Better Late Than Never: Magic The Gathering PART1

                                                    
                                       BEST CARD EVAAAAAAH   (I know, I know, it's a lame in-joke...)


So, many times in our lives we said: oh, I wish I did that thing when I was a teen, but now it's too late and I'm a grown up and I really can't, it doesn't matter if my brain is still as underdeveloped as it was at the time.
Well, to this I say BULLSHIT! We're never too old to do anything! So, what did I do that I haven't done as a teen? Go partying every night, being promiscuous and assuming every kind of illegal substance? NO, because I'm still a nerd as I was before! Then learn how to play an instrument or something artistic like that? No, because I'm lazy!

What I did, and still doing, is playing Magic The Gathering (from now on MTG as this is how the pros call the game). Back in the early 2000, when I was still a teen, my only approach at MTG was this: I bought a 2 player starter set (I think this was the name of that product) and forced a friend to play with me. I kinda liked the game, and the instructions were clear. However, I only played a couple of games with that friend and that's it. The cards in that pack were very basic and that specific product had no replayability at all.

What I should have done was to grab that friend or go on my own to a shop where they played MTG, buy an intro deck or something similar and start playing with seasoned players. Well, I didn't.

A bunch of decades later, a friend confesses me he was a MTG player but quit for various reasons and sold all his cards for some pocket money. He tells me he misses the game and that MTG is an amazing game. So, what happened was that me and the woman that oddly loves me more than anything decided get his for his birthday a Deck Builder's Toolkit of Shadow Over Innistrad. Also, we bought two of the same for us, as we thought it would be fun to start playing together . At the time I had no idea if the DBT was a good purchase or not, nor I knew what the hell Innistrad meant. But I was really curious to have another go at that game!

The problem was, I didn't really know where to start from! Luckily my friend, as a returning player, gave us some guidance, but he admitted it was quite 'rusty' regarding the mechanics. Also, he realised they introduced TONS of new in-game mechanics!

I need to quickly explain what the Deck Builder's Toolkit is: it's a neat box with a bunch of lands, a bunch of cards of each of the 5 colours (don't expect to find any valuable or powerful card among those though) and a few sealed booster packs (can't remember how many) from a few different sets.

Well, our friend explained us I'd have to BUILD A 60 CARD DECK OUT OF THOSE. Aaaaaaand I kinda panicked. There are more than 200 cards in this box, how can I just pick 60 of them?! So he explained me that different colours mean different 'attitudes' of the cards: white is for protection, blue is mind, red is brute strength, green nature, black necromancy...OK, black definitely sounds cooler than the others, but this didn't help that much. Anyway, I picked two colours (because I was bold and thought one was NOT ENOUGH) and did my best. Put some creatures, some lands and some other stuff. Damn, in this game they have 3 different names for what you'd call 'spells' (instant, sorcery, enchantment) but, and this is confusing, EVERY SINGLE CARD IS A SPELL. Yes, even a creature is a spell, as you are a Planeswalker (like a mage) casting every sort of spell. Very straightforward, right?

Anyway, got my green-blue deck (if I remember correctly) and played my first match. And discovered I didn't put enough lands (which are the 'money' to pay the cost of every spell), so that I ended up not being able to play that many cards.

In the next games I fixed that, and the experience was much more enjoyable. Actually, I really enjoyed the game! Put creatures on the boar, tap them for attack but maybe keep some untapped for blocking the opponent, play a sorcery to destroy another creature, enchant one and make it stronger...pretty cool stuff. And lots of variations though! I was starting to get why this MTG was and is so popular after all...

BUT. There is a but. I only suspected that at the time, and now I know it for sure : MTG has a very steep learning curve, due to its complexity as a game. Complexity which, at the same time, makes this game one of the very best in its own genre.

So, what happened was that, after a while, we got tired of our decks or, to be more precise, of our cards. We made different decks of different colours, but our games become to be a bit repetitive and 'random'. What I mean when I say random is that I felt there was something 'lacking' in our decks.

What was that? Did that stopped us from playing? These, and many other questions nobody asked will be answered in the next 'episode' of BLTNMTG. What a charming acronym.

A presto raga!

Il vostro,

Vinny Panini

THIS BLOG IS DEAD. LONG LIVE THIS BLOG

A random image that doesn't fit that much with the post. But posts with no pics are booooooring.

Two enthusiastic posts, then two months of absolute silence.

I knew it! Another project that starts with lots of enthusiasm and then...just dies in silence. Well, my friends, maybe not this time.

But what happened? Or, even better: what didn't happen? I started this blog as I felt the need to have a platform where I could write whatever I wanted, without having to follow a formula or be rigorous. I think I'm talking for my dear Fred Cannoli as well, the co-founder of this blog. Dear reader, you need to know that more or less for a living I write every day lots of cool stuff which probably won't be read by many people but which needs to be top-notch: well researched, creative, well structured. So, I thought: let's start a blog, where I can just throw shit on paper (not literally, as I'm not writing on paper) and don't care about the result. 

So I hammered my fingers on the keyboard and wrote my first post, which was a sort of rant and personal opinion on the current mania of remaking films (yes, it's still here on the blog).

All was good, but then...the VOID. What happened is, I believe, that I unconsciously started thinking too hard about the audience and the quality of the contents of this post. 

OK, let's go a bit more into detail here: the audience. If you are reading this post, well, you are indeed my audience. Maybe you won't come back to read any other post, but still. When I started, I said to myself: who cares about the audience! Just DO IT. If nobody reads it, that's fine. I'm doing it for myself. Well, guess what? That didn't work. And this brings me to the other point: the content.

As I kinda wanted to have an audience, I was trying to figure out how to produce interesting and original content. I didn't want to do what the other bloggers are doing: tell interesting stories about their lives, shout their opinions about politics and do totally biased reviews of films, comics etc. I wanted to do something smart that let readers  THINK.

Turns out, I really don't know if I'm capable of that, and I couldn't accept that. 

So, as I'm writing again on the blog and I'm 'confessing' all my false hopes and broken dreams...does this mean I finally found a way to do it? HELL NO. And I probably won't. What I found is, hopefully, the strength for accepting my limits and work within them.

What to expect then from now on? ANYTHING. Literally, I will take any aspect I encounter in my boring life which makes me think a bit (yes, that can happen. It's horrible) and I'll write a post. I really don't want to have deadlines (nobody will ever pay me for doing this) but I'd say I'll post at least once (ideally twice) a week.

OK, now two important things: first, the English of this blog. You may have noticed that the writing is a bit...weird. Well, that's because ENGLISH IS NOT MY FIRST LANGUAGE. I think I'm doing pretty well, but you'll find here bad grammar, misspellings and the like. At first I decided to have a person doing a light proofreading of my posts but...I think that's not fair. This is just something I do for fun, and I don't think a proofreading is necessary. What is necessary is the patience of the hypothetical readers. That's it!

Last, but definitely not least! Actually, this is VERY IMPORTANT: in this post I am writing what I feel, but this blog also belongs to my dear friend Fred Cannoli. In this post I'm stating what I THINK, NOT WHAT WE THINK.

Fred is going through some really, really REALLY bad stuff at the moment, and I don't know if he'll feel like writing on this blog again. Something tells me he will, but I can't push anyone to do things they don't feel like doing or they don't believe in. Anyway, he still has total creative control on this blog, and I want both him, and you, dear reader, to know that. I hope he'll join me soon in the resurgence of this prematurely dead blog, but that's totally up to him. This blog-thing is not the same without you, Fred!

Wow, this post is long and boring! What a great start! OK, enough of this. Soon, you'll find a new post and you'd better be here reading!

Statemi bene! Vostro,

Vinny Panini