The Night god Retired
PreHistory
John’s
Cards & Comics was a hole in the wall shop about two minutes from the
Octopus Garden; I’d first discovered it while looking for the latest Cerebus
the Aardvark anthology. John had
a sign in the window saying that he had weekly Magic tournaments, so I asked
him about it. Unlike some of the other
places I’d heard about that held informal tournaments, John said he had an open
format: any card was fair game. Even
those normally banned. Also, no cover
charge or entry fee. Basically, John
had two rules:
1) no burn decks, and
2) John (if he played) could not lose.
Fine by
me.
I just
wanted to play, anyway, so this set-up appealed to me — especially the “any card
goes” concept. After all, if you got
it, flaunt it. As most of you know, I’m
just in it for style points, anyway — more interested in having fun than
winning. I usually don’t win, but I
lose most impressively.
Well, just
before trekking out to Badass, I thought I’d try my hand at crafting a real
deck, just to see if I could still do it and win.
I have since come to call it the PestoDerv deck. It has a lot of
little nuisances (pests) that quickly combine to a brutal massacre.
The strategy, like the deck
itself, is interconnected. Use
Pestilence for creature control, which clears the way for the Dervishes. Since they have Protection from Black, the
Pestilence and The Abyss don’t affect them. Pestilence also puts the “Fun” in Fungusaur — just do a 1 point poke at
the end of every turn, and it will be
HUGE in no time. This deck does as
much damage to me as it does to my opponent, so the Soul Nets and Roots of Life
help take the edge off that. Soul Net is
awesome in this deck, simply because there is so much inherent creature
removal.
This is also a great deck for Multi-Player
Magic, and since (at the time of this writing) the key cards are still in print, I highly recommend it to
anyone looking for new deck ideas. A
little tweaking can customize it to your own style while keeping the core
strategy intact. I’ll take the Pepsi
Challenge with this deck any day of the week and stand proud.
Apotheosis
Obviously, not
all of you have those cards. However, since I’ve got the Old School card
base, and (equally important) the skill to use it correctly, I have earned the
nickname “god.” (I’d capitalize it if I
had Timetwister and TimeWalk, and were less modest...) Actually, that’s my nickname among the players with enough knowledge to
appreciate the cards that I’m using. Everyone else calls me Howard Stern. Most of the newbies never understood the god name because I wasn’t winning
the tournaments. Again. they didn’t
understand that I wasn’t trying to — I was just in it for the fun
And that I
think is the sign of a superior player — when you are secure enough not to care
about winning.
But that last night, I wanted to win.
The Crowd
About ten in all, the usually
it is a mix of Newbies and Veterans, and even the untrained eye can spot the
difference before it finishes blinking. Questions like, “What’s Upkeep?”
are key clues that separate the men from the boys. Although I’m in it for style points, I try not to play the
Newbies for two reasons. First, the
games take forever because I only use old cards (which they don’t know) and
they only use new cards (which I don’t know) and we have to spend all our time
explaining what each card is. More
importantly (in terms of Style Points) they are just too inexperienced to
appreciate my decks. Every week I get
some yung’un pawing at my cards crying “wow, I want that!” I shoo them off, saying, “sorry, but you’re
not worthy enough to touch my cards!”
My last
night, it was a fairly even mix of Familiar Faces and Fresh Meat.
Also
joining us, fresh from a hard day’s slacking as cashier at Publix, was
StinkyFeet Girl.
The Legend of StinkyFeet Girl
Her
name’s Lisa, actually; a short, chunky dishwater blonde with coke-bottle
glasses and a moderate southern drawl. I knew her by reputation before I actually met her; she was a regular at
the Barnes & Noble I worked at. She
would come in, get a cup of coffee at the café, grab a stack of magazines, and
go lounge in one of the many chairs stationed about the store. We encouraged our customers to make
themselves at home, and she certainly did this, leaving a mess of magazines and
books for us to clean up at the end of the night.
And yes,
she would frequently take her sneakers off and plot those plump feet up on the
table. No exaggeration — you could smell
that shit an aisle away, earning her the nickname StinkyFeet Girl. Like her friend Nanook (200 pounds of Samoan
vegetable) she would frequently come up to us while we were working and try to
engage us in friendly conversation as if we had been life-long buddies. I usually got out of it by saying “excuse me,
but I have to go, uh, alphabetize the Pets section.”
I first
met her, without realizing her secret identity as SFG, one evening when I was
buying something at Publix. She was my
cashier. I was paying by plastic, and
she looked over my card.
“I know
your brother.” she tells me.
“No you
don’t.”
“Yes I do;
I went to high school with him.”
“No you
didn’t.”
“Sure I
did,” she tells me assuredly.
“I don’t
have a brother.”
“Oh,
aren’t you related to the Farrells out in Palm City?”
“No.”
“You
sure?”
“Well,,,
yes.”
“Huh. Well, there are a bunch of them out there.”
“Only one
o’me.”
Get
the picture?
…but I digress…
So
it’s my final night in Florida, and I
showed up early to say good bye, schmooze, trade, and mostly to size up the victims. Rob and Chris, two of the top players,
didn’t show up, which was good in terms of increasing my chances of actually winning, but bad because I enjoy their company. Actually, not all that many people showed up; maybe eight or
ten — normally there are more. However,
who should show up, but StinkyFeet Girl, still in her Publix smock. She
had a deck and a dice bag; she intended to play.
The Continuing Adventures of
StinkyFeet Girl
Although I didn’t know it that moment, I’ve
since realized that I had a run-in with her at a previous Magic outing. I was playing my Underworld Dreams “Draw ’till you Die!” Deck (you all know it & love it… or is that loathe it???) Anyway, she had some half-assed White/Artifact deck, and during our
second game
I got off Jester’s Cap. Since my deck
is built around Dreams, I went fishing for anything she had that might remove
it. Her deck being white, my prime target would be Disenchant. That's tied
with Tranquility as the one card that
would bring my deck to a dead stop.
I
checked her deck twice — she didn’t
have any, nor were any in her graveyard.
“Don’t you
any Disenchants?”
“Disenchants?”
she screams. “Are you crazy?!?”
“Well, yes, but Disenchant is the best white spell there is.”
“But it gets rid of artifacts and enchantments!” she shoutingly
defended (as people stopped playing to spectate) “My deck is nothing but
artifacts and enchantments.”
I tap my in-play dreams. “So’s all this, and if you disenchanted it, I’d be castrated and
have no way of winning.”
She still didn’t get it.
Then
again, the saddest aspect was there was nothing in her deck that scared me enough to Cap
it out anyway.
StinkyFeet
Girl also introduced me to a new rule that has since become a staple joke among
the Magic crowd there: “Passing The Draw.”
During our
first game, she told me “I’m going to Pass The Draw,” and promptly draws a card.
“Excuse
me?” I ask, confused.
“I’m
Passing The Draw.”
“I don’t
understand.”
She is
clearly confused that I don’t understand. “Passing The Draw. You skip the
option of playing any cards your turn to draw another card.”
“Oh,” I
say, still confused. “And what lets you
do that?” I’m guessing this is some
ability of a card she has in play.
“Nothing
— it’s
a rule.”
“It
is?!?”
I ask in disbelief. Granted, I’m a bit
behind the times on my rules lawyering and errata knowledge, but still… I ask around, “Hey, anyone ever heard of
Passing The Draw?”
“Huh?”
“No.”
“Isn’t
that an album by Bad Company?”
She
insists it’s a rule she’s read somewhere.
“Yeah,” Chris wonders a little too aloud, “maybe a house rule…”
Anyway, we promptly call Bullshit on it,
and I kick her ass about eight turns later anyway. My next match after her was against Chris, one of the best players there. He promptly tells me during is first turn,
“Ok, I’m gonna Pass The Draw…”
We all start cracking up, but she yells
from the other side of the room, “It’s a real rule, I swear!”
This quickly degenerated to me saying,
“All right, I’m going to Pass The Discard Phase,” “I’m Passing The Damage
Resolution Phase,” etc.
From then on, whenever I lost to Chris, I
would say, “I know what I did wrong! I
didn’t Pass The Draw!”
Back to the Action
I’d
already told everyone there The Legend of StinkyFeet, so the moment she comes
in the door, Joe (aka Burn Deck) yells “StinkyFeet!”
That set
the tone for the entire evening — Joe yelling “StinkyFeet” in a high-pitched
squeak at random intervals. It became
the running joke of the evening — so much so that when I got home later and found
I had to retransmit the World Domination Relocation Update, I made the
last-minute change of the Secret Word of the Day to (you got it!) “StinkyFeet.”
So anyway
she sat down at my table, and I felt my IQ drop twenty points.
During the
pre-tournament festivities, she launches into a sick contest with one of the
other players, essentially centering around who has a better recollection of
Jeff “you know you’re a redneck if…” Foxworthy jokes. I guess this was the White Trash version of Snapping. She was not only proud of the fact that she
had all of Foxworthy’s books, tapes, and videos, but was actually smug about
it. So she’s going back and forth with
this guy, waiting to see who’s memory of the material would give out first.
I lean
over and loudly say, “You might be a redneck if you’ve sat down and memorized
all that crap.”
Joe adds,
“You might be a redneck if you have StinkyFeet!”
Needless
to say, she won the contest.
To my
knowledge, it was the only thing she won that night.
As for myself,
The
format was simple: each match was decided by the best of three games,
thereafter winners could only play winners, loser could only play losers. I ended up playing four people, and went 8-2
overall.
I started
off against Joe, who despite the Branch Floridian moniker Burn Deck, was
playing a cool Black/Blue bruise deck. Lots of creature control to contend with, but fortunately a first turn
Juzám Djinn helped set the tone.
Next was a
Newbie I didn’t know, who actually handed me one of my losses courtesy a quick
Goblin/burn deck. No finesse or style,
but obviously the brute force approach worked. At least until I dropped Pestilence and stopped the swarm in their
tracks. He actually won the tie-breaker
for me, by misplaying Final Fortune. He
was all psyched about getting an extra attack, which actually would have dealt
lethal damage — had I not had Zurin Orb out. His extra turn ended with me
still alive, so game over.
Matt
(Joe’s roommate) gets my vote for StyleMeister, with his “Who’s Afraid of the
Big Bad Wolf” deck. It was actually a
good deck, and would have done a lot better had I not gotten off a 5-card Mind
Twist on the first turn. I kind of hated to do it to him, but I was
playing to win, and he was cool with it as I crushed him a few turns later.
The major threat of the evening came
from Nick, the other undefeated player who I took on in the Winner Circle.
Nick is that nasty breed of Magic player
who (ahem, allegedly) gets half his cards by ripping off newbies during trades. There is also extensive evidence that he has
sticky fingers when he looks through other peoples’ collections. He’s also extremely arrogant and is a Rules
Lawyer of John Grisham proportions (ie: long-winded, boring, & rarely
right.) Perhaps his worst feature is
his lack of originality — all of his decks seem to come straight out of InQuest,
Duelist, or Scrye Magazines. He once
complained, “Gee, I haven’t won a tournament in a while!” Rob replied, “That’s because the new InQuest
isn’t out yet.” Nick once claimed that
a lot of his deck ideas came from his brother. “Yeah,” Rob snapped, “Brother
InQuest.”
In his defense, Nick is a very good player
who has never done anything bad to me personally. (well, he did rip me off on an overpriced sale of a Megrim, but
other than that…) He was playing a
Red/White deck built around some new creatures called En-Kor. I gather it was just a tweaked version of
one of the pre-constructed decks available. He actually won the first game, by a fairly close margin. But the second game I saw how his deck
worked, and adjusted my playing style accordingly. I think I won both games the same way — by having more life than he
did and just going nuts with Pestilence.
So with some skill and style, I took him
out and won the tournament.
Who da man?!?
god does the victory dance!
Negative Eugenics
Nick
was actually flirting with StinkyFeet Girl, which made me wonder: if they had a
child, what would it look like? Probably have Sticky Fingers and Stinky Feet.
The Token Holocaust
Since
I locked up the winner’s bracket, Joe and Nick dueled each other for Second
Place. While waiting for that outcome,
I asked StinkyFeet Girl if she wanted to play. After all, just because someone has Bromidrosis and the IQ of a
grapefruit is no reason to avoid them.
Well,
actually, it is, but I was bored, and she was the only person there not
currently playing a game. So what the
hey — emember, I’m just having fun, right?
Joe promptly
began a shrill chorus of “StinkyFeet!” which caused a laughing convulsion that
really threw off my concentration.
She was
playing a straight Green Thallid deck, which at first caused me to laugh. After all, anyone concocting such an asinine
assembly couldn’t hope to win, so she must be like-minded and just in it for
kicks, right? In fact, it seemed it was
more her intention to Millstone me to death than swarm me with Saprolings. Well, I later learned that it’s her favorite
deck, and she actually does try to win with it. The fact that I was laughing and she wasn’t confirms this.
Needless
to say, the moment I dropped Pestilence, it was all over. Think of it as a Saproling slaughter for
just one Swamp mana.
During
this, Joe wanders by, and sees me playing her. I forget if he commented on the fact that I was playing her or that she
was playing Thallids (possibly both, even) but she goes, “well, people
sometimes do weird things.”
“Like wash
their feet?”
Chaos
Traditionally,
the final event of the evening is a big multi-player game with everyone who is
still there.
Although
my winning deck would probably do quite well in the Chaos Game, I very
specifically use a different deck for it. Straight Black, with global effects like Pestilence and Armageddon
Clocks. The two kickers are
Tacklemaggots and Siphon Souls. The ’Maggots are group fun, because everyone can pass them around. The ’Souls are in it because it’s a “more
the merrier” card — once we had 15 players, so I gained 30 life from it!
We only
had about six or eight people playing by that time (alas, StinkyFeet had
wandered off by then) so it was not as much fun. And it only got worse.
Normally,
Rob and Chris team up and attack Nick right off the bat, not stopping until
he’s dead. However, the dynamic duo
weren’t there, which gave Nick some breathing room. However, Nick had prepared in advance for such an event — he
brought along a friend and gave him a special deck to use.
Nick’s
deck was built around some bizarre combination (no doubt gleaned from the pages
of InQuest) that essentially allowed him to generate an infinite number of 1/1
tokens. His friend had a deck that was
nothing but Counterspells. Obviously,
Nick was using him as a shield — he countered anything that would have hurt Nick’s
precious combo. Our guess is that they
had a signal system (ie: a kick under the table) for Nick to tell his buddy to
Counter something. There clearly was
something wrong, because the kid was countering stuff he shouldn’t have (like
my Pestilence, which would have once again stopped the Token spree) but letting
all of Nick’s powerful stuff through.
Anyway, it
was pretty nasty, and left a taste in my mouth akin to a dead gerbil.
Although there was no way of it happening, what with Nick’s counterspell
companion covering his ass, I have since realized that my deck had an awesome
way explode Nick’s strategy in his face. I was going creatureless, and
had a Balance and a Dingus Staff in my deck. If Nick creates
his infinite hoard, I could Balance him down to none, and they would each
trigger the Staff. He would take infinity times two damage. Sweet!
Didn’t happen, of course, but it would have been the best way to
cap off my career and end the legacy.
Still, it was a fun night overall, and a
fitting note to retire the “god” moniker on.
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