Salt Road Patrol: Why Are All Burn Players Alike?

Hey all, welcome back to another episode of the Salt Road Patrol. After just coming off 5k weekend hosted by Fusion Gaming, I’ve got a lot of fresh salt-inducing topics to talk about, mostly relating to things that happen in the tournament environment. If you remember I hate long intros so let’s get into it:

4) People only talking when they win

I’ve never understood people who come off as extremely friendly and social during a match of magic right up until the point where they lose. What exactly is your problem? “Hey man! My name is so-and-so, nice to meet you!” Is what I’m greeted with when I meet a new face at a GP. “Where are you from? Oh wow from Canada? Awesome! I’m not too far from here”. They engage you in pretty friendly conversation, sometimes about magic, sometimes not. Either way, these people start off quite friendly and talkable. They’re cracking jokes, talking about their tournament experience, etc. I deal out my seven cards, wish them good luck as I always do, and look at my hand. “You as well!” They reply.

I  lose the first game, and the banter continues. “Ah man what a close game, you really almost had me, luckily I had the answer to that last card in your hand. This matchup is actually pretty good for me, I have some extra cards in the sideboard as well”. Sure man. I keep up with the friendly talking despite because I’m a decent human being, and you’d think you could expect the same from this chatterbox. Shuffle up for game two, another good luck from me, and another reply from my opponent reciprocating the gesture.

But then it happens. I win game 2, and it’s as if their whole world has come crumbling down. All of a sudden any sort of speech ceases to exist from my opponent as they frustratingly scoop up their cards and start shuffling, muttering who knows what under their breath. Now it’s real quiet, the silent void is seemingly heightened due to all the talking prior to the end of second game. Decks are presented and shuffled, starting hands are drawn. “Good luck” I say, as I always do. They say nothing. I Win, the match slip gets filled out and they’re off without another word. Was it something I said? Salty losers I tell ya, speaking of which..

3) Not shaking hands

There’s a lot of controversy on this topic, everyone has an opinion about it and here’s mine: The loser should offer the handshake, but either can do it, it’s just a handshake after all, don’t be a baby. But seriously, no handshake at all is a little tilting. I tend not to offer the winner’s handshake because a lot of people do not find it welcome, but I’ll always offer it when I lose, whether it was a good game, a mana screw game, a lucky topdeck, whatever. You look much more classy shaking your opponent’s hand after a loss than you do being a whiney child complaining about bad luck (I mean the trick is to just not do it in front of your opponent). So like I said, I’m just coming off Fusion Gaming’s 5k weekend, and I participated in a total of 5 post-match handshakes. I was 7-4 on the weekend, which means 6 people wouldn’t offer me a handshake after a match. Shoutout to the one classy dude who did, I was pleasantly surprised, it doesn’t happen often. Seriously just shake your opponent’s hand when you lose it really cannot be that bad, if they luckered you just get them back next time, if they actually beat you fair and square show some respect.

2) Magic Hyperboles

This one is bugging me a lot right now. People use hyperboles when talking about this game way too much. “Jund can’t beat burn, it’s unwinnable.” Really? Because I’m pretty sure I’ve seen it happen before. “Reflector maging Kalitas wins the game on the spot.” Are you sure? Because again, I’ve seen the kalitas deck win a game after that’s happened. It just sounds stupid, saying something so confidently as if it’s fact when it clearly is not. “Feed the Clan is useless”, “Spellskite does nothing”, “If Birthing Pod resolves the game is over”. I’m sure if you pay attention you’ll hear at least one hyperbole every tournament you go to, it’s literally the worst thing ever in the magic community.

1) Burn players

Why do you people play magic? I’m sure you’re going to get some sort of twisted sick satisfaction out of this paragraph but wow do burn players put me on tilt. You all have the same habits too, I don’t know what it is but I can spot a burn player when I sit down to play one a good percentage of the time. First tip off is the ruffled up sleeves. I’m pretty sure burn players have some sort of internal anger issues because their sleeves are so mangled it’s as if they accidentally ran their deck through the wash before the tournament. An addition to that there are plenty of other things that tip me off that I’m about to lose to a topdecked boros charm:

• Red Deck Box
• Untied shoes
• 10 digit DCI number that doesn’t start with a 1
• Wild playmat that isn’t your typical UltraPro or WOTC Event playmat, usually something like nyancat or RTFC
• Messy hair that hasn’t been styled or combed
• Always wins the die roll
• Why are you always fidgeting? I swear burn players shotgun a pack of redbull before every tournament
• Khans of Tarkir fetchlands
• M11 Lightning Bolts (I have no idea why but next time you play a burn player look at the bolt I can almost guarantee its M11)

Probably tons more I could list off but my internal blood pressure is rising so I need to move on. Seriously though does burn even have any good matchups? No matter what deck I play it just seems to be an elaborate 30 minute long coinflip where I call heads and it’s about to land heads but then it spins and spins and all of a sudden it inevitably flips over to tails while I get triple lava spiked out of the game. Have you people just chosen that your purpose in the MTG world is to effectively be tournament landmines for the rest of the players?

That’s it for this episode. Did you play at the 5k? Anything set off your salt sensors? I’d love to hear about it, just leave a comment and let me know. Cya next time.