My Journey to Nowhere

Hello, the Internet! I am on you! Hm. Okay, let's rewind a bit. Who am I?

My name is Chris Young, and as you can probably guess, I play Magic. I've been in the game since I was quite young; the first cards I remember seeing are cards like Tor Wauki and Marhault Elsdragon (yeah, look those up). One of my first decks ran Zuran Spellcaster alongside Prodigal Sorceror because hey, they're awesome right? Fast forward to 1997 and 10-year-old me going into my local game store (Days of Knights in Newark, DE) and buying my first Magic product(the $5 stack of assorted Ice Age, The Dark, and Alliances cards I got from a schoolmate notwithstanding): the Tempest "Deep Freeze" precon because it's "the blue one." Yeah, 10-year-old me knows where it's at. (More than 23-year-old me does probably, but we'll get to that.)



So I got on with that for a while. Playing terrible decks as 10-year-olds do, moving through a Sliver phase when Onslaught came out in high school (I was the only one with Muscle Slivers. Tech!) And then in college, I stopped.

A short aside: I had never been all that hardcore into Magic. I would buy a pack once in a while, build decks with maybe 1 or 2 4-ofs just because that's all I had on hand, but not much past that. The theory though -- I ate that up. I did a lot of on-paper deckbuilding. I read all the Mothership articles. I submitted a couple decks that made it into Mark Gottlieb's House of Cards. I even got a deck into Auction of the People when the Magic Invitational was still going (I've still got a Richard Garfield signed Swamp and two R&D stickered playtest cards I won from that, among other things). But the actual playing? I didn't get it at all. I never played in tournaments or anything. I mean, how was I even supposed to build a cool deck? There were just so many cards! (I didn't really get the idea of formats at the time.) So when I left high school, I left my casual playgroup and never really made an effort to play any more Magic.

So college. I played in a couple random limited events (I remember playing in a Guildpact sealed where I opened Niv-Mizzet and Mindmoil.) I hung around on MTG forums and read the articles on the Mothership. I kept up with magic in theory, but didn't do too much playing. Then, I stayed at college for the summer to do a research project. The guy who lived next to me in the summer-housing dorm played Magic. I didn't have my cards, but I brewed up a Lightning Coils deck (that knocked his decks out of the water) and we played. When the school year started up again, I brought my cards and I was hooked again. But this time it was different: There was a community of players around, I actually went out of my way to get cards to make "real" decks (which here is used to mean "decks that actually had a plan") and I otherwise took the game seriously.

Then I graduated. I moved to New York City. And now, I play pretty regularly at Jim Hanley's Universe. Gone are the days of crappy Sliver decks and hello Mass Polymorph, Molten Psyche, and Pyromancer's Ascension decks. (Not all in the same deck. Usually.)

So, what does all of this have to do with this blog? The message I want you to take from this incredibly self-indulgent biography is this:

I'm bad at this game.

Okay, that's not entirely true. I'm actually a pretty technically skilled player. In Limited, I make a pretty good showing. But Constructed? Oh boy. So what I really mean is:

I choose to be bad at this game. Because it's fun.

The decks I post here won't be tuned and they won't be well-tested. They definitely won't be Tier One. Full disclosure: My Constructed rating is TERRIBLE. But what I strive for is to make fun, playable decks. And most of all, I want them to be unexpected. One of my favorite feelings is that moment where you play a spell and your opponent sort of pauses. He (or she) reaches across to look at it, and invariably makes a noise that is something like "huh." Not in an inquisitive fashion like, "Huh? You played what?" but as in "Huh. I never thought of that."

I look at Magic as a game of exploration. Of pushing boundaries and of trying new things. And with most true exploration, failure is an inevitability. If you're trying new things and none of them fail, you're not getting far enough afield. In this blog, I'll take you with me in my explorations. I'll lead you through my methods. I'll talk about deckbuilding, about Magic in general, about my random thoughts at any given moment. But my focus will always be on exploring. On how to find new ways to enjoy yourself in this indescribably vast game of Magic. It doesn't all have to be about winning the next big tournament (but it's fun to try!).

So settle in. Magic is a journey. The experiences you have on that journey are a constant excitement if you want them to be. Enjoy that journey! Even if it's a Journey to Nowhere.