Preview Article #2--Home-Brew: Magic: The Gathering Deckbuilding with Ben Snyder

Ed. Note: You can expect various Magic: The Gathering articles to appear on the website as a part of our section on Gaming.  With the "release of the new set", Ben is going to be discussing a variety of "rogue deckbuilding options" and "high value plays" as well as a number of other things that we don't entirely understand.  Enjoy.

“It’s the return of the—aw wait”

Yeah, I went there.  It’s been a long time.  More than 5 years since my last SCG article; more than 5 years since you last read about a deck I designed on Magicthegathering.com.  (Am I still proud that an article of mine still shows up as the first result in seven different Google searches?  Yes...yes I am---try "team constructed magic" for example)  I haven’t taken a hiatus from Magic so much as I lumbered about in the degenerate world of corporate retail sales management.  I still play the game, never stopped, and I still read the articles, but I didn’t have time to do what I do best: designing decks. 

So for those of you who don’t know my history, why don’t we do the David Copperfield thing for a moment?  I started playing Magic in 1993 when my cousin brought home two starter decks and some boosters from his annual trip to Ohio.  That’s right, I’ve been playing longer than anyone who is reading this article (except for an extremely short list of people who probably aren’t reading this, I’m one of the few still actively playing who can claim to have played since the literal beginning of the game). 

Preview Article #1: An Introduction

               Before you continue reading, for the purposes of this introduction (and, indeed, in many ways, in order to appreciate the guiding principle behind this website) it is necessary to walk through a very simple thought experiment.

                Consider that you are thinking of something right now.  Now, consider that (to simplify) 7,000,000,000 other human beings on the planet also just thought something a second ago.  What are the odds that someone thought that exact thing (say, peanut butter-covered Sour Patch Kids).  This is a multiplicity that could stretch infinitely, but, again, we are speaking broadly, so a reasonable estimate is 1 in 7,000,000,000.  This is, of course, not true, because they would have to be in the same situation as you, say, in America.  Now you are at 1 in 300,000,000.  Following that logic, they’d need to be in the same city as you (for our purposes, say, Lafayette, LA).  1 in 100,000.  Continuing, they’d need to be in your house.  1 in 4.  Your room.  1 in 1.  So the odds actually get smaller, until it is almost a certainty that at least one person had the thought that you just had.  Which, since you did just have that thought, someone did.

                If you understand what just happened, the rest of this will make sense.  If not, we are pretty sure that Cracked.com could always do with a few dozen more readers.