A Brief History of Time Part 1

Hello again everyone. My name is Josh, and I'll be posting under the name Obso1337. Along with Joey (whom you'll meet soon) I am the co-founder of Devia Venatus. I thought a good way to start this out would be to give you all a short recap of my gaming history so that you have an idea of where I am coming from, and what my frame of reference is.(Edit: It ended up not being very short at all ^_^' )

I was born under unusual circumstances...oops, wait...never mind.

I am rather young, just 21. So as you can imagine my gaming history is not nearly so long or storied as many readers, who may have years of gaming under their belts. I began my first real experience in gaming at around 14 or 15 playing Magic:The Gathering with friends. We barely understood the rules, and played with whatever terrible cards we could buy for a couple bucks from a local stores. Strategic concepts were so completely beyond us we were mostly content to create decks with "totally cool themes" like a deck full of Tree related cards, or packed with as many giant "Wurms" as we could. This time was perhaps less about the game itself and more about a reason to hang out with a couple friends and sneak our first six packs.

As I continued to play into high school I began to develop a love for deckmaking. I began to love analyzing a deck's strengths and weaknesses, exploring its possibilities and pushing its boundaries from one extreme to another. The act of creation felt powerful, as all do. I began to take delight in the thought of my strategic planning and tactical foresight overcoming my opponents'. The long hours in a week spent gearing my decks up for battle against my friends felt almost as good when my planning came to fruition and I was ready for my opponent's every move. Even losing held the exciting promise of knowing I could do better, could push my mind further to squeeze yet more versatility or efficiency out of my decks. This begins the theme of games serving as an outlet for me to "prove my superiority" by outsmarting my opponent. To some extent this is true to everyone, but I admit it was exceedingly so for myself. It all had to do with classic boring intellect issues that came from teachers telling me I was very smart and whatnot, but me absolutely not caring, and not wanting to use it for anything that will necessarily get me any money. I'll not go into it, as it's all dime store psychology and mostly me being an elitist asshole.

Now, I know how all that sounded. A little obsessive. And it was, to some extent. I won't deny that when I get into something it tends to be very all or nothing. I have an intense need to understand and fully comprehend things, not just know about them. If I'm getting into football I don't want to blindly follow a team and root for them, I want to know in detail their roster into third string, their emerging prospects and developing players, the strength of the league they play in, and a history of the couching staff. This effect was compounded by the fact that in high school I basically had absolutely no social life at all. I had about 3 friends, and all time outside school was spent on Magic or online poker. I was rather unhealthy mentally and physically.

I don't want to give the impression that you're just going to be reading about a borderline autistic fat kid though. (If it isn't to late) I'm in a better place now, promise. :-P

Moving on, around my junior and senior year of high school I began to get involved with a more serious Magic community in a local game shop. We played Friday Night Magic, ran Limited events, and had the occasional tournament for prizes. This is when I was introduced to the "Metagame" of Magic, or the constantly flowing popularity and power struggle of the most powerful decks in major tournaments in high level Magic that eventually filtered down to the local scenes by way of the Intrawebs. I was immediately drawn to this, as it proved a clearly definable, yet constantly changing power structure that was just begging to be thwarted. (There will most definitely be a later post about various conversations Joey and I have had about Rules, Systems, and beating and abusing them, and what makes us love it so much)

In this Metagame environment I came to love Innovation. Before I had been stumbling in the dark looking for a nearly non-existent foe in my loose playgroup. Here, I had a clear adversary, and a limited set of tools with which to overcome it. I began to specialize in "rogue deck" making. My goal was always to find combinations and tools that had been overlooked by the majority of players, surprise them with an effective tactic they were ill-equipped to deal with, and ride the advantage to victory. Later on as I became more aware of the incredible level of efficiency already instilled in the "Netdecks", the most popular and powerful decks of the day, I began to realize that the chances of finding a truly revolutionary concept were rather slim. Instead I began to focus on the Micro aspects of Metagame tweaking and optimization. I would labor not over entire deck concepts, but just 2 or 3 card choices in a single deck archetype. My search for innovation became focused on how unconventional bold card choices in an archetype could change the power and balance dynamics of a metagame. It was the ultimate exercise in fine tuning, and I daresay I was good at it.

As this has begun to run on far longer than I thought it would, I have elected to cut it in half. I'll end here for now, and post the second half as another entry. Thanks for reading, and I hope it was at least somewhat interesting.