Magic: The Gathering As An Accessory

Note: yes, I do play M:tG. I fancy myself pretty good at it, as far as “casual” players go. Casual here means that I’ve spent less than $1,000 on cards (and less than $30 for a single card). I readily admit this is not a perfect definition – some people have gotten tournament-winning decks for less than the cap, and some people have paid more for cards than rent. But for me, that’s not what “casual” should imply.

If you spend a grand on cardstock, it’s no longer something you do on the side. A four-digit investment is not a passing fancy, nor is it something you take lightly. Spending that much on anything, especially cards, suggests that the cards are a measure not only of financial worth, but personal worth as well.

And that’s something Magic does much more effectively than most other card games (and in many ways, as good as video games, fashion, and alcoholism) – it drives the player to invest themselves into their decks.

Yu-Gi-Oh! and Pokemon fail in this regard, because more or less the decks tend to look the same. How many people sat on decks running Charizard? Rather, what kind of idiot wouldn’t do so if they could? How many people depend on the Blue Eyes, White Dragon? Or Ultimate Dragon, I should say, since that’s the end game.

In effect, there’s very little true personalization.

But by the sheer volume of cards and sets released in its history, Magic has cards that will appeal to just about any kind of player, so every kind of player can find something to like.

Want to have a lot of life? There’s a card for you.

Want to have everyone else lose life? There’s a card for you.

Want big motherfuckers? Here you go.

What about lots of motherfuckers? Got that too.

What if people want to do things you don’t like? Well, fuck them!

Just want to fuck with people? Go for it!

Hey, why not win just because? You can do that.

Hell, what if you don’t even want to play by the rules?

Well, actually…

WAIT, THEY DID THAT.

Basically, you can just about do whatever you want. There are thousands and thousands of choices, you’re bound to find something you like. And really, that’s what its appeal boils down to.

If you buy a dress, you accentuate your appearance except for when it’s sitting in the closet or crumpled in a heap at the foot of a bed. If you buy a game, it will collect dust within a few weeks once you’ve finished it off. In both cases, the individual item loses value by virtue of being interchangeable with other, similar items. But a Magic deck, once completed, represents a manifestation of the individual’s personality. Whether they like being super strong or super crafty, whether they like being friendly with opponents or antagonistic… no matter what, a Magic deck is irreplaceable because it does something nothing else can do, and it belongs to them.

So apparently, the message is that Prada bags can suck it?