Magic: The Gathering Dust (or Maybe I Just Don't Care Anymore?)

[Norm4eva]

Hi.  You probably don't know me from my submissions to the forums at all; usually I just browse, browse and browse some more until I see something I feel like I'm actually capable of commenting on, then I do so and sort of go away again, heh.
My screenname is "Norm4eva" (long e thank you, like "easy"), but really that's a tired holdover from what you might call.. a previous life?  Previous band, actually, but that's not important.
My name is Luke.  I've been playing Magic since May 16th, 2002.  I know this because I jumped into the Judgment prerelease a mere 2 days after I learned the game, and the date of the Hebrew Glory I received was "18 May 02".  So yeah.
Anyway, I've been playing for nearly six years, and in the last 24 months I've maybe played 7 sanctioned events.  Usually I come home with a dread of the experience.
Maybe it's my approach to the game.  First of all, I'm a die-hard White Weenie fan.  Since I first saw the deck, or a variation of it back in the Invasion-Odyssey Standard, I was positively captivated by it.  The deck ran whatever a bunch of white men that flew, coupled with Crusade effects, Battle Screech and that "Intuition for Flashback cards" card to find Deep Analysis and other random goods.  It locked up the ground with Knights and things, made a bunch of flyers and then made them ALL HUGE.  I was just enthralled with it.
Now I play Angel Stompy and I like it okay, sure, but I sort of miss turn one Suntail Hawk, turn two Quiet Speculation, turn three drop guys make birds, turn four Crusade.  Guess I'm just a little kid when it comes to what I like to run.
I play White Weenie for the same reason people are Cubs fans.  Yeah, when they're bad they're really bad, but oh shit when they win. . . . !
So maybe it's me, then, setting myself up the bomb and hating the results.
Maybe it's the location.  Here in Nebraska, it's all about Standard.  In case you didn't know, White Weenie is not that hot in Standard, so by my rule 5 points are automatically deducted from the format.
Anyway!  I hate showing up to events and getting savaged by (a) expensive tech, or (b) really shitty tech.  I hate losing to $45 Tarmogoyfs that my lifestyle can't allow me to acquire, and I really don't like losing to little kids sporting Illusion.dec and a bunch of spells that just bounce things or whatever the new Pacifism of the day is (Temporal Isolation gah).  I mean, the unknowable X is supposed to be part of the allure, right?  Barbarians vs. Turtles!  Lifegain.dec takes on five-dollar-version of Empty the Warrens combo!  White Weenie against fucking Tings?  Shit like that.  That's supposed to be FUN, right?  So why aren't I having any fun?  So I say to myself, oh, maybe it's the format.
See, I decided to dedicate myself to Legacy when I saw the BR split.  I thought that was going to be my ticket to an Eternal format.  The early predictions looked enticing; aggro-control as a top contender, things like Angel Stompy and UG Madness reigning over Landstill and racing 2-Land Belcher... yes yes yes I am all in.  I'll be there.  I bought 4 LEDs about two weeks after I heard about the format.  Whenever there would be a Legacy event in Lincoln, I would show up.
I showed up.  Nebraska didn't.  So by following my own vision of the kind of experience I wanted to have, instead of letting the environment determine my experience, I ended up on a deserted island.
Oh, there were events after a while.  City Champs and shit.  Then, for like 6 weeks, I was a pimp.  "Oh snap it's Legacy tonight?  Go find Stick, he's got, like, a bunch of Legacy decks."  And I did.  A-Stompy, Goblins, Affinity, Spring Tide, and whatever the random jankety fifth-deck I was building was at the time.  Most of the Legacy I played was me versus my own decks.  Even when they weren't, and I had some Type 2 dork playing decent aggro against me while I played Spring Tide and he would tell me, "I've been watching you play all night and for our match I'll need you to speed up your decisions," and so I went off with a bunch of Remands and High Tides on the third turn ("hope that was fast enough for you," I said), I still proved that my own experience goldfishing and reading The Mana Drain had given me enough smarts to play around matches I had not anticipated.  I won way more often than I lost.
My rating shot up to a respectable 5th in the state.  5th in Legacy in Nebraska was good enough for me.
For a while.  Then the format went away again.  Now I come out o the occasional prerelease, again, when money allows.  But I don't much care for Limited, I have this bad habit of going 2 - 2 at prereleases and not getting into any prizes.  Meh.
So maybe it's the format, maybe it's me.  I don't know.  What I know is that my Magic office is a seldom entered shrine to goldfishing decks that won't see competitors.  My wife learned how to play, and sometimes, every few months, she breaks out the Elf deck and I try on whatever it is that I'm working out.  It's like our version of Monopoly; it gets played from time to time, but no one would play Monopoly every day.
Maybe it's my lifestyle.  I work two jobs, one a courier at DHL and the other a teacher in a music program.  I have two bands that I dedicate a lot of my nights to, I have a daughter from a previous relationship that I have on the weekends, and on top of these things I'm supposed to have hobbies?  Fuck, man, I find time to play Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance 2 for an hour while I'm doing laundry and I consider it multitasking.  For me, playing Magic would require a weekend excursion to like, Chicago or some Midwestern venue.  And to do it without feeling like a schmo I'd want a playtest group.  But, again, Nebraska just doesn't give a shit about Legacy, so where's my playtest group?  I'm not sure I want to drive solo across the country just to play cards.
My wife hates it when I talk about cashing out.  You'll regret it, she says.  She takes pride in the fact that she was the only girl I ever dated who didn't want me to pick between her and the game.  I'm rather fond of that aspect of her personality myself!  Yet, here I sit with hundreds of dollars worth of potential energy, both for my financial situation and for other gamers, somewhere out there who may not have a set of FoWs or LEDs yet, someone who will put my Piledrivers to good use.  I'm sitting in a clipper ship stuck in a doldrum; a dearth of resource around me, yet when that one violent wind blows I raise sail and drift closer to. . . . what, exactly?
I guess I was hoping that someone around here could relate.  Even if it's just a "dry season" where you are, or if life got in the way of the game, or. . . whatever your experience is, I was hoping for some insight.

[Almighty]

I'm there. I can count the number of times I've played with real magic cards on one hand in the past year. I haven't hit up an event since SCG Roanoke minus two FNMs on the rare Friday night off.

These days I get my fix just collecting the game. I've slowly been collecting foil versions of a R/G beats deck that I've had for a year, and that keeps me current. There will be a time where I have the time and the energy to play regularly again. That alone keeps me from completely abandoning a hobby that I have always enjoyed. Realistically, I won't be able to attend another event for several months due to the nature of my job, but I'll always enjoy playing the game. Sure I'm sitting on roughly $700 in cards in the meantime. But it will take me a long time to reacquire them if I cashed out now and did something in regards to breaking out of debt or putting it towards my Roth IRA. Hell, I'd regret spending that money on something that would see actual recreation use, like a BMX bike or set of golf clubs or *shudder* a new gaming system.

Unless you need that money to stay afloat, I'd hang in there. Because hey! You never know.

[Matt]

Oh man, I feel for you 110%. For a while there was a decent Legacy scene here, then it grew tenuous, then some people moved away, and who knows what happened to others, and now it's dead. Which saddens me, because I love Legacy and it's the only constructed format I'll play. And I hate tribal themes, so right now I can't even draft - maybe the October set will be better, but right now, Magic == a box in the corner, from which I proxy and goldfish. I last played on Thanksgiving weekend, and that had been after a 5-month dry spell.

So yeah, you may be alone, but you ain't alone by yourself. If you take my drift*.

Lastly, I would advise you not to cash out, because given your current situation, if you do, it's unlikely you'll ever get back in, and, as we both know only too well, we need every player we can get. Someday the scene around you may grow more attractive, or perhaps you'll wind up moving somewhere with a better scene. Finally, Legacy staples being what they are, it's unlikely they will ever lose their value as long as the game is being produced and supported. If you had Tarmogoyfs or something whose price is high due to its demand in non-rotating formats, you might consider selling THAT on the assumption that they will drop when they rotate, but duals and FoW and fetches and so on - hang on to that.



*omg clipper ship pun

[Zombie Shakespeare]

I know how you feel. The Magic scene as a whole here in Charleston has been on a down swing for some time. The turnout on Fridays are sometimes in the single digits and tournaments are a quarterly events at best. Most of the hardcore tournament players have to travel at least 2 hours for a sanctioned Standard event and 4 to 6 for  PTQ or Vintage events. How Charleston managed to get a Pro Tour when we've never had FNM baffles me.

Have you tried playing Legacy on MWS?

Definitely hang onto your cards if you enjoy playing. One day things might improve.