to see card-card interactions. The way I learned this was from my starter deck which was a Simic deck with a small Landfall subtheme. Casting Harrow during the combat phase with Roil Elemental in play was a great combo to get my interests peaked. But this wasn't enough for me. All my combos seemed to be disjointed. Card A and B worked well together and so didn't B and C. But card A and C just failed miserably together. So I started to try a make my deck flow. And by flow I mean refine. At the end of the day I scrapped the Simic deck altogether for pieces of another deck. I went monogreen (hmm I wonder why, maybe the memories of playing Krosan Cloudscraper were in the back of my head) with a greater focus on Landfall. Now I just didn't have a few creatures that did something when I played a land but all my creatures seemed to have some triggered ability activate. I was gaining life, my creatures were getting buffed, and Rampaging Baloths were making tokens. It was great and the deck won.

I still wasn't satisfied with the deck because if I couldn't play a lot of lands I wouldn't get my fatties on the board. This lead me to the internet with hours of research following. I would stare at a deck list and think I don't get it, how do they win? Some the decks I was looking at didn't have big creatures and didn't have an obvious sorcery or instant that was gamebreaking. I knew the decks were good cause pro players had been using them and winning successfully. I had seen my first real control deck. From here on out I was all about streamlining my decks. Fine-tuning them until they could crush my opponents. I looked over the rule book to get a better understanding of the game, looking for new strategies and things you could do in certain situations to get a slight edge on my opponent. The Spike in me was born.

So I would say that on average, players go through a Timmy to Johnny to Spike evolution. Now some people don't make the jump to Spike. Ryan is one of those people. Its why he makes decks constantly on MTG Fanatic and then leaves them behind to make another. He is constantly searching for that new combo that would be so cool if he could pull it off. I have friends who are still in the early stages of their Magic career who I would say are still mainly Timmies with a hint of Johnny. DJ would fall right into this category. I still think that everyone will always have some Timmy in them. I can't explain how satisfying it is to use Nissa Revane's ultimate in my Eldrazi Elves deck (which I've done twice now) only to return her to my hand cast her and use her life gain ability. I had 5 D-20 lifecounters at this point and my opponent conceded.

People say that being a Spike player is no fun, that I loose out on a part of the game. I think it is just the opposite. People who don't play competitively don't understand how much fun it is to tinker ( catch that pun?) with a deck until it is just right. Matching wits against a formidable player, someone who you just simply don't know if you can beat, is just so much fun. I may not always come out the victor, but I'll take on any player with any deck any day.