Back Matter: Kool Runnings Pt. 2

Hey y’all!

Some days have passed, and it’s time to continue our tale of good times (AKA: the story of me)! We last left off with me quitting Magic for the second time (and blaming the tribal lameness that was Onslaught… good thing I didn’t stick around for Legions). If you missed part 1 you can find it here.

After I had started selling my cards, I know I built a 5-Color deck (what we on MTGO would call Prismatic) to play with Chris and James on vacation after Chris’s and my senior year of high school. Luckily, I had obtained a bunch of common land cyclers from Scourge and retained ownership of all of my “come into play” … sorry, “enters the battlefield” creatures. This coupled with Allied Strategies and Fact or Fiction let me steal some games from the boys every now and then during our week-long bum lifestyle.

After that vacation, I returned my cards to the closet and focused on other things (primarily, college on the horizon… ugh). I did find the time to brew the worst White-Black Board Control deck- Goblins, Zombies, all other tribes Onslaught and the play-styling of previously mentioned “Boy” all put me in my place- to go 0-3 in a GPT later in the summer. That’s what I deserved for not really playing, huh?! (Did I mention that my deck was neither tribal nor Lightning Rift/Astral Slide oriented? Embarrassing.)

As cardboard gathered dust and I resisted the urge to read about the Pro Tour, I didn’t remain completely cut-off from the Magic world. Chris was still buying cards, so I saw the new border of Mirrodin (and felt like White cards and Artifact cards looked too similar). And I’d occasionally see locals around town and chat about what’s up in the world of mana, planeswalkers and all night drafting. But mostly I would waste my time learning about infinite series and heat transfer (boo) over my preferred subjects of metagames and secondary markets (or local Gabe Walls becoming a cardboard superstar).

Fun Without Cardboard (An Aside of an Aside, or Yes, It Can Happen!)

During this sabbatical, I actually had an amazing Magic-less experience made solely possible through my Magical connections. I was on a brief reprieve from scholastic enslavement (was home on a weekend) and called up Mr. Byer(tron). He had ran by the Game Preserve (local card haven) and got the down-low on three dollar cheeseburger platters at TGI Fridays attached to the very mall the card shop was located in. (If you’re anything like me, right now you’re thinking, “mmm, cheeseburgers.”)

Well, this is awkward- what I’m trying to say is Byer scheduled a fantastic cheeseburger date for him and me with a bunch of Magic guys. Mmm, cheeseburgers. All was well; Byer and I were going bowling later that night, and the bowling alley was right next the restaurant (well, like 5 minutes away). I swung by Byer’s home for what I thought was going to be a quick catch-up meal and fun-filled night of balls. I was wrong on some accounts.

At the restaurant, I found the majority of Central Indiana’s past Magic crew- almost everyone was there (except for Travis, who had ran off to some Eastern seaboard slumville by this time of our story). I gorged on 6 dollars worth of cholesterol-laden goodness and recanted times of yore with the guys. During conversation, Byer or I mentioned bowling and got some lukewarm response (but I didn’t expect anyone to join us based on the reactions). As we were leaving, Nick (Little) ordered some food for Gabe and the guys that didn’t join us for grub. “What did that have to do with anything,” you might be wondering…

Fast forward a few hours, and it’s bowling time! We show up at the locale and, low and behold, there’s like eight guys waiting to get their roll on- including notable pros Gabe Walls (obv), Neil Reeves(!) and (ladies, eat your heart out) “dragonmaster” Brian Kibler! The “real adults” of the bunch got some drinks, and ten pin madness ensued!

I spent so much time laughing (and bowling between my well-defined, sexy toothpick legs) that I can barely remember any details. What I can remember: Neil Reeves was just as good at bowling as he is at playing Magic. Dude definitely had the best score out of the bunch. Kibler was insanely fun and hilarious, but… he def shouldn’t drop from the Pro Tour to join the PBA (Professional Bowlers Association)! I was (am) awesome at bowling between my legs. (I don’t mean to toot my own horn, but I am SUPER awesome.) And since I failed to mention it earlier, the event was most definitely cosmic bowling (black lights, strobe lights, pop music and all)!

The night left me missing the social aspect of gaming (and left me wishing I had a Rith, the Awakener so I could play fan boy with Kibbles). Luckily, my third calling was right around the corner (and Kibler is playing again- maybe I will get that signed Rith still)!

My Affinity for Magic, Part 3

I’m sure that most Magic players know, the game calls to you when you shy away from it. Whether it’s in the form of the siren’s wail or your intoxicated ex-girlfriend ringing your cell at 3 AM when you have work the next morning (which I would liken to late night MTGO binges), most Magic gamers tend to step out of retirement to sling spells again. My third (!!) calling to Magic was almost entirely due to James Mink.

James had gotten back into the Standard grind and Betrayers of Kamigawa was the new kid on the block- of course (for those of you old enough to remember), that meant Affinity was out in full force. Artifact lands, Arcbound Ravager, and Disciple of the Vault were holding hands with Cranial Plating and Myr Enforcers all over the planet. In addition to Affinity, Tooth and Nail could be sprouting huge monsters in dynamic duos every so often (if it could pair against a non-Affinity opponent or race the Brown/Silver monster).

I thought little Minker was insane for getting into Magic with such a dominant and unfair archetype reigning supreme, but he had a plan- a simple Aggro Red-Green deck that played enough maindeck hate cards that were versatile- Blood Moon, Viridian Shaman and Hearth Kami were among his arsenal. After sideboard, the deck had Sowing Salts to deal with Tooth’s nonbasic accelerants and Oxidize and the like to further improve the Artifact Aggro matchup.

Playtesting showed the deck to be a blast, so I did what any poor, college-aged gamer would have done in my shoes. I sold a bunch of cards to StarCityGames and StrikeZone in exchange for the cards I needed for the deck! This budget approach didn’t last long… Affinity lost its steam in a mass-banning (the last of its kind in standard, if I recall correctly), and I needed a new deck. Well, I didn’t need a new deck, but I sure wanted one- again, I found myself committed to playing.

James and I talked to old standbys (AJ and Chris Byer) and quickly the four of us were amassing a large collection of Standard cards. AJ had been playing the odd event at his college (and keeping his collection somewhat up-to-date), while Mr. Byer would pick up cards for 5color every now and then (I believe him and James still were playing every now and then). I have always been one to pool my collection with others to share costs/expand my deck choices, and this time it gave me a good excuse to pal around with my high school buddies.

The summer of ’05 was a whirlwind (of semi-success). Our little cabal playtested and brewed and playtested some more. For Standard, I fell in love with Kuroda-style Red, a burn deck featuring Senseis Divining Top and Shrapnel Blast. The deck put me in the Top 16 of the 2005 KY Open (losing to a god hand turn 3, turn 4 Plow Unders from a Beacon Green deck) and in the Top 8 of the 2005 Indy Regionals (losing Round 1 then winning out only to lose to Beacon Green in the Top 8- but this time the loss was my fault. I didn’t sleep and did something EOT that I meant to save until his turn- yay for mistakes!). Byer also won(!!) our Regionals with a White Weenie deck that he brewed the night before the event. Sick day.

Standard was just the beginning. I won a CHK Block PTQ on the first weekend for PT:LA ’05 with Snakes, wading through White Weenie and beating the only Gifts Control deck (one game on a mull to 4)! The PTQ win was extra sweet due to Flores’s confusion regarding my deck (CTRL+f, and type Chris Kuehl, if you want to see my 15 minutes of fame!)- I basically won again and again with Patron of the Kitsune. It’s also probably worth noting that I dreamcrushed ggslive.com frontman Rashad Miller in the finals. (Rashad, if you ever read this- I had planned on going to the PT when I beat you, but then when none of my friends made it, I chickened out and blamed finances!) Byer and I decided we were pros (no one else could get out of obligations to join us), so we made a last minute decision to drive up to GP:Minneapolis and try our luck on a bigger stage. (Oh, and following is a sweet pic from the PTQ finals.)

The GP was an interesting experience; we were both super poor and unemployed at the time. Luckily, dealers were paying insanely large amounts for Hand of Honor and the like, so we could afford to eat off our extra Uncommons and Rares! On the way up, we brewed an awful White-Green Control deck featuring Celestial Kirins and Time of Needs (props to AJ for helping us build it on the phone). Byer missed out on byes during the night before GP trial (which we barely arrived in time for), losing in the final round before they would have been awarded. The next day, I managed to rattle off enough wins to Day 2 with our little creation (Byer wasn’t as lucky), even amidst tutoring for the wrong Legendary Creature and losing rounds because of it (I got a Kirin instead of a second Patron versus a White Weenie deck that could kill my Patrons via the legend rule). The highlight was my last opponent, who cursed me after his defeat (my top decks) and left without signing the results slip- made my day!

After a short 6 hours of sleep (little sleep is always a bad decision), Byer and I headed to the convention center for another grueling day of Magic. I was going into Day 2 at the bottom of the rankings, but I just wanted to money (Top 32 would get me $250 plus $250 amateur prize) so that we would break even on our trip. Well, spoiler, it didn’t happen. I played against Gadiel Szleifer the first round of the day, lost versus his Gifts deck (which murdered my awkward Board Control deck) and then clawed uphill the rest of the day (beating Adrian Sullivan’s Mono-Black at one point and sending him into a fit of rage, arms swinging and all- all due to him not remembering that I had an Okina, Temple to the Grandfathers in play).

Going into the final round of the day, I was paired against some guy playing White Weenie. Throughout the event (one of the bad things about creating a rogue deck and not testing- the event is your trial by fire), I had figured out that Umezawas Jitte and/or Isamaru, Hound of Konda led to explosive starts that were hard for me to handle. We split the first two games, and I found myself playing the last game of the day with it “all on the line” (it being $500 dollars and my MTG dignity, of course)! I mulled a shaky hand into a no land hand into 2 Plains, Kodamas Reach, Sakura-Tribe Elder, and Yosei, the Morning Star. It seemed solid, but my opponent started with an Isamaru AND I missed my Green source on turn 2 (while oppo played a Jitte for his turn 2). Well, I mised (not to be confused with missed) it on turn 3, breathed a sigh of relief and tapped all of my lands (for maximum use out of my resources), said “Reach” and then face-palmed. Had I played the Sakura-Tribe Elder, I could have prevented 4 damage (2 from the Jitte pump and 2 from the Isamaru- because I made a bad play, my opponent was able to just use one Jitte counter to force me to use my Elder before blocking). I ended up “stabilizing” at 3 life, but my opponent had Shining Shoal and a card to pitch to make my own Yosei kill me! As you can probably tell, that sequence of events still haunts me to today!

The summer went pretty well for our little team- in the PTQ following the Kentucky Open, our friend (and local shop owner at the time) Jeremy Top 8ed with the Gifts deck that we built 3 copies of (thanks to the wonderful work of Japan’s finest). At one of the GenCon PTQs, AJ got second (losing to some bad luck if I recall- he was a master of double Shizo, Death’s Storehouse Gifts by the end of the season)! We picked up a few more boxes in local events (James taking one with Deathcloud- one of his favorite cards to this day) and ended up with a fairly big collection.

Autumn of Magical Period Three

But the summer passed, and everyone had to go back to school and our collective became fairly inactive. This is where I first got into MTGO (mostly interacting with Robert “Boy” Kadlec) and where I fell in love with the Singleton format (I remember watching a fellow named “slearch” play and another named “Starphyre” smash in a field dominated by Blue-Green-White). I spent most of my MTGO budget playing 9^th Edition and Ravnica sealed Leagues (yes, they did exist), and even built bomberman in 60 Card Singleton when Mirage came out (Lion’s Eye Diamond plus Auriok Salvagers).

Somewhere during the past year, I had made the dumb decision to pursue a relationship with something other than cardboard (bad, bad Chris), so I spent most of my free time collecting cards or driving to visit the succubus… I mean girlfriend. I guess I didn’t make the connection on how much money I would need to effectively date in modern America, so I also got a job working at a card shop (for Jeremy, the guest appearance mentioned earlier).

Since Ravnica, I really couldn’t play Magic in real life. I hadn’t taken the time (and neither had they) to update the massive paper collection that I shared with the guys. Luckily, Boy had told me how he was making “infi” redeeming sets on MTGO and selling them. I converted my entire digital collection to essentially 4x Ravnica, redeemed, and sold the rest to Boy for $70 in paper foils (to start an ambitious all foil draft stack- that’s what I called my “cube” before cubes were popular).

Working at the card shop left me a lot of opportunities to play and trade locally, but my relationship was a HUGE drain (did I call her a succubus already?) on my ability to PTQ/GP. I did manage to acquire all of the RAV staples, but didn’t travel much. I think the crew went to one out-of-state event (GP: St Louis ’06), and none of us made Day 2- (I dropped at 5-3). James, Byer and I did play a single Team Unified Standard event where I didn’t win a single match (and neither did Byer, but James won all of his with Ghost Husk). Team Unified Constructed is one weird beast (I kinda hope it comes back).

As Time Spiral approached, I acquired all of the spoiled Timeshifted cards (including a set of sexy, Unlimited Psionic Blasts), but no one really cared to play anymore. We split up the cards to their rightful owners (James and AJ would lend from their collection to the mess that Byer and I owned jointly), and I shopped around for someone to buy our modest set of Type 2 (ahem, Standard) playables. In about a month, the local player base had picked through for what they wanted, and Byer and I sold the rest to dealers at the Planar Chaos Prerelease. Finally, now I could focus on not having any fun (unless putting 300 miles on your car and spending like $150 on consumables a week is fun) and grinding away as lower management in my retail job (as I had decided to break from school- not recommended).

But Wait- I Thought You Were On A Break?!

The last break was barely a break at all. My crew was feeling a guys’ weekend, so we decided to hit up the 2007 Kentucky Open. James, AJ and Byer still had some cards, but they couldn’t make a complete deck by themselves really (and I have no idea when Byer picked up more cards, but he had some). The trip was scheduled on short notice, but I had a sweet Green-Red-White (with Blue in the sideboard) Midrange deck featuring Glittering Wish that I was aching to play with (it featured Seige-Gang Commander, which quickly became one of my favorite cards). I had committed to not buying paper cards anymore (I never seemed to use them enough to warrant owning them), but I had a large network of locals willing to lend me cards so I didn’t have to make any purchases. It only took three days of traveling around Indianapolis, but I built 4 copies of a deck that had ~55 Rares in it!

The Open was fairly uneventful- I started out 4-0, but then lost back-to-back rounds and dropped. My first loss was to a super embarrassing error. On turn 7, I said go without playing my Karoo land. I lost the game because I was one point short of using Demonfire to send my opponent to tournament hell (the loser’s bracket). Needless to say, this memory shares the same empty space in my brain as the GP: Minneapolis Sakura-Tribe Elder mishap.

The Sun Sets on Fun Times

Lorwyn released, and I drafted a few times with the locals (giving my cards to James), but mostly shifted my magical enjoyment to MTGO. But I had ill timing, I purchased a lot of Block cards and then the servers went dark for the jump to MTGO v3.0.

Frustration, frustration, frustration! When I made the decision to go all digital, I was expecting nearly instantaneous gratification whenever I so desired! The Dark Age of MTGO (3 weeks or so?) was painful. So painful, that we will have to to wait finish the tale from here until next time! (Imagine that MTGO was cut off for a multitude of weeks- you’d need a rest to recant that portion of our story, too.)

Cheers,

ChrisKool/Kuehl