It's the calm before the storm.

Next weekend is the 2024 Magic: The Gathering World Championship, and as you're reading this I'm on my way to Las Vegas to prepare with the team a week before we all take our shot $100,000 and eternal Magic glory.

Next week's article will be my usual predictions article for the event, but this week I wanted to take a step back and answer some of the questions y'all sent in on Twitter, YouTube, and Discord!

I am very lucky to get to do what I do, but it's important to recognize that any job is just that, a job, and there are some days you just don't want to go to work. There's no escaping this, it's just a fact of life. This is why folks are often surprised when I tell them I almost never go to any sort of local Magic FNMs or anything or play much in my off time; when you play and write about Magic for 40-50 hours a week, when it's downtime it's time to do something else!

That all being said, I'm also profoundly lucky that I seem to have an endless amount of enthusiasm for Magic. There are just so many different ways to play and things to do that you can always switch it up and the variety helps me avoid any sort of burnout.

Realistically, while Magic is obviously the game I play, my main game these days is simply "content creation." Sure I'm playing Professional Magic again and would love to do well, but my big challenges, accomplishments, and desires these days are based in improving my content and my craft, the Magic is secondary. This perspective shift makes it much easier to weather bad patches of play or formats.

I've seen tons of other content creators get "stuck" in their game, in that playing it is their livelihood and if they switch games they will lose out on significant income, but they're super burnt out on the game and are only playing it because they have to. This leads to big time resentment and burn out and I'm extremely thankful that I love Magic so much and this hasn't happened in the decade I've been doing content.

This piggybacks off the last question quite well. I sort of fell back onto the Pro Tour by accident in the last two years, and it has been a blast getting to live out my early Magic dreams of playing every Pro Tour and preparing with the greats.

That being said, I'm not 23 anymore. This is all that 23 year old Jim ever wanted, but 40 year old Jim has very different priorities. My goals these days are far more aligned with my content creation than competitive play, to the point that competitive play is basically a vacation for me. When it comes down to it, I love creating the best and most entertaining content that I can and growing my content business - that is my current game.

If you told me that I would win the World Championship in two weeks, winning $100,000, eternal Magic glory, and a spot on the Pro Tour for the next year, but I had to never make content ever again, you can keep it.

I am profoundly lucky to have the job I have and the life I have and I wouldn't trade it for anything.

Ah yes, time and money, the enemies of every content creator.

It's a great question honestly, as any creative person always has big ideas that have not been able to come to fruition for one reason or another. Frankly doing paper Magic content would be awesome, but it is extremely expensive and difficult to do, requiring a bunch of tech and setup.

One passion project that I really want to do but just haven't been able to find the time is a non-Magic YouTube show called "The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly" which would review popular movie and TV media from the popular franchises like Marvel, Star Wars, The Lord of the Rings, etc. I love a lot of the content in those spaces and have a lot to say about them, and would love to be a voice in that space that's not the usual incel rage-bait crap.

I've also been meaning to write an instrumental post rock album for over a decade. I wrote this entire song playing everything over ten years ago, and have written snippets here and there, but frankly just haven't had time for music in recent years.

One day!

Honestly? Wizards of the Coast is on the right track.

The pandemic was an absolute killer for in store Standard play, as one of the principle tenets of a rotating format is that your collection updates and grows over time as new sets come in and rotate out. The issue is that because of the pandemic, when in store play started to open again, very few players actually had a Standard collection to build off of. Starting a Standard collection from scratch is very daunting, as is the fear that you won't have anyone to play with because nobody else has one either.

In the last few years this has been a continuing issue, and with no SCG Tour or Grand Prix or major events to drive interest, there just hasn't been a reason to maintain a Standard collection.

Thankfully, with the Regional Championship system as well as the new Spotlight Series (basically Grand Prix), there is once again a reason to play, and with this development players should feel much better about investing into a format they can actually play meaningful events in. This trickles down to the local stores, as ideally those same players will be looking to practice and play locally at their local game stores.

That's all from a top level point of view, but on a grassroots level I would strongly encourage your friends and local stores to try playing Standard again. Someone has to be the spark, so build a deck or two and bring it to Commander night, or talk to your store owners about maybe running an event. The support is now coming from the top, so it should be a much easier sell on a person to person level.

Standard and in-store play are so important to Magic and I'm so glad they are coming back!

Devante Adams is great and all, and obviously has chemistry with Aaron Rodgers (who is as old as me by the way), but the Jets aren't exactly lacking offensive weapons for once. Garett Wilson is one of the best receivers in the NFL already and Breece Hall is fantastic as well, so there has to be some element of diminishing returns here.

On paper the Jets should already be good, but that hasn't really panned out so far, and I don't know if Devante Adams changes whatever their issues are. I hope so though!

"What is the first card

I was handed the Blue/White 7th Edition starter deck by my friend Matt when I first started playing, as he wanted the foil Thorn Elemental so he took the Red/Green deck. Soon enough I was countering his spells and attacking with fliers, and I came to the first epiphany of my Magic career:

"Counterspell is the best card in Magic because it's the only card that can answer anything, even itself."

Young Jim was wise indeed!

With my Piledrivers-themed stream graphics and hockey jerseys, as well as my outspoken love of hockey and the New York Rangers, you might think that it would be hockey, but actually young Jim growing up was a huge baseball fan.

I was very spoiled in that I started watching baseball in 1996, when a young Derek Jeter lead the Yankees to their first of many World Championships during the late 90s/early 2000s, so it makes total sense I would be a huge baseball fan. I played a bit of little league, but for the most part was just a fan. I'd often have a Yankees game on in the background when playing Magic Online or Pokerstars back in the day, and it was the sport I dreamed of playing in the big leagues when I was a kid (quite illogically as I barely played and was quite bad).

Now I find baseball pretty boring and haven't really paid attention since Jeter retired. I hear we've got a chance for a Subway Series this year though!

Off To Worlds

I've got a lot of packing and preparation to get to, so that's all we've got time for today!

My assistant Cassady will be coming with me to the testing house as well as Worlds, so look for some extra special content from the event. We're planning on doing some short form content, a video about the testing house, a deck tech for the deck I end up playing, and a much nicer recap video.

Otherwise, I'll see y'all on the other side!