"It"-That-Should-Not-Be-Named

Posted by gatch | Labels: | Posted On Wednesday, November 4, 2009 at 10:43 AM


The flavor text says it all. You shell out for the most absurdly expensive manabases. You playtest till your hands are all blistered from shuffling. You and your dedicated team tweak and tune the deck to perform like an F1 race car. On tournament day, you get to the tables, draw your opening seven, keep a great hand with two lands.. and draw no more for the next five turns. You're manascrewed. It has happened to us all, and it's the most frustrating thing ever. Having your arms tied behind your back while your balls are itchy as hell is heaven compared to the manascrew. I define manascrew as pure evil. It is the mold that grows on the scab, that dried up from the pus, that erupted from a pimple on satan's left-side butt-cheek. The gamers at Hogwarts refer to manascrew as 'It'-That-Should-Not-Be-Named. Know what happened on the 7th day? god farted- and there was Manascrew. I could go on and on telling you how bad it is, but until you've played the game and experienced it for yourself you would not understand. Even winning on account of manascrew is awful. Taking a game because your opponent didn't get his lands is never as satisfying as beating him fair and square, and I'm always hesitant to extend a handshake after winning that way, for fear of getting my hand smacked away, or viciously bitten off. Funny thing is, it never seems to happen during playtesting...or maybe I just don't notice because of the absence of tournament level pressure. I don't know if its bad shuffling, destiny or just plain rotten luck. I do know however, that luck is part of the game, and the probability of drawing god-hands is the same as drawing crap hands. You can control it to some extent (read Jay Salazar's article on starcity games:http://www.starcitygames.com/php/news/article/890.html) but even applying the fundamentals of manabase building will not guarantee a perfect draw.
Manascrew is a variable of the game that you cannot control, and will happen more often than you expect. The reason behind all this ranting is because I had just been to a tournament and got manascrewed five times. Needless to say I had the living daylights Magicked out of me. My $300 deck lost to budget builds that weren't even optimal. That's not counting the long nights of playtesting always accompanied by a grande caramel machiato (they're not cheap either). I felt like a passionate athlete losing at my beloved sport to a chump who only learned how to play yesterday. I don't mean to brag, but I think I deserve to beat decks like that for sheer dedication to the game! Well, there's no point in bitching like a princess over what happened realy. I'm sure the best players have been in the same situation more often than I have, I just needed to vent my frustration out into the world. Sorry if you got nothing helpful from this post. Until next time, I hope the magic gods smile upon you and your draws.
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carla isabel says...

Bitter! Ahaha! Hey about the balls itching post, you could always have someone else scratch it.

Posted on: November 7, 2009 at 11:53 AM

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