No, you don't need to rob little kids and take their collection for that great copy of Carnival of Souls... So don't blame it on me if you do. It's relatively simple... Say, like this weekend at the prerelease, when I needed:

4 Blurred Mongoose
4 Kavu Titan
2 Urza's Rage
4 Shivan Reef
4 Yavimaya Coast

Yeah, I know what you're thinking: No way in Finkel's Monster's name is he gonna get all those cards in one day. Yes, I am a random scrub who has been playing since Tempest and never gotten into a top 8 despite the best efforts of my friends to teach me how to build decks and how to play and what I need.

It's okay, though, 'cause I had a huge binder full of horrible cards like, Goblin Game, Antagonism, Chaos Sphere, Carnival of Souls. Young and old Magic players who don't have money or a job to finance this addiction - I have a way to get the cards you need.

Oh I'm supposed to tell you not gloat about it. All right, here it is. First, surf the Internet for a while or use your own extensive knowledge and write down a list of the hottest cards that people want. Then on the ride to the tournament or at home before the tournament, you write down a list of all the cards you really want or need for a deck. Once you're at the tournament, you go to the first person you see trading. (Get there a bit early so you can have plenty of time to trade.) If he's already in a trade, don't be rude and interrupt or try to outdo the other guy; you just watch them trade with each other and figure out what they both want. You offer to trade and ask him what he needs. If you don't have it just nod and say sorry. If he finds things, trade with him - but if he doesn't, apologize and just walk away but write down what he was looking for and his name, if you got it. Next, go the farthest away from the guy that you can and find more people trading. You then do the same thing with them.

Never be a jerk about trading if he doesn't want to; don't push it, because then you most likely won't get what you want. Make sure the first thing you ask for is the thing the first guy wanted and then what you want. If he has what you want and you have something for him, trade for it.

If he has what the first guy wanted, make sure you get it. If you get what the first guy wanted, go back to him and trade him for what you want. Also see if you can push it to get what the other guy wanted. If you do, go back to him and get the stuff you want. You continue to do this but never do it too close to the person you first traded with, or the people will just trade with each other and cut you out. Now, after you have all this web of intricate things going on and two hundred cards written down that people need, you find some guy standing off in a corner trading with one or two people at a time but neither person really getting anything - especially not those choice rares that everyone wants. Make sure you remember him, because he'll be important later.

Continue to do all this trading until around four o'clock in the afternoon. This is where a lot of people start to drop and trade heavily or leave. Make sure you watch the people you traded with, and listen a lot to see if there's anything else they need. Around five o'clock, you go to the guy in the corner with the small trade binder and ask him to trade. He'll ask you the eternal question that he's been asking all day: Can I just pull cards out for trade value? You of course say yes, because your binder is full of absolutely nothing that's worth much. You sit down with his binder of gold and open it, looking at the two pages of Urza's Rages, Undermines, and Absorbs that you have been slaving to get all day long. He starts pulling out like fifty cards from your binder and going"fifty cents" continually. Then, after about a hundred cards, he asks if you see anything you want. Oh, I was just staring at the binder wondering if I could make a break for the door and possibly catch a cab before you called the cops or caught me…

Oh, the hundred cards the guy pulled out? Don't worry about them; they were just crap cards like Carnival of Souls and Chaos Sphere. Those kind of things.

So as you sigh in relief, you point to the three or four cards that you want. He tells you that you have $50 in trade value.... So you pull out the four $10 cards and two $5 cards and shake hands with the guy. Make sure you shake hands. People always remember you better when you shake hands. You then can just continue to play, having gotten all the cards you needed, or go back into the crowd and trade those hard-earned cards away for things you need.

Now just to explain how this works.

I think the only way to sum it up was said by a character in Dragonlance:"It's not stealing or borrowing - it's scrounging."

Yeah, that's basically what you do. Except with trading, you want to make sure everyone gets what he or she wants. Sometimes that means that you don't get what you want at that moment, but sometimes it pays off to just be the nice guy. Wow! Being nice in Magic. I know, you won't win the game like that... But you will get better trades. The guy with the small binder with all the good cards is the guy from a local card shop that sells bundles of cards on eBay. Most shops do this, and there is most likely one in every area that does it. So all those crappy cards you got off of to get good stuff, even though you feel like it, you really weren't being cheated. You got what you wanted and he got what he wanted. Great - everyone is happy.

One of the most important things to learn about trading is never be afraid to tell the guy"no" for a card... But don't put it in your trade binder if you have no intentions of ever trading it. If he asks why tell him you're holding out for a better offer or for a card that you really need, if he offers you the best trade you have ever seen, well... Just use your better judgement. Just remember that you do have a focus for today: That's to get those cards for your deck or for any reason that you want them. Always try to pick up those crappy rares as little throw-ins; they can add up to big things.

Another easy way other than little kids is to find casual players. While they don't play tournaments, often they know the value of cards - but a lot of them find that they don't like the newer cards, so you can get off some of your older stuff to them for newer things.

Now in response to Bennie Smith's and various other writers' articles on cheating: This is my response. More people need to be banned.

Now before the prerelease, I never really saw cheating in Magic as a big problem. But I guess that in the eyes of the innocent, nothing is a big problem. At the prerelease, however, my fourth round opponent was at seven life and I was at fifteen.

He cast a Volcanic Spray, doing one point of damage to everything on the board, dropping me to fourteen and him to six. He then cast an Ember Beast and attacked for thirteen points of damage. He then removed his Volcanic Spray from the graveyard to his"removed from game" pile and said he was using its flashback ability. Well, there is only one problem with that: He only had six mana in the first place!

I told him he couldn't do that because he had no mana left open. He tried to say that he cast the Ember Beast last round. He called the judge over. He apparently knew him, since he was using his first name. So I went to tell my side of the story and the judge told me to,"Shut up and let him tell his side of the story." I was quiet and polite, waiting for my turn to tell my side... But oh, how I wanted to say some words that would make a sailor blush to that guy as he sat there telling the most convincing lie to the judge. I then told my side of the story, and the girl next to me playing in another game even agreed with me and told the judge that the guy didn't have the mana.

THE JUDGE TOLD HER TO SHUT UP AND MIND HER OWN BUSINESS!

Now, this was a judge wearing a DCI shirt running the thing. I told the judge that if he had cast the Ember Beast last round, then why hadn't he attacked with it? Well the guy just shrugged. The judge didn't respond, but gave me a game loss since I had declared no blockers and the additional point"killed" me. Well, next game the guy got me to around ten and I just packed up my crap. He offered his hand, but I glared at him and told him that I didn't shake hands with people who cheated to win. I then stood up and had a murderous thought of just swinging my heavy backpack with my trade binder and cards upside the guy's grinning head... But I decided not to, and stormed out without even signing the sheet. My ride was outside so I just got in the car and went home so angry. Yeah - 2-2 for me.

Played horribly? Having a bad day? No sleep the night before? No, No, Yes. It doesn't matter, though; what matters is that I was cheated out of any chance at a top 8 slot at the prerelease and a box of Odyssey.

So as I said before - yeah, in the eyes of the innocent, the system isn't corrupt. Play for awhile longer, and you will notice that different people take advantage of the system in different ways. Some stall, some don't take out there sideboard cards. A few have friends who are judges and always call on them. Now I am not talking trash about any judges; some judges are the nicest, most considerate people you will meet - but just a few are corrupt and will do anything to help people win. As Bennie Smith eloquently put it, they're people who are"jerks" - and then they're the guys with high Jerk Tolerance Levels. I think that all nicer Magic players are starting to build up a higher JTL.

Everyone says you have to become a jerk to win in Magic. Well, I think it's every nice guy and judge's job to make sure that it's fair. If a jerk wins and it's fair, hey - that's great. If a nice guy wins and it's fair - hey, even better.

Well that's my take on it. If anyone knows where I can complain to DCI about the game, e-mail me.

Until next time,
Josh
DesolateMagic@aol.com