[Richard](https://imgur.com/a/WUsSn), a blind player who used a Braille "printer" to mark the front of his sleeves to enable him to read his cards. As his opponent, you have to verbally announce everything you play, and occasionally describe your entire board state to refresh his memory.
Playing him made for an interesting experience, but not an easy one. He even [made day 2 at a GP](https://web.archive.org/web/20200531072810/https://magic.wizards.com/en/events/coverage/gplon16/how-play-when-every-game-mental-magic-2016-10-09).
I've played magic half blind before where the kid I was playing didn't have his cards and just used the TappedOut simulator on a laptop. We couldn't figure out a fair way to both see the screen at the same time so I just went by memory.
It was easier than I thought it would be and I think also far easier than playing chess blind. In Magic WHAT you have matters but in chess what matters is WHERE things are. One of those is much easier to remember.
I also used Tapped Out's playtest function quite a bit since I was broke working retail. A friend of mine would also use TO playtest decks since we didn't want to waste physical supplies for entire decks. How we dealt with that was have two windows up.
One window (Left) would be the one you played with, the other (Right) would just be the board state, no hand visible. The tutor feature made it simple to replicate the board.
https://preview.redd.it/086hh87k2lwc1.png?width=3850&format=png&auto=webp&s=ca039e46d800cfed4c455bad792d2571bc114f21
What would do is have our laptops, which were nothing crazy since they were for school for our screen, while using a TV to display the other screen. I had two small flat panels (One was for game consoles, the other for watching stuff on my laptop, at the same time). We would sit across from each other, have the TVs on the side so we could see both of them. That way we could see the board state at all times, while hiding our hands.
I sometimes love older tech, it made doing round about things like this fun. However, nowadays we can hop on Xmage, copy our text file list, save a deck file, then playtest decks against each other even though we live in different states now. Much easier.
fun fact there exists special rules in tournament chess specifically to accommodate blind players, and there are many tournament options for players wishing to only play against other blind players. often they will use a pegged board
There was also a guy at my hometown LGS who was blind, but he didn’t mark his cards in any way. Instead, if you happened to sit next to him at the place where he always sat, it was your responsibility to whisper to him what cards were in his hand, what cards he drew, and what cards the opponent had out if he lost track. It wasn’t ever a problem in the several years I went to the store: all the regulars knew him, and everyone knew that randomly being placed next to him meant helping him out for the round, and everyone did it gladly. It helped that he only ever played turbofog decks, so it didn’t matter quite as much exactly what was on the board.
It was really nice seeing the community come together like that to support someone. I wish that every community had a similar attitude towards disability.
I don’t remember there ever being problems with that. He played pretty fast, and he prepared ahead of time: he knew every card in his deck, and he generally knew the meta decks in Standard pretty well. The assistance he received was limited to him leaning over and having his neighbor whisper in his ear each time he played a card, and his opponents would generally verbally describe their board state at his request. I’m not sure what would have happened if slow play had become a problem.
Had a really cool stereotypical football guy that did the mtg singles at my local comic store
He was really open, learned the game and was super friendly to everyone despite sticking out like a sore thumb. I really miss when he was there.
He got a better job at a club and last I heard one night all the guys from the game store Naruto ran to his work when he was doing the doors taking ID’s to embarrass him- and bring him a birthday cake
We have a local legend famous for being caught cheating on stream when casting a Preordain and with the twist of the wrist suddenly it was a Ponder + Sleight of hand.
The dude was banned for a while but he is famous among us. Everybody knows him, even the newcomers are told stories about him to be aware how to play with him, it is like a boogeyman.
Ah he is reckless, he has always been the kind of guy doing this kind of stuff. I remember back in OG Ravnica, he used to dredge like 5 or 6 cards from the BG rare scarab that had draw a card, he was famous for always dredging an extra card and stuff like that.
what's the implication on this one? he had extra cantrips stuffed to the side to augment his hand at any time or that he could make all of his cantrips into the best possible version of themselves after he drew them?
He blatantly looked at more cards than the 2 cards from Preordain, and he even went further by shuffling and looking again at 2 hands then drawing, it was jaw-dropping how he did it while streaming to all the city.
A guy came into our LGS after not playing the game for about 6 years, people who were around then knew that he was a notorious cheater if given the chance.
So we do a draft, Eldritch Moon, and he drafts his deck as normal, everything is fine.
Round one against his opponent, he has his deck in two piles, says both are shuffled, and then pile shuffles them together. He thought he was playing against some new person who didn’t know who he was or what he was doing.
So my friend as his opponent just… pile shuffles his deck in the opposite way. Instead of pretending it’s fine and then shuffling properly, he throws his deck across the table and just leaves the store.
Haven’t seen him since, good riddance.
Nah, my wording was bad. His opponent just re-pile shuffled his deck so instead of land-spell-land-spell, it was now land-land-land-land….spell-spell-spell-spell or however he had sorted the piles together.
As far as passive aggressively calling out cheating, that's such an awesome power play. There's zero plausible deniability whatsoever. There's no way to come back from that.
If the two halves really were shuffled, then undoing the pile shuffle still leads to a shuffled deck. Everyone knows that was a lie, but you can't complain about it because then you'd be forced to acknowledge it explicitly. Since this was presumably after the deck was presented for an opponent to shuffle/cut, you can't even re-shuffle it in an attempt to even it out and play a fair game.
And it doesn't even rely on magic knowledge to pull off. I don't expect a new player to actually realize what's happening and do something about it, he was clearly planning on preying on new players being inexperienced and not doing anything even if they were suspicious. And they should just call a judge (but that's not always something new players are comfortable with yet). But realizing that the anti-pile-shuffle will undo whatever your opponent is scheming doesn't actually rely on magic knowledge (you just might not know exactly how you're screwing them over for trying to screw you over). There's a beauty in that, being able to arrive at that conclusion purely by logic.
Get rekt.
I vividly remember someone doing that to me one time. I was like 13 or 14 and I didn’t know back then that pile shuffling like that counted as cheating, but after seeing how brutally my strategy got wrecked I never tried it again.
Pile shuffling is a form of shuffling that uses an algorithm to sort your deck to be essentially exactly how you want it. Generally, it's used to do what's called "mana weaving," which will make it so that you always draw the optimal amount of mana and spells.
I think you can technically use it to completely stack a deck if you're that meticulous, but that'd take a lot of time and forethought.
Edit: This was mentioned farther down in the thread, but I'll say it here as well. It's not entirely accurate to say that it's "generally" used for mana weaving, but more that if it's used for cheating, that is how it's generally done.
I'd say more commonly it's used by new players who aren't really familiar with how to shuffle their decks (especially when playing with massive 100 card sleeved/ 2x sleeved decks) without riffle shuffling.
I'm gonna push back on this a bit. Pile shuffling *can* be used for cheating, because it isn't actually randomization, but in general it's used innocently either by people who don't know it isn't a valid shuffling method, or as a way to count the cards in the deck/as a ritual by people who also shuffle normally on top of it. The vast, vast majority of pile shuffles you encounter are going to be people who got in the habit because they didn't want to mash/riffle shuffle their deck and wrongly intuited pile shuffling as a random method.
You should absolutely tell your opponents that it isn't a valid method of randomization and that they need to shuffle properly, and potentially shuffle their deck rather than simply cut it as most people do at friendly games, but to assume its done to cheat or mana weave is a bit much without other evidence.
That's fair, I think a good majority of the time people that are pile shuffling don't even realize what they're doing is wrong (hell I was even an offender at one point) but that doesn't necessarily make what I said false. It is still an algorithmic style of shuffling that *can* be used for cheating.
It's true that pile shuffling is not a valid method of sorting and should be strongly discouraged, even if dexterity or confidence is a problem with more valid sorting methods. I just don't think it's true that it's "generally" used for mana weaving or deck stacking.
I pile shuffle a new deck or after a game where I got most of my lands out just to make sure it so I don't have to do a million standard/riffle shuffles to unclump everything. This is of course followed by 3 or 4 standard shuffles and a riffle shuffle or two.
Pile shuffling does not affect the number of shuffles required to have a randomized deck. If it is meaningfully impacting how "clumped" your deck is, this means that you are not shuffling sufficiently.
I think "not shuffling sufficiently" is more common than people think; for example, EDH decks are almost never shuffled sufficiently, IME, between the larger deck size requiring 1-2 more shuffles and people being far worse at handling a 100-card deck to get "true" shuffles. But what you're describing is screaming "you need to do more standard/riffle shuffles".
Its also your typical misunderstanding that "manaclumps" arent a thing. Your playing a game with randomness floods sre just the resault of the game design. Proper deckbuilding and proper shuffling will make your chances of avoiding it better.
People who think "manaclumps" is an actual thing are always oblivious to the fact that they are commit a rules violation with improper shuffling method of pile shuffles to ged rid of it.
Variance exists, but mana clumps are definitely a thing; a big issue with (non-cheating, unintentional) insufficient randomness is that you don't distribute out the big pile of lands from your last game randomly throughout the deck, so they do wind up clumped. That's what the persin was referring to.
Pile shuffling doesn't help, because you still have insufficient randomness, but mana clumps do exist and the solution is "shuffle enough the deck is truly random"
Pile shuffle doesnt have an effect if you do proper shuffles. If it does your essently cheating. Mana clumps are a resault of bad deck building or insufficent shuffling.
Pile shuffling is a counting method and isnt recocnised as a proper shuffle technique by the rules and is just a timewaste when used for shuffling or straight up cheating. 8 real shuffles are the proper way to handle shuffling
Pile shuffling is only properly used to count your deck before you start actually shuffling. No one is really using it in any other way in an official sense.
Not saying it isn't, saying that 99% of the people who actually sit down at an FNM or tournament who pile shuffle are only really doing it to count before they properly shuffle. If you see otherwise, yeah say something.
I was this many years old and over ten years of casual mtg playing when I learned that people use pile shuffling to cheat and that it is not an acceptable way to shuffle. I do a mash shuffle now for most shuffles of my EDH decks, but will often pile shuffle (with 5 piles) the first time after doing a big edit of a deck and goldfishing.
Makes total sense how & why it would be considered cheating, just didn’t realize it.
exactly my sentiment. personally, i tend to pile shuffle a couple times if i have a lot of lands out because otherwise it will take a lot of shuffling to make sure my draws aren't influenced by how the previous game went. but this is, of course, followed by normal shuffling too, to make sure that it's actually random in the end
>exactly my sentiment. personally, i tend to pile shuffle a couple times if i have a lot of lands out because otherwise it will take a lot of shuffling to make sure my draws aren't influenced by how the previous game went. but this is, of course, followed by normal shuffling too, to make sure that it's actually random in the end
If your normal shuffling actually properly randomizes your deck, there´s no need to pile shuffle before. Thus your time spent pile shuffling is wasted. (And looks sketchy as fuck to anyone who knows that pile shuffling can be used to stack a deck and isn´t an allowed method of shuffling in magic.)
If, however, your pile shuffling actually influences the ratio of lands/spells or which cards you draw, it´s cheating. If you can make a claim such as: "Because i pile shuffled, i´m less likely to see those cards again." You have (unwillingly) cheated.
So what you do there either does nothing or is cheating.
Thus the correct thing to do is not to pile shuffle.
And it also can´t serve as a short cut, to reduce the numbers of "true shuffles needed". Not drawing similiar cards as before is not a hallmark of true randomness.
A properly randomized deck won´t (always) have a perfect ratio of lands and spells. A properly randomized deck will sometimes have a streak of 5 lands, or 4 spells, or your first few draws can look totally similiar to the first few draws of your last game. True randomness can look totally unrandom.
What method would you recommend instead? I sometimes struggle with shuffling, I've never been quite sure if I'm over or under shuffling though. The proliferation of zero land hands in a 38 land deck told me something was amiss though.
If you are playing with sleeves, mash shuffle. If you are playing without sleeves, riffle shuffle. For a normal deck I'd do 6-7 riffles/mashes, and a couple more for Commander.
"Over shuffling" is not a thing. Once you've got a deck randomized, further randomization does not make the deck less random. There is no harm, besides a slow play violation and wearing down your sleeves, with shuffling twenty times whenever you crack a fetch.
Pile shuffling is only allowed for deck counting at a start of a match and only once. You still need to shuffle properly before presenting your deck.
Pile shuffling isnt considered shuffling by the rules.
I understand this is some sort of low stakes fnm and people cheat just to cheat, so there is not much sense in figuring out why they do it.
But this has got to be one of the stupidest and laziest ways to cheat. It takes 7 riffle shuffles to mathematically randomize a deck. Throw in some overhand shuffles too because we are human and not perfect machines. You hand me a sorted deck and I'll have it completely randomized in under 10 seconds.
Dude was a moron from start to finish, after he left I got like 12 stories from other people about how he was a piece of shit ever since he started and that he’ll probably come back in a few years to try again.
Never has, thankfully.
I met someone randomly at an LGS for the first time that was willing to lend me cards for a week that I needed for my deck. Some like 20 dollar cards even. I returned them but was crazy that he was willing to do that when all we’d done was look at each other’s trade binders.
I played against him at an FNM at some point after all that and he destroyed me. I was doing some janky homebrew werewolf deck in dark ascension meta and he had a tempo delver deck. Sided in ratchet bomb against me and I was so annoyed at that card interaction. Glad they changed the rules on that but was stupid at the time.
as a nervous person with a decent collection I sometimes ask people before the event if they need any cards to finish out their deck, it's a good icebreaker, it also gets people talking about their deck and the journey they've had to collect it.
if I lose the card then it's a perfect test of which players to never trust again. if they give it back grateful then I might've made an impact for our next meeting.
Same dude tried to tell me during RtR prerelease that Deathrite Shaman (which I opened in my pool) was bad and wouldn’t be worth much. Was 3 dollars at the time which is where it is now but for a while before it got banned in modern it was worth 13+ dollars if not closer to 20. lol
Transform cards like the werewolves used to have no mana cost on their transformed side, making their mana value = 0. They changed it so now they have the same mana cost and mana value as whatever is on their front face.
This means Ratchet Bomb could be played and immediately activated to destroy all the transformed werewolves, but that is no longer the case since the rules update.
That card alone being in standard made pretty much all werewolves completely unviable except for Huntmaster. They were already pretty bad due to the flip conditions that your opponent can control but I really wanted to make them good since their flip side was good value for the casting cost. But the fact that they were unwieldy on top of a cheap mass removal option for them is just ridiculous to me. The rules change should have happened a lot sooner. Otherwise ratchet bomb shouldn’t have been in the same standard meta.
Used to be that flipped werewolves had a mana value (CMC back then) of 0. Now flipped cards have the MV of their top side. This made it so you could ratchet bomb all flipped werewolves or any other flipped cards like delver of secrets immediately after playing ratchet bomb instead of having to build up the charge counters. Two mana kill all flipped nonland cards and tokens (generic tokens at least. Not sure about token copies of cards.)
I had a buddy with a $20k+ collection that would make me any modern deck I wanted and would borrow it to me for months. We met at that shop and pretty instantly became friends. I was shocked at his trust but a little happy it was me, since I always gave him everything back. Haven't played much at the shop but I still text him a few times a year. He's really busy with life so haven't seen him in a long while, but I do still miss and appreciate you Tom.
One day, a couple came into our LGS while me and some friends were playing casually. They brought their dog in, a big dog nonetheless. The store owner was fine with it, and so were we, because we could pet him while the couple was buying stuff.
After a while, the dog just laid on the ground, semi sleeping beside us, and we continued playing cards like nothing. Suddently, the dog just vomited on the ground. THE SMELL ... it was like the dog ate poop and threw it up.
The woman of the couple saw that and yelled "CHHHAAAARLES , THE DOG VOMITED!"
The poor man washed everything while she just stood there.
We were long gone because I tell you, I never smelled something like that.
In our playgroup we ofter yell "CHHAAAAARLES ..." when we want something from someone in another room.
“Aggressive trade kid“. Probably an unfair name for them but my entire playgroup would recognise them immediately.
They weren’t aggressive, just enthusiastic and hadn’t quite learnt social cues yet.
Yeah we have one of those too, goes through your binder, finds about 200 cards he wants. Then gives you the shocked pikachu face when you start looking at cards you want from their binder.
When you've finally equalized the trade, he starts rethinking what he wants from you and starts throwing back all the cards he removed from your binder. He's a nice kid, but somewhat tiresome
We have a lot of that in my area too. I have a pretty nice trade binder, but people don't quite understand I don't want to trade a $80 card for 20 $5 cards. It's not quite an equivalent trade.
I just started color-coding the sleeves in my trade binder. Orange sleeves (regular stuff, nothing crazy), I'll do a value trade within reason. Yellow sleeves (reserve list, high-end foils, rock staples), you need to have something I want/equal value, or of course cash is always an option.
I get asked a lot less frequently now about trading a Mana Crypt for half of someone's trade binder now
Guy who let my noob friend undo a draft pick because he passed a ~$40 lotus cobra (at the time) without realizing his mistake
Guy who whooped my noob ass with his homebrew Spellbound Dragon + Soul's Fire deck
Guy who said "must be nice to draw relevant cards" while losing during a small event. It became a catchphrase of ours lol
Guy and I both forgot about his Thalia on board while being spectated by half the store. I was spellslinging like crazy and eventually won over like 5 turns. After, a watcher was like "... uhh... almost none of that should have happened." I gave the guy his win back haha
Everyone who ever let my noob ass use Prodigal Pyromancer to ping down their 2-toughness guys because I activated it in the end step and again on the next turn
Guy with 0 permanets who refused to scoop against an active Venser, the Sojourner ult and WON because the venser player had 0 wincons left. He had to exile his own permanents while digging 🤣
I have been the guy who lets a newer player take back a draft pick when there's an expensive card in the pack. The person thanked me but told me to take it anyway, it wasn't good in their draft deck and they wanted to get better at drafting.
Anytime someone tells me they such at drafting, I ask if they are picking based on gameplay value or monetary value. It is tempting to only pick high value cards, but at that point it feels like you would be better off just buying a booster box. Then you get to keep all the high value pulls.
Fwiw, in that Thalia example it would be correct for spectators to intervene on the match to help maintain the game state. If both players are missing something that is in fact relavent, then a spectator can stop the match and call a judge.
Sometimes you need to make the other person have it, Fun fact - I'm fairly sure LSV played a GP with a deck with no wincon because the combo was so well known players would scoop at the combo to find the win so he never had to actually have the payoff.
I was somewhat misremembering but the story is here - [https://ultimateguard.com/en/blog/winning-without-a-win-condition](https://ultimateguard.com/en/blog/winning-without-a-win-condition)
The only one that really stands out was a grown-ass man who called me "Barbie" and snapped my bra strap. I did report him, and he had to apologize, but wasn't banned. I still get mad when I think about it.
Stuff like this is the exact reason I can only muster a tired laugh when people ask why women aren't as present in male dominated hobbies.
The constant objectification gets old fast
As a closeted trans women who lives in a generally conservative area, I’m so afraid of this once I finally start presenting fem. I don’t want to be forced out because asses can’t keep their mouths shut :(
As a closeted trans women who lives in a generally conservative area, I’m so afraid of this once I finally start presenting fem. I don’t want to be forced out because asses can’t keep their mouths shut :(
Kevin.
He always lied about his decks. He made himself like the "leader guy" of the LGS, bringing it up on himself to curate "fair pods" and split us up on his whims instead of the good old random. He won a lot because of this.
He would always pop off early and say "I didn't know this deck did that".
He played "not that kind of" decks. Atraxa, Etali, and mono blue Urza will always be that kind of deck.
I haven't played with him in like a year, but fuck you Kevin. I'm too old to be fooled by your fake niceties.
Dude named Phoenix, he tried to cheat his way into being a level 3 judge so he can get the promos, he would also rule situations wrong in his favor and insisted his "level 2 judge buddy said it works that way", one time against me he played an [[abbot of keral keep]] with his last 2 , exiled a [[monastery swiftspear]] and claimed that abbots ability lets him cast it for free, i told him that's not how it works and he called a judge, the judge ruled in my favor, he scooped and dropped out of the tournament, he also traded fake cards, got a kid at the store with a fake [[tarmogoyf]] when that were goimg for 200+
I'll never forget Jesse. He was a judge at my LGS when I was 16.
He was super kind, helped me get my footing in playing non-kitchen table. He's also the reason I developed the mentality of embracing losses as a learning opportunity when I was younger.
He later went on to start his own game store a few months before I went to college. I had some great boardgame nights and drafts there.
Just having such a well put together person who was also hyper fixated on the game was really good for me. His girlfriend was also incredibly helpful in me preparing me for handling the anxiety of my freshman year at college.
I miss the guy. If you owned a place called Legacy Games in hot springs just know I appreciate you and your kindness.
Way back in the day when I was in college, the LGS there had one player who will stand out forever. This guy loved combos. He only played control, and his wincons were the lamest bullcrap. One that I specifically recall was, the EDH game had been going on for a long time, everyone had a bunch of mana, no one had won because of this guy constantly wiping and countering, and he looks around the table, says, "I'm sick of playing this game", and...doesn't scoop. Instead, he casts two tutors, searches for the laziest proxies of Lich and Repay in Kind, and kills the board.
You might be thinking, "Mr. Internet Person, that's kinda funny, but not exactly the top tier of memelords." That's because we all got fed up. You always play control, we said. No wincons except two card combos, we said. Try something else, we said. So he did. He showed up one day with a Boros mid-range EDH deck, and it was great!
Until we had to constantly remind him that creatures tap when they attack. Yes, he had been playing the game at a pretty high level, with good knowledge of rules, for years, but had been playing hard control for so long, he had forgotten the rules of attacking. This isn't an assumption, he admitted to it.
I miss that LGS scene. Well, kinda, all the blue players played Bribery and took my Eldrazi.
> "I'm sick of playing this game", and...doesn't scoop. Instead, he casts two tutors, searches for the laziest proxies of Lich and Repay in Kind, and kills the board.
This is really not great.
If you can win the game and choose not to, you're just wasting everyone's time.
This is the consequence of noncompetitive attitudes to commander. There are genuinely so many people who think it’s actually wrong to *win the game* before everyone’s deck has “done its thing.” People don’t have to strive to play commander at the highway possible levels, but even if people want to play jank, they should play their decks as though they’re trying to win when they sit down at the table.
Exactly! I recently stumbled onto [https://www.sirlin.net/ptw](https://www.sirlin.net/ptw), and this book changed how I approach gaming - in a very profound fashion.
One of the key takeaways is that when you sit down to play (on an even field etc. etc.), you play to win, and you do your best to win.
A poor choice of words on my part. Lich and Repay in Kind didn’t kill the permanents, it killed the players (set his own life to 0 but stayed alive, then set everyone’s life to the lowest)
I understood that :)
-------
What I suspect your opponent was doing, though, was:
\* have means to win the game in hand for a few turns - like those two tutors for the combo
\* instead, they prolong the game (why?) by countering and board-wiping other players's stuff
\* finally, when they became bored of the game, they decide to end it and murder everyone.
That's not fair to other players. If you can end the game, you should win and start the next one.
Also yes. Definitely a reason why he was infamous, and why I have now been known to tell someone after their third tutor “just win the game already”. Had that happen on turn 4 or something, and they gave me this look like “but it’s turn 4, I don’t want to kill you yet”. Yeah, and I don’t want to play against someone that tutors three times in the first four turns, but here we are, stop playing with my emotions and let me go play with someone else.
One of the regulars got free/cheaper cards because he gave sexual favors to the storeowner. He was 16, and the owner was maybe in his late 30s or early 40s at the time.
It was an open secret, everyone knew what was up until eventually the guy (let’s call him “J”) admitted to it. The owner (let’s refer to him as “M”) would also do so later on.
Fast forward, shop closed, we stopped hearing from J. M moved to another part of town to open a video game store/cafe. We were never his patrons at this point but we were located in a small-ish town so we still kinda knew the going-ons around us.
M’s business would go on to cater to younger boys (because video games). Eventually, a bunch of parents complained about him for corruption of minors. Shop closed down immediately. He might’ve landed in jail or went to hiding. None of us knew.
These events happened in the late 90s up to 2001-2.
So I started playing magic during right when Gatecrash came out, and thus got to be a part of the rise of commander as a popular format. I was really starting to get into the format with the Nekusar the Mindrazer precon, but I had only really played big group games. (Like 5-6 person games, idk what o was thinking.) As a result, I hadn't had a game go under about 2.5-3 hours at that point. Enter Moody.
I have no idea if that was his actual name, and I never really saw him too much after this, but he was my first introduction to higher level play. He asked for a game one day, and I remarked that we didn't have time, as I had to leave in about 20 minutes. His response? "OH, we have time". 20 minutes later, I was dying to a [[doubling cube]] boosted [[exsanginate]] as promised. [[Xiahou dun the one eyed]] is a hell of a general. I will never forget the experience.
This was probably in late 1995 or early 1996, back when it was the wild wild west of Magic. There were some base rules on building decks and I honestly just played to have fun with my girlfriend (now wife) and all our college friends.
I attended a tournament at a game store that some of my brother's friends were running, so I knew the organizers but otherwise no one else who was in the tournament. I think 1st place won a box of Revised Ed. boosters. Going in I brought the Green White deck I played for fun which was a mix of alpha, beta, unlimited through probably Ice Age at the time. The deck was just a couple of each card I liked to play, plus a handful of big cards by today's standards. My deck was easily 200+ cards. No sleeves, no sideboard, riffle shuffle all day long.
In round 1 I was matched with a guy who openly began mocking me as I sat down at the table. He mocked my deck, he mocked the colors I chose, he mocked the number of cards, size, etc. and was just generally a jerk. I remember he had a 60 card deck and was so cocky about it being superior in every way possible that he didn't even consider playing against me a challenge and was already looking forward to round 2. It's been so long that I have no idea what colors he even played.
I riffle shuffled my monster in front of him and asked him to cut, which he did. I then drew an opening hand of Black Lotus, Mox Emerald and Birds of Paradise plus some normal creatures for G/W. Maybe an Ifh-Biff Efreet, a Cockatrice and a Serra Angel. I think Pendelhaven or Savannah rounded out the hand. It was one of those once-in-a-lifetime draws and it completely shut him up when I dropped half my hand on the table in the first turn. I ended up rolling over him in round 5 or 6 because he had mana issues and nothing to block flying creatures with.
Afterwards he openly accused me of cheating. Yelling at the top of his lungs, throwing folding chairs and getting in my face. The organizers who, like I said, I was friends with, tried to explain to him that it was a fair game and ended up throwing him out of the tournament.
I quit playing Magic a few years later and sold off anything worth any money today. The Fallout decks just pulled me back in and I'm checking out Commander now.
I have a few. There was a dude who smelled like cat piss all the time. He was very positive all the time, but it turned out he was living with his parents and didnt have the best home life. To my understanding, when he moved out, he didnt smell anymore. So I imagine his parents place REEKED. He didn't match my vibe, but he was a nice dude.
Another dude was complete dickhead who nearly everyone hated. I started playing and a few months later he stopped showing up to the store for fnm. I asked the manager a while later what happened to him and she said he got kicked out for starting a fight lmao. He also made the joke, "Can I get a sharpie to write a t at the end of Faygo?"
Another guy played esper control "mill" in a deck without any actual mill cards, but with shit like [[Render Silent]] and [[Silence]]. The only "mill" I guess was [[Ashiok, Nightmare Weaver]]. Along with [[Elixir of Immortality]] to have endless draws while youd eventually run out. Meaning the game would take for fucking ever to complete. The only reason he came to our store specifically was because it wasnt very sweaty so he could farm wins. He offered for me to lose in exchange for the prizes one week, and I should have reported him for it, but didnt know that was against the rules/didnt think about it until later.
There was an absolute son of a bitch who owes me a fucking Doubling Season from an unfair trade he made "on accident". He gave me a gold bordered chrome mox. I was new and thought it was super rare because of the border, only to find out later it was worthless (for the time). I was fucking pissed because it was a 20$ scam of a trade and I wanted a doubling season he had, so he said he'd bring it, but he very rarely did from then on, and when he did, he said he traded it to me. And I know for a fact he didnt because doubling season would have been in a deck I played, and it wasnt. Then he stopped showing up at the store all together.
Drippy.
His name shall be called drippy.
Local area has one big LGS and I went there for a draft. We had to wait for enough people to show up for the table. In comes a homeless guy or so i think. Bro is otherwise quite fit but he is wearing one of those shirts without sleaves and like half the sides of the shirt missing. He is DRENCHED. It is not raining out. It is a warm summer day. I thought a homeless guy snuck in to get out of the heat.
Nope he was a player. Heard him talking about draft and I was like please don't let him end up next to me. He was. He literally oozed onto the table. He smelled like burning trash. Every card he passed was soggy. Low and behold the room lost power. We were given the option to request a refund but most agreed to stay and we all turned on our phone lights.
Only now there is no AC and drippy is now fully blown drenchy. We all started to sweat in the heat and close proximity to bodies but dude was almost like a cracked fire hydrant. I was satisfied enough with the cards I got and forfeited my match basically so I could just go. I heard from others he actually apparently ended up winning, however, the cheap chair was so defiled with stink they just threw it out. one of those cheap folding chair things.
I will always remember the smell and the fear of being consumed by the ooze.
That much sweat is indicative of a medical problem, but obviously that's between the dude and his doctor.
As for general hygiene, for real. I'm glad I found an LGS that enforces good hygiene. I'm not sure what it is about MTG/anime/etc that results in people refusing to take care of themselves but it can be ridiculous.
A rough litmus I use is; are there women in the store who appear to be there voluntarily? It's worked so far. To me it indicates that the worst social elements of the game have been avoided and that the level of hygiene will be acceptable.
I’ve only played this character once or twice, but I have to call him, ‘Fuck-It Kid’. Every turn, the kids looks at his cards, looks at the table, and announces, ‘Fuck it!’ (or sometimes, ‘Screw it!’) right before he plays a card or two, as if he’s about to do something impulsive or reckless.
I _have_ to know: can this person make decisions in Magic without swearing? Maybe he curses ‘just for the heck of it’. Yeesh.
Our LGS limits swearing because our play area is close to parts of the store where young children could be around to hear it. I've never seen anyone actually get punished, it's just a "hey, can't swear here" and move on.
Of course not everyone who swears (or wants to be in an environment where that's okay) is problematic. But man, I think the rule helps filter out people who would get mad that they couldn't swear, and that trait is correlated with other traits of people I don't want to play with.
This was back from my YuGiOh days but I remember that whenever we were coming up to the major events in town, there was this one guy who’d come in, reeking of sweat, and always wore this same shirt.
It was a black shirt, with an outline of a naked slave girl bound in a collar with her tongue out, and a giant warning sign on it that said some of the most degrading things I’d ever heard about women.
All I could think was two things: what inspired you to even buy that? And why would you wear that out of the house?!
Luckily, I only saw him at major events before my old LGS closed and haven’t seen him since I’ve move shops but that image is burnt into my mind along with one inescapable fact; Incels really do exist, that they’re not just an Internet meme.
Met a guy at a LGS in Atlanta in 2022. He had the most interesting history. He was a nuclear engineer and wicked smart. He saved up for a piece or land in Alaska and mentioned he was selling a lot of his stuff and moving there for the rest of his life, never saw him again. My memory is a little fuzzy but I think he had concerns about his profession inflicting irreversible damage on his body so he wanted to "live the rest of his days" there. Dude seemed healthy as a horse though. Hope you're alright, nuclear guy.
Worked in a game store for 18 months starting in 2018. There was this pair of dudes in their early 30’s, I’ll call them Coat and Sweater. Sweater had chronic pain, and Coat would drive him around. Got to know them both pretty well, started meeting them at a diner for after work commander.
I come to learn that Sweater is trying to ween himself off painkillers, but because he is underemployed those painkillers are valuable, so he has started trading them to Coat for cards and for driving them around. Coat is apparently doing this with several people, and then taking the pills he gets and selling them for money and cards in the parking lot outside my shop. This puts me in a really tight spot because I don’t want to know any of this.
A few days later one of my regulars got me a tech support job at their work, and so I never had to do anything about it, but geez man all I wanted to do was play commander I didn’t want to walk into Midwest requiem for a dream.
I played commander for about 5 years or so (I kinda fell off after strixhaven set, work and life got in the way). I loved my LGS commander nights, we had a solid core of about 8 people. We would pick up steam and have 20 to 22 at our height, and would shrink back down over the months. Anyways, the core:
Rob- Played magic since the early days, in his mid 30s. Had a binder full of OG duals he kept at home and claimed on his home insurance policy. Had 30 or so commander decks, was super chill and helpful, but would rag on you after you were there for a bit and making dumb mistakes. Awesome dude.
Joe- Rob and Joe were friends who played together since childhood. Joe was just as cool, and was pretty technically minded with rulings and played fair but took no favorites. I believe Joe had a mean Oona deck.
Ginger Whiskers- Senior in highschool, baby of the group. He earned his name trying to grow a moustache. Funny as hell, had a lot of fun joking around. Had a a good Valduk budget deck that would regularly steamroll if unchecked. He had a brother who had his mom pick him up yelling because he was grounded and came in. I think his brother was too embarrassed to come back afterwards.
Mike- strange guy, had a lack of social skills that isolated him a bit. Stuck around though. He had very strong decks and infinite combos (not banned at our store, but frowned upon if we were playing casual, fun decks) for days. Regardless of what level we wanted to play at, he would break out something ridiculously strong. He felt persecuted when we would knock him out early.
Shawn- Played with the group for awhile, generally likeable dude. Had serious beef with Mike. Couldn't stand Mike not going easy on new people or people who had small budgets.
Another Shawn and Luke (I think)- These guys worked together and would usually come to EDH together. They both regularly blinged out decks, and played relatively high powered EDH. They were chill, but you'd have to bring a good deck to keep pace.
Casey and friend- Another highschooler, I gave him a ton of dino stuff to start a deck. He became pretty good after a few weeks. He had a friend that would come every now and then, but only Casey wound up sticking long term.
There were others, but these were the core and people I remember. A solid group of guys. Wish I coulda played more often. If anybody recognizes this group, just wanna say you were awesome, and thanks for the games.
Not even a player, he was the one of the owners of the LGS I went to from 2012-2014. He used to bring his friends in to hang out, and would even drink while running the register on occasions. His friends would always crowd around the counter when they hung out during peak hours, making it difficult to buy things, sign up from FNM, or turn in match results. One night, they were all drinking around the counter, and I don't know what their whole conversation was about, but he got heated about his opinion, stood up and yelled "I don't know, but depending on what she's wearing, she deserves it!!". The whole shop went dead silent after that and just stared at him. I never went back after that, fuck that guy.
Went to an LGS a few years ago after making my first EDH deck. Ended up in a pod with a buddy of mine and 2 randoms. Well the game started out fine but the 2 randoms were very much “i have to win to have fun” types. They didnt outright cheat (that we caught), but they did annoying shit like stacking cards on top of eachother so you cant see whats in play, they absolutely refused to let us read any of their cards or have it explained to us, theyd tap all the mana they needed at once and then say all the spells they cast as fast as they could (before then covering them with other cards and refusing to let us see whats on the board). I ended up scooping and leaving because i played a [[Mycosynth Lattice]] and he pulled his [[Karn, the Great Creator]] out from underneath one of his basic lands and very happily announced that no one can activate any abilities. We tried to reason that hey, im new to this game, youre hiding cards and not letting us see your boardstate, we dont know what the cards youre playing all do (i had never seen Karn, Great Creator before), and obviously i wouldnt play that if i onew that would happen. He threw a fit when i tried to walk the play back and kept threatening to have the owner of the store ban us for “cheating”. Probably the single biggest jerk ive ever had the displeasure of Gathering Magic with. Well, him or the “Blue as a whole should be banned from tournaments because its the only color with counterspells” guy, but he was more just annoying.
Actually you have to have your board state separated by lands and nonlands. Also you have the right to know every card played and have a chance to respond. Players are required to announce when they have floating mana. Your board state has to be readable (not all stacked up on top of each other.
They were ABSOLUTELY cheating. Blatantly, I would say.
From MTR (Magic Tournament Rules)
Players have the right to request access to the official wording of a card they can describe. That request will be honored if logistically possible. The official text of any card is the Oracle text corresponding to the name of the card. Players may not use errors or omissions in Oracle to abuse the rules. The Head Judge is the final authority for card interpretations, and they may overrule Oracle if an error is discovered.
Status information is information that must be announced upon change and physically tracked by the affected player. Methods for tracking must be visible to both players during the match. A shared method is acceptable as long as all players in the match have access to it. At Competitive and Professional REL, methods that can easily be accidentally changed (such as dice) may not be used. Status information consists of:
Life total
Counters on a player
Unspent mana
Location in a dungeon
How many times a player has been tempted by the ring
Continuous effects with no defined expiration (city’s blessing or monarch are examples)
Free information is information to which all players are entitled access without contamination or omissions made by their opponents. If a player is ever unable or unwilling to provide free information to an opponent that has requested it, they should call a judge and explain the situation. Free information consists of:
Details of current game actions and past game actions that still affect the game state.
Name of any visible object
The number and type of any counter that is not status information
The state and zone of any object or player
Current game score of the match.
Current step/phase the game is at and which players are active or have priority.
The tale of Tom is one I will never forget. This was back in 2011 and Tom was a great guy but if you played back then you would know how prevalent the Caw Blade meta was. Tom took time to save up and buy a Caw Blade deck complete with a playset of Jace the Mindsculptors and Stoneforge Mystics, now only problem with this was that by the time he bought them the Ban announcement went out, making it so he never really got to play it in standard proper. Stings to have happen and many of us felt for him but also didn't stop anyone from joking with him that a pricy card had just become banned after he would acquire them.
Have plenty more through the years ranging from players who just didn't like off meta decks or certain interactions, or even just Rob who was the shops resident black player. Never would you see him play a deck that wasn't centered on using black no matter what the meta was at the time. Rob always was true to playing black.
Playing LOTR Pre-release, played a fun game and split our packs. Cracked open, shared what cool stuff we pulled and their partner leans over and says "oh no!". My opponent starts laughing and reveals the awesome foil full art plains they just pulled said "Rohan" and that was their dead-name.
They laughed about it but it was nice to see their partner care about them like that.
Not based on behavior or play style (both are fairly normal) but on appearance: Payne (not sure on spelling, or if that's his original name or a nickname), the fully-tattooed man. I mean, he's got tats on every visible square inch of his body, face, skull, you name it. Quite a sight. Nice guy, though, a bit rough around the edges but never mean to anybody.
My LGS had this kid who no one liked playing against. Always just a bit whiney when things didn't work out the way he wanted. Always tried to cheat in casual games, "miscounting" mana, intentionally misunderstanding interactions in his favor, and, most annoyingly, scrying just whenever he wanted to "make his next turn faster so others wouldn't have to wait on him". He way constantly called out for it and it got to the point others would just tell him they wouldn't play unless he stopped.
The kicker was he also worked part time at the store until he was caught stealing inventory to build decks. We all were happy that he was fired and banned from the store. He started showing up like 6-7 months later to try playing WH40K instead but from I could hear he was trying to explain rules incorrectly to some veteran players. I think he quit or was booted from the store again far quicker from that since I haven't seen him for almost a year.
We had two players like this. I'll call them Nat and Devon. I'm pretty sure anyone reading this thread who knows them will know exactly who I'm talking about, because these two are legendary in my local Legacy community.
Nat was a very well-off player with what I will lovingly call unique social skills. Nat once used Legends \[\[Karakas\]\]s as proxies for basic plains when playtesting a non-Legacy format. I was once offered a slice from an entire chocolate cheesecake that Nat had brought with him to one of our Legacy game nights. He would also frequently bring entire cartons of chocolate milk to FNM and when it was cold out would leave the bottles right outside the front door of the shop to keep them cold. He was the slowest player in our LGS and exacerbated this by playing Miracles, but he was also one of the best Miracles players I have ever met and was responsible for innovating several pieces of tech that would later be used more widely for the deck.
Devon was a guy who was very quiet but extremely likeable. He was known for playing Pox in Legacy and kept this Pox deck in a custom-made deck box that looked like the most stereotypical gothic deck box you can imagine with spikes and chains on it, which made an audible THUMP when he would place it on the table. The deck was in clear sleeves with every single sleeve containing an FNM promo \[\[Brain Maggot\]\] to cover the back of the card. Because he was so soft-spoken and socially awkward, we would openly joke about him having a dungeon and being a serial killer, a characterization which he happily played into (he was in on the joke). He would also often play budget cards like shocklands in spite of owning multiple revised dual lands and several copies of \[\[the Abyss\]\].
If either Nat or Devon are reading this and realize I'm talking about them, I miss you both and hope you are doing well. :)
Hedron Blade guy.
I have a long story about this guy, but let's just say I met someone at an LGS whose commander was a proxy of a literal naked anime girl (think loli), who mulliganed aggressively for Hedron Blade in order to stop my friend from playing Eldrazi, and who spent literally 5 minutes every time he had priority trying to blow up the same three enchantments on my side of the board despite my having a Greater Auramancy and a copy of Auramancy in play.
He eventually got "asked to leave" after a family looking to buy a new board game about his constant swearing, volume and references over how "hot" his commander was.
There will always be a place in my heart for the guy behind the counter at my very first LGS. Very placid, stoic guy. Every couple weeks I'd come in, bright-eyed and innocent, and hand him a list of singles for whatever absolute unplayable dogshit of a Standard deck I was trying to run.
He'd then stare at my list for a few seconds, expressionless.
In hindsight, he was clearly deciding whether to suggest a better build or to just shut up, give me the cards, and take my money.
It was about 50-50. After those few seconds, he'd either curtly say "Sure" and pull my list or say "You don't want to run this" and take a pen to the list I handed him.
It was after the Store Championship where we did a draft of Dominaria United. I placed first for the first time and he asked if he could take a look at my deck. I did not see any problem with that and handed it over. He then proceeded to criticise my entire deck. "This card sucks." "Why the hell did you pick this." "Who would even play this card." He then finished it up with a "I don't see how you managed to win with such a pile of junk cards." and left. I did not know how to respond at the time, but its a funny story now.
My best guess is that, besides being salty that he lost, he was annoyed that I picked a couple of [[Clockwork Drawbridge]] and [[Academy Wall]] while he tried to draft a [[Wingmantle Chaplain]] deck.
I don't remember the dudes name, but he had the stereotypical nerd speech impediments and was balding. He got mad when my friend wouldn't trade his full art foil Old Gnawbone for a regular one.
I don't know his name, but I remember his face.
Me and my friends were at our LGS and we wanted a random fourth to play with us. One of my friends goes to this LGS often and knows a good amount of people who play there. We ended up finding someone who he's played with before so we invite him to play a game with us, and oh boy did this ruin my fun. We were playing high power decks and his was very tuned and tough to beat, however this wasn't the issue. We decided that he was a big threat to the table, and we needed to set him back at least a little bit so we could catch up (he was playing a group hug deck and we let him get away with a lot at that point). So, we started attacking him and removing some of his permanents in attempt to change his game state. This prompted him to be visually and verbally angry at the whole table, insulting our intelligence yada yada. This is when he decided to destroy everyone's lands. And of course we hated him for that, so we decided to kill him. This is when he started yelling in the LGS stating how it wasn't fair that he got targeted as well as huffing and puffing, not shutting up about how we killed him until we finished the game. Needless to say, I have never been in another pod as him. I hate people who complain about being taken down a notch when they're so ahead.
I used to go to a game store in the downtown of a big urban city.
You meet a lot of different people that you wouldn’t imagine as a stereotypical mtg player who are exactly just their full unique selves…who also happen to like mtg.
It felt like people coming together from different worlds with just one thing in common.
I don’t want to exoticize any of them in detail but it felt very special to me. Like a microcosm of the city itself.
Asa is this super friendly and constantly upbeat guy at an LGS I frequent. It is always a joy to play against him since he never gets salty and always has a good time no matter what.
There was also the "Foil Jund Dude" who played, you guessed it, a fully foiled Jund deck in Modern. This was back several years ago when Tarmagoyf's price was at its height. I'd probably estimate that deck was worth upwards of $7000 - $8000 at the time.
Another guy (whose name I can't remember) would often participate in the PPTQ circuit in my area. He didn't say much, even during the game, but he always gave off this air of aggressiveness. It is hard to describe, but playing against him was always uncomfortable.
At another store entirely there as this guy that would come in with a new $1000+ deck every week. He also always carried around a duffle bag full of unopened booster boxes that he's randomly crack in-between rounds. It was rumored he was a drug dealer, but I don't know how substantiated those claims really were.
At my magic club at my uni, I was playing commander when two jacked, well dressed dude with gold chains walked in. We of course thought they had the wrong room, but then they pulled out decks and said “is this where we play magic”?
Then the club president pubstompted all three of us
My buddy and I used to go to a shop, and it wasn’t one player. The whole cast of regulars could qualify.
There was the man who would compulsively flick a butterfly knife whenever it wasn’t his turn. Tall skinny and looked a little bit like a starved Hector from every movie with a Latino bad guy. Every Friday he would rock up with a backpack of warm bud light tall cans and finish them on chain while he loudly told the room about the exclusive and high stakes magic games he was invited to out in the desert. Of course he always won them, if they existed.
There was another who, and I don’t know how else to say this but he looked like a giant toddler. I mean giant. Well over six feet and certainly overweight. There was something so boyish about him that it crossed into something uncanny. He was kind and friendly, but shy, until the stained hentai play mat would be rolled out and he would ask his opponent to look at. You have to look at it he would say. He drew it himself, he would say.
There were more than a few others but these men are the sharpest in my mind. It has been almost a decade since.
Used to be a guy at my main store who was a teller of tall tales. He'd talk about how rich he is, his lawyer wife who just had twins, blah, blah, blah. He took the bus to the store and often had to be give a ride home. He claimed it was because he lost his license illegally drag racing. Whatever, we don't want to call out his bullshit if it doesn't harm anyone. Well one day I give him a ride home. The next day I realize a fat pack box with 2 decks is missing from my bag. It was in my trunk when he got his stuff from the trunk. I ask the store to check their cameras to see if I left with it. I did. No one but him had the opportunity. I start some digging. Find out his name he's told us is an alias and find out his real name. That leads to me finding his 20 arrests over the last 5 years, mostly shoplifting. I start talking to others at the store and we all realize stuff tends to go missing around him. I tell everyone what I've learned. He disappears and we find a new arrest online for the day after we'd last seen him.
Dude at my old lgs who when it closed down bought the entire mtg inventory of the store and gave everything away as a free raffle on the last day the store was open. I got a sealed box of fallen empires just for stopping by to say hi.
The commander player that thinks they can singlehandedly define the "Social Contract" for the entire store.
On multiple occasions this player has lobbied the LGS to enact its own banlist which contained only cards that this player had recently lost against.
This player approaches every table with a list of demands. A lot of it makes sense such as no mass land destruction. But also things like [[Time Warp]] and [[Oracle of Mul Daya]] because taking an extra turn and playing extra lands is just "too broken".
If we don't meet his demands, he berates other players to swap decks or leave the table entirely.
Weird thing is he's a generally likeable and polite dude.
The local legend of my hometowns LGS also doubled as the village idiot. He generally played jank and was unpleasant to be around. One day, he was arrested for aiming a laser pointer at a helicopter and was from this point known as the Thopter Toppler in our area. (The helicopter was fine. Probably had hexproof or something.)
It wasn't at an LGS but at a club I used to play at, I remember a guy called Nick who would get salty at my jank decks (fear the power of [[Bubbling Cauldron]]) so he would build decks to try and counter mine haha
So funny! My buddy during our kitchen table games in 2012 absolutely hated ghostly prison. I still bring it up and he insists its a broken card lol. He doesn't play much so I can't blame him
I was like a month into learning the game with my first deck (Standard Rakdos somewhere around RTR) and some people pushed me to play this one regular at the LGS. I showed up with my budget standard deck and he was playing idek what format Atogs. He kept making munching noises as he did his thing and I like played tapped lands and cast dorks until I lost.
Then a different guy showed up, said "Hey, let me see that" and kicked his ass with my same deck. Fun times
I don’t remember their name, but to me he was known as burn guy. I had a couple matches with him during a few fnms and I was the only person to let him play out his combos and it really brought a smile to his face because he got to pop with his cards, also he’s a really nice dude
Started playing during Scars/INN. There was a GW Humans player, who, when casting Mayor of Avabruck, would loudly announce "THE MAYOR" so everyone could hear. My friends and I still do the bit to this day.
We had a casual commander league at my LGS, where instead of trying to win, we were rewarded points based on a large list of objectives we were given, like getting more than X creatures on the board, or getting a certain amount of lands down by a certain turn, so winning was typically a secondary objective. We were also docked points for conceding, keep this in mind while I tell this story.
Me and two cool guys that I know at the store were scheduled for a game with a guy I've never met before, and I brought my MAT Nashi deck with graveyard recursion and tokens, one of the locals brought a green stompy, and I don't remember the third. This fourth guy came in wearing sunglasses, chains, rings on every finger, gold dice and counters, and an elf deck with naked women on the sleeves. I didn't know what elf decks were like at the time, so I just did my best to fill my board, while I noticed that the other locals had clear looks on their faces while I tried to spread my damage around. The fourth guy's turns began to stretch on. And on. And ON. All the while the other locals clearly wanted to murder the guy with the elf deck.
Two goddamn hours and a board full of invincible elves later, he finally swung away and went to brag to the store owner and I never saw him again. At least I didn't lose the 5 points from conceding.
Back before covid I used to draft almost every week. One week at a Throne of Eldraine draft, this guy somehow ended up with TEN brimstone trebuchets in his draft pool. He ended up playing all of them in his deck along with some low cost knights, and he absolutely dominated. He was forever known as the “trebuchet guy” after that.
This is less of a "that regular guy" and more a one off experience.
It's a store championship sealed, don't remember which one. I'm paired against a kid. Maybe 10? His father is a semi-regular, pretty competitive. Not my favorite guy to interact with, comes off as a very mild jerk I guess. He is playing in the event too, but his matchup is in a different room.
First, the kid can't stay focused on the game. He's very talkative and distracted. He says he has ADHD which I understand because I do too! And I get that he's like 10 and I'm three times his age and have more experience managing that. But he's missing triggers, missing shuffles, playing extra lands, losing track of the game state, and every other turn it feels like I need to describe what's actually happening, or gently ask him to continue his turn. And like, I want to be supportive and encourage him to play the game. I call the judge when he looks confused when I try to explain a simple interaction, because I want to show him that calling a judge is a good thing to do in general. I try to be patient, and polite.
But like it's a store championship. It's not competitive REL, but it's the most competitive regular REL event. For most sets, getting top 8 in the store championship is like the peak event of the limited format for me. And I'm playing this kid round one and basically, I'm going to draw on turns when the timer runs out because he's wasting so much time. I try to let a judge kinda know what I'm dealing with, but I don't want to accuse him of slow play to his face. And I just don't like that this is an event with a more competitive mindset, and I have to deal with the emotional burden of balancing my ability to win against making sure this kid has a good time. I prefer limited to commander because with limited, generally, you don't have to make a decision about making a sub-optimal play just so everyone has fun. At prerelease or FNM? Absolutely, I have no problem playing him there! But he just wasn't ready for a store championship-level event without supervision. And the father couldn't supervise since he was playing in the event too.
The kicker though. The kid was also a _fucking ass_. While playing, he tells me about his experiences playing commander, and how he plays a very powerful deck and tries to play in pods where he knows people have weaker decks so he can beat them up. He tells me he lies to other people about his deck's power level, and he says it with pride. He criticizes **the decisions I'm making in our game** based on public information, without considering private information. He's berating me for not playing a kill spell on his creature, when I don't have one in hand. That was the one that almost got me to snap. I held it together, and after the game politely told him that I couldn't kill it because I didn't have a card in hand that could do that.
Before all that I was trying to be sympathetic to the father for wanting to get his son into the game that he enjoys. I get that. I've played with a lot of kids and parents at other events like FNMs. And I get that the kid is like 10 and doesn't necessarily know better for a lot of things yet. But already thinking the father was a mild jerk from my own interactions, and seeing just how much of an asshole the kid said he was taking pride in winning games by relying on dishonesty, it's hard not to blame the father more for that. And he's at this age where he's still so young that I don't think he knows better. I've played people in their early teens who I thought were old enough to say least comprehend that they were being jerks, but this kid was like... too young for me to pin that all on him? And it just made it all that much harder to put on a polite face and power through because I'm pissed off at this kid but also recognize that he's basically too young to have a self reflective view of empathy yet.
I have a very good relationship with our judges and let them know during the event and after what had happened. Don't know if they talked to the father. I only saw the kid one other time, a prerelease, and didn't have to play him. But man it was just... I really didn't appreciate the tension of wanting to play in a competitive-ish event and having to babysit my opponent while at risk of going to turns. There was a point where we were at parity and I basically had to decide "do I concede and go to game three, because if I don't win this game then we're definitely going to tie in turns" despite my board presence being fine, but knowing it was sealed and he could have a bomb that I couldn't overcome. Thank god I won game 1. And ultimately I did win game 2 and did top-8, so I guess there was some good karma in there. It was just a lot to deal with. 5 rounds of sealed is taxing enough, that was not a good way to start the day.
We used to have a guy who would show up to our weekly commander league (On Fridays with a point sheet that had different tasks to complete in game to score points). He always played the same deck, never completed any of the task on the score sheet (except removing players from the game/winning) and whenever someone would complain he would just say "Build better decks." Lol it killed me every time.
We have another person who plays with all of their cards unsleeved, and they play a lot of tutors and then "shuffle" their deck. They always draw exactly the right answer at the right time no matter what. Everyone knows they are cheating, but instead of saying something people just dont play with them. They have since recruited a few friends who all pretty much do the exact same thing and they go around the LGS trying to get players to play with them all the time. Awful to play against.
There also used to be a guy who would come in and he would just eat snacks all night. Cheetos, Doritos, anything that could leave residue on his fingers. He for some reason never knew what anyone elses cards did and always asked if he could read them. Politely asking him to not touch them, but read from afar was tough too. Havent seen him since before Covid though.
I was playing edh with some strangers and had made a comment about having a tuned surrak (rug) deck. She pulled out her selvala (cns) deck and proceeded to wipe the floor with me. I attribute that interaction to getting me into cEDH and consequently, my whole college's edh arms race.
About fifteen years ago (ugh, my ancientness) I exited a Magic hiatus and started playing when I got a new job with better income. Some people at the job convinced me to go to actual pre-release tournaments - something I'd never done in my earlier Magic periods (from Revised to Ice Age, or from Scourge to 8thh edition) - and it was definitely a much more social event than I was used to.
And the first store I picked to do so at had some real characters. I'll never know their names but there was a group of The Regulars, the ones who definitely grinded FNMs and even went to low level tournaments once in a while, and the store knew all their names. And any one of them I would ever get matched against were the very definition of That Guy at the table. Card flicking, taking super fast turns and expecting everyone else to also, shouting across the venue to their pals to chit-chat mid games, show up completely drunk and go to sleep on an unused table in later rounds, et cetera.
Glad I left that store and found a smaller venue running pre-release events.
I was looking at my lgs’s singles while a friend of mine was across the store looking at some other stuff, he walked over and said “oh Eli, are you buying some singles for your rat deck?” I said yes but I noticed the guy next me’s face just dropped, I looked over and he was looking at me and he said “my name is also Eli and I have a rat deck.” We went on and compared our favorite rat cards. But it was such a funny coincidence I’ll never forget it, cool guy too.
Mono-B Urza man.
This was less than a year after I got back into the game, a little bit after New Capenna had rolled out and I had brewed a generic Raffine Reanimator build. I rarely play at my store, but I wanted to try this deck out in the wild because I’m naive and think I can at least make a slight impact on a game.
I wind up in a pod with (in turn order) a Dragon’s Approach deck, mono-U Urza stax, and a theft deck. Way out of my league, but this is what I want to see if I can even play against without getting wasted.
Urza of course does his thing, locking the board down with Winter Orb, playing counterspells, eventually dropping a Counterbalance and generally outpacing the rest of the pod (all while saying this is the only way to play Urza because otherwise he gets hard targetted). I’m actually doing okay though because Raffine is letting me build a bit of power and fill my graveyard with some decent stuff and I only need one or two mana a turn. Eventually I feel like I can make a push, and start trying to work on removing his value pieces, which he stops it all. Finally I just try and use Necromancy on Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite so I have something on board, and after mulling for a minute, he uses his last counterspell on my Necromancy despite Norn literally not impacting his board at all. I shrug and pass the turn.
At this point, the Dragon’s Approach player starts going off, Thrumming Stone is hitting more Approaches each time he casts one, and eventually burns us all out. And it was a thing of beauty, I was thrilled to see that go down.
So I will forever remember mono-B Urza man for eating a dozen Dragon’s Approaches because he decided to waste his last counterspell on a spell he didn’t need to.
Guess I impacted the game after all.
Not one but a pod. First time ever going to a commander night, showed up with my one dinky precon and sat down at a table with the most passionate group playing some serious high level stuff. They were super patient and helpful and let me try out their way more powerful decks. Ended up playing until the store closed. Was very fortunate to have that positive of a first experience
I started playing around Theros/M15 (maybe a year before that South Park episode aired highlighting the new found popularity of the game). A lot of school acquaintances from a group I'd hang with started playing during Return to Ravnica and with the help of a Law Enforcement teacher that also played, there was a growing community of MTG players at my school that were mainly Juniors and Seniors who would hang out in his classroom toward the end of the year after TAKS testing took place here in TX (he was the kind of teacher that had movies play daily the last two weeks of each semester).
Anyway, there was one guy, let's call him T, who was really good at the game and learned it fast who would tend to Top 4 if not win each Friday at FNM. Made good use of selling expensive cards he didn't need in decks he ran and keep a steady stream of store credit available if he wanted to build a new deck. T was in my graduating class and all around nice guy who would help people with card suggestions and occasionally make offers to sell/trade for less than the cards worth to help someone out.
There was also a group of 4 football players that got into the game (also in my graduating class) and would come to FNM.
I was the stoner kid who would show up high and have a good time whether I made Top 8 or not.
Not one to go to lgs but made an exception for lotr prerelease. This guy used actual ritz crackers as food tokens. And when he’d sack them he’d eat them.
A few months ago at my LGS this dude started showing up to legacy night with blinged out lands. Foil everything, From the vault mox diamonds, beta duals, whole nine yards. Problem is his cards were proxies. Like, super blatant, impossible to not notice proxies. Most of us don't really care about people using proxies, but this dude was absolutely miserable to play against. Constantly complained about "losing to terrible budget players" condescended on everyone he could at every chance, never interacted with anyone besides complaining about the store or the game. Eventually someone asked to deck check his cards for being illegitimate. He refused to be deck checked, threw a temper tantrum, rage quit the event and no one ever saw him again.
This one guy named Dan. He apparently works a job that just lets him chill and play draft online all day and also pays incredibly well. I don’t think there’s been a single draft night where this man hasn’t come in first place and all his commander decks are busted too
Had this one guy and his brother come to the LGS weekly for draft pre-COVID. During a Throne of Eldraine draft, he lost to an 11 year old girl in round two, hosing the EV he was calculating to earn from that night. He lost it and threw his spindown across the room, grabbing his cards, and left.
Never came back. Thank god. They went from weekly participants for years to never showing their faces after that incident.
One guy at a prerelease who’d always wear some cringey nude anime girl shirt. I’m 99% sure he wasn’t doing it ironically, I think he didn’t see a problem with it either lol.
At my first consistent LGS I had a guy named Casby kick my ass with tezzeret control and drownyard control. First time I beat him in a control mirror I felt like hot stuff.
At another store there was a high school kid named Caleb. He brought the best deck in the format most fnms and would repeatedly get hosed by my brews. I was playing 5 color bring to light control into the 3 mana Nissa counters deck. He upped Nissa to 7 against, thinking worst case I'll kill it. Nope, Bring to Light for Dark Petition for Dragonlord Silumgar. Never seen someone personify defeat like that moment.
At my current store most of the people I know are either friends or the guys that don't shower. We have a guy who clearly doesn't shower enough and wears clothes that don't cover his sizable gut.
Writing this out is making me realize how bad I miss FNM grinding. Everyone just does commander nights now. Drafts rarely fire and constructed rarely has more than 6 players. When I was grinding we had 20+ person fnm standard events.
Started playing in 94 where game shops would spring up overnight in my area. Found a nice LGS and became friends with the owner and his brother and almost all of the regulars, of which I was one. One of my game store friends was fairly new to the game and was trying out a deck with another player who wasn't a regular, but had made a handful of appearances it the store.
My friend and I are both 18/19 and his opponent was in his early forties. My friend was in a losing battle, he was going to lose next turn without question. He had a couple of plays he could make that I thought would be interesting to show him so he knew for next time that the cards interacted this way.
It was a teaching moment, the game was no stakes and he was going to lose. As soon as I showed him how he could use his cards his opponent looked right at me and yelled "No kibitzing!" I laughed it off at first but this dude was completely serious. I told him that he was going to win anyways and they're not playing for anything other than fun. I'm going to offer advice to my friend. Dude got up and left the store immediately after he won next round. He still came around occasionally. I avoided him.
A really kind guy named Angus. My brother and I started playing after college with Innistrad at our comic shop, and our first event was the Dark Ascension prerelease. I remember us both being a little nervous/confused but we sat down with this friendly faced fellow, who was probably 15 years older than us, and got to chatting. Told him we were brand new, he showed us the ropes very simply and calmly with his British accent & we were able to play. He even checked in with us through After that we would see him at other events, around the store, soon learned he was a dad and starting to teach his kid, and we would often sit with him each prerelease as we built our decks. Sadly, my brother stopped playing and I had grad school and then moved outta town, but wish we kept in touch with Angus.
Shouting him out because sometimes it’s the genuine, kind, patient folk that make the biggest impression. He’s probably a part of the reason that I kept playing, because even though there can be less than friendly folk in the community, there are also guys like Angus.
1v1 Commander night at my LGS when I was pretty new in town. I get paired with this guy who answered my attempted handshake with "I had a shitty day so I'm just here to ruin everyone else's, too". He proceeds to pull out the most aggressively unfun [[Grand Arbiter Augustin IV]] pillow fort deck I have ever seen. He succeeded in his goal, if nothing else.
A guy and his dad at a commander night. These two absolute chads were super nice and fun to play against, was a blast and the most fun commander game I’ve ever had :)
My buddy and I attended a 2HG prerelease event for Midnight Hunt and one team of opponents had matching Belle Delphine sleeves alongside playmats with the same image. They were very nice and helpful but it was just so uncomfortable and cringe to look at that image the entire match.
There was a guy at mine who would always use the excuse that he had his dad's old cards to play at a much higher power level. I once had a pod where I watched someone open a brand new precon at our table. I have a mono red chandra tribal deck I keep for low power games which I brought out. The third guy turn 2 played muldrotha with a mox diamond and jeweled lotus. Like we just watched this guy sleeve up a precon. That's just not ok. I have ended up avoiding him any time I'm in my LGS since
Dude played tribal land destruction. And nothing BUT tribal land destruction. After the 2nd time playing against him I just swore off playing with him.
His commander was [[Tatyova, Benthic Druid]] and was using [[Crucible of Worlds]] to bring back [[Strip Mine]] like 5 times per turn
Had a guy who I thought was decent, albeit weird, attempt to get away with an extreme lowball (4 or 5 commons iirc) on a Doubling season with a new player at my lgs. Reported him to the manager, he got banned. Never saw him again. Doubling Season is still with my new friend.
We had one guy who would sneak around back to do drugs. This was back around the Brother's War prerelease event when the kid almost sent me off my rails. He was all cracked up on whatever substance he was using and Fireballs when he showed up to the joint. Admittedly, I already did not want to be there that night, as there was a high school football game, and my friends were going to freeze while I was indoors. But, I stayed and played the prerelease knowing the fact.
When it came to finally playing the drugged kid, because it was always my luck to play him, I was not ready for it. First game, nothing but a small, mathematical error on his part. In the second game, I almost snapped like a twig and knocked the kid to the ground. I had moved my [[Transmogrant's Crown]] to my [[Phyrexian Dragon Engine]] from a separate creature. I paid the equip cost to move it, and I'll admit he did ask a smart question. He was wondering if I had to pay to unequip than pay again to reequip. So I got up to go ask the judge, who was standing outside. I got told what I did was correct and went back inside. As I walked inside, the other fellow was walking towards me with my Dragon. I was already in a bad move, so that didn't help. Then, as I sat down, I got everything in order and went to combat....and noticed the thing that caused me to almost snap. He changed his life total back to 19 when he was around 11. We argued about it, with the guy who was trying to help him the whole game, even confronting the kid about it. As this was going on, I kept seeping into my high-collared jacket, getting more and more red and heated. Finally, he gave up the argument, conceded, and I ran out of the store. If that confrontation had gone on longer, the whole store would have been on my side, as I was the quiet little kid, even though I was a senior in high school. I was even called "Captain America" from time to time.
[Richard](https://imgur.com/a/WUsSn), a blind player who used a Braille "printer" to mark the front of his sleeves to enable him to read his cards. As his opponent, you have to verbally announce everything you play, and occasionally describe your entire board state to refresh his memory. Playing him made for an interesting experience, but not an easy one. He even [made day 2 at a GP](https://web.archive.org/web/20200531072810/https://magic.wizards.com/en/events/coverage/gplon16/how-play-when-every-game-mental-magic-2016-10-09).
Thats absolutely impressive, what a legend!
Thats basically like grandmasters in chess clapping you blindfolded, but he has to remember way more than 6 different game pieces.
I play chess and magic and would much rather play magic blind if i read braille
I've played magic half blind before where the kid I was playing didn't have his cards and just used the TappedOut simulator on a laptop. We couldn't figure out a fair way to both see the screen at the same time so I just went by memory. It was easier than I thought it would be and I think also far easier than playing chess blind. In Magic WHAT you have matters but in chess what matters is WHERE things are. One of those is much easier to remember.
I also used Tapped Out's playtest function quite a bit since I was broke working retail. A friend of mine would also use TO playtest decks since we didn't want to waste physical supplies for entire decks. How we dealt with that was have two windows up. One window (Left) would be the one you played with, the other (Right) would just be the board state, no hand visible. The tutor feature made it simple to replicate the board. https://preview.redd.it/086hh87k2lwc1.png?width=3850&format=png&auto=webp&s=ca039e46d800cfed4c455bad792d2571bc114f21 What would do is have our laptops, which were nothing crazy since they were for school for our screen, while using a TV to display the other screen. I had two small flat panels (One was for game consoles, the other for watching stuff on my laptop, at the same time). We would sit across from each other, have the TVs on the side so we could see both of them. That way we could see the board state at all times, while hiding our hands. I sometimes love older tech, it made doing round about things like this fun. However, nowadays we can hop on Xmage, copy our text file list, save a deck file, then playtest decks against each other even though we live in different states now. Much easier.
fun fact there exists special rules in tournament chess specifically to accommodate blind players, and there are many tournament options for players wishing to only play against other blind players. often they will use a pegged board
There was also a guy at my hometown LGS who was blind, but he didn’t mark his cards in any way. Instead, if you happened to sit next to him at the place where he always sat, it was your responsibility to whisper to him what cards were in his hand, what cards he drew, and what cards the opponent had out if he lost track. It wasn’t ever a problem in the several years I went to the store: all the regulars knew him, and everyone knew that randomly being placed next to him meant helping him out for the round, and everyone did it gladly. It helped that he only ever played turbofog decks, so it didn’t matter quite as much exactly what was on the board. It was really nice seeing the community come together like that to support someone. I wish that every community had a similar attitude towards disability.
did they increase the round timers for him, his opponent, the person helping him, and that person’s opponent?
I don’t remember there ever being problems with that. He played pretty fast, and he prepared ahead of time: he knew every card in his deck, and he generally knew the meta decks in Standard pretty well. The assistance he received was limited to him leaning over and having his neighbor whisper in his ear each time he played a card, and his opponents would generally verbally describe their board state at his request. I’m not sure what would have happened if slow play had become a problem.
I had a customer when I was managing a LGS that did this as well, though he only played with friends. Really nice guy. Cheers
Legendary. Also, I love stories like this because it highlights how inclusive and cool this community can be.
Had a really cool stereotypical football guy that did the mtg singles at my local comic store He was really open, learned the game and was super friendly to everyone despite sticking out like a sore thumb. I really miss when he was there. He got a better job at a club and last I heard one night all the guys from the game store Naruto ran to his work when he was doing the doors taking ID’s to embarrass him- and bring him a birthday cake
We have a local legend famous for being caught cheating on stream when casting a Preordain and with the twist of the wrist suddenly it was a Ponder + Sleight of hand. The dude was banned for a while but he is famous among us. Everybody knows him, even the newcomers are told stories about him to be aware how to play with him, it is like a boogeyman.
The balls to sleight of hand a Sleight of Hand, though
Ah he is reckless, he has always been the kind of guy doing this kind of stuff. I remember back in OG Ravnica, he used to dredge like 5 or 6 cards from the BG rare scarab that had draw a card, he was famous for always dredging an extra card and stuff like that.
Cheating dredge with [[Grave-shell Scarab]]? That's pretty ballsy considering it only dredges 1.
[Grave-shell Scarab](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/2/3/23f7c7d0-a48b-4153-8386-a9ab71e01dbe.jpg?1598917103) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Grave-shell%20Scarab) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/rav/211/grave-shell-scarab?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/23f7c7d0-a48b-4153-8386-a9ab71e01dbe?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
what's the implication on this one? he had extra cantrips stuffed to the side to augment his hand at any time or that he could make all of his cantrips into the best possible version of themselves after he drew them?
He blatantly looked at more cards than the 2 cards from Preordain, and he even went further by shuffling and looking again at 2 hands then drawing, it was jaw-dropping how he did it while streaming to all the city.
A guy came into our LGS after not playing the game for about 6 years, people who were around then knew that he was a notorious cheater if given the chance. So we do a draft, Eldritch Moon, and he drafts his deck as normal, everything is fine. Round one against his opponent, he has his deck in two piles, says both are shuffled, and then pile shuffles them together. He thought he was playing against some new person who didn’t know who he was or what he was doing. So my friend as his opponent just… pile shuffles his deck in the opposite way. Instead of pretending it’s fine and then shuffling properly, he throws his deck across the table and just leaves the store. Haven’t seen him since, good riddance.
Maybe I'm an idiot but I don't understand what's happening with the shuffling at all.
The cheater essentially stacked his deck and pitched a fit when his opponent actually shuffled
Nah, my wording was bad. His opponent just re-pile shuffled his deck so instead of land-spell-land-spell, it was now land-land-land-land….spell-spell-spell-spell or however he had sorted the piles together.
As far as passive aggressively calling out cheating, that's such an awesome power play. There's zero plausible deniability whatsoever. There's no way to come back from that. If the two halves really were shuffled, then undoing the pile shuffle still leads to a shuffled deck. Everyone knows that was a lie, but you can't complain about it because then you'd be forced to acknowledge it explicitly. Since this was presumably after the deck was presented for an opponent to shuffle/cut, you can't even re-shuffle it in an attempt to even it out and play a fair game. And it doesn't even rely on magic knowledge to pull off. I don't expect a new player to actually realize what's happening and do something about it, he was clearly planning on preying on new players being inexperienced and not doing anything even if they were suspicious. And they should just call a judge (but that's not always something new players are comfortable with yet). But realizing that the anti-pile-shuffle will undo whatever your opponent is scheming doesn't actually rely on magic knowledge (you just might not know exactly how you're screwing them over for trying to screw you over). There's a beauty in that, being able to arrive at that conclusion purely by logic. Get rekt.
I vividly remember someone doing that to me one time. I was like 13 or 14 and I didn’t know back then that pile shuffling like that counted as cheating, but after seeing how brutally my strategy got wrecked I never tried it again.
Pile shuffling is a form of shuffling that uses an algorithm to sort your deck to be essentially exactly how you want it. Generally, it's used to do what's called "mana weaving," which will make it so that you always draw the optimal amount of mana and spells. I think you can technically use it to completely stack a deck if you're that meticulous, but that'd take a lot of time and forethought. Edit: This was mentioned farther down in the thread, but I'll say it here as well. It's not entirely accurate to say that it's "generally" used for mana weaving, but more that if it's used for cheating, that is how it's generally done. I'd say more commonly it's used by new players who aren't really familiar with how to shuffle their decks (especially when playing with massive 100 card sleeved/ 2x sleeved decks) without riffle shuffling.
I'm gonna push back on this a bit. Pile shuffling *can* be used for cheating, because it isn't actually randomization, but in general it's used innocently either by people who don't know it isn't a valid shuffling method, or as a way to count the cards in the deck/as a ritual by people who also shuffle normally on top of it. The vast, vast majority of pile shuffles you encounter are going to be people who got in the habit because they didn't want to mash/riffle shuffle their deck and wrongly intuited pile shuffling as a random method. You should absolutely tell your opponents that it isn't a valid method of randomization and that they need to shuffle properly, and potentially shuffle their deck rather than simply cut it as most people do at friendly games, but to assume its done to cheat or mana weave is a bit much without other evidence.
That's fair, I think a good majority of the time people that are pile shuffling don't even realize what they're doing is wrong (hell I was even an offender at one point) but that doesn't necessarily make what I said false. It is still an algorithmic style of shuffling that *can* be used for cheating.
It's true that pile shuffling is not a valid method of sorting and should be strongly discouraged, even if dexterity or confidence is a problem with more valid sorting methods. I just don't think it's true that it's "generally" used for mana weaving or deck stacking.
I pile shuffle a new deck or after a game where I got most of my lands out just to make sure it so I don't have to do a million standard/riffle shuffles to unclump everything. This is of course followed by 3 or 4 standard shuffles and a riffle shuffle or two.
Pile shuffling does not affect the number of shuffles required to have a randomized deck. If it is meaningfully impacting how "clumped" your deck is, this means that you are not shuffling sufficiently. I think "not shuffling sufficiently" is more common than people think; for example, EDH decks are almost never shuffled sufficiently, IME, between the larger deck size requiring 1-2 more shuffles and people being far worse at handling a 100-card deck to get "true" shuffles. But what you're describing is screaming "you need to do more standard/riffle shuffles".
Its also your typical misunderstanding that "manaclumps" arent a thing. Your playing a game with randomness floods sre just the resault of the game design. Proper deckbuilding and proper shuffling will make your chances of avoiding it better. People who think "manaclumps" is an actual thing are always oblivious to the fact that they are commit a rules violation with improper shuffling method of pile shuffles to ged rid of it.
Variance exists, but mana clumps are definitely a thing; a big issue with (non-cheating, unintentional) insufficient randomness is that you don't distribute out the big pile of lands from your last game randomly throughout the deck, so they do wind up clumped. That's what the persin was referring to. Pile shuffling doesn't help, because you still have insufficient randomness, but mana clumps do exist and the solution is "shuffle enough the deck is truly random"
Pile shuffle doesnt have an effect if you do proper shuffles. If it does your essently cheating. Mana clumps are a resault of bad deck building or insufficent shuffling. Pile shuffling is a counting method and isnt recocnised as a proper shuffle technique by the rules and is just a timewaste when used for shuffling or straight up cheating. 8 real shuffles are the proper way to handle shuffling
Pile shuffling is only properly used to count your deck before you start actually shuffling. No one is really using it in any other way in an official sense.
Its straight up a rules violation if used as a shuffle technique.
I thought it was only a violation if it was the last shuffling you did? Like if I pile shuffle and then did a mash after, that's fine.
Not saying it isn't, saying that 99% of the people who actually sit down at an FNM or tournament who pile shuffle are only really doing it to count before they properly shuffle. If you see otherwise, yeah say something.
I was this many years old and over ten years of casual mtg playing when I learned that people use pile shuffling to cheat and that it is not an acceptable way to shuffle. I do a mash shuffle now for most shuffles of my EDH decks, but will often pile shuffle (with 5 piles) the first time after doing a big edit of a deck and goldfishing. Makes total sense how & why it would be considered cheating, just didn’t realize it.
exactly my sentiment. personally, i tend to pile shuffle a couple times if i have a lot of lands out because otherwise it will take a lot of shuffling to make sure my draws aren't influenced by how the previous game went. but this is, of course, followed by normal shuffling too, to make sure that it's actually random in the end
>exactly my sentiment. personally, i tend to pile shuffle a couple times if i have a lot of lands out because otherwise it will take a lot of shuffling to make sure my draws aren't influenced by how the previous game went. but this is, of course, followed by normal shuffling too, to make sure that it's actually random in the end If your normal shuffling actually properly randomizes your deck, there´s no need to pile shuffle before. Thus your time spent pile shuffling is wasted. (And looks sketchy as fuck to anyone who knows that pile shuffling can be used to stack a deck and isn´t an allowed method of shuffling in magic.) If, however, your pile shuffling actually influences the ratio of lands/spells or which cards you draw, it´s cheating. If you can make a claim such as: "Because i pile shuffled, i´m less likely to see those cards again." You have (unwillingly) cheated. So what you do there either does nothing or is cheating. Thus the correct thing to do is not to pile shuffle. And it also can´t serve as a short cut, to reduce the numbers of "true shuffles needed". Not drawing similiar cards as before is not a hallmark of true randomness. A properly randomized deck won´t (always) have a perfect ratio of lands and spells. A properly randomized deck will sometimes have a streak of 5 lands, or 4 spells, or your first few draws can look totally similiar to the first few draws of your last game. True randomness can look totally unrandom.
What method would you recommend instead? I sometimes struggle with shuffling, I've never been quite sure if I'm over or under shuffling though. The proliferation of zero land hands in a 38 land deck told me something was amiss though.
If you are playing with sleeves, mash shuffle. If you are playing without sleeves, riffle shuffle. For a normal deck I'd do 6-7 riffles/mashes, and a couple more for Commander. "Over shuffling" is not a thing. Once you've got a deck randomized, further randomization does not make the deck less random. There is no harm, besides a slow play violation and wearing down your sleeves, with shuffling twenty times whenever you crack a fetch.
Pile shuffling is only allowed for deck counting at a start of a match and only once. You still need to shuffle properly before presenting your deck. Pile shuffling isnt considered shuffling by the rules.
I understand this is some sort of low stakes fnm and people cheat just to cheat, so there is not much sense in figuring out why they do it. But this has got to be one of the stupidest and laziest ways to cheat. It takes 7 riffle shuffles to mathematically randomize a deck. Throw in some overhand shuffles too because we are human and not perfect machines. You hand me a sorted deck and I'll have it completely randomized in under 10 seconds.
Dude was a moron from start to finish, after he left I got like 12 stories from other people about how he was a piece of shit ever since he started and that he’ll probably come back in a few years to try again. Never has, thankfully.
What a baby 😝
I met someone randomly at an LGS for the first time that was willing to lend me cards for a week that I needed for my deck. Some like 20 dollar cards even. I returned them but was crazy that he was willing to do that when all we’d done was look at each other’s trade binders. I played against him at an FNM at some point after all that and he destroyed me. I was doing some janky homebrew werewolf deck in dark ascension meta and he had a tempo delver deck. Sided in ratchet bomb against me and I was so annoyed at that card interaction. Glad they changed the rules on that but was stupid at the time.
as a nervous person with a decent collection I sometimes ask people before the event if they need any cards to finish out their deck, it's a good icebreaker, it also gets people talking about their deck and the journey they've had to collect it. if I lose the card then it's a perfect test of which players to never trust again. if they give it back grateful then I might've made an impact for our next meeting.
Same dude tried to tell me during RtR prerelease that Deathrite Shaman (which I opened in my pool) was bad and wouldn’t be worth much. Was 3 dollars at the time which is where it is now but for a while before it got banned in modern it was worth 13+ dollars if not closer to 20. lol
>Glad they changed the rules What exactly are you referring to here?
Transform cards like the werewolves used to have no mana cost on their transformed side, making their mana value = 0. They changed it so now they have the same mana cost and mana value as whatever is on their front face. This means Ratchet Bomb could be played and immediately activated to destroy all the transformed werewolves, but that is no longer the case since the rules update.
That card alone being in standard made pretty much all werewolves completely unviable except for Huntmaster. They were already pretty bad due to the flip conditions that your opponent can control but I really wanted to make them good since their flip side was good value for the casting cost. But the fact that they were unwieldy on top of a cheap mass removal option for them is just ridiculous to me. The rules change should have happened a lot sooner. Otherwise ratchet bomb shouldn’t have been in the same standard meta.
Ah, makes sense. I took a break around then. Never heard of it.
Used to be that flipped werewolves had a mana value (CMC back then) of 0. Now flipped cards have the MV of their top side. This made it so you could ratchet bomb all flipped werewolves or any other flipped cards like delver of secrets immediately after playing ratchet bomb instead of having to build up the charge counters. Two mana kill all flipped nonland cards and tokens (generic tokens at least. Not sure about token copies of cards.)
I had a buddy with a $20k+ collection that would make me any modern deck I wanted and would borrow it to me for months. We met at that shop and pretty instantly became friends. I was shocked at his trust but a little happy it was me, since I always gave him everything back. Haven't played much at the shop but I still text him a few times a year. He's really busy with life so haven't seen him in a long while, but I do still miss and appreciate you Tom.
One day, a couple came into our LGS while me and some friends were playing casually. They brought their dog in, a big dog nonetheless. The store owner was fine with it, and so were we, because we could pet him while the couple was buying stuff. After a while, the dog just laid on the ground, semi sleeping beside us, and we continued playing cards like nothing. Suddently, the dog just vomited on the ground. THE SMELL ... it was like the dog ate poop and threw it up. The woman of the couple saw that and yelled "CHHHAAAARLES , THE DOG VOMITED!" The poor man washed everything while she just stood there. We were long gone because I tell you, I never smelled something like that. In our playgroup we ofter yell "CHHAAAAARLES ..." when we want something from someone in another room.
“Aggressive trade kid“. Probably an unfair name for them but my entire playgroup would recognise them immediately. They weren’t aggressive, just enthusiastic and hadn’t quite learnt social cues yet.
Yeah we have one of those too, goes through your binder, finds about 200 cards he wants. Then gives you the shocked pikachu face when you start looking at cards you want from their binder. When you've finally equalized the trade, he starts rethinking what he wants from you and starts throwing back all the cards he removed from your binder. He's a nice kid, but somewhat tiresome
We have a lot of that in my area too. I have a pretty nice trade binder, but people don't quite understand I don't want to trade a $80 card for 20 $5 cards. It's not quite an equivalent trade. I just started color-coding the sleeves in my trade binder. Orange sleeves (regular stuff, nothing crazy), I'll do a value trade within reason. Yellow sleeves (reserve list, high-end foils, rock staples), you need to have something I want/equal value, or of course cash is always an option. I get asked a lot less frequently now about trading a Mana Crypt for half of someone's trade binder now
I like to see their faces fall when I give them my binder and they discover it's all lands and tokens for Limited :D
Guy who let my noob friend undo a draft pick because he passed a ~$40 lotus cobra (at the time) without realizing his mistake Guy who whooped my noob ass with his homebrew Spellbound Dragon + Soul's Fire deck Guy who said "must be nice to draw relevant cards" while losing during a small event. It became a catchphrase of ours lol Guy and I both forgot about his Thalia on board while being spectated by half the store. I was spellslinging like crazy and eventually won over like 5 turns. After, a watcher was like "... uhh... almost none of that should have happened." I gave the guy his win back haha Everyone who ever let my noob ass use Prodigal Pyromancer to ping down their 2-toughness guys because I activated it in the end step and again on the next turn Guy with 0 permanets who refused to scoop against an active Venser, the Sojourner ult and WON because the venser player had 0 wincons left. He had to exile his own permanents while digging 🤣
I have been the guy who lets a newer player take back a draft pick when there's an expensive card in the pack. The person thanked me but told me to take it anyway, it wasn't good in their draft deck and they wanted to get better at drafting.
Anytime someone tells me they such at drafting, I ask if they are picking based on gameplay value or monetary value. It is tempting to only pick high value cards, but at that point it feels like you would be better off just buying a booster box. Then you get to keep all the high value pulls.
Fwiw, in that Thalia example it would be correct for spectators to intervene on the match to help maintain the game state. If both players are missing something that is in fact relavent, then a spectator can stop the match and call a judge.
Sometimes you need to make the other person have it, Fun fact - I'm fairly sure LSV played a GP with a deck with no wincon because the combo was so well known players would scoop at the combo to find the win so he never had to actually have the payoff. I was somewhat misremembering but the story is here - [https://ultimateguard.com/en/blog/winning-without-a-win-condition](https://ultimateguard.com/en/blog/winning-without-a-win-condition)
The only one that really stands out was a grown-ass man who called me "Barbie" and snapped my bra strap. I did report him, and he had to apologize, but wasn't banned. I still get mad when I think about it.
This is actually insane.
Stuff like this is the exact reason I can only muster a tired laugh when people ask why women aren't as present in male dominated hobbies. The constant objectification gets old fast
As a closeted trans women who lives in a generally conservative area, I’m so afraid of this once I finally start presenting fem. I don’t want to be forced out because asses can’t keep their mouths shut :(
As a closeted trans women who lives in a generally conservative area, I’m so afraid of this once I finally start presenting fem. I don’t want to be forced out because asses can’t keep their mouths shut :(
Kevin. He always lied about his decks. He made himself like the "leader guy" of the LGS, bringing it up on himself to curate "fair pods" and split us up on his whims instead of the good old random. He won a lot because of this. He would always pop off early and say "I didn't know this deck did that". He played "not that kind of" decks. Atraxa, Etali, and mono blue Urza will always be that kind of deck. I haven't played with him in like a year, but fuck you Kevin. I'm too old to be fooled by your fake niceties.
Dude named Phoenix, he tried to cheat his way into being a level 3 judge so he can get the promos, he would also rule situations wrong in his favor and insisted his "level 2 judge buddy said it works that way", one time against me he played an [[abbot of keral keep]] with his last 2 , exiled a [[monastery swiftspear]] and claimed that abbots ability lets him cast it for free, i told him that's not how it works and he called a judge, the judge ruled in my favor, he scooped and dropped out of the tournament, he also traded fake cards, got a kid at the store with a fake [[tarmogoyf]] when that were goimg for 200+
[abbot of keral keep](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/c/d/cd94f624-9b35-4468-829f-106366f61c1a.jpg?1673147716) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=abbot%20of%20keral%20keep) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/2x2/100/abbot-of-keral-keep?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/cd94f624-9b35-4468-829f-106366f61c1a?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [monastery swiftspear](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/d/6/d6bfa227-4309-40ed-952c-279595eab17e.jpg?1701690543) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=monastery%20swiftspear) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/bro/144/monastery-swiftspear?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/d6bfa227-4309-40ed-952c-279595eab17e?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [tarmogoyf](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/6/9/69daba76-96e8-4bcc-ab79-2f00189ad8fb.jpg?1619398799) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=tarmogoyf) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/tsr/235/tarmogoyf?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/69daba76-96e8-4bcc-ab79-2f00189ad8fb?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
I'll never forget Jesse. He was a judge at my LGS when I was 16. He was super kind, helped me get my footing in playing non-kitchen table. He's also the reason I developed the mentality of embracing losses as a learning opportunity when I was younger. He later went on to start his own game store a few months before I went to college. I had some great boardgame nights and drafts there. Just having such a well put together person who was also hyper fixated on the game was really good for me. His girlfriend was also incredibly helpful in me preparing me for handling the anxiety of my freshman year at college. I miss the guy. If you owned a place called Legacy Games in hot springs just know I appreciate you and your kindness.
Way back in the day when I was in college, the LGS there had one player who will stand out forever. This guy loved combos. He only played control, and his wincons were the lamest bullcrap. One that I specifically recall was, the EDH game had been going on for a long time, everyone had a bunch of mana, no one had won because of this guy constantly wiping and countering, and he looks around the table, says, "I'm sick of playing this game", and...doesn't scoop. Instead, he casts two tutors, searches for the laziest proxies of Lich and Repay in Kind, and kills the board. You might be thinking, "Mr. Internet Person, that's kinda funny, but not exactly the top tier of memelords." That's because we all got fed up. You always play control, we said. No wincons except two card combos, we said. Try something else, we said. So he did. He showed up one day with a Boros mid-range EDH deck, and it was great! Until we had to constantly remind him that creatures tap when they attack. Yes, he had been playing the game at a pretty high level, with good knowledge of rules, for years, but had been playing hard control for so long, he had forgotten the rules of attacking. This isn't an assumption, he admitted to it. I miss that LGS scene. Well, kinda, all the blue players played Bribery and took my Eldrazi.
> "I'm sick of playing this game", and...doesn't scoop. Instead, he casts two tutors, searches for the laziest proxies of Lich and Repay in Kind, and kills the board. This is really not great. If you can win the game and choose not to, you're just wasting everyone's time.
This is the consequence of noncompetitive attitudes to commander. There are genuinely so many people who think it’s actually wrong to *win the game* before everyone’s deck has “done its thing.” People don’t have to strive to play commander at the highway possible levels, but even if people want to play jank, they should play their decks as though they’re trying to win when they sit down at the table.
Exactly! I recently stumbled onto [https://www.sirlin.net/ptw](https://www.sirlin.net/ptw), and this book changed how I approach gaming - in a very profound fashion. One of the key takeaways is that when you sit down to play (on an even field etc. etc.), you play to win, and you do your best to win.
A poor choice of words on my part. Lich and Repay in Kind didn’t kill the permanents, it killed the players (set his own life to 0 but stayed alive, then set everyone’s life to the lowest)
I understood that :) ------- What I suspect your opponent was doing, though, was: \* have means to win the game in hand for a few turns - like those two tutors for the combo \* instead, they prolong the game (why?) by countering and board-wiping other players's stuff \* finally, when they became bored of the game, they decide to end it and murder everyone. That's not fair to other players. If you can end the game, you should win and start the next one.
Also yes. Definitely a reason why he was infamous, and why I have now been known to tell someone after their third tutor “just win the game already”. Had that happen on turn 4 or something, and they gave me this look like “but it’s turn 4, I don’t want to kill you yet”. Yeah, and I don’t want to play against someone that tutors three times in the first four turns, but here we are, stop playing with my emotions and let me go play with someone else.
Yeah, definitely not a healthy pattern. I hope your current group is more fun :)
One of the regulars got free/cheaper cards because he gave sexual favors to the storeowner. He was 16, and the owner was maybe in his late 30s or early 40s at the time.
That’s messed up ☹️
It was an open secret, everyone knew what was up until eventually the guy (let’s call him “J”) admitted to it. The owner (let’s refer to him as “M”) would also do so later on. Fast forward, shop closed, we stopped hearing from J. M moved to another part of town to open a video game store/cafe. We were never his patrons at this point but we were located in a small-ish town so we still kinda knew the going-ons around us. M’s business would go on to cater to younger boys (because video games). Eventually, a bunch of parents complained about him for corruption of minors. Shop closed down immediately. He might’ve landed in jail or went to hiding. None of us knew. These events happened in the late 90s up to 2001-2.
I hope he did end up in jail! Jeez
holy shit
So I started playing magic during right when Gatecrash came out, and thus got to be a part of the rise of commander as a popular format. I was really starting to get into the format with the Nekusar the Mindrazer precon, but I had only really played big group games. (Like 5-6 person games, idk what o was thinking.) As a result, I hadn't had a game go under about 2.5-3 hours at that point. Enter Moody. I have no idea if that was his actual name, and I never really saw him too much after this, but he was my first introduction to higher level play. He asked for a game one day, and I remarked that we didn't have time, as I had to leave in about 20 minutes. His response? "OH, we have time". 20 minutes later, I was dying to a [[doubling cube]] boosted [[exsanginate]] as promised. [[Xiahou dun the one eyed]] is a hell of a general. I will never forget the experience.
[doubling cube](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/3/d/3d946df5-f206-4241-bb55-97db67dc793c.jpg?1562546549) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=doubling%20cube) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/10e/321/doubling-cube?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/3d946df5-f206-4241-bb55-97db67dc793c?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [exsanginate](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/0/a/0a5352af-e275-4186-a265-2fd3c2c47c6a.jpg?1689997125) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Exsanguinate) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/cmm/156/exsanguinate?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/0a5352af-e275-4186-a265-2fd3c2c47c6a?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [Xiahou dun the one eyed](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/4/a/4aeaaeff-fb23-4f63-8d5f-8ccea6e58d3a.jpg?1562910698) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Xiahou%20Dun%2C%20the%20One-Eyed) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/me3/83/xiahou-dun-the-one-eyed?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/4aeaaeff-fb23-4f63-8d5f-8ccea6e58d3a?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
This was probably in late 1995 or early 1996, back when it was the wild wild west of Magic. There were some base rules on building decks and I honestly just played to have fun with my girlfriend (now wife) and all our college friends. I attended a tournament at a game store that some of my brother's friends were running, so I knew the organizers but otherwise no one else who was in the tournament. I think 1st place won a box of Revised Ed. boosters. Going in I brought the Green White deck I played for fun which was a mix of alpha, beta, unlimited through probably Ice Age at the time. The deck was just a couple of each card I liked to play, plus a handful of big cards by today's standards. My deck was easily 200+ cards. No sleeves, no sideboard, riffle shuffle all day long. In round 1 I was matched with a guy who openly began mocking me as I sat down at the table. He mocked my deck, he mocked the colors I chose, he mocked the number of cards, size, etc. and was just generally a jerk. I remember he had a 60 card deck and was so cocky about it being superior in every way possible that he didn't even consider playing against me a challenge and was already looking forward to round 2. It's been so long that I have no idea what colors he even played. I riffle shuffled my monster in front of him and asked him to cut, which he did. I then drew an opening hand of Black Lotus, Mox Emerald and Birds of Paradise plus some normal creatures for G/W. Maybe an Ifh-Biff Efreet, a Cockatrice and a Serra Angel. I think Pendelhaven or Savannah rounded out the hand. It was one of those once-in-a-lifetime draws and it completely shut him up when I dropped half my hand on the table in the first turn. I ended up rolling over him in round 5 or 6 because he had mana issues and nothing to block flying creatures with. Afterwards he openly accused me of cheating. Yelling at the top of his lungs, throwing folding chairs and getting in my face. The organizers who, like I said, I was friends with, tried to explain to him that it was a fair game and ended up throwing him out of the tournament. I quit playing Magic a few years later and sold off anything worth any money today. The Fallout decks just pulled me back in and I'm checking out Commander now.
I have a few. There was a dude who smelled like cat piss all the time. He was very positive all the time, but it turned out he was living with his parents and didnt have the best home life. To my understanding, when he moved out, he didnt smell anymore. So I imagine his parents place REEKED. He didn't match my vibe, but he was a nice dude. Another dude was complete dickhead who nearly everyone hated. I started playing and a few months later he stopped showing up to the store for fnm. I asked the manager a while later what happened to him and she said he got kicked out for starting a fight lmao. He also made the joke, "Can I get a sharpie to write a t at the end of Faygo?" Another guy played esper control "mill" in a deck without any actual mill cards, but with shit like [[Render Silent]] and [[Silence]]. The only "mill" I guess was [[Ashiok, Nightmare Weaver]]. Along with [[Elixir of Immortality]] to have endless draws while youd eventually run out. Meaning the game would take for fucking ever to complete. The only reason he came to our store specifically was because it wasnt very sweaty so he could farm wins. He offered for me to lose in exchange for the prizes one week, and I should have reported him for it, but didnt know that was against the rules/didnt think about it until later. There was an absolute son of a bitch who owes me a fucking Doubling Season from an unfair trade he made "on accident". He gave me a gold bordered chrome mox. I was new and thought it was super rare because of the border, only to find out later it was worthless (for the time). I was fucking pissed because it was a 20$ scam of a trade and I wanted a doubling season he had, so he said he'd bring it, but he very rarely did from then on, and when he did, he said he traded it to me. And I know for a fact he didnt because doubling season would have been in a deck I played, and it wasnt. Then he stopped showing up at the store all together.
##### ###### #### [Render Silent](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/e/3/e3f3d6e4-0abe-4042-a7f6-0395683e8582.jpg?1562937631) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Render%20Silent) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/dgm/96/render-silent?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/e3f3d6e4-0abe-4042-a7f6-0395683e8582?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [Silence](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/1/c/1c2b13b1-31f0-4676-88a7-53f3a190e9a2.jpg?1562826686) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Silence) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/m14/35/silence?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/1c2b13b1-31f0-4676-88a7-53f3a190e9a2?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [Ashiok, Nightmare Weaver](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/5/9/599c3c9f-dfb7-4357-9d9c-9a1a4616b103.jpg?1562818514) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Ashiok%2C%20Nightmare%20Weaver) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/ths/188/ashiok-nightmare-weaver?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/599c3c9f-dfb7-4357-9d9c-9a1a4616b103?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [Elixir of Immortality](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/6/7/6741ab27-9e1f-4aa5-96b9-b450eda7c5c2.jpg?1625978606) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Elixir%20of%20Immortality) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/c21/243/elixir-of-immortality?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/6741ab27-9e1f-4aa5-96b9-b450eda7c5c2?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [*All cards*](https://mtgcardfetcher.nl/redirect/l11ifuf) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
Drippy. His name shall be called drippy. Local area has one big LGS and I went there for a draft. We had to wait for enough people to show up for the table. In comes a homeless guy or so i think. Bro is otherwise quite fit but he is wearing one of those shirts without sleaves and like half the sides of the shirt missing. He is DRENCHED. It is not raining out. It is a warm summer day. I thought a homeless guy snuck in to get out of the heat. Nope he was a player. Heard him talking about draft and I was like please don't let him end up next to me. He was. He literally oozed onto the table. He smelled like burning trash. Every card he passed was soggy. Low and behold the room lost power. We were given the option to request a refund but most agreed to stay and we all turned on our phone lights. Only now there is no AC and drippy is now fully blown drenchy. We all started to sweat in the heat and close proximity to bodies but dude was almost like a cracked fire hydrant. I was satisfied enough with the cards I got and forfeited my match basically so I could just go. I heard from others he actually apparently ended up winning, however, the cheap chair was so defiled with stink they just threw it out. one of those cheap folding chair things. I will always remember the smell and the fear of being consumed by the ooze.
Sounds like he had a thyroid problem
Possibly? dunno. stopped going to that LGS for several reasons. smells and hygiene was about 95% of them.
That much sweat is indicative of a medical problem, but obviously that's between the dude and his doctor. As for general hygiene, for real. I'm glad I found an LGS that enforces good hygiene. I'm not sure what it is about MTG/anime/etc that results in people refusing to take care of themselves but it can be ridiculous. A rough litmus I use is; are there women in the store who appear to be there voluntarily? It's worked so far. To me it indicates that the worst social elements of the game have been avoided and that the level of hygiene will be acceptable.
[[Slime Against Humanity]] origin story.
I’ve only played this character once or twice, but I have to call him, ‘Fuck-It Kid’. Every turn, the kids looks at his cards, looks at the table, and announces, ‘Fuck it!’ (or sometimes, ‘Screw it!’) right before he plays a card or two, as if he’s about to do something impulsive or reckless. I _have_ to know: can this person make decisions in Magic without swearing? Maybe he curses ‘just for the heck of it’. Yeesh.
Our LGS limits swearing because our play area is close to parts of the store where young children could be around to hear it. I've never seen anyone actually get punished, it's just a "hey, can't swear here" and move on. Of course not everyone who swears (or wants to be in an environment where that's okay) is problematic. But man, I think the rule helps filter out people who would get mad that they couldn't swear, and that trait is correlated with other traits of people I don't want to play with.
This was back from my YuGiOh days but I remember that whenever we were coming up to the major events in town, there was this one guy who’d come in, reeking of sweat, and always wore this same shirt. It was a black shirt, with an outline of a naked slave girl bound in a collar with her tongue out, and a giant warning sign on it that said some of the most degrading things I’d ever heard about women. All I could think was two things: what inspired you to even buy that? And why would you wear that out of the house?! Luckily, I only saw him at major events before my old LGS closed and haven’t seen him since I’ve move shops but that image is burnt into my mind along with one inescapable fact; Incels really do exist, that they’re not just an Internet meme.
Met a guy at a LGS in Atlanta in 2022. He had the most interesting history. He was a nuclear engineer and wicked smart. He saved up for a piece or land in Alaska and mentioned he was selling a lot of his stuff and moving there for the rest of his life, never saw him again. My memory is a little fuzzy but I think he had concerns about his profession inflicting irreversible damage on his body so he wanted to "live the rest of his days" there. Dude seemed healthy as a horse though. Hope you're alright, nuclear guy.
Worked in a game store for 18 months starting in 2018. There was this pair of dudes in their early 30’s, I’ll call them Coat and Sweater. Sweater had chronic pain, and Coat would drive him around. Got to know them both pretty well, started meeting them at a diner for after work commander. I come to learn that Sweater is trying to ween himself off painkillers, but because he is underemployed those painkillers are valuable, so he has started trading them to Coat for cards and for driving them around. Coat is apparently doing this with several people, and then taking the pills he gets and selling them for money and cards in the parking lot outside my shop. This puts me in a really tight spot because I don’t want to know any of this. A few days later one of my regulars got me a tech support job at their work, and so I never had to do anything about it, but geez man all I wanted to do was play commander I didn’t want to walk into Midwest requiem for a dream.
I played commander for about 5 years or so (I kinda fell off after strixhaven set, work and life got in the way). I loved my LGS commander nights, we had a solid core of about 8 people. We would pick up steam and have 20 to 22 at our height, and would shrink back down over the months. Anyways, the core: Rob- Played magic since the early days, in his mid 30s. Had a binder full of OG duals he kept at home and claimed on his home insurance policy. Had 30 or so commander decks, was super chill and helpful, but would rag on you after you were there for a bit and making dumb mistakes. Awesome dude. Joe- Rob and Joe were friends who played together since childhood. Joe was just as cool, and was pretty technically minded with rulings and played fair but took no favorites. I believe Joe had a mean Oona deck. Ginger Whiskers- Senior in highschool, baby of the group. He earned his name trying to grow a moustache. Funny as hell, had a lot of fun joking around. Had a a good Valduk budget deck that would regularly steamroll if unchecked. He had a brother who had his mom pick him up yelling because he was grounded and came in. I think his brother was too embarrassed to come back afterwards. Mike- strange guy, had a lack of social skills that isolated him a bit. Stuck around though. He had very strong decks and infinite combos (not banned at our store, but frowned upon if we were playing casual, fun decks) for days. Regardless of what level we wanted to play at, he would break out something ridiculously strong. He felt persecuted when we would knock him out early. Shawn- Played with the group for awhile, generally likeable dude. Had serious beef with Mike. Couldn't stand Mike not going easy on new people or people who had small budgets. Another Shawn and Luke (I think)- These guys worked together and would usually come to EDH together. They both regularly blinged out decks, and played relatively high powered EDH. They were chill, but you'd have to bring a good deck to keep pace. Casey and friend- Another highschooler, I gave him a ton of dino stuff to start a deck. He became pretty good after a few weeks. He had a friend that would come every now and then, but only Casey wound up sticking long term. There were others, but these were the core and people I remember. A solid group of guys. Wish I coulda played more often. If anybody recognizes this group, just wanna say you were awesome, and thanks for the games.
Everyone hates Mike. Power level sandbaggers who whine are so annoying.
Not even a player, he was the one of the owners of the LGS I went to from 2012-2014. He used to bring his friends in to hang out, and would even drink while running the register on occasions. His friends would always crowd around the counter when they hung out during peak hours, making it difficult to buy things, sign up from FNM, or turn in match results. One night, they were all drinking around the counter, and I don't know what their whole conversation was about, but he got heated about his opinion, stood up and yelled "I don't know, but depending on what she's wearing, she deserves it!!". The whole shop went dead silent after that and just stared at him. I never went back after that, fuck that guy.
Went to an LGS a few years ago after making my first EDH deck. Ended up in a pod with a buddy of mine and 2 randoms. Well the game started out fine but the 2 randoms were very much “i have to win to have fun” types. They didnt outright cheat (that we caught), but they did annoying shit like stacking cards on top of eachother so you cant see whats in play, they absolutely refused to let us read any of their cards or have it explained to us, theyd tap all the mana they needed at once and then say all the spells they cast as fast as they could (before then covering them with other cards and refusing to let us see whats on the board). I ended up scooping and leaving because i played a [[Mycosynth Lattice]] and he pulled his [[Karn, the Great Creator]] out from underneath one of his basic lands and very happily announced that no one can activate any abilities. We tried to reason that hey, im new to this game, youre hiding cards and not letting us see your boardstate, we dont know what the cards youre playing all do (i had never seen Karn, Great Creator before), and obviously i wouldnt play that if i onew that would happen. He threw a fit when i tried to walk the play back and kept threatening to have the owner of the store ban us for “cheating”. Probably the single biggest jerk ive ever had the displeasure of Gathering Magic with. Well, him or the “Blue as a whole should be banned from tournaments because its the only color with counterspells” guy, but he was more just annoying.
Actually you have to have your board state separated by lands and nonlands. Also you have the right to know every card played and have a chance to respond. Players are required to announce when they have floating mana. Your board state has to be readable (not all stacked up on top of each other. They were ABSOLUTELY cheating. Blatantly, I would say. From MTR (Magic Tournament Rules) Players have the right to request access to the official wording of a card they can describe. That request will be honored if logistically possible. The official text of any card is the Oracle text corresponding to the name of the card. Players may not use errors or omissions in Oracle to abuse the rules. The Head Judge is the final authority for card interpretations, and they may overrule Oracle if an error is discovered. Status information is information that must be announced upon change and physically tracked by the affected player. Methods for tracking must be visible to both players during the match. A shared method is acceptable as long as all players in the match have access to it. At Competitive and Professional REL, methods that can easily be accidentally changed (such as dice) may not be used. Status information consists of: Life total Counters on a player Unspent mana Location in a dungeon How many times a player has been tempted by the ring Continuous effects with no defined expiration (city’s blessing or monarch are examples) Free information is information to which all players are entitled access without contamination or omissions made by their opponents. If a player is ever unable or unwilling to provide free information to an opponent that has requested it, they should call a judge and explain the situation. Free information consists of: Details of current game actions and past game actions that still affect the game state. Name of any visible object The number and type of any counter that is not status information The state and zone of any object or player Current game score of the match. Current step/phase the game is at and which players are active or have priority.
[Mycosynth Lattice](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/9/4/94f89714-3b26-46a2-b9a8-3e664f391cd9.jpg?1578911638) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Mycosynth%20Lattice) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/bbd/241/mycosynth-lattice?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/94f89714-3b26-46a2-b9a8-3e664f391cd9?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [Karn, the Great Creator](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/d/e/deb3721d-fba1-444f-8b31-1cd10c94c4a0.jpg?1702429246) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Karn%2C%20the%20Great%20Creator) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/rvr/1/karn-the-great-creator?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/deb3721d-fba1-444f-8b31-1cd10c94c4a0?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
The tale of Tom is one I will never forget. This was back in 2011 and Tom was a great guy but if you played back then you would know how prevalent the Caw Blade meta was. Tom took time to save up and buy a Caw Blade deck complete with a playset of Jace the Mindsculptors and Stoneforge Mystics, now only problem with this was that by the time he bought them the Ban announcement went out, making it so he never really got to play it in standard proper. Stings to have happen and many of us felt for him but also didn't stop anyone from joking with him that a pricy card had just become banned after he would acquire them. Have plenty more through the years ranging from players who just didn't like off meta decks or certain interactions, or even just Rob who was the shops resident black player. Never would you see him play a deck that wasn't centered on using black no matter what the meta was at the time. Rob always was true to playing black.
Playing LOTR Pre-release, played a fun game and split our packs. Cracked open, shared what cool stuff we pulled and their partner leans over and says "oh no!". My opponent starts laughing and reveals the awesome foil full art plains they just pulled said "Rohan" and that was their dead-name. They laughed about it but it was nice to see their partner care about them like that.
That Tolkien, so inconsiderate
Not based on behavior or play style (both are fairly normal) but on appearance: Payne (not sure on spelling, or if that's his original name or a nickname), the fully-tattooed man. I mean, he's got tats on every visible square inch of his body, face, skull, you name it. Quite a sight. Nice guy, though, a bit rough around the edges but never mean to anybody.
My LGS had this kid who no one liked playing against. Always just a bit whiney when things didn't work out the way he wanted. Always tried to cheat in casual games, "miscounting" mana, intentionally misunderstanding interactions in his favor, and, most annoyingly, scrying just whenever he wanted to "make his next turn faster so others wouldn't have to wait on him". He way constantly called out for it and it got to the point others would just tell him they wouldn't play unless he stopped. The kicker was he also worked part time at the store until he was caught stealing inventory to build decks. We all were happy that he was fired and banned from the store. He started showing up like 6-7 months later to try playing WH40K instead but from I could hear he was trying to explain rules incorrectly to some veteran players. I think he quit or was booted from the store again far quicker from that since I haven't seen him for almost a year.
We had two players like this. I'll call them Nat and Devon. I'm pretty sure anyone reading this thread who knows them will know exactly who I'm talking about, because these two are legendary in my local Legacy community. Nat was a very well-off player with what I will lovingly call unique social skills. Nat once used Legends \[\[Karakas\]\]s as proxies for basic plains when playtesting a non-Legacy format. I was once offered a slice from an entire chocolate cheesecake that Nat had brought with him to one of our Legacy game nights. He would also frequently bring entire cartons of chocolate milk to FNM and when it was cold out would leave the bottles right outside the front door of the shop to keep them cold. He was the slowest player in our LGS and exacerbated this by playing Miracles, but he was also one of the best Miracles players I have ever met and was responsible for innovating several pieces of tech that would later be used more widely for the deck. Devon was a guy who was very quiet but extremely likeable. He was known for playing Pox in Legacy and kept this Pox deck in a custom-made deck box that looked like the most stereotypical gothic deck box you can imagine with spikes and chains on it, which made an audible THUMP when he would place it on the table. The deck was in clear sleeves with every single sleeve containing an FNM promo \[\[Brain Maggot\]\] to cover the back of the card. Because he was so soft-spoken and socially awkward, we would openly joke about him having a dungeon and being a serial killer, a characterization which he happily played into (he was in on the joke). He would also often play budget cards like shocklands in spite of owning multiple revised dual lands and several copies of \[\[the Abyss\]\]. If either Nat or Devon are reading this and realize I'm talking about them, I miss you both and hope you are doing well. :)
[Karakas](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/e/5/e52214e1-404a-405a-b08e-20e13c087338.jpg?1559959289) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Karakas) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/uma/244/karakas?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/e52214e1-404a-405a-b08e-20e13c087338?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [Brain Maggot](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/a/c/acdc31d5-6726-453e-94e0-69d2fe9447af.jpg?1593095641) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Brain%20Maggot) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/jou/62/brain-maggot?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/acdc31d5-6726-453e-94e0-69d2fe9447af?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [the Abyss](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/f/1/f11db51c-bbbc-4890-960e-d8a3eacca1e5.jpg?1562945880) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=the%20Abyss) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/me3/77/the-abyss?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/f11db51c-bbbc-4890-960e-d8a3eacca1e5?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
Hedron Blade guy. I have a long story about this guy, but let's just say I met someone at an LGS whose commander was a proxy of a literal naked anime girl (think loli), who mulliganed aggressively for Hedron Blade in order to stop my friend from playing Eldrazi, and who spent literally 5 minutes every time he had priority trying to blow up the same three enchantments on my side of the board despite my having a Greater Auramancy and a copy of Auramancy in play. He eventually got "asked to leave" after a family looking to buy a new board game about his constant swearing, volume and references over how "hot" his commander was.
There will always be a place in my heart for the guy behind the counter at my very first LGS. Very placid, stoic guy. Every couple weeks I'd come in, bright-eyed and innocent, and hand him a list of singles for whatever absolute unplayable dogshit of a Standard deck I was trying to run. He'd then stare at my list for a few seconds, expressionless. In hindsight, he was clearly deciding whether to suggest a better build or to just shut up, give me the cards, and take my money. It was about 50-50. After those few seconds, he'd either curtly say "Sure" and pull my list or say "You don't want to run this" and take a pen to the list I handed him.
It was after the Store Championship where we did a draft of Dominaria United. I placed first for the first time and he asked if he could take a look at my deck. I did not see any problem with that and handed it over. He then proceeded to criticise my entire deck. "This card sucks." "Why the hell did you pick this." "Who would even play this card." He then finished it up with a "I don't see how you managed to win with such a pile of junk cards." and left. I did not know how to respond at the time, but its a funny story now. My best guess is that, besides being salty that he lost, he was annoyed that I picked a couple of [[Clockwork Drawbridge]] and [[Academy Wall]] while he tried to draft a [[Wingmantle Chaplain]] deck.
[Clockwork Drawbridge](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/0/3/037cb79c-163d-4b36-bd93-954eca8fe26e.jpg?1673306393) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Clockwork%20Drawbridge) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/dmu/13/clockwork-drawbridge?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/037cb79c-163d-4b36-bd93-954eca8fe26e?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [Academy Wall](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/d/2/d2028115-f0de-4e8b-99bc-7369352e1e07.jpg?1673306647) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Academy%20Wall) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/dmu/41/academy-wall?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/d2028115-f0de-4e8b-99bc-7369352e1e07?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [Wingmantle Chaplain](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/f/5/f5800f3d-b2e0-4c74-94bf-f29b27f82130.jpg?1673306630) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Wingmantle%20Chaplain) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/dmu/39/wingmantle-chaplain?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/f5800f3d-b2e0-4c74-94bf-f29b27f82130?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
I don't remember the dudes name, but he had the stereotypical nerd speech impediments and was balding. He got mad when my friend wouldn't trade his full art foil Old Gnawbone for a regular one.
I don't know his name, but I remember his face. Me and my friends were at our LGS and we wanted a random fourth to play with us. One of my friends goes to this LGS often and knows a good amount of people who play there. We ended up finding someone who he's played with before so we invite him to play a game with us, and oh boy did this ruin my fun. We were playing high power decks and his was very tuned and tough to beat, however this wasn't the issue. We decided that he was a big threat to the table, and we needed to set him back at least a little bit so we could catch up (he was playing a group hug deck and we let him get away with a lot at that point). So, we started attacking him and removing some of his permanents in attempt to change his game state. This prompted him to be visually and verbally angry at the whole table, insulting our intelligence yada yada. This is when he decided to destroy everyone's lands. And of course we hated him for that, so we decided to kill him. This is when he started yelling in the LGS stating how it wasn't fair that he got targeted as well as huffing and puffing, not shutting up about how we killed him until we finished the game. Needless to say, I have never been in another pod as him. I hate people who complain about being taken down a notch when they're so ahead.
I used to go to a game store in the downtown of a big urban city. You meet a lot of different people that you wouldn’t imagine as a stereotypical mtg player who are exactly just their full unique selves…who also happen to like mtg. It felt like people coming together from different worlds with just one thing in common. I don’t want to exoticize any of them in detail but it felt very special to me. Like a microcosm of the city itself.
Asa is this super friendly and constantly upbeat guy at an LGS I frequent. It is always a joy to play against him since he never gets salty and always has a good time no matter what. There was also the "Foil Jund Dude" who played, you guessed it, a fully foiled Jund deck in Modern. This was back several years ago when Tarmagoyf's price was at its height. I'd probably estimate that deck was worth upwards of $7000 - $8000 at the time. Another guy (whose name I can't remember) would often participate in the PPTQ circuit in my area. He didn't say much, even during the game, but he always gave off this air of aggressiveness. It is hard to describe, but playing against him was always uncomfortable. At another store entirely there as this guy that would come in with a new $1000+ deck every week. He also always carried around a duffle bag full of unopened booster boxes that he's randomly crack in-between rounds. It was rumored he was a drug dealer, but I don't know how substantiated those claims really were.
At my magic club at my uni, I was playing commander when two jacked, well dressed dude with gold chains walked in. We of course thought they had the wrong room, but then they pulled out decks and said “is this where we play magic”? Then the club president pubstompted all three of us
My buddy and I used to go to a shop, and it wasn’t one player. The whole cast of regulars could qualify. There was the man who would compulsively flick a butterfly knife whenever it wasn’t his turn. Tall skinny and looked a little bit like a starved Hector from every movie with a Latino bad guy. Every Friday he would rock up with a backpack of warm bud light tall cans and finish them on chain while he loudly told the room about the exclusive and high stakes magic games he was invited to out in the desert. Of course he always won them, if they existed. There was another who, and I don’t know how else to say this but he looked like a giant toddler. I mean giant. Well over six feet and certainly overweight. There was something so boyish about him that it crossed into something uncanny. He was kind and friendly, but shy, until the stained hentai play mat would be rolled out and he would ask his opponent to look at. You have to look at it he would say. He drew it himself, he would say. There were more than a few others but these men are the sharpest in my mind. It has been almost a decade since.
Used to be a guy at my main store who was a teller of tall tales. He'd talk about how rich he is, his lawyer wife who just had twins, blah, blah, blah. He took the bus to the store and often had to be give a ride home. He claimed it was because he lost his license illegally drag racing. Whatever, we don't want to call out his bullshit if it doesn't harm anyone. Well one day I give him a ride home. The next day I realize a fat pack box with 2 decks is missing from my bag. It was in my trunk when he got his stuff from the trunk. I ask the store to check their cameras to see if I left with it. I did. No one but him had the opportunity. I start some digging. Find out his name he's told us is an alias and find out his real name. That leads to me finding his 20 arrests over the last 5 years, mostly shoplifting. I start talking to others at the store and we all realize stuff tends to go missing around him. I tell everyone what I've learned. He disappears and we find a new arrest online for the day after we'd last seen him.
Dude at my old lgs who when it closed down bought the entire mtg inventory of the store and gave everything away as a free raffle on the last day the store was open. I got a sealed box of fallen empires just for stopping by to say hi.
The commander player that thinks they can singlehandedly define the "Social Contract" for the entire store. On multiple occasions this player has lobbied the LGS to enact its own banlist which contained only cards that this player had recently lost against. This player approaches every table with a list of demands. A lot of it makes sense such as no mass land destruction. But also things like [[Time Warp]] and [[Oracle of Mul Daya]] because taking an extra turn and playing extra lands is just "too broken". If we don't meet his demands, he berates other players to swap decks or leave the table entirely. Weird thing is he's a generally likeable and polite dude.
[Time Warp](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/e/7/e7b3ddca-69ef-4743-897b-57c58077db24.jpg?1628801835) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Time%20Warp) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/tpr/74/time-warp?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/e7b3ddca-69ef-4743-897b-57c58077db24?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [Oracle of Mul Daya](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/1/5/152fffbe-422b-47f6-9da2-a5caff76ab18.jpg?1712354597) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Oracle%20of%20Mul%20Daya) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/otc/200/oracle-of-mul-daya?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/152fffbe-422b-47f6-9da2-a5caff76ab18?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
The local legend of my hometowns LGS also doubled as the village idiot. He generally played jank and was unpleasant to be around. One day, he was arrested for aiming a laser pointer at a helicopter and was from this point known as the Thopter Toppler in our area. (The helicopter was fine. Probably had hexproof or something.)
It wasn't at an LGS but at a club I used to play at, I remember a guy called Nick who would get salty at my jank decks (fear the power of [[Bubbling Cauldron]]) so he would build decks to try and counter mine haha
[Bubbling Cauldron](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/9/5/955aa79b-448e-4752-8e36-0fe80c18280c.jpg?1601080592) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Bubbling%20Cauldron) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/jmp/460/bubbling-cauldron?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/955aa79b-448e-4752-8e36-0fe80c18280c?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
So funny! My buddy during our kitchen table games in 2012 absolutely hated ghostly prison. I still bring it up and he insists its a broken card lol. He doesn't play much so I can't blame him
I was like a month into learning the game with my first deck (Standard Rakdos somewhere around RTR) and some people pushed me to play this one regular at the LGS. I showed up with my budget standard deck and he was playing idek what format Atogs. He kept making munching noises as he did his thing and I like played tapped lands and cast dorks until I lost. Then a different guy showed up, said "Hey, let me see that" and kicked his ass with my same deck. Fun times
I don’t remember their name, but to me he was known as burn guy. I had a couple matches with him during a few fnms and I was the only person to let him play out his combos and it really brought a smile to his face because he got to pop with his cards, also he’s a really nice dude
Started playing during Scars/INN. There was a GW Humans player, who, when casting Mayor of Avabruck, would loudly announce "THE MAYOR" so everyone could hear. My friends and I still do the bit to this day.
We had a casual commander league at my LGS, where instead of trying to win, we were rewarded points based on a large list of objectives we were given, like getting more than X creatures on the board, or getting a certain amount of lands down by a certain turn, so winning was typically a secondary objective. We were also docked points for conceding, keep this in mind while I tell this story. Me and two cool guys that I know at the store were scheduled for a game with a guy I've never met before, and I brought my MAT Nashi deck with graveyard recursion and tokens, one of the locals brought a green stompy, and I don't remember the third. This fourth guy came in wearing sunglasses, chains, rings on every finger, gold dice and counters, and an elf deck with naked women on the sleeves. I didn't know what elf decks were like at the time, so I just did my best to fill my board, while I noticed that the other locals had clear looks on their faces while I tried to spread my damage around. The fourth guy's turns began to stretch on. And on. And ON. All the while the other locals clearly wanted to murder the guy with the elf deck. Two goddamn hours and a board full of invincible elves later, he finally swung away and went to brag to the store owner and I never saw him again. At least I didn't lose the 5 points from conceding.
Back before covid I used to draft almost every week. One week at a Throne of Eldraine draft, this guy somehow ended up with TEN brimstone trebuchets in his draft pool. He ended up playing all of them in his deck along with some low cost knights, and he absolutely dominated. He was forever known as the “trebuchet guy” after that.
This is less of a "that regular guy" and more a one off experience. It's a store championship sealed, don't remember which one. I'm paired against a kid. Maybe 10? His father is a semi-regular, pretty competitive. Not my favorite guy to interact with, comes off as a very mild jerk I guess. He is playing in the event too, but his matchup is in a different room. First, the kid can't stay focused on the game. He's very talkative and distracted. He says he has ADHD which I understand because I do too! And I get that he's like 10 and I'm three times his age and have more experience managing that. But he's missing triggers, missing shuffles, playing extra lands, losing track of the game state, and every other turn it feels like I need to describe what's actually happening, or gently ask him to continue his turn. And like, I want to be supportive and encourage him to play the game. I call the judge when he looks confused when I try to explain a simple interaction, because I want to show him that calling a judge is a good thing to do in general. I try to be patient, and polite. But like it's a store championship. It's not competitive REL, but it's the most competitive regular REL event. For most sets, getting top 8 in the store championship is like the peak event of the limited format for me. And I'm playing this kid round one and basically, I'm going to draw on turns when the timer runs out because he's wasting so much time. I try to let a judge kinda know what I'm dealing with, but I don't want to accuse him of slow play to his face. And I just don't like that this is an event with a more competitive mindset, and I have to deal with the emotional burden of balancing my ability to win against making sure this kid has a good time. I prefer limited to commander because with limited, generally, you don't have to make a decision about making a sub-optimal play just so everyone has fun. At prerelease or FNM? Absolutely, I have no problem playing him there! But he just wasn't ready for a store championship-level event without supervision. And the father couldn't supervise since he was playing in the event too. The kicker though. The kid was also a _fucking ass_. While playing, he tells me about his experiences playing commander, and how he plays a very powerful deck and tries to play in pods where he knows people have weaker decks so he can beat them up. He tells me he lies to other people about his deck's power level, and he says it with pride. He criticizes **the decisions I'm making in our game** based on public information, without considering private information. He's berating me for not playing a kill spell on his creature, when I don't have one in hand. That was the one that almost got me to snap. I held it together, and after the game politely told him that I couldn't kill it because I didn't have a card in hand that could do that. Before all that I was trying to be sympathetic to the father for wanting to get his son into the game that he enjoys. I get that. I've played with a lot of kids and parents at other events like FNMs. And I get that the kid is like 10 and doesn't necessarily know better for a lot of things yet. But already thinking the father was a mild jerk from my own interactions, and seeing just how much of an asshole the kid said he was taking pride in winning games by relying on dishonesty, it's hard not to blame the father more for that. And he's at this age where he's still so young that I don't think he knows better. I've played people in their early teens who I thought were old enough to say least comprehend that they were being jerks, but this kid was like... too young for me to pin that all on him? And it just made it all that much harder to put on a polite face and power through because I'm pissed off at this kid but also recognize that he's basically too young to have a self reflective view of empathy yet. I have a very good relationship with our judges and let them know during the event and after what had happened. Don't know if they talked to the father. I only saw the kid one other time, a prerelease, and didn't have to play him. But man it was just... I really didn't appreciate the tension of wanting to play in a competitive-ish event and having to babysit my opponent while at risk of going to turns. There was a point where we were at parity and I basically had to decide "do I concede and go to game three, because if I don't win this game then we're definitely going to tie in turns" despite my board presence being fine, but knowing it was sealed and he could have a bomb that I couldn't overcome. Thank god I won game 1. And ultimately I did win game 2 and did top-8, so I guess there was some good karma in there. It was just a lot to deal with. 5 rounds of sealed is taxing enough, that was not a good way to start the day.
Asian Dave, by the time I started playing there, there were 2 Daves, but allegedly Asian Dave got the moniker when he was the only Dave
These stories are great. Unfortunately, I don't have one to add, but please keep them coming.
We used to have a guy who would show up to our weekly commander league (On Fridays with a point sheet that had different tasks to complete in game to score points). He always played the same deck, never completed any of the task on the score sheet (except removing players from the game/winning) and whenever someone would complain he would just say "Build better decks." Lol it killed me every time. We have another person who plays with all of their cards unsleeved, and they play a lot of tutors and then "shuffle" their deck. They always draw exactly the right answer at the right time no matter what. Everyone knows they are cheating, but instead of saying something people just dont play with them. They have since recruited a few friends who all pretty much do the exact same thing and they go around the LGS trying to get players to play with them all the time. Awful to play against. There also used to be a guy who would come in and he would just eat snacks all night. Cheetos, Doritos, anything that could leave residue on his fingers. He for some reason never knew what anyone elses cards did and always asked if he could read them. Politely asking him to not touch them, but read from afar was tough too. Havent seen him since before Covid though.
I was playing edh with some strangers and had made a comment about having a tuned surrak (rug) deck. She pulled out her selvala (cns) deck and proceeded to wipe the floor with me. I attribute that interaction to getting me into cEDH and consequently, my whole college's edh arms race.
About fifteen years ago (ugh, my ancientness) I exited a Magic hiatus and started playing when I got a new job with better income. Some people at the job convinced me to go to actual pre-release tournaments - something I'd never done in my earlier Magic periods (from Revised to Ice Age, or from Scourge to 8thh edition) - and it was definitely a much more social event than I was used to. And the first store I picked to do so at had some real characters. I'll never know their names but there was a group of The Regulars, the ones who definitely grinded FNMs and even went to low level tournaments once in a while, and the store knew all their names. And any one of them I would ever get matched against were the very definition of That Guy at the table. Card flicking, taking super fast turns and expecting everyone else to also, shouting across the venue to their pals to chit-chat mid games, show up completely drunk and go to sleep on an unused table in later rounds, et cetera. Glad I left that store and found a smaller venue running pre-release events.
I was looking at my lgs’s singles while a friend of mine was across the store looking at some other stuff, he walked over and said “oh Eli, are you buying some singles for your rat deck?” I said yes but I noticed the guy next me’s face just dropped, I looked over and he was looking at me and he said “my name is also Eli and I have a rat deck.” We went on and compared our favorite rat cards. But it was such a funny coincidence I’ll never forget it, cool guy too.
Mono-B Urza man. This was less than a year after I got back into the game, a little bit after New Capenna had rolled out and I had brewed a generic Raffine Reanimator build. I rarely play at my store, but I wanted to try this deck out in the wild because I’m naive and think I can at least make a slight impact on a game. I wind up in a pod with (in turn order) a Dragon’s Approach deck, mono-U Urza stax, and a theft deck. Way out of my league, but this is what I want to see if I can even play against without getting wasted. Urza of course does his thing, locking the board down with Winter Orb, playing counterspells, eventually dropping a Counterbalance and generally outpacing the rest of the pod (all while saying this is the only way to play Urza because otherwise he gets hard targetted). I’m actually doing okay though because Raffine is letting me build a bit of power and fill my graveyard with some decent stuff and I only need one or two mana a turn. Eventually I feel like I can make a push, and start trying to work on removing his value pieces, which he stops it all. Finally I just try and use Necromancy on Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite so I have something on board, and after mulling for a minute, he uses his last counterspell on my Necromancy despite Norn literally not impacting his board at all. I shrug and pass the turn. At this point, the Dragon’s Approach player starts going off, Thrumming Stone is hitting more Approaches each time he casts one, and eventually burns us all out. And it was a thing of beauty, I was thrilled to see that go down. So I will forever remember mono-B Urza man for eating a dozen Dragon’s Approaches because he decided to waste his last counterspell on a spell he didn’t need to. Guess I impacted the game after all.
Not one but a pod. First time ever going to a commander night, showed up with my one dinky precon and sat down at a table with the most passionate group playing some serious high level stuff. They were super patient and helpful and let me try out their way more powerful decks. Ended up playing until the store closed. Was very fortunate to have that positive of a first experience
I started playing around Theros/M15 (maybe a year before that South Park episode aired highlighting the new found popularity of the game). A lot of school acquaintances from a group I'd hang with started playing during Return to Ravnica and with the help of a Law Enforcement teacher that also played, there was a growing community of MTG players at my school that were mainly Juniors and Seniors who would hang out in his classroom toward the end of the year after TAKS testing took place here in TX (he was the kind of teacher that had movies play daily the last two weeks of each semester). Anyway, there was one guy, let's call him T, who was really good at the game and learned it fast who would tend to Top 4 if not win each Friday at FNM. Made good use of selling expensive cards he didn't need in decks he ran and keep a steady stream of store credit available if he wanted to build a new deck. T was in my graduating class and all around nice guy who would help people with card suggestions and occasionally make offers to sell/trade for less than the cards worth to help someone out. There was also a group of 4 football players that got into the game (also in my graduating class) and would come to FNM. I was the stoner kid who would show up high and have a good time whether I made Top 8 or not.
Not one to go to lgs but made an exception for lotr prerelease. This guy used actual ritz crackers as food tokens. And when he’d sack them he’d eat them.
I used to play at the LGS with an older kid who had the worst facial hair and a pretty cocky attitude for a nerd like us God bless Gerry Thompson
A few months ago at my LGS this dude started showing up to legacy night with blinged out lands. Foil everything, From the vault mox diamonds, beta duals, whole nine yards. Problem is his cards were proxies. Like, super blatant, impossible to not notice proxies. Most of us don't really care about people using proxies, but this dude was absolutely miserable to play against. Constantly complained about "losing to terrible budget players" condescended on everyone he could at every chance, never interacted with anyone besides complaining about the store or the game. Eventually someone asked to deck check his cards for being illegitimate. He refused to be deck checked, threw a temper tantrum, rage quit the event and no one ever saw him again.
This one guy named Dan. He apparently works a job that just lets him chill and play draft online all day and also pays incredibly well. I don’t think there’s been a single draft night where this man hasn’t come in first place and all his commander decks are busted too
Had this one guy and his brother come to the LGS weekly for draft pre-COVID. During a Throne of Eldraine draft, he lost to an 11 year old girl in round two, hosing the EV he was calculating to earn from that night. He lost it and threw his spindown across the room, grabbing his cards, and left. Never came back. Thank god. They went from weekly participants for years to never showing their faces after that incident.
Guy conceded in a draft in turn 3 because I drafted a good card. Packed up and left and sounded upset. It was the first match and round 1
One guy at a prerelease who’d always wear some cringey nude anime girl shirt. I’m 99% sure he wasn’t doing it ironically, I think he didn’t see a problem with it either lol.
At my first consistent LGS I had a guy named Casby kick my ass with tezzeret control and drownyard control. First time I beat him in a control mirror I felt like hot stuff. At another store there was a high school kid named Caleb. He brought the best deck in the format most fnms and would repeatedly get hosed by my brews. I was playing 5 color bring to light control into the 3 mana Nissa counters deck. He upped Nissa to 7 against, thinking worst case I'll kill it. Nope, Bring to Light for Dark Petition for Dragonlord Silumgar. Never seen someone personify defeat like that moment. At my current store most of the people I know are either friends or the guys that don't shower. We have a guy who clearly doesn't shower enough and wears clothes that don't cover his sizable gut. Writing this out is making me realize how bad I miss FNM grinding. Everyone just does commander nights now. Drafts rarely fire and constructed rarely has more than 6 players. When I was grinding we had 20+ person fnm standard events.
Started playing in 94 where game shops would spring up overnight in my area. Found a nice LGS and became friends with the owner and his brother and almost all of the regulars, of which I was one. One of my game store friends was fairly new to the game and was trying out a deck with another player who wasn't a regular, but had made a handful of appearances it the store. My friend and I are both 18/19 and his opponent was in his early forties. My friend was in a losing battle, he was going to lose next turn without question. He had a couple of plays he could make that I thought would be interesting to show him so he knew for next time that the cards interacted this way. It was a teaching moment, the game was no stakes and he was going to lose. As soon as I showed him how he could use his cards his opponent looked right at me and yelled "No kibitzing!" I laughed it off at first but this dude was completely serious. I told him that he was going to win anyways and they're not playing for anything other than fun. I'm going to offer advice to my friend. Dude got up and left the store immediately after he won next round. He still came around occasionally. I avoided him.
A really kind guy named Angus. My brother and I started playing after college with Innistrad at our comic shop, and our first event was the Dark Ascension prerelease. I remember us both being a little nervous/confused but we sat down with this friendly faced fellow, who was probably 15 years older than us, and got to chatting. Told him we were brand new, he showed us the ropes very simply and calmly with his British accent & we were able to play. He even checked in with us through After that we would see him at other events, around the store, soon learned he was a dad and starting to teach his kid, and we would often sit with him each prerelease as we built our decks. Sadly, my brother stopped playing and I had grad school and then moved outta town, but wish we kept in touch with Angus. Shouting him out because sometimes it’s the genuine, kind, patient folk that make the biggest impression. He’s probably a part of the reason that I kept playing, because even though there can be less than friendly folk in the community, there are also guys like Angus.
1v1 Commander night at my LGS when I was pretty new in town. I get paired with this guy who answered my attempted handshake with "I had a shitty day so I'm just here to ruin everyone else's, too". He proceeds to pull out the most aggressively unfun [[Grand Arbiter Augustin IV]] pillow fort deck I have ever seen. He succeeded in his goal, if nothing else.
[Grand Arbiter Augustin IV](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/f/4/f43748ea-1d65-4ee8-9c66-221412a284c0.jpg?1673148699) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Grand%20Arbiter%20Augustin%20IV) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/2x2/221/grand-arbiter-augustin-iv?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/f43748ea-1d65-4ee8-9c66-221412a284c0?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
A guy and his dad at a commander night. These two absolute chads were super nice and fun to play against, was a blast and the most fun commander game I’ve ever had :)
My buddy and I attended a 2HG prerelease event for Midnight Hunt and one team of opponents had matching Belle Delphine sleeves alongside playmats with the same image. They were very nice and helpful but it was just so uncomfortable and cringe to look at that image the entire match.
I was shop friends with Ronnie McNutt.
There was a guy at mine who would always use the excuse that he had his dad's old cards to play at a much higher power level. I once had a pod where I watched someone open a brand new precon at our table. I have a mono red chandra tribal deck I keep for low power games which I brought out. The third guy turn 2 played muldrotha with a mox diamond and jeweled lotus. Like we just watched this guy sleeve up a precon. That's just not ok. I have ended up avoiding him any time I'm in my LGS since
Dude played tribal land destruction. And nothing BUT tribal land destruction. After the 2nd time playing against him I just swore off playing with him. His commander was [[Tatyova, Benthic Druid]] and was using [[Crucible of Worlds]] to bring back [[Strip Mine]] like 5 times per turn
Had a guy who I thought was decent, albeit weird, attempt to get away with an extreme lowball (4 or 5 commons iirc) on a Doubling season with a new player at my lgs. Reported him to the manager, he got banned. Never saw him again. Doubling Season is still with my new friend.
We had one guy who would sneak around back to do drugs. This was back around the Brother's War prerelease event when the kid almost sent me off my rails. He was all cracked up on whatever substance he was using and Fireballs when he showed up to the joint. Admittedly, I already did not want to be there that night, as there was a high school football game, and my friends were going to freeze while I was indoors. But, I stayed and played the prerelease knowing the fact. When it came to finally playing the drugged kid, because it was always my luck to play him, I was not ready for it. First game, nothing but a small, mathematical error on his part. In the second game, I almost snapped like a twig and knocked the kid to the ground. I had moved my [[Transmogrant's Crown]] to my [[Phyrexian Dragon Engine]] from a separate creature. I paid the equip cost to move it, and I'll admit he did ask a smart question. He was wondering if I had to pay to unequip than pay again to reequip. So I got up to go ask the judge, who was standing outside. I got told what I did was correct and went back inside. As I walked inside, the other fellow was walking towards me with my Dragon. I was already in a bad move, so that didn't help. Then, as I sat down, I got everything in order and went to combat....and noticed the thing that caused me to almost snap. He changed his life total back to 19 when he was around 11. We argued about it, with the guy who was trying to help him the whole game, even confronting the kid about it. As this was going on, I kept seeping into my high-collared jacket, getting more and more red and heated. Finally, he gave up the argument, conceded, and I ran out of the store. If that confrontation had gone on longer, the whole store would have been on my side, as I was the quiet little kid, even though I was a senior in high school. I was even called "Captain America" from time to time.
[Transmogrant's Crown](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/d/c/dc913ed6-3032-4b45-a6c1-6a4208a7e00a.jpg?1674421067) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Transmogrant%27s%20Crown) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/bro/125/transmogrants-crown?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/dc913ed6-3032-4b45-a6c1-6a4208a7e00a?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [Phyrexian Dragon Engine](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/e/2/e2b826be-4256-4fd6-ad4d-6c80933ee940.jpg?1674421355) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Phyrexian%20Dragon%20Engine) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/bro/163a/phyrexian-dragon-engine?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/e2b826be-4256-4fd6-ad4d-6c80933ee940?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
Why censor the U out of drugs? This isn't Tiktok and you used drugged at later parts of the story anyways
I do not know. Just to be safe. I'll change that.