I've got a dilemma for you, and it's filled with venom:

What divides a population, smells like radish, and causes more frustration than trying to peel an M & M? I'll give you a hint: it's something people vote for. I'll give you another hint: it's something that only a minority of people vote for, but a majority of people complain about.

No, it's not the presidential election. It's"Selecting Ninth Edition?"

(Please note, that question mark is intentional, as it is right smack dab in the front of the link on magicthegathering.com. It's as though even Wizards themselves is trying to ask us what the hell we are thinking.)

Anyway, as has been evident from the beginning,"Selecting Ninth Edition" is clearly the one and only factor that is keeping Magic: the Gathering relevant. In a world that is now choked with gaming Pro Tours, it is driving and powering Magic forward, in order to ensure that it remains the pinnacle of the Collectable Card Game experience. If some aspiring politician out there needs a spin-doctor, you know how to get in touch with me.

Actually,"Selecting Ninth Edition," or its more charming acronym, SNE (which is kind of like the sound my friend makes when he stifles a sneeze) is a bunch of funk in a pail. The reasons for this are multitude, and I shall address them equally. Likewise, I shall rebuke the good reasons for SNE soundly. If I can find them.

First, though, I have to go back to the days of"Selecting Eighth Edition." Actually, S8E (which is the name of a girl I know) wasn't so bad. There were some playable cards in there, and after all, we got to vote Dismiss into Type 2. Dewey Defeats Truman, amiright? Yeah, that was supposed to be the sure thing, although in retrospect, it wasn't such a bad thing. I mean, who didn't love floating nine mana and untapping to cast a Decree of Savagery?

Sorry, sometimes I think I'm funny. After the sure thing vote, the good guys at Wizards made us choose between Llanowar Elves and Birds of Paradise, and a couple of walls which we are too apathetic to remember at this time. That's like having to choose between chocolate and peanut butter, or between Lindsey Lohan and your girlfriend. You know which one you're going to choose if someone makes you, but, but . . . why in God's name can't we have both?

(And why does this article have so many paragraphs already?)

The whole choosing my girlfriend over Lindsey Lohan thing left a real bitter taste in mouth. I mean, crap, it's not like the most broken deck ever ran a full complement of both. Opposition blah blah Fires blah blah. Those decks beat down with men, with men! I absolutely refuse to believe that one-mana creature accelerants are too broken or unbalanced to include eight in a core set. Birds of Paradise wasn't even part of a viable Type 2 deck this year. (In a bar in Hoboken, Llanowar Elves is laughing.) And then, and then, after all that, Crusade loses! To Glorious Anthem! Another card which didn't see any play at all over the course of the season. And this was supposed to be one of the good votes! [ I think Crusade got voted out by Liberals! And uh, Glorious Anthem got voted in by people who thought Crusade was obviously prejudiced. What were we thinking? - Knut, unsure on both accounts, but feeling loopy]

But that's all okay, man. It's alright. We got a second chance this time around. We got to spend this summer SNE, oh yes, (although all things considered I'd rather spend it getting donkeypunched.) This time, we were going to do it right. We were going to rock the crap out of this vote. So how did we all do? In case you didn't read Ted's last article, here's how things turned out so far, each one with a nifty subtext explaining just how hard we rocked, and why:

Week 1: Emperor Crocodile vs. Jade Leech - Emperor Crocodile Wins!
"Yes, we will rock the card that has never been played. Maybe if we got Llanowar Elves back, we wouldn't think that Jade Leech isn't such mega-bad shizzle!"

Week 2: Blinding Angel vs. Dawn Elemental - Blinding Angel Wins!
"We will rock the Angel. 'Nuff said."

Week 3 - Mana Leak vs. Memory Lapse - Mana Leak Wins!
"In the upset of the century, we will rock the good card!"

Week 4 - Havoc Demon vs. Yawgmoth Demon - Yawgmoth Demon Wins!
"Maro's ridiculous promotion of Demons has forced us to rock one of two cards that reek like my breath, so we will choose the one that reeks less."

Week 5 - Persuasion vs. Confiscate + Rewind - Confiscate + Rewind Wins!
Okay, Rewind didn't beat a card that was already better than it, what the hell chance do they think it has against a card that Isn't Even In The Same Category, and as a bonus, they'll tack on another card to it. That's like letting all of the University of Arizona's NBA players come back and play for them again. That would rock (told you I'd get it in there.)

Week 6 - Balduvian Horde vs. Goblin Goon vs. Rathi Dragon - Rathi Dragon Wins!
"Something food something something."

"Hey, there's a Dragon in this one."

"Rock The Freaking Dragon Already."

Week 7 - Temporal Adept vs. Time Elemental - Who Cares???
Seriously, without looking on the website, which card won? You can't tell me, because you don't know. You don't know because it doesn't matter in the slightest. No one, anywhere, will or would ever play one of these cards. Rock.

Week 8 - Viashino Cutthroat vs. Viashino Sandstalker - Viashino Sandstalker Wins!
"Rock tired."

Week 9 - Hammer of Bogardan vs. Shard Phoenix - Shard Phoenix Wins!
"What's this? Two ancient playables? In that case, we will rock the one miserably slow faux-combo piece that hasn't had a chance to be proven as terrifyingly inefficient, and die a miserable death, in this Type 2.

Week 10 (I'm getting close to the end, I swear) - Blackmail vs. Addle -
Okay - aside. When I saw this I thought,"There is no possible way that this can get screwed up. This would have to be one of the biggest blunders of all time, bigger than"Do you have any fast effects?" Bigger than my friend, who was 18 at the time, dumping his incredibly sexy girlfriend because she was leaving town in six months and he"just didn't know what the point of them being together was if she was leaving in six months." Like they couldn't be together forever. He didn't know much about the birds and the bees. Still doesn't. Anyway, I knew, I knew that there was no possible way that this could go wrong, but sure enough:

Blackmail Wins!

Sheep:"Let us rock, mutually, the card that didn't even see play in a Block Constructed format where there were No Discard Spells At All available."

MBC, circa 2003 States in an alternate reality,"I play Addle naming White. Oh, why yes, I think I will take that Karma!"

Ridiculous.

Week 11 - Weird Harvest vs. Animal Magnetism - Weird Harvest Wins!
Bleiweiss channeling Bennie Smith:"Animal Magnetism is the Green Fact or Fiction!"

Sheep:"Why rock, then, clearly Weird Harvest is the correct choice."

Did anyone else notice that they stopped showing how many people voted when the Animal Magnetism vs. Weird Harvest vote came out? That's because Wizards was too damn embarrassed to show that only eighteen people voted, and that Weird Harvest outvoted Animal Magnetism thirteen votes to five. (FYI, three of the five votes for Animal Magnetism were Michael Flores.)

Week 12 Furnace whatever can't do it . . .
Which brings us to Week 13. At the time of this article, Shared Triumph was squaring off against Glorious Anthem. In another stroke of genius by the Wizards Brain Trust, they have pitted a card that already beat Crusade against a marginally good, but much worse card, in the same vein. Obviously, this means Shared Triumph will win. I figured that Mr. Bleiweiss would have plenty to say about this card, being that there are no good tribes in White that can utilize it successfully, thanks to Wizards outsourcing all the good tribes to other colors, but he didn't. Instead, he ate a sandwich and threw up in a trash can. Which segues nicely into my next point.

If you've been reading the fine dilemma series between Ben Bleiweiss and Ted Knutson, you already know that two-thirds of Ben's articles are fake conversations between Wizards employees, or terrible rap songs of yore, or made up decklists. Poor Ted is teetering on the edge of despair, you can tell by his writing. He had to put out a whole article last week just to explain why even though he bends over backwards to get people to vote for the right card, everyone has been stupid enough to vote for the wrong card pretty much right down the line. I may be wrong, but it seemed like in the beginning, no matter what Ted did, people voted against him.

Honestly, who has it worse, Bleiweiss or Knutson? Bleiweiss has to defend the more bad card, but Knutson has to watch as his champion gets beat down like Bobby Brown done to Whitney Houston. Lately, things have evened out in favor of Ted's picks, but I'm sure those people out there will find a way to send him into a rubber room before this is all over. And I do mean those people. It's obviously not you, faithful reader, who votes for the wrong card. No one I've even talked to has voted for the wrong card. Remember the Spice Girls? They sold a bajillion albums. Did you know anyone who owned one? Me neither, but apparently a lot of people did. People, somewhere, are voting for these all-stars, unless we have a Rathi Dragon fetish society that is registering account after account to stuff the proverbial ballot box. But it's sure as hell no one I know, and I would bet that it's no one you know, either.

Of course, the fact that the more bad card can make it in time after time is indicative of another problem. No, not the Rathi Dragon fetish society. I'm talking about almost complete and total voter apathy. For the early votes, anywhere between ten and fifteen-thousand people voted for the cards. I want to let those numbers sink in a little bit: ten to fifteen-thousand. This is a card game that over six-million people play! When Wizards discontinued Sideboard magazine, they stated that part of the reason was that"Over 98% of the game's players" had access to the tech online. What's 98% of that, like at least a million, right? And the most we can muster is a measly freaking fifteen-thousand? Let me put it in another perspective. At the time of this writing, there were over 7,000 people in the world with a Constructed rating over 1800. If every one, I mean, 98% of those people were to rock the vote, the good card would be in, time after time, every time. But there is voter apathy, which is indicative of yet another problem . . .

The Cards Are Terrible! There's a reason that two of the best writers this website has to offer can't find a damn thing to write about in this SNE between the two of them. You can't polish a turd, folks! Just ask Ted, he edits my articles. Now I don't want to hear someone whine in a nasal voice about how,"This is for the casual players, the competitive players get 'You Make the Card.'" Okay, sure, the competitive players get"You Make the Card," and then Wizards goes"We Make the Card . . . Bland!" Yeah, yeah... Crucible of Worlds good in one format. Moreover, Wizards picks the abilities of the card that we decide, so don't even tell me that we really get a choice. Unless I have it all wrong, and"You Make the Card" is meant for the casual players, and"Selecting Blah Edition" is meant for the competitive players, but even I am not so cynical as to believe that Wizards is so completely out of touch with Type 2 that they believe that the cards that they're putting up for selection will actually be in any decks. (Of course, turnabout is fair play, and it we're not careful we could have a whole bunch of Type 1 players writing in and saying that Type 2 players aren't innovative because they can't build a winning deck with Furnace of Rath.)

If"Selecting Whatever Funk" is truly for the casual players, they've had their chance, and they've failed, because none of them give a damn either. If being R&D for Mirrodin or Invasion is like playing Go or Chess, working on developing Ninth Edition is like Where's Waldo. There is absolutely no reason that the people working on the set couldn't sit back, pick two good, competitive cards that have seen play in several decks, and let them fight it out. (And not in some sadistic way, like Wrath of God vs. Armageddon, but something cool, like Innocent Blood vs. Diabolic Edict.) Give the competitive players a chance to shape Type 2, and I can't imagine that you wouldn't see a bigger turnout.

There are other aspects to SNE that I haven't touched on, because their impact on gameplay is zilch. While choosing the art for platinum hits like Dancing Scimitar and Spirit Link might not get me all warm and fuzzy, at least it doesn't affect the game. Honestly, I have no real complaints about the art votes. One does not have to recognize a good card to recognize good art, praise all that is holy. I don't believe that I have disagreed with a single vote for any artwork. The flavor text is amusing, and I don't know that I could do better than most of the ones that get put up to vote and picked. But the best part about submitting a flavor text is that if you submit one which happens to be a real world quote, and even if said real world quote is suitably applicable (for a card like, say, Shock) and somehow manages to make it past thousands of other quotes and get into the top ten for voting, then Wizards can be all like"Whoops, our bad. Even though we made up the damn contest and the rules, every single one of us forgot that this guy Mark Twain actually existed, and we somehow let it this quote into the top ten! Although it doesn't even seem fathomable, somehow no one at all noticed that you submitted a famous quote that was said by a real person until it was already in the top ten! Sorry guy who sent in the quote, your shot at glory is now the cow of my butt."

Gah, I can't go on, I'm too disgusted."Selecting Ninth Edition" is finally over and the hurting can stop.

Until next time, remember - if someone walks up to you and asks you to polish a turd, smack them in the mouth and tell 'em I sent you.

Adios,

Matt Walker
"The Guy Who Writes Those Retarded Articles for StarCityGames"
Iceman2265 AT aol DOT com
Random_Scrub on StarCity