A Magical Gathering

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Re: A Magical Gathering

Postby Newbie » Tue Nov 14, 2017 10:58 pm

I'm putting Unhinged cards on my Christmas list this year just because I want some for the cube I'm never going to get around to making.
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Re: A Magical Gathering

Postby Büge » Thu Nov 23, 2017 9:56 pm

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Re: A Magical Gathering

Postby Mongrel » Mon Nov 27, 2017 2:43 pm

Erin Campbell's back and goes into some detail about what Wizards found was the reason female player levels are so low in MTG


(Twitter thread, but it's short, like 10 tweets)

Nothing that's really a surprise there, to be honest.
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Re: A Magical Gathering

Postby Friday » Mon Nov 27, 2017 4:30 pm

That doesn't happen to me anymore when I go to local tournaments, but when I played as a teen, holy shit. If I could go back to any point in time in the Universe, it would be to 1971 so I could punch these two in the fucking face:

This is a transcript of the 1971 conversation between President Richard Nixon and John D. Ehrlichman that led to the HMO act of 1973:

John D. Ehrlichman: “On the … on the health business …”

President Nixon: “Yeah.”

Ehrlichman: “… we have now narrowed down the vice president’s problems on this thing to one issue and that is whether we should include these health maintenance organizations like Edgar Kaiser’s Permanente thing. The vice president just cannot see it. We tried 15 ways from Friday to explain it to him and then help him to understand it. He finally says, ‘Well, I don’t think they’ll work, but if the President thinks it’s a good idea, I’ll support him a hundred percent.’”

President Nixon: “Well, what’s … what’s the judgment?”

Ehrlichman: “Well, everybody else’s judgment very strongly is that we go with it.”

President Nixon: “All right.”

Ehrlichman: “And, uh, uh, he’s the one holdout that we have in the whole office.”

President Nixon: “Say that I … I … I’d tell him I have doubts about it, but I think that it’s, uh, now let me ask you, now you give me your judgment. You know I’m not too keen on any of these damn medical programs.”

Ehrlichman: “This, uh, let me, let me tell you how I am …”

President Nixon: [Unclear.]

Ehrlichman: “This … this is a …”

President Nixon: “I don’t [unclear] …”

Ehrlichman: “… private enterprise one.”

President Nixon: “Well, that appeals to me.”

Ehrlichman: “Edgar Kaiser is running his Permanente deal for profit. And the reason that he can … the reason he can do it … I had Edgar Kaiser come in … talk to me about this and I went into it in some depth. All the incentives are toward less medical care, because …”

President Nixon: [Unclear.]

Ehrlichman: “… the less care they give them, the more money they make.”

President Nixon: “Fine.” [Unclear.]

Ehrlichman: [Unclear] “… and the incentives run the right way.”

President Nixon: “Not bad.”

[Source: University of Virginia Check - February 17, 1971, 5:26 pm - 5:53 pm, Oval Office Conversation 450-23. Look for: tape rmn_e450c.]


But If I could go back to two points in time, the second would be teen Friday's MTG tournaments, so I could punch the fuckbois who thought it was funny to shit on me in the fucking face, instead of just silently swallowing their abuse.
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Re: A Magical Gathering

Postby Büge » Thu Nov 30, 2017 3:25 pm

When Real Estate Agents Find the Legacy Lands Facebook Group

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Re: A Magical Gathering

Postby Friday » Thu Nov 30, 2017 7:24 pm

It's Plains to see that the users here are making a Mountain out of a molehill and can't see the Forest for the trees. Living on the Island of the internet for so long, it's easy to get Swamped down in the details and forget that you can't lump all the Traitors into one City. This Rugh Martins guy just wants to Strip Mine as many places as possible, turning them into a Wasteland. But it's not a huge deal like the burning of the Library of Alexandria.

Mishra's Factory.
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Re: A Magical Gathering

Postby Mongrel » Fri Dec 08, 2017 3:54 pm

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Re: A Magical Gathering

Postby Grath » Fri Dec 08, 2017 9:06 pm

From the Loading Ready Run Unstable Pre-PreRelease: "Wait, if I cast this Shahrazad does Mark Rosewater get sucked into the subgame with me?"

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Re: A Magical Gathering

Postby Mongrel » Wed Dec 20, 2017 1:14 pm

So Breitbart is going to publish an article on Magic tomorrow, per MTGHQ.

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Re: A Magical Gathering

Postby Grath » Wed Dec 20, 2017 2:25 pm

Oh good. I'm sure the Alt-Reich has wonderful things to say about Magic and how these innocent white men are being persecuted just because they attempted harassing anyone more civilized than a /b/ resident out of Magic.

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Re: A Magical Gathering

Postby Lyrai » Thu Dec 21, 2017 1:54 am

Mongrel wrote:Erin Campbell's back and goes into some detail about what Wizards found was the reason female player levels are so low in MTG


(Twitter thread, but it's short, like 10 tweets)

Nothing that's really a surprise there, to be honest.


This no longer appears. What was it?

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Re: A Magical Gathering

Postby Mongrel » Thu Dec 21, 2017 2:14 am

The most commonly cited reason was (surprise, surprise) terrible experiences at the most basic competitive play level: the local game store. Harassment of course, but also filthy stores, filthier players, poor social environment even if outright harassment wasn't present, etc.

Also, even for those who can tough out the local game store (or who actually have a nice one with decent people!), at the higher level, women have a MUCH harder time joining pro-teams or aspiring pro-teams are are thus denied the advanced practice and skill-building that serious competitive teams help build. This in turn is part of the reason you see even fewer women proportionally at high levels of play (which has been spun as women not liking competition).

It isn't that women don't like higher-level competition, or that they prefer casual or cooperative gaming over confrontational gaming or any of those oft-claimed excuses. There's a small amount of truth to them, but not in numbers big enough to account for the huge dearth of female magic players.

No, it's that the loud smelly unwashed socially clueless gamer or aggro-bro-fratboy gamer stereotypes are true; or at least true enough that they massively depress the number of women who would otherwise be interested in playing serious competitive Magic. And they do close ranks - "No problem here! Not at my store!"

Basically a case of "Tell me something I didn't know."
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Re: A Magical Gathering

Postby Mongrel » Thu Dec 21, 2017 2:33 am

Incidentally, that's a big part of the reason I'm genuinely worried that the alt-right will pick up a large amount of traction among MTG players if Magic gets dragged into this culture war. The average MTG community seems like REALLY fertile ground, and there's already been enough shitty incidents as it is.

The only saving grace is that I expect Wizards will (hopefully) have a pretty no-tolerance policy, as recently indicated by the Travis Woo ban.

(TWoo probably isn't actually evil or even really alt-right; unlike the alt-right guys who use deception as a cloak of deniability to dance behind, TWoo seems genuinely confused, sometimes completely incoherent, and has been visibly in need of serious mental health support for a couple years now. But he still enabled some horrifying things over the past couple weeks and the ban is pretty clearly merited)
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Re: A Magical Gathering

Postby Friday » Thu Dec 21, 2017 2:52 pm

You can also see evidence the other way: My local shop is clean, enforces a "go home and fucking shower, jesus christ, and put on some clothes that don't smell like you've been smoking weed nonstop for 15 years, which you have" rule, and is populated by (mostly) friendly gamers who are there to enjoy playing magic (and some warhammer) and have fun.

Surprise! There are like five or six regular girls who play there, including me.

It's really not complicated.

EDIT: I do think that things are (slowly) getting better in regards to mtg players "cleaning up their act" both in terms of attitude and actual hygiene, but the 90s were fuckawful to the extreme (I know, I was there) and just like video games, it cemented MTG as a boy's only club, so you don't see a vast swath of 30 something females playing either mtg or vidya like you do with males, simply because the girls didn't do it as kids and teens and so don't do it as adults.
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Re: A Magical Gathering

Postby Friday » Thu Dec 21, 2017 2:57 pm

I also don't want to shit on guys here, even in the 90s, the majority of male MTG players I encountered ranged from fine to nice. But there were consistent bad apples, and that's all it takes to drive people away.
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Re: A Magical Gathering

Postby Mongrel » Thu Dec 21, 2017 3:16 pm

Yeah, I mean, I had fun at the time, but there were always more than a few creepy/severe autism spectrum/poor hygiene/mean guys and terrible behaviour was more tolerated than it would have been if Magic wasn't seen as a boys club. I encountered virtually zero women playing Magic throughout all my high school years, and even when I was at Uni in the early 2000's they were still rare.

However the ones I knew at Uni consisted of the owner of one of the three local game stores and the couple girls she employed. They had slightly higher prices but the store was clean and well managed, with no nonsense. The second was very popular but was run by a guy who was very nice but also a totally irresponsible fat slob and a bit of a pushover*. The third was an old family business being run into the ground. Guess which of the three is still in business today?

To be fair, at the time, I hung out at the fat guy store most of the three, because it was way more fun and had way more players. But I knew even then that store wasn't going to last.

*Dan would regularly have "all bacon" days, where everything he ate contained bacon. He also let anyone who wanted to rub his "Buddha Belly" (he was some variety of mixed Southeast Asian and played up the fact that he looked like a Buddha statue) for good luck. Okay, typing that out, maybe that sounds creepy, but it wasn't; Dan thought his being so many players' "good luck charm" was hilarious.

We all liked Dan; he was a genuinely earnest, warm, happy, smiley guy and wanted to make everyone happy - too much so. I recall he was left with huge debts when the store went under and he had to move back home and had no real prospects after that. Even when he was bankrupt and closing up, he still gave away pretty much everything left in the shop for free or virtually so. I hope things turned out for him in the end.

Hm... wasn't expecting to get mugged in Memory Lane in the Magic thread.
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Re: A Magical Gathering

Postby Lyrai » Thu Dec 21, 2017 5:59 pm

Everything said is pretty much why I quit playing. I tried to do tournaments and it was just awful. A lot of people tried to be nice but all it took was one or two creeplords and you're suddenly scared each time they get up or look at you, and when the shop owner goes "Well they haven't really done anything so you're probably just overreacting" it's easier to just quit and not go back.

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Re: A Magical Gathering

Postby atog » Fri Dec 22, 2017 2:44 am

I can say it will get worse before it gets better - as social media and MTGO separate competitive success even further from walk-n-talk social interaction, the assholes will have more and more echo chambers to misogynize and fling feces in, and fewer and fewer settings where they are challenged to exercise discretion and use their social skills.

At least 10-15 years ago, when I was actively competing, you had to have a minimal standard of social interaction and tact to participate in organized play. It didn't mean you always had to shower and brush your teeth and put on clean clothes, but it did mean that you had to at least think about whether your current aroma would pass the sniff test at this or that venue.

You didn't always have to like losing to a girl, or having girls say they weren't interested in you, but you practiced biting your tongue so you didn't take a boot to the ass and get banned from game stores. Some business owners would stand by and do nothing, content to let boys be boys and collect the money. Others would definitely step in, and if you were also smelly and rude and thoughtless as a general rule, the staffer would drop the hammer.

Now that you can comfortably avoid consequences for saying or doing all but the most blunt and egregious things, sitting behind a computer screen for 90% of your comp career, that social skills muscle never gets exercised, those showers get less and less frequent. You only go to stores when you absolutely have to and then if there's girls or parents or people of colour there, with their expectations of civil and mature behaviour, welp...it must be a conspiracy. Must...go...home...and post on redpill about it, my LGS has been taken over by the SJW thought police!
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Re: A Magical Gathering

Postby Friday » Fri Dec 22, 2017 1:30 pm

Man, that article shits on MTG players more than anyone I've ever seen. Like, the joke about MTG players is they're undersexed socially awkward weirdo nerds of the highest order (tied for first with DnD players), because, well, some of them actually are and those are the ones that make the impression.

But like I said earlier, the majority of magic players are just normal people (or at least, normal nerds) and are perfectly capable of speaking to girls, having sex, doing things normal people do, etc.

But not according to this article! Jesus Christ. I thought it was supposed to be defending the poor helpless mtg player being bullied by SJW cuck overlords, not shitting on them nonstop.
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