The Beginning

Magic: the Gathering is a difficult game. I am not good at Magic: the Gathering.

I want to get better at Magic: the Gathering.

Magic has been around for literally my entire life, but I've only been playing for just over a year. Trying to learn how to play a complex game, full of intricacies and nuance, is kind of like riding a bike blindfolded. You understand the basics--stay balanced, push down on pedals--but you can't see where you're going. And the best part--everyone else can see. As you learn more in the game you have flashes of life without the blindfold. You start understanding why you do things. You are no longer blindly pedalling into games.

Most of the time I still feel like I'm pedalling blindly.

There's a lot of Magic blogs out there. Most are by pros, artists, developers, financers, etc. What I'm hoping to do with this blog is tell a story. Show improvement. Record everything.

Like many other aspiring Magic players, I'm a student. And I have a part time job. And I live with my girlfriend. Needless to say, free time is hard to come by. I don't have 12 hours a day to practice and learn. Instead, I'm hoping this blog will help me use my time efficiently. Dedicated learning instead of mindless practice.

If any of you like watching streams on Twitch as much as I do, you've probably stumbled across Jaime Staples (pokerstaples) stream. For those that haven't Jaime is an professional poker player who also happens to live in Lethbridge. He doesn't claim to be the best poker player in the world, but what he does is use the stream to show his improvement, kind of like reality TV. Viewers interact, ask him questions, and get to take part in the story of Jaime Staples.

Now, I certainly don't expect this blog to take off like Jaime's stream, but I am hoping I can provide something different in the Magic community.

That's all for now. I don't want to have a huge wall of text for my first post (it might be anyway). Next time I'll talk about the different things I'm going to track, and what I'm going to focus on.

Thanks for reading!
- Chris