Before I begin this article, I just want to apologize ahead of time. I want to apologize to all of the Magic players out there who care so much about following decklists and tradition and more.

My decks are never finished. My game is never done. My deck stock is never complete. My projects are never ending. There is always another Cube, another deck, or another purchase I am looking for. I am a Tinker Mage. My work is never done.

I was kindled with the desire to constantly look to improve things. Never content to settle, I am the person who pushes my colleagues. I am the annoying voice on that committee that pushes to improve. “Yes, I know we might be operating at eighty-five percent, but we can do better!” “We made it to ninety-two percent? How about ninety-five!?” That’s me. There is a part of me that wants to take what others have created and to tweak and improve it.

I’m not just dissatisfied with the status quo, I downright disown it.

If you are familiar with the Myers–Briggs Personality Type, I am an ENTP. As an Extroverted, iNtuitive, Thinking Perceiver, I am someone who prefers to run my own course. My unique mixture of types creates an internal desire to improve—to fight against traditions and challenge the various assumptions people make. What actions can be taken to shake things up and improve them?

I am a Tinker Mage.

If you are familiar with StrengthsQuest, you know this is a Gallop-run test that determines my top five strengths, rooted in a positive-psychology approach to discussing what someone is really good at. What are mine? In order from 5 to 1: Connectedness, Strategic, Positivity, Ideation, and Context. What does that mean?

Want some examples?

What about my Commander Cube project? I have documented huge numbers of articles all about specific changes to my Cube, and I’ve gone into great detail about even the smallest of changes. My Cube is a lot better than it used to be, but it still has a way to go. And I’m constantly on the prowl for cards that’ll improve it.

And my (in)famous Deck of Happiness and Joy has almost three thousand cards—and growing. That’s another Magic-long commitment that I have made to sussing out my signature command. That deck has been a deck ever since Urza’s Saga was released. From a Standard-legal deck that had some good game to a Five Color deck during the era of Five Color to a giant multiplayer casual extravaganza, it’s a deck that has morphed from various formats to others, while changing identity. But’s it’s the same deck; it’s constantly under review.

I am a Tinker Mage.

I have a ton of projects in real life card form. I love playing Magic from different angles with their own challenges. Here are just some of the current projects that I have:

• Commander Cube
• Mono-Black Cube
• Crap Cube
• Stack of creatures of each casting cost to make Momir Vig Basic¹
• Stack of one of every Equipment in the game to add Stonehewer Giant to the Momir Vig Basic.²
• Stack of random enchantments and artifacts with global abilities that are revealed, one at a time, each turn to create a new random assortment of stuff
• Full set of Vanguard cards
• Full set of Planechase plane cards
• Full set of scheme cards
• Mercenaries (stack of creatures with Mercenary costs that have to be paid)
• One copy of most of the preconstructed Magic decks (from Tempest until they ended), in order to have random decks to play against each other
• AbeDraft — A full set of one of every card in Magic to use to draft a completely random card (missing just about twenty cards)

I love projects. I love playing with them and making them better. I am a Tinker Mage.

Who are you? What sort of Magic player are you? Discovering your authentic Magic self is an important part of perfecting your Magic enjoyment. I used to play in a lot of tournaments. I wrote about my tournament ventures at The Dojo and StarCityGames. I once made Top 8 at a Pro Tour Qualifier with a ton of people. I would often hit in the prizes at Sealed or Draft events. I built, played, and won a variety of local, small-scale, Friday Night Magic–style events.

I had fun. I was playing Magic. But it wasn’t until I decided to let my casual multiplayer self eclipse my tournament-playing self that I really embraced who I was Magically. I can dial up the multiplayer and casual fun with a ton of people.

Meanwhile, my favorite casual/tournament part of Magic’s career was the old Arena Leagues they had—each month was a crazy new format, and you would play and win prizes. One “season” of the league might feature using the pre-constructed decks and then changing them by adding fifteen cards in subsequent weeks. I played the Sparkler deck from Stronghold. Another season featured this awesome format called Continuous Draft. You opened three packs of cards and shuffled them with three packs from a foe. You flipped over four cards, the first person took one card, the second person took the next two, and the first person took the final card. You rotated the draft order until everyone grabbed cards. You’d build and play forty-card Limited decks like you normally would, and then you’d record your game results. So it begins like a two-player, face-up version of Rochester. That’s fun, but where’s the real spin?

Here’s your spin: You took the cards you drafted to the next round and shuffled them with those drafted by your next opponent and did it again. You drafted with the cards face up and then built a forty-card deck, as before, with the cards. Each round, you’d do the same, constantly mixing all of your drafted cards and then mixing them and drafting again. You never knew if you could keep cards throughout the day.

And those are the tournaments I remember the most fondly. They are the one that I enjoyed the most. Because at the end of the day, I have to try new things. I need to push myself and my Magic.

I am happiest as a Tinker Mage.

If you are someone who really likes to slough through a day playing the same Constructed deck over and over again in the same matchups, in order to fine-tune your deck to perfection, more power to you. Find that part of yourself, and embrace it.

Follow your bliss.

But for me, that’s all about these various projects—the continued need to embrace another and another, to change things up, to try things that are new, to go hit up some older formats and play variants people might have forgotten about. In short . . . 

 . . . to be a Tinker Mage.

What sort of mage are you?

I converted this to real-life stacks with a large number of creatures of each casting cost. So I have a shuffled stack of 1-drops, one of 2-drops, and so forth. Every time a new set is released, I add in one copy of the commons, uncommons, and the extra rares I have sitting around. It’s a lot of fun since you can sometimes see a real swing and a miss. For example, seeing someone spend 8 mana just to get Scornful Egotist is hilarious. You often don’t want to start hitting creature too early since you’ll run out of lands and then hit top-deck mode. You don’t want to be top-decking at 7-mana creatures when you foes are at 9. Plus, a lot of 1- and 2-drops aren’t very good in this. You figure it out pretty quickly. (I like playing half Swamps and half Mountains as my basics.)

² There are two other forms of similar avatars that would often be played with Momir Vig online: Jhoira and Stonehewer Giant. The first made instants, and I can’t build that stack at all, so I passed it on by. The second is the Stonehewer Giant. There are not that many Equipment cards in Magic, and I have a stack of each one. Anytime a critter arrives at the battlefield, you search up a random Equipment that’s its casting cost or less. And then you attach it to the newly arrived creature. You just shuffle the Equipment stack and then reveal them until you find one that works. It’s great fun, too!