Locations
This week, a freeloader by the name of Ryan Bushard is crashing at my house for a few days’ vacation following our trip to Milwaukee. These little visits give us time to get into arguments about banal minutiae, except today, we spawned a somewhat interesting conversation topic when we decided to tackle a tough question I never hear anyone ask. “Who is the third-best Magic player in history?”
I snapped my answer, and Ryan snapped his. The answers we came up with were surprising because we both picked someone from the Magic Pro Tour Hall of Fame Class of 2005 (Two years before Kai Budde was inducted!). Even though you have a 20% chance of guessing who Ryan picked, I’m going to tell you anyway that it was Olle Råde.
Olle is a fine choice, and we may never know how much he could have achieved if he had played a little bit longer. His brief, meteoric career was punctuated by amazing finishes like his winning Pro Tour: Columbus with an Ice Age Block Constructed deck that featured four Giant Trap Door Spiders and only two copies of Stormbind (I guess he knew what he was doing), and in his eighteen total PT appearances, he had a median finish of thirty-first place—not bad for a guy who took a few years off to serve in Sweden’s army. How surprised would you be if I told you Olle Råde isn’t a subject of this week’s Who to Follow?
Darwin Kastle
Where You Know Him From: My choice for third-best player ever; he writes here, too.
Current Title: Writer
Social Media:
Is my choice unconventional? Maybe some think so now, but let’s review the man’s accomplishments. His streak of forty-eight consecutive PT appearances set the record at the time and was only recently broken. He played at the very first PT. He has eight PT Top 8 finishes, which, conveniently, makes him third of all time behind Finkel and Budde (this isn’t my entire basis for calling DK the third best ever, but it makes you think, right?). He has eleven Grand Prix Top 8 finishes as well, 320 Lifetime Pro Points, a GP win, a PT win and, oh yeah, he’s the Avalanche-Riding winner of the 1997 Invitational.
I’m pretty sure you read the man’s articles already because when a Hall of Famer gives you free advice, the least you could do is listen. I’d also recommend following him on Twitter, and yes, I realize I always say that, but I’m saying it again. I mean, he tweets about basketball a lot, but I’m the only one who seems to mind that. I think you’re all terrible nerds, frankly, and you should follow me in enjoying nerdier sports like ice hockey and jai alai, but if you don’t mind a little New York Knickerbockers content all up in your feed (I would say, “Go Pistons,” but I actually don’t even care enough to lend cursory support to the team that is closest to me geographically), give the man a follow. He has exactly twenty-two more Twitter followers than I do, which is so profoundly incorrect I can’t even wrap my brain about it. Think about it: If I had two Twitter followers for every time Darwin Kastle made Top 8 at a GP, I would have as many followers as he does. You know what to do.
Zvi Mowshowitz
Where You Know Him From: I realize this field is here by my own design, but sometimes I feel silly answering this question.
Current Title: StarCityGames Writer, CEO of a medical research analysis company
Social Media:
Exhaustive Archives from Magic's Dark Ages
Elected to the Hall of Fame at the same time as Kai, Zvi is best known as a guy who broke things. Does anyone remember opening a pack of Urza’s Destiny and being bummed out because your rare was a bulk rare called Yawgmoth's Bargain? “Who’s going to pay 6 mana for Necropotence?” people said back then. “This card is unplayable.” They seemed right—until Zvi got ahold of it and made Wizards sorry they ever printed it. He’s the reason Bargain was banned, and the baby thrown out with that bathwater—Dream Halls—only recently was considered for an unban (it’s a little more fair lately).
He has won three Grands Prix and has been on a team that won Worlds. His insight is available on the premium side of StarCityGames, but as a value trader, I’m all about value, and I think real value is reading his insight for free by following him on Twitter. A collection of some of his better tweets are found at this link, but he is always tweeting about relevant Magic-related stuff. He’s excellent value, and if you can’t see the benefit to becoming one of his thousands of followers, you’re not looking hard enough.
Frank Karsten
Where You Know Him From: I’ll do one of these next time it matters.
Current Title: Writer, Student
Social Media:
Frank Karsten takes a very mathematical approach to the game, especially when determining how many copies of cards to run in his decks. I can’t say this approach hasn’t panned out very well for Karsten, and he was inducted into the Hall of Fame the same year as Kamiel Cornielissen and Antoine Ruel.
Half of the impetus for this article spawned from my conversation with Ryan, but the other half came a few weeks ago at GP: Pittsburgh when I was out chilling in the hallway (great trades out there for whatever reason) and I saw Frank walk by. It occurred to me I hadn’t really noticed a time when he wasn’t playing actively, but it seemed significant to me that he was playing Magic “again” even though it turns out he never really left. When he’s not talking about purely Magic-related things, he’s applying his Game Theory training to situations that really matter to Magic players.
@top8games @thezvi In the Credit Card Game, people typically name a number on which (random) card goes out. That's a "decision" imo.
— Frank Karsten (@karsten_frank) March 27, 2013
Frank takes a more analytical approach to the game than some pro players do, which is why he is an excellent candidate for a follow. His play accomplishments speak volumes about his value as a contributor to the game—far more than I could. Frank rounds the list out nicely, and he’s a personal favorite player of mine given how many of his silly decks I have played in events . . . to mixed results.
So, what do we have? We have a list of a bunch of Hall of Fame inductees who still contribute to the game. We have three obvious candidates for following on social media (especially Kastle—again, I have to reiterate that it’s criminal that I have nearly as many followers as he does) who still contribute to this game a great deal. As long as they’re around and willing to help the rest of us become better, who are we not to take them up on it?
