"This game's fun. Fun, goddammit." - Crash Davis,"Bull Durham"

Magic is a great game. It's complex and wonderful and cunning in its various intricacies. You knew that, of course. After all, you're at a strategy site; you're looking for the newest and best analysis by some of the brightest theorists out there,* and you're probably buying a single or two before you leave. You're part of a community - hundreds, possibly thousands of people linked by this one thing. Like it or lump it, you're not just a person, you're part of a united demographic.

And the one thing we're all united about is that we believe, sometime or other, is that Magic, or at least Wizards, sucks. A lot.

Why do we feel this way? Because we fell in love with this game, or we thought we did. Your first boosters, or your first Starter (or Tournament Pack - God, I hate that expression) are your first high school girlfriend, your first semi-serious relationship, and the first person you slept with on a consistent basis all in one cardboard pile. You were in love and everything was strange and new, and wonderful. All the cards were sexy (if you were lucky enough to open a Serra Angel or an Elvish Spirit Guide, you had cards that were sexy in both senses), they all looked cool, and you couldn't wait to put them all in a deck and play, baby, play!

So you ended up with a deck that took you as long to shuffle as it did to play the whole game, and did nothing well, 'cause you had one Elf, one Counterspell, and a couple of cards that Mark Rosewater himself has to look up on Oracle, 'cause they're so awful. Unfortunately, decks like this lose.** To top it off, you play badly. But you don't care. You turn those bad boys sideways and send them into the Red Zone, and if a few of them don't come back, because you forgot about combat tricks, well, you have to break a few Ouphes to make an omelet. Your friends gently point this out, and suggest that four of your best card might be marginally better than one, and what the heck is that card doing there?

Upon closer inspection, some of the cards have beautiful blue eyes that turn out to be contacts, their wonderful figures are padding and spandex, and unless you apply electroshock, some of them ain't never going to get their fat butts off the couch and get a job. So you cut the deck down and start winning more games.

Then we've got you. You've started caring about the game, and the cards you play really are sexy and wonderful. But, like the sexy and wonderful person that you get serious about, now you really have to pay attention. You have to stop drinking with the guys, you have to come home and wash dishes, and you have to mow the lawn instead of watching the game. This wonderful relationship used to be about getting your killer combo into play; now it's work. Those wonderful, sexy cards you love? They're telling you to get out of the recliner and clean up your dirty socks. They're not going to pick themselves up, you know.

Infatuation is easy. Love is hard.

Losing is now your fault. You made the mistake, you went with the sub-optimal build, you didn't mulligan, and you listened to Bruce. That doesn't feel very good.

As the Ferrett pointed out in his articles about his personal quest, the hard part of serious training is the sheer dullness of it. You play the same deck or decks over and over, you analyze your play to the Nth Degree, and you hone your skills. You master the metagame, or at least get good, and then, you're ready. You emerge, and just as you're ready for validation, they change Type II or Extended on you. Wizards comes out with a whole new 350-card set, or a new 175-card expansion, and you have to start all over.

Magic's a slut, dude - she's off sleeping with the pros while I'm at home goldfishing my tuned deck that relies on Invasion Block for half its key cards (that is, if I had a tuned Type II deck). They call it"keeping the environment fresh." I call it breaking my heart - I love my Mystic Snakes and Dual Lands, dammit.

Onslaught is due? Great, someone just cast Extinction on my innocence. They just hit my idealism with Engineered Plague. They slapped me with Lobotomy when I had my clever tech in my hand, just waiting to unleash it on Friday Night Magic. It's enough to make you cry, or spit, or whine incessantly.

Four of us spend our lunch hour playing Magic. Every now and again, someone will walk by and note that they used to play. You know why they stopped playing. The game got too complex - Phasing, Fading, Madness, Buyback, Flashback, Threshold, Morph, O dear God, what now - or too expensive - how much does Call of the Herd cost? - or too time-consuming -"Do I write the paper or play Magic? Test this deck or mail invoices?" It gets to be a bit much, paying hundreds of dollars for thousands of cards over and over, most of which get relegated to the box o' what the hell am I thinking and only emerge if someone out there finds a strange and amazing combination no one saw coming.

This game, this time-consuming, money-hungry monster that Dr. Garfield unleashed, is so lovable that we come back. We hear a knock at the door - and it's the new expansion, carrying flowers and a bottle of good Merlot. Before we know it, there are booster wrappers strewn all over the floor, Barry White's on the stereo, and we're sorting piles by color again. Those guys walking by at lunch? They're probably coming back. One of the guys playing had one sixty-card deck two months ago - he'd sold every other card he owned after Mirage block came out. Now we've got him buying singles by the basket load. He's in on a four-box order. He's calling me every day talking about what he needs to make his deck better and Type II or Extended legal.

New cards really do have a smell. When I was young, and five dollars was a boatload of money instead of a tiny percentage of my rent, I remember smelling my allowance. I still sniff the occasional booster - it's the smell of possibility. Magic evolves, it changes, and if you don't like something about this set, well, there's another set right around the corner. I've been a Cub fan for years, and as Tom Boswell said, each year, time begins on opening day. Magic begins at the prerelease. I still won't read a spoiler list - I wanna see those bad boys in the flesh, or the shiny wrapper, before I figure out what goes where.

Serious Magic really does suck. Most of us in most tournaments are going to go home disappointed. You're probably going to lose - even if you've answered every question, even if you've done all your preparation and homework, the tyranny of mathematics (64 players, only eight Top Eight slots or nine players, two foils) ensures that your chance of winning is tiny. Frustration is an occupational hazard. It sucks that we have to adapt, that we can't win all the time, that we have to learn. It's unfair that the market learns so quickly what the cards are really worth, and if we want four copies of the good stuff, we have to give StarCity our hard-earned dollars. It's unfair that I'll probably never win a PTQ - I don't have the time or the energy or the money.***

Depressing, that. Our desires are Hall of Fame; our talent? Pawtucket or Toledo. Kids, friends, fellow Magic junkies, life is unfair. This, of course, is an insight on the level on"Oxygen is good" and"Things are tough all over," and"If you fall from a great height, it tends to hurt." But, Magic is a microcosm of life. It's only a game, but games are about life. No, we're not really wizards battling it out - we're a bunch of people playing with cards.

Ultimately, though, it doesn't matter. We come back, we fall for the new expansion in the skimpy nightie. The boredom you're feeling is probably that you miss the sex and excitement of the first couple of boxes, when you never got the rare you wanted. Yet, the quickest and surest way to wreck a relationship is to take the other person for granted. It still stuns me that people throw out cards they don't want.**** Sure, quit if you want, but you're probably coming back - Magic's not going anywhere.***** If you're bored, or frustrated, try something different. One guy making Top 8 with a Battle of Wits deck is worth all the tech out there. Ignore an expansion or two. We'll keep your seat warm.

Imagine if you were just learning about the state of the game after two years. My friend from lunch can't keep it straight that I can play cards from the graveyard, or buy 'em back.

And now, if you'll excuse me, I have a date with my prototype Extended deck. We're going to play sad songs and figure out what we do without our Duals.

* - No, I am not describing me. If I am, the state of Magic writing is in deep, deep trouble.

** - I still build decks like this on occasion, and my chance of winning when I give in to temptation is so miniscule that it can only be seen by high-powered microscopes.

*** - To truly admit it, a lot of my feeling on this is my Bruce, but with a lifetime record of 4-4 in FNM and no big tourneys, and Law School and a full-time job, let's agree that it's not likely in the foreseeable future. Once I start cashing those big lawyer paychecks, though...

**** - I'm not counting shredding a card you hate, because it wrecked you at a key moment, or you loathe the art, or igniting a card in a spectacular show of contempt for capitalism, or as a lesson to other cards. That's theatre, not ennui.

***** -"Why Magic Sucks, Part II" will explore this idea in further detail, but let's put it this way: fads tend, especially in these days of short attention spans, to have a certain life. Magic's past the point of being a fad. Will it last twenty years? I'd bet so. Longer than that? I dunno. But, if it were gonna die, I believe it would have died 'round about Fallen Empires, when no one could get the base set and all the really broken cards had been pulled.