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Willkommen to the Braumeister edition of Who to Follow, a weekly informative segment I wanted to abbreviate to “WTF” but couldn’t for legal reasons (Marc Maron’s people are very litigious).
I hope it’s clear by now that I’m a fun-loving guy. I quit grinding because I wasn’t enjoying it, and what I do now gives me a ton of time at events to make new friends and play side events or watch the Gathering Magic crew play some Commander (the term “hardcore casual” occurred to me while I was watching them play), and the ability to show up at an event after Round 2 is over allows me to stay out later at night and get into trouble with other Magic people and generally experience the night life of the city we’re in.
Since I love fun and don’t love playing Magic all that much, I absolutely adore odd decks. The goofier the brew, the better, which is why I want to highlight two gentlemen who I feel are excellent deck brewers and who have contributed to my own personal love of the game by creating some of my favorite decks. If you want to see silly decks ideas bandied about on social media and watch some of them turn into actual decks right before your eyes, you won’t want to miss a single tweet or posting out of either of these gentlemen. Without further digression, I bring you the first Brewmaster edition.
Jesse Smith a.k.a Smitty
Where You Know Him From: His articles on Mana Deprived, his brainchild 60cards.com, or his recent nomination to the Community Cup Team
Social Media:
What can I say about Smitty that isn’t best summed up by pointing out that the deck he’s working on right now contains both Borborygmos Enraged and Griselbrand? It’s obviously fun, and it’s obviously funny, but there is a distinct possibility that it’s actually effective also. Still in the tinkering phase, there is a distinct possibility I can entreat him to try Séance in the deck. What could be more fun than making a free Bobo on the opponent’s upkeep and then Seismic Assaulting him out of the game? I don’t want to live in a world where anything is.
Smitty is a relative newcomer to the game, but he’s more than made up for lost time and amassed a very impressive résumé in a short amount of time. His brewing prowess has seen him featured on StarCityGames and ManaDeprived. Smitty was also the impetus behind the launching of 60cards.com, which I think is a very good website and one that features some new and old writers with some great ideas. I wrote a piece for them back in January, and I have something in the works for later in the month as well. I’ll tell anyone who will listen that this website is well worth keeping in your regular rotation. This year, Jesse was elected to the Community Cup team, which is quite an honor to say the least. To say a bit more, it’s probably the highest honor we currently have to recognize someone who has contributed so many good ideas to the community.
If you’re not following him on Twitter, I recommend doing so if you have any interest in deck brewing at all. To a greater extent perhaps than any other aspect of the game, brewing is a process, the practice of which can hone and inform all other gaming skills. If one of the hottest deck brewers around is willing to let the public in on his process and work with the community on crowdsourcing ideas, the play is probably to take him up on it. Being the first to be informed of new potential brews, tuned decks, and seedling ideas is a great leg up in this game, and unconventional thinking can break stale formats wide open. In my experience, few are as many weeks ahead of the metagame as Jesse Smith, and I can’t recommend following him quite enough.
Sam Black
Where You Know Him From: StarCityGames, Hall of Fame contention, total domination of the game
Current Title: Writer for Star City Games
Social Media:
Since Sam Black does so much and so much of it so well, it was hard for me to know where best to slot him in this series. However, when discussing people who brew and brew often, Sam’s name comes up very early in the conversation. Did I let my feelings influence my decision to profile him because he created the greatest Legacy deck in the history of cards? That’s a possibility, but “Zombardment,” as he’s letting me call it, isn’t his first contribution to the game, nor will it be his last. In my mind, Sam is the prototypical deck-builder, and I feel that he epitomizes someone who finds a card he believes in and who does the work to find a good home for it. If he has to invent an entire archetype to make that happen, so be it.
If you decided to start looking through Sam’s archived materials online to form an idea of how he approaches the deck-brewing process, I’d call that time well spent. I’ve learned a lot from his approach and his ability to assess potential in new cards. As a financier, picking the cards with the most potential before the rest of the herd catches on is a very useful skill to have, and someone who thinks about the game the way Sam does has a lot to teach someone like me. Similarly, if you have a deck you’re working on but that isn’t quite getting there and always feels as though it’s four cards off, he has a lot of insightful things to say about how he deals with tuning.
Following Sam on Twitter is obvious value. He constantly weighs in on community issues and how his decks are performing. StarCityGames currently has him cloistered behind a pay wall, so in my opinion, any opportunity to hear some of his opinions for free should be leveraged. Sam’s Facebook is private, but like so many members of the community, he has opted to allow fans to follow his public postings without having to open up his entire Facebook profile to the public. I’d recommend following his public Facebook postings for the same reason you follow him on Twitter and watch his streams on Twitch (you do watch those, right? I’d recommend it).
There is a lot of material here to absorb. Both of these gentlemen have contributed such a large volume to the community that it’s going to take quite a while to peruse it thoroughly if that’s your intention. I’ll leave you to it. At the bare minimum, I would follow both on Twitter because they’re both quite entertaining and educational. This game really runs on new ideas, so it can’t be overstated that there is obvious value to following two of the most ingenious members of this community.
Keep the suggestions coming—I reply to every e-mail I’m sent, and I love the ideas for topics I've received so far. The near future will see me profiling some of the community’s best Twitch streams and cosplayers. We love our Vorthos content here on Gathering Magic, so I’m looking forward to writing about that last one in particular. Thanks for tuning in—I’ll see you back here in a week.
