Brewer, Tuner, or Player?

What’s good, Spirit Squad!

Today we’re going to go over a topic that every card gamer should know about before making the venture from casual to competitive gaming: what kind of gamer are you?

Hey Alexa, play “What Kind of Pokemon Are You?”

But seriously: how do you do the things you do?

By now, I feel like I can safely assume everyone’s heard of the psychographic player profiles Wizards of the Coast made official before I even started playing: the Timmy/Johnny/Spike archetypes, but just in case:

• Timmy (or Tammy) is the type of player who just likes “doing stuff”. Sometimes it’s putting 10/10’s into play, sometimes it’s completely removing the opponent’s ability to play the game, and sometimes they’re the player who is just there for the Gathering, not necessarily the Magic.
• Johnny (or Jenny) is the type of player who enjoys expressing their creativity through deck building. They’re the ones who are hard at work trying to discover new combos, explore new avenues of victory, or even play with cards that our last subset of players have discarded.
• Spike is the player who’s purely here to win games. They might tune their deck a little, but they’re not typically interested in deck building or even the social aspect of the game, just the competition. If they’re not actively trying to be the best player in the room, they’re not in the room at all.

(To the surprise of hopefully no one, I’m definitely a Spike)

Since we’re looking at a Magic: the Gathering article, I feel like I can assume that you, the reader, are also a Spike. Or you’re on the path to becoming a Spike. Either way, it’s helpful to know that about ourselves, but also “Spike” doesn’t describe the way you want to approach getting your wins… only that you want them.

But doesn’t everyone play a game to win?

First of all, no. There’s a whole section of memes about how casual the average Commander player is, and there’s some truth to the whole “Commander players don’t like to win games” bit. As a whole, that group of players is much more concerned with the social aspect of the game than actually winning, and a lot of players actively hate when people win games more quickly than they’d like.

But just “playing to win” doesn’t describe an approach. I’ve broken down the way people typically approach card gaming into three archetypes that can all file under the overarching “Spike” player:

• Brewers
• Tuners
• Players

(for the people who use the word “sportsball”, I introduce the Milwaukee Brewers, a pro baseball team)

Brewers are the folks who actively want to explore ideas and build a winning deck from scratch, specifically using ideas they came up with. I have a friend, Jamal, who files under this exact type of player. He’s the guy you’d see at a serious tournament playing cards like Fires of Invention or Possibility Storm. This isn’t to say that brewers can’t be or aren’t good players too. These aren’t Timmy or Johnny players; a brewer can be a very dangerous player, seeing as they’re always prepared for what you can do but you’re never prepared for what they can do.

Tuners are the people who don’t necessarily have any desire to create a deck from scratch, but are more than willing to take an existing idea and worry at it until it feels like a perfectly oiled machine. If you’re familiar with roleplaying games like Fire Emblem or Pokemon, these are the players who actively enjoy min/maxing their characters. This is where I live (seriously, I have over 550 hours logged on just Fire Emblem: Three Houses). Against players like myself, you’re almost never surprised by any of the cards we play but you can rest assured that every single one of the 75 cards in a tuner’s deck is there for a reason.

Players are people, usually men, who… wait. Let’s not do that.

Players are people who don’t necessarily care about being the author of a sweet new deck or being the person behind the latest innovation to an existing archetype. They’re here for one reason: to win games. Someone who puts the gameplay before everything else will be the type of person who grinds out Magic: the Gathering Online leagues at 3 in the morning, and will have every relevant deck list from the last 6 months of their chosen format memorized. While you’ll never see innovation from these players, they’re dangerous because they typically make the least mistakes when actually playing games.

(Choose your starter playstyle wisely!)

Hopefully spelling out the different types of Spike players and how they each approach getting their wins provides some insight as to how you, or maybe someone you’re teaching, would like to be established as a Magic: the Gathering player (or any card game, for that matter).

The goal here is to have as many players as possible start playing competitive Magic without wasting valuable time, effort, and money just because they may have approached the game from a viewpoint that doesn’t suit them. I certainly hope that today’s article helped at least one player towards that goal, and for anyone who’s already an established player: I’ll see y’all on the next one!