Less facts, more fiction
Listening to Lip Critic's "Drumming with Izzy" and thinking about Magic again.
I was running out of ideas. My opponent had summoned ANOTHER massive dinosaur. She seemed perfectly casual as she directed them to attack me, sipping on a mug of steaming brew while driving the terrible lizards towards my forces.
I was sweating, acutely aware that this duel was not going well for me. My goblins struggled to hold back the beasts and I was out of ideas. From somewhere in the depths of my mind, I summoned a mighty Goremand to help protect me as I became weaker and weaker. The goblins took inspiration from the Demon leader and held their ground. Perhaps we could fight our way out. A Colossal Dreadmaw charged at me. The snarling demon and my horde of goblins piled on to defend against the attack. If we could push back this dinosaur, we might have a chance. Just as it looked like the tides were turning, a swirl of mist encircled the great dinosaur. It grew larger and larger until my defenders were completely irrelevant. The Planeswalker Izzy had imbued her dreadmaw with a spell of Titanic Growth and I had lost the duel. The dinosaurs had won the day.
This morning, Izzy and I enjoyed a little pre class/pre work hang at Black Coffee Roasting here in Missoula. We played a quick round of my jumpstart "fastpack", which has been one of my favorite ways to play magic lately. She was playing blue/green dinosaurs, I was on red/black goblin reanimator. She won.
About a year ago, I built five 20 card jumpstart decks, one for each color and put them into a small zippered travel pouch with two life trackers and a few dice. I use this bag when someone wants to learn how to play magic or when we just want to play a quick game. Maybe it's because Izzy has started grad school recently and is looking for more chances to have small escapes, but whenever we get coffee or brunch, she's been interested in playing Magic more. I think the format has a lot to do with it.
The inspiration for these decks were a set of jumpstart boosters I bought in 2018 from a Target, before I was "back" into magic. I carried them with me down to McMurdo station with the hopes that I could convince someone to play with me (I had them bound in small bundles of parachute cord like they were gift wrapped). I never had the energy to sit down and remember all of the rules, so they ended up collecting dust in my dorm room.
Later, during the pandemic, I bought duel deck: Elves versus inventors with the hope that Izzy and I could play Magic as a pandemic activity. We sat down to play and I immediately realized that these decks were too fucking complicated! The various duel products seemed to be designed more for entrenched players. It made me yearn for the 10th edition starter decks of years past.
Eventually, I started simplifying the jumpstart decks I had. I removed the more complex cards and tried to streamline the theme. Izzy and I played these decks while traveling in Japan, Hawaii, and, in their final form, on the ferry as we left Juneau. The decks have a bar cube ethos, which means there are no token creators or counters. The games are fast, but they are decision rich too. It's made the whole thing into more of a board game.
This has also been a fun active design project for me. Izzy has been going for Blue/Green lately (Clever + Dinosaurs) as she tries to learn the cards and the best sequences to play them. She recently had a copy of Fact or Fiction in hand and she really saw no reason to play it. As a more experienced player, I see it as a great card advantage moment and a fun mini-game, but to her, it was just too complicated to matter. I swapped it with a copy of Divination for now to see if the simpler version of card advantage will make more sense to her. I love seeing these things in real time and I feel a lot of love towards my partner when she is willing to play these silly games with me.
Someday I'll beat her blue/green dinosaur deck. But it hasn't happened yet.