Try listing, that's a good trick!
from a newsletter I read about ultrarunning quoting another newsletter:
Lists are a way of writing without the pressure of writing. A sentence demands something of you: syntax, a point. It demands that you know, more or less, what you’re trying to say before you say it. We sometimes freeze before the sentence because the sentence feels like a thought we’re not sure we can make.
A list asks for none of that, though. A list just asks, “What else?” It is an invitation. You can put anything on a list. You can contradict yourself from one line to the next. You can be incomplete. There’s no wrong way to make a list. There’s only the act of naming things, one after another, until you run out of names or run out of time. … The next time you have five minutes, don’t reach for your phone. Make a list instead. It can be anything.
Inspired by this idea, a list about what this blog is, isn't, could be, or may never be:
I have been lamenting the end of my Juneau cube group and its newsletter, so is this a place to write little missives about magic cards?
I get so bored of hearing about powerful magic cards, but I light up hearing about interesting cards and ways they interact. I have drafted decks that made me feel smart. I want to tap into that design ethos. Help my players feel smart. So often in my off-the-wall cubes, I feel like people are saying "I have no idea if this is going to work!" That is fine, but I also want people to feel like "I may have found something here".
Magic: The Gathering as a product treadmill sucks. How can I embrace the game system without embracing the accompanying churn? "Serious" magic players aren't really that interesting to me in the space I want to create. I don't want to write them off (and hey, maybe I am one of them?), but I would rather build a community of friends than try and convince serious magic players to embrace community outside of Magic. Players like Ian who are smart and curious and don't spend all of their time thinking about how a Marvel card is ruining vintage are the players I want to attract.
I am really happy with the name "Thornscape Battlemage". It's a cool card (maybe sees play in Premodern?), gestures at my original cube, and feels like some sort of baseline mysterious and goofy identity I can use.
Is the elf in that art riding a tauntaun?
We are coming up on two years since I started my job, which means two years since I had the time during said job's onboarding to build the first version of my cube. Someone from reddit sent me a bunch of revised cards for free (so kind!). I bought a few old school staples from the internet after gorging myself on the old school MTG blog. I was so excited for cards like Prodigal Sorcerer to feature heavily. As I put everything into cube cobra, I was still quite low on workable cards, so I started moving outside of that band and adding cards that were simple and didn't create tokens. I had copy of Stormscape Battlemage. I started to see all of the old frame cards I had in my collection and pulled them out. For some reason, Outlaw Medic was another inclusion as I didn't have a lot of white creatures. That card feels pretty strong in an old school-adjacent environment. I had a copy of Pentarch Paladin. It seemed so cool (it still does). I had no sense of it's power level or how it compared. I think in my mind, it was an old frame card, but I wasn't yet versed in all of the various evolutions of the card frame.
I have these memories of old cards from being younger, but I also know I wasn't deep into Magic. It was something I played in fits and spurts. I remember using basic lands to create terrain for mage knight league night. Each color of lands was in a small plastic basket on the edge of the gameplay tables.
We went to GenCon to play Heroscape and try to scoop the promo figures (possibly in 2007?). I think I was there with Michael, Sterling, and maybe Grinch (shout outs, I love that guy). As we grabbed our con swag bags, inside were 30 card 10th edition sample decks. This was my re-intro to magic. At this point, all of my friends were much deeper into it and I was still holding onto the Mage Knight/Heroscape miniatures dream. I have to imagine that we just played with the 30 card decks though in my mind mythology, we were combining two of them to create 60 card two color decks. I specifically remember having two copies of Pacifism in my deck, which means I must have had "White Deck A". We played a bunch of games and Michael explained the color pie to me. I may have traded and played with a blue deck too. These decks are still really cool and could definitely inspire some future cube projects.
In the summer, I often get nostalgic for lord of the rings. I read my dad's copy of the hobbit one summer when I was young and it gestured at this wide world. I already knew what orcs were at that point from an AD&D box I was given as a gift, so in my mind, orcs were just a known thing. In 2023, I was unemployed in the summer when the LOTR magic set came out. I was listening to Post Malone's Mourning and wondering if I had written his music off unfairly. I spent my days looking for jobs and reading about magic cards. Eventually, I went to the local card shop and bought a few packs plus a LOTR starter set. I didn't even totally understand the new rules additions yet, but I was hooked. I played on Arena in order to better understand the rules system. I scoffed out loud when someone cast "Murder" on my Samwise Gamgee. You can just murder someone in this game? (In retrospect, I was playing ranked alchemy with a LOTR starter deck, so I was at a major disadvantage, but I just wanted to find a place where I could use my LOTR cards). It was kind of a magical time in a new place with something that tickled my brain in a way few things had.
I'm in a new place again. Missoula, for at least 3 years while my partner is in a doctorate program. I have a job but I also have some free time. Maybe less free time than summer of 2023, but still some. We are in a new apartment but most of our stuff isn't here yet, so everything feels infused with possibility. There is a lightness in the summer air. Kurt Vile has a new album out and I feel like how I felt when "b'lieve I'm going down" came out: all of the songs resonate deeply and I am ready to spend time looking at flowers and running in the mountains. "I had a dream once and the dream was here with you."
I want to get a cube group started here, but I am ready to be patient. I don't need to get anything started today. I build, slowly and deliberately. Creating the thing I want to see, the thing I desire to be a part of, instead of waiting for someone else to build it for me.