Conspiracy Theories

Posted on September 23, 2016

Recently, I had a conversation via Facebook with our newly-coronated World Champion, Mr. Brian Braun-Duin. Now, Brian has been a friend of mine for nearly five years, and we’ve always had a great rapport. From treks to a local all-you-can-eat burrito joint at GP Orlando 2012, to me copying his excellent hairstyle (lack-of-hair-style?) at the Halloween GP (Nashville 2014), to our heated rivalry to see who can accrue more SCG Invitational Top 8s and someday catch up with the Esper Oldblade Master himself, Shaheen Soorani, I have enjoyed our rarely-serious, always-entertaining interactions both at tournaments and in preparation for them. We may sometimes disagree on particular card choices, and our passion for our respective Legacy archetypes occasionally spills over into lively debate, but I was extremely pleased to see Brian win a marathon final match at the World Championships and catapult himself into the upper echelon of Professional Magic.

That is, I *was* extremely pleased, until a conversation with BBD led me to believe that he is concealing something that could tear apart the very fabric of the Multiverse. Now, bear with me, because if you aren’t skeptical, you aren’t paying attention.

Brian Braun-Duin told me that he has not received word of when he will get his new Platinum Player’s Card, a typical promotional item that all new Platinum players receive with their photograph and some Pro Tour stats on the back. I mentioned that he already had a card with his likeness on it, a Germ token given away several years ago by his then-employer, StarCityGames. He (in jest, he insists), told me that he was a Germ, but now has mutated to a virus. Well, BBD, that little slip of the virtual tongue gave the whole game away.

You know who had a virus recently? Hillary Clinton. Her pneumonia caught up with her just after Brian leveled up to Platinum with his Worlds win. You know what card makes Germ tokens? Batterskull, a clear tool of the Phyrexians. If Hillary is secretly a Phyrexian, then that means Donald Trump must be . . . AN ELDRAZI! It all makes sense, now. Ms. Clinton is being infected with the Phyrexian plague that BBD represented on his old promotional card, right as Donald Trump admits that he was being a big old Reality Smasher when he kept insisting that President Obama wasn’t necessarily a natural-born citizen. But the plot thickens!

Just as Mr. Trump’s campaign saw him gain the Republican nomination, Magic players the world over began a fresh campaign of complaints (complaignts?) about the state of the Modern format. Numerous times, on Twitter, the hashtag #MakeModernGreatAgain surfaced in these heated discussions. What happened in the interim? Bant Eldrazi went from being an unknown quantity to being the most played deck in Day Two of the recent SCG Open. What else happened in the interim? BBD won Worlds, playing . . . you guessed it, Bant Eldrazi! Who is the Reality Smasher? Donald Trump! You know what deck used to be the top dog in Modern but led Owen Turtenwald down a path of a 1-3 Modern record at Worlds? Infect! You know who was infected with a Phyrexian plague that the doctors are calling “pneumonia”? Hillary Clinton! You know who’s been losing ground in the polls to Donald Trump in the last few weeks? You guessed it, Hillary Clinton!

Infect losing ground to Bant Eldrazi as the de-facto “best deck” in Modern just as BBD wins with it at Worlds, just as Hillary Clinton comes down with a mysterious illness, just as she loses ground to Donald Trump in the polls, just after a major debate about how to best #MakeModernGreatAgain . . . It’s almost too convenient.

More than that, look at the number of syllables in the names “Hillary Clinton” and “Owen Turtenwald”. Five! Look at the number of syllables in “Donald Trump” and “BBD”. Three! And which one played Infect at Worlds? Owen. And which one played Bant Eldrazi, and admitted to me privately that he was drowning his opponents’ hopes all weekend just like Mr. Trump is drowning the hopes of the Democratic Party right now? You guessed it, BBD.

Now, there are Bant Eldrazi decklists, and there are Bant Eldrazi decklists. I took the liberty of examining Brian’s Bant Eldrazi list for any oddities or coincidences, and I was immediately struck by the sideboard. Two copies of Grafdigger's Cage, which is interesting, because very recently, Cincinnati bore witness to the grisly murder of a much-beloved individual who might have been integral to unraveling this entire mystery. The murder took place in — what else? — a cage. You should all recognize by this point that there must have been some serious monkey business going on behind the supposed “necessary evil” of murdering Harambe in cold blood. A child wandering into his cage? I know Oliver Tiu was credited as a wunderkind with his Top 4 finish at Worlds, but I just feel obliged to mention that no one knew of his whereabouts on the day of Harambe’s murder! How else would the Eldrazi manage to get a child to enter a dangerous gorilla enclosure, other than promising a future reward at the World Championships? The plot thickens, and even though Oliver didn’t pilot Bant Eldrazi in Modern, he certainly felt bold enough to cast some Elder Deep-Fiends and Emrakul, the Promised End in Standard. So what else do you have to hide, Oliver and Brian? Clearly, the Tiu of you were in league with the Eldrazi this whole season.

Now, to his credit, I believe that Brian managed to sneak one past his Eldrazi handlers by including a single copy of Rest in Peace in his sideboard as homage to our departed evolutionary cousin. But of course, the intrigue goes much deeper than a mere singleton tribute to Harambe in BBD’s sideboard. In discussion of potential bans in Modern, one card that has been circulated as “promoting decks that don’t interact” and thus meriting a ban is Simian Spirit Guide. An innocuous common from Planar Chaos, Harambe’s would-be Invitational card only ever sought to enable turn-one or turn-two Blood Moons in order to stop the unfair Eldrazi! So who has a vested interest in removing Simian Spirit Guide? The Eldrazi! Which deck won Worlds after dear Harambe was assassinated? Bant Eldrazi!

It makes me sick that a poor, defenseless ape had to die in order to promote the Eldrazi’s interplanar takeover/political agenda, but this is the real world, and unrealistic idealism has no place in serious discussions such as these. I wish it ended there, but the evidence continues to pile up. You want more? I’ve only barely scratched the surface of this conspiracy.

Now, for years medical science has known that silver (specifically “colloidal silver”, look it up) is a powerful antibiotic. For years and years, Brian was a consistent Silver-level pro, and then-Secretary Clinton appeared to be in robust good health. Then, all of a sudden, he leveled up to Gold. You know who has his name in giant gold letters on half of the buildings he owns? Trump. You know who’s been criticized by a number of celebrities for giving out “fake platinum and diamond cufflinks” as gifts? Donald Trump. You know who’s the most recent Platinum pro, but who hasn’t yet been given his official Platinum-level picture card (thus still not being officially recognized as Platinum)? Brian Braun-Duin.

Even more damning is the hair. Brian has no hair to speak of, as he keeps his head as smooth and shiny as a NM-M Kaladesh Masterpiece. But why shave one’s head? Well, Donald Trump has a fragile hairstyle that seems to be almost as sensitive a subject for him as the size of his hands (He mentioned to the press earlier that he was going to build a Reliquary Tower and slap his name on it in big gold letters, because he had no maximum hand size). Is BBD donating his hair like a Harmless Offering to Locks for Love? No, I think the truth is far more sinister.

You see, Donald Trump may need his luscious hair in order to appear vigorous and youthful to the voting public, but as an Eldrazi Titan taking the form of a nearly 70-year-old man, he requires a hair donor in order to maintain his locks. Now, Eldrazi tend to warp and decay the world around them (just look at the art on Wastes!) so it makes sense that Mr. Trump needs a fresh infusion of hair every few weeks to keep from having that horrific Neo-Cubist Wastes-y pattern on his scalp. I just never put two and two together, but it’s clear now that BBD considered himself the man for the job.

Now, speaking of hairstyles, they say a picture is worth a thousand words. Early-’90s Hillary Clinton had a very . . . interesting hairstyle, don’t you think?

What does this mean for us? Well, every serious Magic player knows that Mental Misstep has been banned in every format short of Vintage, but if Mrs. Clinton is elected, there should be no doubt in anyone’s mind that we’ll be paying life to counter spells for at least four years. Don’t believe me? Just Google “Hillary Clinton Missteps” and let the millions of results speak for themselves. People intuitively know what’s coming, they just don’t know how ironically right they are.

Oh, and in case you thought that only Hillary Clinton would unban powerful and unbalanced cards in Modern, stop and consider for a moment that the Eye of Ugin ban was a false-flag operation. Would it not make sense that the powerful Eldrazi forces, led by Trump, persuaded the Banned and Restricted List committee to ban only Eye of Ugin in order to salvage Eldrazi Temple for Bant Eldrazi? If elected, do you doubt that President Trump would immediately issue an unbanning for Eye of Ugin and call for WotC to errata it to no longer be Legendary? His ambition knows no bounds, so the fairness of a particular Magic format is merely another unfortunate casualty of the Eldrazi takeover.

“But, but,” you say, “The Gatewatch saved Innistrad! They imprisoned Emrakul in the moon!” The moon, you say? You mean the same moon that we supposedly landed on way back in the ‘60s? The same moon that inspired the card Pale Moon, which turns all non-basic lands into pseudo-Wastes for a turn? You know what tribe would benefit most from a Pale Moon effect? Eldrazi! And yet I’m still hearing skepticism from the peanut gallery. Yeah? Wake, up sheeple!

And now, Kevin Jones mysteriously “misses” his flight to the Open in Orlando, decides to audible to playing the local WMCQ, and wins the whole thing? So now we get one of the most prolific Jeskai (or as we called it back in my day, “America”) players to represent the United States on the world stage? To top it all off, his Facebook profile picture involves him wearing a “Back to Back World War Champs” T-shirt and watching Fourth of July fireworks! The storybook plot is absolutely, 100% too good to be true. I’m not saying it was rigged, but I’m not saying it wasn’t. The public wants, no, needs to know, Kevin!

So, the question remains. How do we save Modern, and America, from the Eldrazi and Phyrexian threats? I see only one solution, and in retrospect, it’s obvious. Proving that he still has not fallen completely under the Eldrazi Conscription, Brian mentioned it himself in our last conversation, opening my eyes and possibly saving us all.