Inspiration. A spark. The bright candle. Call it whatever you so please, but tonight . . . tonight, it was present. There is not much to say about the myriad of moments that led up to this. I caught my likeness after a round at the local drinking establishment. For that span, a minute that stretched forever, my friends grew silent. Machines, instead, danced in my head. Wonderful winged beasts and an odd collection of gnome-like constructs. Clearly, I was blessed with something special, as many of these images are clearly not of this world.

Perhaps that dapper fellow wasn’t lying when he said he came from some place I have never heard of.

Pardon the diversion of thought. After those first flashes came, the world returned to normal speed. I knew what would come next: hours in the workshop poring over the plans for cogwork greatness half-forgotten. This time . . . this time, I would be able to craft my grand machine.

The Pro Tour Hall of Fame is a very big deal.

I don’t like to use the word very, as it’s often superfluous. I tried several opening statements, but the simplicity of using very won out. My vote as a member of the Selection Committee for the Hall of Fame is one of the few opportunities I have to shape the future of Magic.

I don’t have exact numbers, but it’s safe to say that for almost everyone reading this, the Pro Tour Hall of Fame won’t mean anything personal. Maintaining qualification for the Pro Tour is already a tough quest—earning the right to be discussed for Hall of Fame voting is a sieve that only the best players can make it through. If playing at the Pro Tour is aspirational for the average competitive player, the Hall of Fame is the reason the best keep coming back.

The fact is that, for most players, the Hall of Fame is meaningless, but for those at the top, it matters more than almost anything else. It’s prestige. It’s money. It’s byes. It’s voting “based upon the player's performances, playing ability, integrity, sportsmanship, and contributions to the game in general.”

...

I won’t be discussing all of them individually since others have done so already. I take all of those requirements seriously, as I said in my Hall of Fame ballot article last year: “Many of us on the Selection Committee without Pro Tour experience take our ballots with upmost sincerity and consideration.” While how the Selection and Player voting blocks work (and what that could mean) changed, my position on casting the best ballot I can hasn’t.

It was a bittersweet day on Tuesday when he walked into RIW Hobbies (where I work as the manager) and said, "I got the job in Denver and I leave tomorrow. I'd like to sell my collection."

Obviously, I was very happy for Mike and that he had been offered a great opportunity, but I was also a little bit saddened that he'd be moving away, and I'd likely not get to play much Magic with him anymore.

Mike has always had a close relationship with RIW, and I wasn't at all surprised that if and when he sold his collection he would bring it to us. He has more trophies on our trophy shelf than anybody else by a wide margin. Between VS System, Magic, and World of Warcraft, there are literally eight feet of MJ accomplishments.

...

As I started to go through all of the boxes that he had donated to the store, I realized something unique about Mike's collection. Most of his cards were still in "deck form," meaning that all of his cards were still in the decks where he had played them.

So as I sorted Mike's cards, I basically got to go through every single deck that MJ had ever played in the history of his entire Magic career which was an extremely interesting experience.

Subcultures are fascinating. The human psyche and its effect on social preference, and by extension personal comfort, creates a web in the mind of each individual that is so vast and yet so personalized that we can organize our worldwide tribe of seven billion into an infinite number of smaller groups.

Street performers. Freerunners. Those barefoot people who really love Phish.

The SCG Open in Portland recently was, in a way, a goodbye to a large part of the subculture that I spent a tremendous amount of time with over the last few years, a group to which I've belonged since I was twelve.

The imagined Magic player is an amorphous fellow, a combination of the intellectually hungry and the generic nine-to-five beer buddy. Occasionally, his beard is out of control, but on other occasions, he wears his tie sharp. Sometimes he talks Tom Ross leather jacket smooth, but other times, he's a man of many numbers who speaks only in mathematical certainties and provocative questions. Sometimes he is American angry and at others, Japanese polite. Often, he isn't a he at all, but a calendar-carrying mother of two or a giggly fourteen-year old pixie with little cat ears.

I don't know if there was ever a time when the Magic player was always the unhygienic academic, the so-called basement nerd. I don't know what kind of people I would've bought cards from all these weekends had they taken place in 1998 and not in 2011.

But for the last three years, I've shaken hands with husbands and wives and mothers and sons. And I've enjoyed it.

The title of this piece promised observational wisdom regarding our subculture and thus, I am obliged:

Even before core sets were designed with a focus on Limited, I have always enjoyed playing them. Over the weekend, I had a chance to play a prerelease with Magic 2015. I've also had the chance to do a little bit of drafting with some great Magic players and develop my understanding of the format. So far, M15 has seemed quite a bit different than its predecessor. M15 looks much more aggressive than M14, which was not very aggressive at all, much more tempo-oriented, and much less about brute forcing card advantage. The convoke mechanic has made a return in M15, and is featured on cards of every color. In this article, I'm going to explore what I believe, so far, to be the top couple commons, uncommons, and rares of each color.

For as long as I've known vintage, I've loved it. It's exciting to power out broken plays, and it's rewarding to win through whatever busted thing your opponent is doing. Sometimes you can even punish broken cards with stuff like Misdirection on an Ancestral Recall.

Mental Misstep is legal, but it's not the frustrating, oppressive card that it was in legacy because moxen lets everyone jump their curves. That Misstep has nothing on a turn one Tinker, but it does add more turn zero interaction and helps nerf Ancestral Recall and the Voltaic Key combo.

The pile of tutors available means that every deck is consistent and powerful, and the decision trees can get very deep and complex.

The problem with Vintage has always been the price tag. There are only so many pieces of power in circulation, and the collectors are so spread out that regular tournaments are few and far between. When it's the same small group of dedicated players every week or month or year, innovation will happen slowly and it might stay isolated. For as long as I remember, other format's lists have been strewn about in articles, modo results, and deck techs while vintage technology has stayed relatively buried.

Which is a shame, because some crazy things have been happening.