Salt Road Patrol: Nothing is Ever Good Enough For You People!

1. People Are Never Satisfied with Wizards

You see it literally every time Wizards releases a new Commander lineup:

How come there isn’t a valuable land cycle in it?

How come the MSRP isn’t lower?

Why aren’t there free packs of MM1 included with my purchase?

Wizards releases a new product and it is never good enough for the vocal minority. God forbid Wizards makes a product with 4 times the value of the MSRP, with relevant staples, and strong enough strategically to be playable right out of the box. No, we need to not only have a tier 1 Commander deck right out of the box for MSRP (and if a store dares to charge more than MSRP we’re roasting them over the coals on Reddit) but the deck has to be 25% Modern staples that go into every Modern deck.

Magic players, I feel, love to take Wizards for granted; not only are they great in terms of customer service and response (see numerous examples on Twitter and Reddit) but they run one of the tightest ships in terms of product quality. (Card Stock Quality Withstanding)

Year after year, they release A plus sets that cater to all of the following:

• Standard Staples
• A few cards for Modern
• Commander Cards
• Strong and Balanced Limited Format
• Casual and Vorthos cards

Compare that to a game like Yu-Gi-Oh which has 1 format and still cannot help but royally screw up everything whenever a new set comes out. Every Yu-Gi-Oh set release spells the beginning of a new busted archetype that immediately dominates the format.

In light of all of this, Magic players should be thankful it is run by such competent people, and with the addition of the Play Design team, things can only get stronger. I believe Magic will outlive me, and most of you reading this, and the People behind it are a huge reason why.

2. Getting Mad at Mark Rosewater

It’s fantastic that MARO is such a great person and responds to a lot of the questions and comments he gets on his blog. Which says a great deal because a lot of the time those comments and questions can be either harsh or have no relevance to his job.

Questions like Art development and Standard formats are things MARO is not in charge of let alone works on.

I think this is just another thing that stems from my first point. People love to take Magic and Wizards for granted, they just assume he will answer their questions and when he can’t or doesn’t it just confirms their theory that Wizards is garbage and that MARO doesn’t care.

Let him continue to do the fantastic job he continues to do, and maybe take a listen to his Drive to Work podcast, because it is fantastic. But please quit raking him over the coals for things he has no say in.

3. Gameday Champions

Where do these jerks get off? Like seriously, hear me out here. These so called “Champions” go to their Game Store and want to play in a tournament where they can win a playmat that says “Champion” on it. Then, they have the audacity to use that play-mat when they play any future games of Magic? I don’t know about you but when one of these wannabee Gold Pros sits down across from me, I don’t even pull out my deck box, I just grab the match-slip and sign it 2-0 in my favour, yeah 2-0. Then, as I’m walking away, ask them how many scrubs even played at their “Gameday”?

Leave these nonsense Play-Mats to Yu-Gi-Oh, those ne’erdo wells need Play-Mats to justify their skill, heck, I think the top prize for Yu-Gi-Oh worlds is some pimp Play-Mat with some crazy Anime girl on it that looks 11 but is actually a wizard and is 789 so it’s okay that she is in a bikini. Magic players shouldn’t even use Play-Mats, have you ever seen Eric Froelich use a play-mat? No is the answer to that question.

Furthermore, anyone who uses anything other than a standard deck box, black sleeves, ripped piece of printer paper and a pen supplied to them by the judge deserves to receive automatic round 1 and 2 losses, not that it would matter, they’ll get to that record eventually. So what, I was paired at Table 2 where the ceiling leaks when it rains, I’ll change my sleeves between rounds if it means not looking like a dirty noob.

This is a game where you find the best list from the last GP, build it, goldfish it 5 times, which is the exact time needed to become the store expert on said deck and then take it to your local PPTQ. What happens at said PPTQ? Round 1 you play against Johnny who is on Fraying Sanity/Startled Awake combo which doesn’t care about the card advantage you expertly generated as he mills your library out on Turn 5. You sign the match slip, mark drop and go talk to your friends at the back of the store as your opponent rolls up his Khans of Tarkir Gameday Champion Play-Mat (only the cool guys hang at the back of the store) and tell them you have better things to do than play in this mine field of a tournament. As you walk to your car you mutter to yourself “I bet that guys Gameday had like 8 people at it”

That’s all for this week, sorry it’s not quite as salty as it normally is, I’ve been having a good week, don’t worry, I’ll be back next week, Salty as Ever!

(The views expressed in this article are that of the author and do not reflect the views of this website or Fusion Gaming)