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A Wizard's Conflict

By Distrigon

The tremendous force of nature rampaged towards me as I ran for my life. Throwing some caltrops in its way would have no effect, so I needed to think of some other plan of action because my life was low and one hit from the force would wipe me out. My enemy watched silently through the thick trees of the forest, seeing how I would deal with my opposing threat. Needing time to think, I cast an elusive fog around me, keeping the force of nature at bay for the moment. I gathered my energy up quickly and released it into a large fireball at the unsuspecting beast, knocking it down. It was hurt, but not badly enough to be destroyed. With one last trick up my sleeve, I smirked. Using my remaining energy, a conjured a large lightning bolt to finish off the creature my opponent controlled. The beast dissipated back into the void it had came from. Alas, my opponent worried not. At the last minute, he created a centaur beast, and ordered it to finish me off….

“Wait a minute, a centaur?? We didn’t have centaurs back in the day!! And what’s with this whole trickery doing things at the end of my turn crap? It’s still gonna have summoning sickness, you know!” I yelled out.

“What are you talking about? I just bought a few boxes of the latest set of cards and I have a whole arsenal of stuff to use against your old techniques. And they’ve changed the rules since then. Anyway, you’re the one who’s being cheap by using direct damage” My opponent yelled back.

And so the battle between the two wizards comes to a halt.

The role playing you just read about comes from a typical Magic the Gathering match, a game based on the fact that you and your opponent are both wizards, and are using whatever spells you have learned to destroy each other. The premise is good. What the game has become is not. I learned how to play this card game a little over two years ago, and the main purpose of this game was to have fun. As I found new players to challenge however, I came across many things I disliked about the ways in which people play the game, always complaining about something or other.

First for those who haven’t played this game, let me elaborate a bit on its history and some basic information on how it is played. Magic the Gathering is a CCG, or collectable card game, which came out in 1993, resulting from a product of Richard Garfield’s imagination to create a card game Dungeons and Dragons facsimile. Based on the premise that each player is a wizard, the cards gave the players an assortment of spells to cast to try and defeat one another. That is all you need to know about the game. It is just a game and another attempt to let people have fun in their own fantasy realms. At its best, it is an incredible role playing story line. At its worst, by being materialistic, it has failed, however still being kept alive by those who bother to spend massive amounts of dollars buying the latest card expansions.

As you can probably tell, I have some beef to take up with the players of Magic the Gathering.

On one side of the battle, are the old-schoolers, those people who started playing the game when it had just come out, and stopped playing a few years after. They learned from the alpha versions, when the game was still flawed, still overpowered in its own way, and still having a large capacity to polish and refine itself. These card veterans, who pride themselves on knowing all old cards, or knowing every card a particular artist did art for, start to play again, against those who have completely new cards, and find themselves frustrated because of the culture shock that magic has become. The game has moved on from originally being its wizard battle, to being an all out war of the realms in terms of story line. Old-school players refuse to adapt to the new world of Magic, making it bothersome to even play them because of their stubbornness and refusal to accept that even in role playing, a world filled with magic and sorcery is bound to evolve sometime.

On the other side, are the new players (newbies or n00b for short), and/or tournament players who make this world of magic into a game of “whoever has more money can buy better cards”. This materialistic view of the game keeps it alive, yet robs it of the dignity all games deserve when being played. No one wants to be beaten by someone who has an incredible card advantage because they can afford more cards. There is no honor in that, because the game’s skill level is being reduced to monetary values. I’m not saying that a person with lass cards has no chance, because with the time put into developing skills, a player can use virtually any card advantageously; however, I am saying that I don’t agree with money being an equivalent to time spent. In a role playing world, there is no way you can use money to magically become better. You need to train, and hone your skills by trial and error, not by buying spells and following guides from previous players.

In the next two articles, I will attempt to bridge the gap and resolve the conflicts I have between these two groups, and hopefully enlighten them to my view of how magic should be, and in my mind, still is.

In the meantime, remember to save before you quit. ^_^

-Distrigon

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