How To Win at Magic: Part 1: The Harry Potter Effect

Back in 1993 a game came out that sort of changed everything about gaming. That game was called Magic.

There were really only two types of gaming back around 1990: RPG (role-playing (like D&D (get your minds out of the gutter))) and tabletopping (like Warhammer). That had been the status quo for a decade or so at that point. [Being a "gamer" meant something completely different back in 1990 than it does today (a good example of how terms change meaning), because video games had not yet had the explosion that MMOs such as Everquest and WoW would bring them.] To make this clear, prior to the release of Magic, my gamer buddies and I met several times a week to play many different games.

There was a night for D&D. There was another night for some other kind of role playing game which varied based on who was GMing and whatever game they wanted to be running. Other nights would be for Warhammer Fantasy Battle, the tabletop game we played. At least two nights of that a week in various formats. Sometimes, there were even board games like Risk and, every once in a while, poker. So, yeah, I was a pretty serious "gamer."

Mostly, the guys I gamed with had actual, real social skills. Many of the guys on the fringe, the guys we didn't play with on a regular basis, did not have social skills. As an example, on of those guys was called "Boogie" and that name had nothing to do with dancing. This was not a name that he was called behind his back. It was what he was known as, how he referred to himself, and he was in full knowledge of where the nickname came from, and he was fine with that. I only tell you that to confirm that some of those stereotypical views of "gamers" had a strong basis in reality.

Like I said, though, the guys I gamed with were mostly not like that, although they had all gone to the same high school as me, which meant that there was some amount of nerd in each of them just for the sake of the fact that you had to be smart to get into the school.

Mostly, we met at a particular friend's house, because, of all of us, he was the only one that was married and had a house. And a kid. This was probably the reason that only the socially adept were in our group, because, below a certain aptitude at communication and social graces, my friend's wife would not allow the person over to the house. Boogie was one of those people. He was allowed over one time to participate in a tabletop event, and my friend's wife very firmly let it be known after he had left that Boogie was not to come over again. We had another guy in the group that was only barely able to be there. The wife was always on the verge of kicking him out, because he had no control over his mouth.

There were some nights when we'd meet at the comic shop when those that were more like Boogie were allowed to be involved in whatever it was we were doing.

All of that is kind of beside the point, though. Mostly, it's just to show you how things were. We gamed. We played a lot of different games. We tried out new games. There were all kinds of things going on that we did, and we had different nights for the different things, so you could kind of pick and choose what nights you wanted to be involved. It was a lot of fun. Yes, I do miss those days.

Then came the fall of '93. One of the guys in our group took a trip out here to CA and brought Magic back with him because it hadn't yet made it to Louisiana. It changed everything. We were all, and I do mean all of us, fascinated by the game, and we all undertook it to get cards and put in a big group order through the mail to a CA retailer to get some. Seriously, it was well into '94 before the cards became available enough for any of the local stores to be able to stock the cards. Magic had the same effect on out little gaming world as Harry Potter had on the book world.

After Magic, everything was Magic. That's all we did. Often, we got together four or five nights a week to play. Once the local retailers were finally able to start stocking the cards (summer of '94 with the release of the Legends expansion), tournaments started happening, and everything became focused on that. Often, our evenings of playing were really only to refine our decks for the weekly tournament. [I was the top ranked player in north LA through '94 while we were tracking player stats. After that, Wizards of the Coast came up with their own ranking system, and we quit tracking it. It was a lot of hassle, and we had a lot of players in and out of the store by that point. (We were the biggest tournament location in north LA, so people would come from hours away to play every week.)] It was more than two years before we started filtering back into doing things that weren't Magic.

Harry Potter had pretty much the same impact on books and, well, kind of, everything. Harry Potter changed the landscape of popular culture and reading and movies and... like I said, everything. It was a, ready for it?, game changer.

The interesting thing to me about both of these phenomena is that neither creator created with the intention of "taking over the world." They made an excellent product, and it, the taking over the world, just happened. In fact, Richard Garfield, the creator of Magic, wasn't even trying to make/sell Magic. He had this other game, RoboRally, that he was trying to sell to WotC, but the guy at WotC told him what they really wanted was something portable. Garfield decided on a card game.

So... the first way to win at Magic: have a good idea and make it into the best product you can.

Here are some of my favorite cards from the Beta edition of Magic:

It's a great card, but it also went well with my whole elf thing from Warhammer (in which I played wood elves). No, I'm not going to explain how those things go together.

Not incredibly powerful but nice art and, again, elf.

The first Mox I ever pulled from a pack. The pack of cards cost $2.49; the Mox Emerald is currently worth over $500.00. I own this.

The most expensive card in Magic at up to $2000.00. Yes, I own this, too.

One of the best pieces of art from the initial series of cards.

Why Skynet Isn't Necessary

Okay, so that may not be exactly what I mean.
What I mean is if Skynet became real and took over everything, it wouldn't need to bother with terminators. There would be no point.

At least not for the "civilized" world.

Seriously, we're all already slaves to the non-existent Skynet. Slaves, I tell you, so why would it want to kill us all?

As far as it goes, I'm non-dependent on technology. I don't have a cell phone. I don't have a tablet. I don't have an i-anything. I'm not really all that "plugged in." I don't want to be. We don't even have TV. No cable, no satellite anything, no DVR. We have a TV set and a Blu-ray player (which we only have because someone gave it to us). We barely have a console gaming system for the kids. We even live as independently from our cars as much as practically possible.

I mean, when I go somewhere, I want to be there, at that place, doing whatever it is I'm doing, even if it's standing around reading a book while I'm waiting for my kids to get out of school. I don't want technology bothering me.

And, although I love video games, I love actual board and tabletop games more. Video games have always been a substitute for when I can't get the actual personal interaction of people for the games I really love. Granted, I haven't really had that since I left my gaming group behind in Shreveport something more than 15 years ago.

All of that said, when my computer died a week ago, I was reminded of just how dependent upon technology I still am even with the lengths I go to to avoid that dependence. I mean, I couldn't work. I couldn't work! I actually do quite a bit of writing on paper, but it just so happened that I had all of my recent stuff already transferred into the computer the week before and had carried forth from there on  the computer, so all of my most recent stuff was IN THE COMPUTER! And it was dead. I mean, sure, I could have sat down and written something else, but I had stuff I needed to be working on, and I couldn't get to it.

I felt like the cat when he wants to go out and there's no one there to open the door for him. It was horrible.

Not to mention the fact that I had to go buy a new computer, but we'll get to that later.

Anyway, the point is that even I am dependent on Skynet. My technology. I don't know what to do with myself without it other than go to bed early, which I actually did a couple of nights, because I had NOTHING that I could work on! Did I mention how horrible that was?

So, yeah, Skynet will have no need to send terminators after us. Skynet will have us all working for it in exchange for technology. In fact, once we have real virtual reality, it might actually be more like The Matrix, except we'll be going in willingly, like I talked about in this post.

I do actually find it distressing that so many people are losing the ability to disentangle themselves from technology. People my age that didn't grow up tied to it even, and it's so much worse for the kids of today that have never been without it. Except for my kids, of course, because they, also, don't have any of this stuff (well, except my oldest, because his grandfather gave him a cell phone a few years ago (which I hate and which causes me to call my son Texty-Boy or Texty-Lad, which he hates, but that's what he gets when he's busy texting his girlfriend during family time or dinner, which is family time)), much to my daughter's chagrin, because at least half of her friends have their own cell phones, and she wants to know why she can't have one, and none of these girls are even 10, and, for the life of me, I can not figure out why anyone would give a $400 device that's smaller than a book to a child. I have no sympathy for any of them (the parents) when they are complaining that their kid lost and/or broke their phone.

This post, today, was originally meant to be the next post in my death series, but this is all kind of a different kind of death, because the loss of a piece of technology can have that same kind of effect upon people. I watched women at my kids' school cry over a lost or broken piece of tech as if their mother just died, which is also why I have no sympathy for them when they give that tech to their kids even just to use for a few minutes and that whatever-it-is get dashed across the playground by a different kid running past and, then, some other kid steps on or kicks it. So it's all just another kind of loss. Hopefully, one we recover from more easily than the death of a loved one, although I'm not sure with some people. There is this one mom that's been going on for weeks now about her broken cell phone. Or, maybe, it's lost. I can't remember, because, honestly, I just turn off my brain when she starts in about it.

It's just a thing!

And that is why I don't want to be so attached to technology. I don't want to feel like I've suffered a death because something breaks.

But, you know, I still need Skynet.
>sigh<

[Note:
Today was supposed to be the release of Part 9 of Shadow Spinner, but, because of the computer problems, it didn't get finished. Well, let me re-phrase that, it's written, but I wasn't able to get it all set up with Amazon and all of that jazz, so it's suffering a slight delay. Maybe Friday. Yeah, I'm hoping to have it for Black Friday, because that seems kind of appropriate for Tib. Black Friday, that it, taken as just a name.
However, to go along with what was supposed to be the release, J. R. Pearse Nelson interviewed me about serials and Tib and Shadow Spinner, and I told her to go ahead and run it today, anyway, even without Part 9. You should all hop over there and check it out!]

Remembering Miniatures

I haven't talked about the fact that I paint in a while. Mostly, it's because I haven't done any painting in a longer while. Since I got serious with the whole writing thing back in 2010, I pretty much set the brush aside. I just haven't had the time for it. Not to mention the fact that all of my painting stuff is still packed up since we moved last year, and I haven't worked out yet where to set any of it up.

But I've really been wanting to paint, lately. And do some gaming. Tabletop gaming. Oh, yeah, before you get all confused, I don't do canvas painting; I paint miniatures. I used to also do tabletop wargaming with them, but it's been even longer since I've done that. Like 20 years. Not that I haven't done tiny bits of tabletopping in there, but I haven't done anything serious in 20 years. It's one of the things I miss doing, but there's just not time or space for it, right now.

But I digress...

All I really want to do today is show you some pictures of some of my old figures from when I played Warhammer Fantasy Battle. My main army was Wood Elves.

This is not an army. This is a unit of rangers.

All of the shields are individually painted. No decals.
One of the reasons I loved Wood Elves is that the Wood Elf army gets Treemen.

Who wouldn't want one of those on your side?
They also got beast masters, which were pretty cool, too.

But the main thing about the Wood Elf army that I loved was the Wardancers.

They didn't wear armor, because they had magic tattoos. Yeah, my guy doesn't have any tattoos (long story that has nothing to do with the miniatures -- maybe one day I'll explain), but he's still cool.
Here is the commander of the ranger unit:

And the sorceress:

And the musician:

Anyway... that's just a look. I have some more stuff coming up about miniatures and painting, so I thought I'd let you guys see what I'll be talking about before I talk about it.