I love Magic: The Gathering.

I love it in my bones.

In thinking over what I wanted to write about today, I spent hours this week re-reading reports from a PTQ Top 8 from twenty-one years ago. Three eventual members of WotC R&D made that Top 8; a US Nationals Team alternate; and a Hall of Famer. Plus, one of the first friends I had ever made on the traveling PTQ circuit, plus a future L.A. roommate, who eventually left the game in infamy. Undeserved, I assure you. All one Top 8! Mostly different people! Gun to my head, I'd wager that all eight were past - or dare I say "current" - PT competitors. How often does that happen? At that level?

This particular Columbus, OH PTQ Top 8 catalyzed multiple strategy articles and - insane to modern readers - was largely decided on deck registration errors by two different participants. At least two played - literal decades before Yorion, Sky Nomad - sixty-one cards. At least one of them on purpose.

Who even remembers a PTQ - note the "Q" - Top 8 from over two decades ago? We're not talking about a Pro Tour. A Pro Tour Qualifier. While it took place during one of my most prolific runs as an amateur enthusiast (I won qualifiers for every season and Nationals to boot that year), I only got to live it from fragmented reports and secondhand accounts on The Magic Dojo. Where I would go to work later that year.

Still, I cherish its memory (and can't for the life of me recall what the proper split was against a Mark Globus Urza's Bauble-Intuition).

I think it was the snow.

It was February in 1999 and I was living with my parents. If I recall rightly, my Dad wouldn't let me make the long drive to Ohio's capital through such weather. A month or two later I'd take a long week visiting old teammates in Philadelphia and the District of Columbia; realize my Dad's worst fear, spinning across the highway in an icy circle, smash up the side of my Saturn... But also write Who's the Beatdown? about that PTQ Top 8, and eventually make it to New York brandishing a Blue Envelope won in suburban Detroit.

We did it.

We did it week in and week out.

Through ice.

Sleeping on couches, crashing on grownups' hotel floors, wrapped in musty duvet covers. When I say "you had to be there" I mean you had to BE THERE. That was it. That was the game. Being somewhere was the game. Being with your friends, your rivals. Long road trips punctuated by the heartbreaking Top 8 or infrequent Blue Envelope.

I don't think that - until the last couple of weeks - I really fathomed how much I miss physical Magic tournaments. I like to jaw that I was more-or-less at the height of my game in 2006 - right before my second child was born - but didn't return to the Pro Tour for almost ten years (once my kids were a little more self-sufficient). Even during that dry decade, I qualified for Nationals, built more PT-performing decks than I can recall, founded more than one popular Magic: The Gathering podcast, and invented Splinter Twin.

Since the DCI website no longer exists, I can't tell you how long I ever went between physical Magic: The Gathering tournaments, but it sure as hell wasn't nine ten months.

Believe it or not, I never played in a Friday Night Magic until 2015; but FNM had become a steady ritual for me since about 2017. I am proud to say it was instrumental in making several of my closest friends the last couple of years and I probably wouldn't have gotten back on the PT this last time without it.

During the long bastard that has been this quarantine I took to buying full sets of everything that came out here on CoolStuffInc. Inexplicably, I simply forgot to preorder a full long box of Zendikar Rising. Which of course is the set with all the Modal Double-Faced lands that are going to be Staple in every format, like forever.

Do yourself a favor.

Go order the next set.

Don't be like me!

Do it now!

Right here on CoolStuffInc.com!

Hi.

I'm Mike.

I love Magic: The Gathering.

I love it in my bones.

Still.

Twenty-six years in, and I check in on it almost every day. In the current digital age, the deck lists don't change so often, but I still look in to make sure. There is no relationship I've ever cultivated that I gave so much attention to, at least not for so long.

Following are eight two-card combinations that describe this fulfilling, frustrating, venom-filled, and ultimately never ending, whatever-this-is. <3

1. SUMMER 1994

I began playing Magic in the summer between my senior year of high school and my freshman year at the University of Pennsylvania. At the time, I didn't know that Richard Garfield, PhD had designed Magic there, or that the physics lab I would sneak girls into during the first half of my first term was the sacred site where Magic was born, dedicated to in every Starter of Revised.

During that summer we had few rules, and less comprehension of what cards were good. I played seven Lightning Bolts in my deck, because that's how many I owned. The uncommon Serra Angel was the same retail price as the rare Savannah; but I didn't have a Serra Angel. Nor did I really understand what an uncommon was versus a rare. So, when I opened a Savannah, I traded it - fair and square - to Worth Wollpert (who would go on to be my first Pro Tour roommate, then the longtime boss of Magic Online).

Anyway, I didn't need Savannah. Like. I was the seven Lightning Bolt guy!

As seven Lightning Bolt guy, I started by playing whatever Red cards I owned. Kird Ape was Red! Being common, I owned him. So Kird Ape went into my ever-growing seven Lightning Bolt deck.

It took a little while before I realized Kird Ape wasn't very good in my deck of all Mountains. I had acquired one Taiga (that miraculously hadn't been traded away for presumably a Sengir Vampire or something) and thus began my twenty-six year long love affair with deck design.

At that point I approached Magic like a conventional video game. I saw Kird Ape - a Red card - and its affinity for Forest as the content that you don't need to complete to win the game, but that enriches your experience of it. Like knowing which brick to jump into or which door to bypass to get the hidden food. Ultimately, this combination started my "this card works with this other kind of card" gears turning (and they haven't really stopped).

2. 1994-1995

To the naked 1994 eye, Orcish Artillery wasn't very good. You take three... But they only take two.

Its advantage was that it didn't have to attack to do two; but it was not very good at attacking anyway... Check out that power-to-casting cost ratio! Speaking from late 2020, I almost can't think of a more perfectly aesthetic Magic: The Gathering card.

But the "Kird Ape + Forest" guy in me (evolving the seven Lightning Bolt guy, presumably) realized that you could pair Orcish Artillery with Circle of Protection: Red and you would have a mondo combo!

Here's how Orcish Artillery actually worked:

By 1995, 1996 at the latest, it was already a beast. With 3 toughness it could withstand the full force of a Contagion and keep firing.

A pump Knight - say a Knight of Stromgald - couldn't very well attack into it. They would have to devote two mana to get to 3 power; and then another mana to first strike it down. After all that investment the Orcish Artillery could just tap and kill the presumptuous pump Knight!

It could lock elbows with a Lightning Bolt or Incinerate to take down an Erhnam Djinn. A pair of them could shoot a Serra Angel - one of those Savannah-stealing seraphim - without spending a single card.

That's how Orcish Artillery worked if you had some concept of using your life as a resource. With The Philosophy of Fire so many years in my future, I don't know if I ever tapped mine without a protective Circle or Spirit Link alongside.

Here's how Circle of Protection: Red actually worked:

Sometimes the guy (always a guy in those days) across the table from you would be playing Red. You will have just made an enemy for life.

On occasion you would get the two cards together, and get essentially the value of an Orcish Artillery (which, as I already said, was a g-d beast with or without Circle of Protection: Red leveling it up). Then it would probably eat a Swords to Plowshares or Lightning Bolt.

Still, I absolutely adored this combo.

3. Spring 1996

I went through a phase for the next year or so where I was really into "lock" decks.

The one I played was a Mono-Red land destruction / Millstone deck. You blew up all their lands and then could use Orcish Spy to make sure they didn't draw any more. Millstone away their lands! Drown them with their spells!

There were other times where they might be "out". Then you could give them all lands, taking away their spells.

I bragged that this triumph of deck design "beat everything" that didn't play either Land Tax or Necropotence.

Months after the first Standard Pro Tour (but long before any restrictions or bans), basically everyone was playing Land Tax or Necropotence.

I think I made the finals of my second ever tournament, losing to altran and his deck (with Land Tax!) in the final frame. Al would go on to become the star of "Who's the Beatdown?", not to mention my teammate, boss, and longtime roommate in later years.

Losing to him would make me a player once I realized that, you know, everyone played Land Tax or Necropotence.

4. Fall 1996

I was by this point a player.

The kind of total asshole that thinks playing creatures is below him.

I was also the kind of asshole who couldn't buy a game.

So, the night before that fateful PTQ I became for the first time a Necropotence player under the age-old adage "If you can't beat 'em, join 'em."

At some point over the summer I had read an article by Jean-Luc Park about the card Withering Wisps. All you had to do was play Snow-Covered Swamp and Withering Wisps was like an undercosted Pestilence! This made sense to me. Years later I would make friends with Jean-Luc Park and have coffee with him at a Starbucks near Penn Station.

So my "Necropotence" deck played some amount of Snow-Covered Swamps (for Withering Wisps), basic Mountain (for Pillage), Sulfurous Springs (of course), and - wait for it - Thawing Glaciers (to tie it all together).

Pillage and Necropotence; also Infernal Darkness and Stone Rain.

To be clear: Pillage and Infernal Darkness. Withering Wisps and basic Mountain.

OBVIOUSLY I won the PTQ. Obviously. Sorry. I can't say it's gotten any better.

5. Spring 1998

I wrote about this recently; with altran and the original "Spring forward burly protector, and save me!" Team Discovery Channel moment.

Consulting for singletons became a thing after this.

I briefly became a Demonic Consultation guy. I may, in fact, have Consulted for Hunted Wumpus at Bob's PT Chicago a year or so after.

NOW IMAGINE YOU WERE ONE OF THE SIX PEOPLE WHO LOST TO ME ON DAY ONE. Exactly.

6. Fall 2004

"Don't you mean Spring 1998?"

Oddly enough, I don't.

It would make sense, though, wouldn't it? Jackal Pup into Wasteland was at the height of its popularity in 1998, and my then drinking partner Dave Price won PTLA that year on the back of this two-card combination.

But I was never really a Red Deck guy in that era. Go figure.

It wasn't until Tsuyoshi Fujita at PT Columbus in 2004 (when I joined the Sunday broadcast team) that I became personally enamored of the Red Deck.

I'd long admired the work of Dan Paskins, and considered Patrick Sullivan a close friend, but I myself wasn't a Red Deck guy. Can you imagine? But somehow watching Fujita - Shuuhei Nakamura, actually - dominate seemingly more powerful decks with the simple Jackal Pup-Wasteland made me a convert. A few forays into Simic aside, I've never really left their court.

So, I became a Mono-Red Deck guy for the ensuing PTQ season. I didn't win every matchup, but I learned to play the Red Deck mirror as well as anyone on the planet during that stretch; which is a skill I pride myself on to this day. I learned what to never get hit by (Blistering Firecat)... But also when I could strategically weather one hit. More than anything else, I learned how to bias my deck to win the mirror, while still retaining most of its oomph for all the other matchups. It's this kind of thinking that would eventually extinct cards like Atarka's Command from the Modern version, and innovate "Standard card" Inspiring Vantage.

7. Fall 2005

Over the years I've probably made more of a big deal about Gnarled Mass than it reasonably deserved, even at the time. Yes, Gnarled Mass was actually an important innovation. The deck played at a different speed than every other deck; all it had to do was live long enough to get to Kodama of the North Tree, Meloku the Clouded Mirror, and Keiga, the Tide Star and that would be that.

But the opposing Hand of Cruelty or innumerable White 2/2s didn't want that to happen.

Gnarled Mass became the answer!

We at one point had four copies of Gnarled Mass between deck and sideboard. Steve Sadin wanted to side all of them in in like every matchup.

I actually ended up playing Isao, Enlightened Bushi in the main deck slot because it could trade with an opposing Kodama of the North Tree. But, at least at first, I still had four copies in my sideboard.

Until someone - I think it was Steve? - said maybe we should play some Consuming Vortex.

I convinced myself that they were the same card; or at least allowed the deck to sideboard into essentially the same speed.

With five life left, in the last game of the last match I would play that day, I activated my Sensei's Divining Top. My opponent had sacrificed his whole board to Tomb of Urami; and Gnarled Mass could not so much as chump his 5/5 flyer.

But you know what the third card down was?

Consuming Vortex!

Nineteen years into my "professional" career Consuming Vortex taught me humility. It taught me to release the iron-grip hold I had on my own - admittedly pretty clever - idea. Had I not added it at the last second, I wouldn't have won that Qualifier. Even if it's Gnarled Mass who still gets the nod.

8. Winter 2019

I was doing pretty well at physical Magic: The Gathering tournaments a year ago.

The prospect of forcing the opponent to play into my mana - and bite a Frilled Mystic or other permission spell - or not - and fall behind an army of Wolf tokens from Nightpack Ambusher - served me pretty well. A love affair that had started some twenty-five years earlier just kept rolling. I was back on the PT once again! Never more in love than I was with those Blue and Green cards again as my dance partners.

I don't know what else to say at this point. I miss my own sweaty palms. Not anyone else's, of course; and who the hell would shake hands at this point? But I miss the stress. I miss stowing my bag under the table. I miss the smell of my playmat and the smacking staccato of shuffling.

Hi.

I'm Mike.

I love Magic: The Gathering.

I love it in my bones.

Still.