"Playing Magic Is Too Expensive" or "The Shitbirds"

A few weeks back, I covered how counterfeit Magic cards were surfacing. I then went on to conjecture about how folks would justify using those cards and what consequences might follow. Inevitably, some folks are going to justify buying high quality, fake Magic cards because it's so expensive to play.

Most of these folks are talking—well they're flapping their lipholes and flailing on their keyboards in an approximation of English. Those decipherable signals claim that it's necessary to buy counterfeits to play Magic.

Let met speak directly to you, you festering piles of animate filth. I need you to take your hand, the one with the single opposable thumb you use to manipulate the Magic cards we fucking humans use, and stick it your pie hole. You don't realize you're talking, but you are and as with every moment, from your conception until you die, it's a bad idea and you have to put your thumb into your mouth to stop it because your brain cannot be trusted to control itself.

You idiot. It is not necessary to have a $50 card to play Magic. Unless you're exceptionally driven to play Magic, but the patchwork, rotted mess of neurons that oversees your nervous system can't recognize this:

This doesn't allow you to start playing Magic for just $20. It allows you and a friend to start playing Magic for just $20. I know you don't have any, but imagine. *sigh* Have someone else imagine it for you then. Good. Did you tap a land? You're playing Magic. Clap yourself on the back and tell your mommy so she can pat you on the dick, you coddled, entitled man-child.

Oh. You wanted to play a format. Sure. Pauper is—oh. Something with an "official Magic event" ring to it. Fair enough. There are a number of limited options. I personally think drafting is the purest expression of one's skills at—oh. You specifically want to play vintage and standard formats. Well, you and your friends can download the Magic Set Editor. You can make proxies to your heart's content, test decks. Hell, you can even trade the proxies and...

You specifically want to play competitive formats with cash prizes. You simply don't want to pay what every other player has to play at that level.

Oh. You're a cheater. That's a completely different affair.

That's what you're doing when you call out for high-quality fakes; you're announcing that you want to cheat at Magic, but you don't want anyone to know about it. You want to crash the Magic that thousands of people know and love. You want to fuck with the income of local game stores that host an event. You want to walk into a game where everyone assumes that every good card you have is something you've dramatically lucked into or worked hard for and represent yourself as an equal who shares their burdens in creating, testing, and playing decks. You want to fuck this great thing because you can't accept there's one or two things that are just beyond your reach you entitled piece of shit. You want to walk into a tournament and walk out with money because you're a greedy, small-minded motherfucker.

I'll explain this slowly because of the constant pressure on your brain; the premise of vintage and standard tournaments (and the tens of thousands of dollars paid out at them) is the concept of "fair access" to the cards. That doesn't mean everyone gets a card or can afford a card. It means that there are X cards and if demand is $100 for each one. They're equally hard for everyone to get.

If the unfairness of people who already have money gaining a competitive advantage in a field that gives them more money is blowing your mind, then I'm going to go ahead and get you a placard:

You got bigger things to protest, son.

You're a dirty cheater who doesn't want to work as hard as everyone else to get there. End of story. You aren't good at Magic and you're even worse at life. You think you can hang with the guys who (the occasional cheater aside) paid with every hour, every loss, and every dollar to earn the right to flop cards at the very top of the "play a silly game for real fucking money and a lot of it" and you want to get an easy pass because you're lazy and can't come to grips with your own terminal mediocrity.