There are millions of registered Magic: The Gathering players worldwide. Now in its 20th year, the game—in which two players wage battle using some 16,000 trading cards that cast spells and creatures upon their opponent—is more popular than ever.Some of these millions play just for fun; others compete for winnings that can reach to the tens of thousands per tournament. In New York City on any given Friday night, MTG devotees can find officially sanctioned Friday Night Magic tournaments at ten comic book and gaming stores in the five boroughs.

We spoke to amateur and competitive players at three stores: Get There Games of Staten Island, Montasy Comics in Midtown Manhattan and Kings Games in Midwood, Brooklyn. Even though one of us is a Magic player, we were still surprised at the vast array of backgrounds represented in the rooms. From longshoremen to attorneys (and of course, the requisite IT guys), we met an enormous variety of people with just one thing in common: they love this game.

Theory articles are fascinating to me. They are the most interesting ones, they’re the hardest to write, and they’re the most rewarding, since they’re timeless and if they’re good you feel like you’ve made a real contribution. For that reason, or perhaps because I’m overly critical, it pains me how many of those articles are just bad—many use a number of fallacies to elaborate on incorrect points, for example.

If you’re reading this article for advice on how to write, then you’re probably not going to write a Theory article anytime soon. You will, however, read a lot of bad ones, so I think it’s very important that you recognize when a theory article is sound and when it’s flawed. Some theory articles are very complicated and use a lot of words, so you might be led to accept what it says just because it looks right, and you shouldn’t. Contrary to many kinds of articles, people liking a theory article does not mean it’s good—it can be harmful if people like your article when you’re a good writer but the information is bad.

As a reader, I think you should be more critical of what you’re reading. A lot of people think something is great just because they want to agree with it—they are looking for validation, and once they find it they’re happy. For example, you might be a person that doesn’t like to mulligan much. Then you read an article that tells you common wisdom is wrong, and you should in fact keep most hands with one land, or hands with seven spells. You think, “great, I can finally keep those hands, awesome article!” when the article is in fact just not correct. “But—a pro player said it!” Well, sure, and 15 pro players said you shouldn’t.

Although most of the team wrote about PT Gatecrash in one form or another (you can even see my report here), I decided to talk to Team Channelfireball to get everyone’s perspective on the event. The following are short recaps of the testing process, and can help bring a sense of what Pro Tour testing meant to the team members involved. Plus, if you did miss some of these fine reports, I suggest you read what Efro, BenS, and Conley had to say about the Pro Tour.

- LSV

Frank Lepore: How much input, if any, do you have in the creation of characters and backgrounds for a given set before that set is realized? For example, are you handed ideas and told to simply flesh them out, or does Creative decide which characters will appear in a given set and what they will be like before then handing those ideas to Design?

Doug Beyer: It’s a fascinating and sometimes slightly twisty process, but the identities of the characters that are relevant to that story generally originate with the Creative Team. 

For most cards, the flow of card creation starts with the mechanical designs of card designers. Then we on the Creative Team translate that mechanical card design into a flavorful creature or spell. We give it a flavorful name. We commission art for it. We infuse it with the feel of Ravnica, or whatever the current setting is, to make it feel like it was grown right out of that plane.

Last week, I talked about my impending future studying play and gaming and about my fears that such an area of study might one day become stifling and escapist. I followed that up by looking at some of the ways that play and games can teach us about the “serious” ways we grow and learn—pretty much (at least for me) putting those fears to rest.

This week, I will be looking at the emotional aspects of play and how they inform our lives. Children play because it fills a variety of needs—it brings them happiness, it's a safe way to explore the world, and it gives them a break from the ordinary and extraordinary stresses of being alive. I don't know who started spreading the idea that once we reach adulthood we should no longer attend to those needs, but it simply does not appear to be true.

In case you live under a rock, Seattle is where most fantasy artists live, and getting a groundswell of them to, well, do anything together is quite notable. Limited Edition Alpha was twenty years ago. You can be famous, change your name, become infamous, and then become famous again in that amount of time. (Who also played basketball with my cousin in middle school oddly enough.) Reinvention happens in creative fields, but some aspects do stay, just like accepting a request to play “Free Bird” or alter another Force of Will.

So, all of these artists are in one spot; that’s neat. Grand Prix events these days have three artists who arrive at nearly everything: rk post, Terese Nielsen, and Steve Argyle. Having some of the original artists allows for signatures on cards—little alters, yes—but you get to see some of their original artworks. More important to our community is that original artworks are available to be seen that haven’t been out of the vault for over a decade.

Josh Krauser, the webmaster over at OriginalMagicArt.com is there and taking pictures like a man possessed. Most notably, Peter Adkison, former CEO of Wizards of the Coast and CEO of Gen Con has loaned some of his Alpha original artworks for an art show.

Mox Sapphire by Dan Frazier

One of the most fruitful things Richard Garfield built into the original version of Magic was different values for power and toughness (and not just power when attacking and power when defending). While it seems obvious now, it certainly wasn't a guarantee to be in the game. Plenty of games pre- and post- Magic used one stat for combat. The direction Magic went certainly adds some complexity but also a lot of interesting game play. It also lets development make a lot of small tweaks to get cards to the right power levels and to make playing the game more interesting.

To give an example, let's say we are just playing with creatures with square stats. You have out two 2/2 vanillas, and I have out a 4/4 vanilla. You can't attack me, and I am able to attack and trade my creature for both of your creatures (if you want to make the trade). Now let's look at options for making these creatures non-square. Moving even one of the 2/2s into a 2/3 all of a sudden turns the trade unprofitable for me—my much-larger creature now only trades for one of yours. If my creature was a 3/5, however, I can now freely attack through both of your creatures, assuming there are no combat tricks. Turning my creature into a 4/3 doesn't change its power in the first example, but now it will trade with a 3/1, if you have it. Development makes sure to populate a set with a fruitful number of different power and toughness combinations to ensure that even without a single instant, we can create a good deal of variation, and decisions, in game play. It also lets us tweak the individual strength of creatures by increasing or reducing their stats to trend toward them dying more often from combat, surviving more often from combat, or being better at trading with other creatures in combat.