In the past, I’ve been willing to sit by and watch the selection process happen. Even when Tim Aten was on the Fan Favorite Ballot in 2005 I wasn’t inspired to vote, and I graduated high school with that guy.
Sorry, Tim. Glad you made it without my help.
This year, after listening to Stephen Menendian beg, plead, cajole, threaten, and bribe (just kidding, on all of those) everyone at the last Meandeck Open, I felt obligated to participate and show my support.
Plus, Steve is absolutely correct when he says that getting him voted into the 2007 Magic Invitational is a great opportunity for the Eternal formats of Vintage and Legacy. I know Wizards doesn’t exactly ignore Vintage, and Legacy is really starting to gain recognition with this year’s Grand Prix Flash and inclusion in the Worlds tournament, but they’re still the two most misunderstood and most often maligned formats in the game.
Having a representative like Steve at the Invitational, hanging out with the pros and chatting with Mark Rosewater and other Wizards employees, could be a huge boon. Steve can promote Vintage and Legacy there and can present level-headed, knowledgeable opinions regarding the banned and restricted list, tournament support, and countless other Eternal issues. It’s not like Vintage will overtake Standard as the most popular constructed format anytime soon, but it will at least get some recognition beyond the often cited “Early game is the coinflip, midgame is the mulligans, late game is turn one” gag.
Essentially, if you play Vintage and Legacy almost exclusively, you have very little excuse to not vote for Menendian.
In fact, go do it now. You can save yourself some time reading if you want. I’ll wait. Here’s the address: http://forums.gleemax.com/showthread.php?t=903223
It’s interesting, I thought, that they put Steve on the Storytellers ballot. I guess I never really think of Steve as a storyteller per se. He’s enthusiastic, certainly. I mean, have you ever seen anyone else get that excited over a particularly good (or even halfway decent) Brainstorm? Enthusiasm by itself isn’t exactly storytelling, though.
Steve’s articles are insightful and always educational. They explain how he develops decks and how to make the optimal play in a Drain mirror or with a Ritual combo deck, and he’s excellent at explaining why these are the plays to make and what considerations went into them. His analyses aren’t always flawless, but he always shares his reasoning and that’s a big part of the learning experience for everyone.
Combining the insights with the enthusiasm makes Steve’s articles worth the read every time.
Take this section of his article “Deconstructing Combo versus Control” from February of this year (I’m going to use slightly older articles so that non-Premium readers can see them as well):
“Here is the Grim Long hand (in organized form, not in the order I drew the cards):Steve then talks for six pages about the hundreds of possible plays with this hand of seven. He points out that there are at least 36 lines of play turn one (“I stopped counting after that.”) even if you restrict Grim Tutor to only finding Black Lotus.
Tolarian Academy
Mox Jet
Dark Ritual
Cabal Ritual
Brainstorm
Grim Tutor
Windfall
This hand has so many insane plays.”
In the end (to ruin part of the story), Steve elected to play the Mox and Academy and Brainstorm (with the idea that he could still Grim Tutor for Lotus and play Winfall if necessary). Brainstorm revealed Necropotence, among other things, so Steve made that his primary plan with Windfall backup turn two if necessary.
“[Necropotence] resolves! I’ll Necro for 12 cards, going to 4 life. Please don’t kill me, Gifts!”
What an exciting format! There’s tension, drama, and potential heartbreak and death, and the opponent hasn’t even drawn his card for turn yet!
Another of my favorite parts of Steve’s writing came from one of the RIW tournaments where Steve learned about sideboarding Ichorid, from a player not usually known for Vintage:
“After winning game 1, with the clear presumption that Brian [Demars, playing Slaver,] would elect to play game 2, I was astonished to watch Matt [Bobek, playing Ichorid] quickly tuck the Duresses into the deck and pull out mainboard Petrified Fields with no other changes.I like this section because it shows Steve’s fallibility, which I think is important in the constantly changing paradigm that is Magic: the Gathering.
“I couldn't believe what I was seeing. And then as I watched Brian and Matt play and my amazement turned to laughter. Not the ‘lol’ where you may smirk and type those three letters. No, I was laughing in a manner that was audible to most people present. It was a laughter that traveled up my brain and released loads of endorphins.
“I abruptly understood what he was doing. And suddenly, my tremendous failure in this tournament turned into an epiphany that shone the ray of hope on my beleaguered brain. He was playing game 1 again. If he lost, then he knew exactly what his opponent's hate cards would be. He'd have to.”
After his “epiphany,” Steve changed his sideboard and went on to play in the finals of the side tournament in that particular tournament. I’ll let you read the report and see the controversial ending for yourself, though. The more important part is that Steve was able to share his findings and the fun of a tournament with us, the readers.
Steve even manages to imbue his “rank-and-file” articles (set reviews, format overviews, and such that every writer does once in a while) with the excitement he feels about having “so many insane plays.” Look at his review of Street Wraith from Future Sight:
“Street WraithSure, Street Wraith’s use as a free, uncounterable cantrip hasn’t quite taken off as predicted, but who cares? For the weeks surrounding the Future Sight prerelease, that was the card on everyone’s mind.
“My favorite card in the set. Screw Pact of Negation, this card is insane!
“When I updated Meandeck Tendrils last year for Repeal, I said that if I ever won an invitational I would request this card (before they started requiring creatures).
“As I explained here:
“‘Repeal is the key new tech. Repeal breaks the golden ratio - it is a free cantrip. The key bottleneck in this deck is mana, and so this card is a godsend. It's the closest we will ever come to actually printing:
Broken Urza's Bauble
0
Tap, sacrifice: draw a card.
“‘In fact, in some ways Repeal is better because it adds two to the Storm count. Pretty exciting stuff!’
“Boy, was I wrong. They actually printed the card I was talking about. Granted, you can't up storm with it, but this card, at least in Vintage, should fundamentally change Vintage in ways we haven't seen since the printing of fetchlands in Onslaught. […] A side bonus of this card is that cards like Extirpate and Jester's Cap become irrelevant. Hide / Seek can go away now.”
Of course, Steve isn’t just a good writer; he’s also a pretty good Magic player. This is important criterion for getting the most out of an Invitational vote. Sending Evan Erwin or John F. Rizzo will no doubt get an amazing tournament report or two, but the chances of them winning are next to none. They’re lunchpailers like the rest of us. They’re fine Magic players, I’m sure, but in a room with the world’s best, they will find themselves sorely lacking.
With Steve, you’d get the amazing tournament report (with full play by play analysis) and a chance to have him win it all. Granted, it might not be a large chance—pros are pros for a reason, after all. Steve isn’t the most comfortable attacking with creatures (cf. his Fish versus Gro-A-Tog article), but his first-rate card and interaction analysis skills should keep him in the game.
I hope.
Well, I could pretty much go on and on about why Stephen Menendian should get your vote for the Invitational, but time is limited. Voting ends on August 15, for one.
Anyway, the biggest reason to vote for Steve is to get a respected and knowledgeable Eternal format player into the limelight. He’s a good player who’s dedicated a lot of time and effort to a format he loves. Every article he writes is thousands of words of useful analysis surrounded by thousands of words of entertaining prose. It’s good stuff.
Seriously. Go vote here: http://forums.gleemax.com/showthread.php?t=903223
Hopefully we’ll see Steve create some retarded broken card in all formats. That would be amazing.
1 comment:
Smenenenenennenenendian!
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