My Thoughts from earlier in the year. Hope this gives you some insight into who I am.

No manna burn?....Tapped blockers deal damage? Dark Ritual is not in type two? Type two is standard?

Miss a day and you might not miss much. Miss a decade and the landscape is quite different. Perhaps my experience is not unlike the return to Mirrodin. When I left the magic scene, after Visions and Fifth Edition, I knew what was going on. To check prices of singles you had to get a Scrye or Inquest (I preferred Scrye) and Interrupts were still a card type. I heard about “The Stack” and the demise of Interrupts kind of like you overhear part of a discussion as you walk out of a room. “Interesting,” I thought, “that will change things.” My life moved on, I got married, had kids. Any news of MTG was like a rumor from a distant country.

I was in New Orleans when Katrina encouraged a massive relocation, but just before that I had the urge to play again. I found a local card shop and found out about Mirrodin, an artifact world. I had to learn new rules, and what is this equipment stuff? But it was cool. I had gotten rid of all my old cards years earlier and began to slowly pick up a few for casual play at the card store when I had time. I had little time, however, working on advanced degrees and children take up a lot of time. So only picked up on a few of the happenings. Katrina’s flooding of New Orleans and the surrounding areas was a Shahrazad, and I had no time or inclination to get back in the game. (No we were not in the city when the storm hit, but we did loose a house to 20 feet of water.)

Fast forward to the end of 2010 and my graduate work is all but completed. I have defended a dissertation and now I will have some time to check out Magic again. But the world has changed. Like the shiny spires and glistening artifacts of Mirrodin, things are not what they once were. First of all, MTGO allows me to play and interact from home or work. I was skeptical, but now I am sold. I used to spend countless hours putting paper decks together and testing them in fish bowl games, but now I can do that online. But where is Dark Ritual? How does anyone play black without a one? I remember getting 2nd at big convention in Atlanta with a “Necro Deck” back when it was a mono black monster, the deck would not have dominated without the ritual. Much of the game is still there on the surface, much like the glimmer of Dark Steel, but so much has been changed from within. Planeswalkers are now cards and not just you, the player. Rares are not the most rare of cards and land destruction is not a viable option. In fact, lands are now spells and creatures.

So what is an old planeswalker to do? I feel like Jessie James moving to Manhattan. I desperately want my old strategies to work, but I know that the game has changed so much that they likely will not. I will have to adapt to the new world. When I first started Magic was definitely the Wild West. Your local card shop was a unique world and big tournaments were few. Innovation happened with little collaboration. Every so often we would hear rumors of new ideas and decks and we would have to figure them out for ourselves. Wizards did not have a consistent release of sets so the environment was less predictable. Now the card pool changes like the seasons and the Metagame like the weather. Wizards has a steady flow of sets and predictable changes in standard so the players know when to reap and when to sew. The internet and MTGO provide for daily and weekly tweaking of decks. The splendor of the old Mirrodin has been replaced with the ruthless efficiency of New Phyrexia. In the same way the Magic has gone from a new world to an institution. The change is not necessarily bad, but it is a change.

So again, what is an old planeswalker to do? I can lament the old and curse the new. But what good is that? The game has to change if it is to survive. I don’t like the idea of the Phyrexian victory, but will I let that “poison” me from the game itself? No, I don’t think so. Do I have to embrace the Glistening Oil and let it change me until nothing remains of the past? I can’t do that. I will have to adapt. In some sentimental way I think my favorite card from New Phyrexia will be Greenhilt Trainee, simply for the flavor text. I will adapt, I will survive, but that doesn’t mean I’ll like it. Well, that is not completely true. In fact, there is much I do like about the game now. I look forward to seeing the seasons change. In a few years, who knows, the oil just might do its work. Until then I hope to shock the metagame with powerful rouge that nobody sees coming. I can have a few Illusions of Grandeur, can’t I?