Jank [3of5]
A Magical Trading Card Game Memoir
Emm and I were assigned to different tables. Three unopened packs of fifteen cards were stacked in front of each drafter in their pods of eight. As per rules, silence is to be maintained. Direct communication is not permitted during the draft.
Each competitor was in a state of quiet contemplation, but not just because it was a rule. Drafting is an important level on which we play. Compared to constructed formats, drafting is more random. Which does not mean it is less skill-based. Quite the opposite: limited formats are more skill intensive and require greater agility of mind. Persistent archetypes exist based on core mechanic interactions, but their effectiveness changes with the impermanent environment. Scissors don’t always beat paper. Rock isn’t always solid. A draft format is a quickly evolving entity.
A bell rang signalling the start of drafting. We cracked our boosters. My hands expertly extracted the precious cardboard shards out of plasticized foil packaging. An anticipatory wave rushed over me as though effects from future events were rippling backward through time. My heart pumped excitedly and an alert calm surged the mainline to my core. The smell of the card-stock hit my nostrils and resurfaced the memory of my first time, all those years ago.
The Way had summoned me. Lunch hour after math class. In the halls of high school. While the cool kids opted to smoke cigarettes in the vacant lot adjacent to the school grounds, we played. We the few. We the brave. (For that story, ΩPP: Episodes 71-73, “The Riddle of Cardboard”)
I had been a player for almost a quarter century before I recognized the higher dimensional order. I felt ashamed I had not noticed sooner, but I quickly made peace with my past. Within this new paradigm, life itself is a series of games. In some you get bad beats. In others you get blessed, top-decking like luck is one of your skills. A state of flow; becoming one with the moment, is required to master playing on multiple levels linked through time by a multifaceted metagame, fluctuating like cosmic strings. Form constantly shifting. Every component gradually swapped out and replaced anew. A fifth-dimensional Ship of Theseus. By certain definitions the game is even more alive than its players. This deceptively simple game obeys commands, but it also gives them. Anyone can play, but to parlay into The Way, one must obey.
I know that sounds like hyperbolic nonsense. I’m sure by now, some of you regular listeners might suspect what I am describing to be a symptom of my recent head injury (ΩPP: Episode 137 - “Oblong Data”). Indeed, brain damage may be a contributing causal stream. However, I have only gained insight. I speak in near-religious abstract because no greater metaphors exist in language for me to convey the concept. There is no single mind or entity commanding the will of The Way. Its intentionality is visible only to those of us open to really looking. Not for a meta-meme made manifest, but the opposite: a nascent ethic on the verge of autopoietic self-birth. Speculative as it is, I strongly believe what I am describing to be real.
But I digress.
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I fanned the fresh fifteen cards in my hand. Instinctively I noted the color distribution. Then I scanned for bombs. Removal. Evasion. Aggression. Value outside the draft in excess of gains from my probable placement in the competition. Maximizing Expected Value is the route to Going Infinite. To burn as brightly and for as long as odds allow.
My basic drafting strategy has always been cooperative. For this block, I had contextually memorized all 458 cards. Their names, mana cost, type line, text box, art, artist, flavor text, collector number, rarity, and errata. I knew the pick orders and the combos. But, I also knew I was not alone with that knowledge. Other players likely had insight, skill level, or experience exceeding even my own. I took all this into consideration and made subtle adjustments to my priorities.
And just like that, the first round of drafting was complete. The Master of Ceremonies granted a 30 second break between packs. I took stock of my picks, noting cards in all five colors. No archetype was yet speaking to me. In the distance I spotted the back of Emm’s head. I could tell she was smiling. Her aura radiated positive energy which indicated to me, she had drafted a bomb or two.
I refocused myself, cracked pack two, removed the token, picked a card, and then passed to my right. My selections, face down in a single pile in front of me. I attempted to compose my deck mentally. The cards passing through my hands blurred together in a prismatic whirl. Their 2D sheen sang to me holographically. The second pack completed then the third went around the table.
The trickle of cards into my pool ceased and deck construction began. I arranged my picks by the curve of their casting-cost and pored over my options. Hearing the colors, a current of card-song stirred up past drafts. My brain set itself to work differencing datasets. The moist computer filtered and distilled a shapeless perspective for my mind.
Like most things that exist, I can identify its components. I can identify the rules under which it operates. But, there are more than just those two levels of analysis. The thing itself relates to things not directly linked to its constituents or behavioral reality. Human phenomena are mere disturbances on the surface of our reflecting pool reality. The source of those disturbances extends into a realm unimaginable. Something that is beyond language. Something that withdraws from any attempt at a complete analysis. The Way’s gestalt is not grounded upon dichotomies of instinct-serendipity, signifier-signified, subject-object, component-function, field-particle, or any shallow spectrum of human thought.
Again, I digress.
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From my forty-five draft picks, I selected twenty-three for the main deck. The rest didn’t make the cut due to being off curve or color, or because they were too situational. I relegated these reserves to my sideboard. I opted to build a black-red deck, splashing blue. Compared to a two-color deck, it was not preferable as there were trade-offs between diversity and synergy; power level and consistency. I hoped perhaps on that day variance would favor me.
Emm tapped me on the shoulder.
“Lil’ help bud?”
“Certainly. Show me what you got.”
She had it down. There were no improvements I could suggest. For her deck’s slightly high cost curve, she had beautifully intuited the hypergeometric distribution, correctly matching eighteen lands with twenty-two spells. Assuming she didn’t get aggro’d or flood within the first five turns and kept her play tight, she would be unsinkable.
“Very nice,” I said, complimenting her elegant build.
“Eighteen mana isn’t too much?” she inquired, not confident in her instincts.
“Probabilistically optimal if you want to cast that six-drop bomb in a reasonable time-frame. You did great.”
“Thanks! What about you, pull anything of note?”
“Nothing broken. A decent amount of removal. Mostly jank, but I can work with it.”
We sleeved up. Emm’s were plain matte black. Mine, decorated with a vector graphic of a cartoon panda. First round pairings were announced. We bid each other good luck then parted to find our seats.
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