First of all, congrats to Oscar Tan on the Writer's War...THE TRUTH HAS MADE ME FREE!!! I'm a regular reader of the submissions to StarCity. In my never-ending quest for knowledge on the aspect of life that dominates my thoughts during my hazy sojourns at work, I stumbled upon Oscar's"You CAN Play Type 1..." series. At first, I was skeptical; I'm sad to say that I was one of those who thought that Type One was all about the first-turn kills, and infinite combos... In short, rigging the dice to make sure you always go first.

How wrong I was!

What first caught my attention was how the principles that were discussed in regards to Type One were applicable to all formats (extended being my drug of choice at the time), just in much less visible ways. I was especially intrigued by the idea of life as a buffer for other resources. While looking at things in this respect, when my opponent casts a Shock, from my side of the table it reads - Pay two life: Target opponent taps a R producing land he or she controls and discards a card. From a control player's perspective (I almost always play control), this sheds a different light on what can be considered a resource and on the game in general. The way I look at it, every card can be broken down into a trade for of life (yours or an opponents) or turns (cards).

To demonstrate this point, I will use my little brother as an example: My brother, who I commonly refer to as"Timmy" (in reference to the Unglued card, because the point of all of his decks is to get his Leviathan into play), has had many lessons on this subject - albeit largely ineffectual. In a typical game he will have four different two or three casting-cost cephalids on the table along with a few creature enchantments, which collectively have beat me down to fourteen or sixteen by turn 4 when I cast my Wrath of God. At this point, I have six cards in my hand including another removal spell, two or three random counterspells, and a Morphling (or other miscellaneous beatdown stick). Now, at this point if we just assume that I can trade a card in my hard for a card in his hand (while both playing a land every few turns), theoretically it will take him somewhere around five or six turns before he can get anything of consequence into play...

Hmmmm... Can a Morphling reduce his life total to zero in six turns?

Therefore, in this light my Wrath might as well have read - 2WW, pay six life: Take five or six extra turns. Now, I know this annoys non-control players to no end, but it really is a very simple concept.

As I said before, I was reluctant to try Type One, I guess because I was scared (you know, all the Type One horror stories you hear as a newbie), and justified my irrational fear by saying that Type One is pointless, and so on. Well, after reading Oscar's submissions and working up the courage, for the first time I decided to fire up Apprentice and give Type One a swing... It rocked! I created my own variation of"The Deck" for experimentation purposes, and my first game was against a mono-black beatdown deck. Now, I consider myself a pretty decent Magic player, I win most of the casual games I play and even at the small tournaments I've been to I usually place pretty well (almost always 1st or 2nd).

Once the game got underway, however, I was absolutely baffled by the multitude of choices I was presented with at every turn. I made more mistakes - and I'm talking glaring, obvious mistakes - in that game than I think I have ever made in a single game before... Needless to say, I need some serious work in order to be good in Type One. From what I can see, the reason for the unbelievable lack of playing skill that I exhibited was due to the power of the cards and the versatility they present: Do I Time Walk now? When should I use my Mind Twist? What should I tutor for??

Such a far cry from the common misconceptions of Type One.

When's all said and done, I'm glad I gave the Grandfather of all Magic formats a chance...I think I'm hooked! Now, where do I find a Lotus that I don't have to skip out on my car payment or sell my soul to obtain...

Until next time, play responsibly.
Matt Vennard