Hello, everyone, Welcome to this episode of Superhero Ethics. Today's podcast is
inspired by a sad event, but it's chanced to celebrate a great life and
someone who had an incredible impact on a game that many of us love,
magically Gathering. We're talking, of course, for those who are in the
Magic the Gathering world. No, Sheldon Meani. Sheldon Meani was a huge
part of creating the Commander format and putting out ideas such as rules zero and
other things that really encourage something that went along with a lot of Commander nearly
the idea of playing a game where the idea the focus isn't necessarily on who
wins, but as much as how does everybody at the table have a good
time. We're al still having some friendly competition involved. And that's the kind
of thing that I love talking about on this podcast in terms of just like,
let's talk about what that culture is like and how to sustain it and
challenges to it and other versions of things like that, all in honor of
Sheldon, who just did so much to really put forward these ideas. I
was just such a great friend to so many of us, and I have
two really exciting guests. First, as returning guest Will Freeland. Will,
I don't think we've had you on to talk about magic before, but I
know you've talked about comics on here and a lot of other topics. We'll
just quickly introduce yourself. Yeah, so Will Freeland, Silver Dreamer pretty much
everywhere on the Internet. I've been here before talking about primarily Marvel stuff.
Talked a little bit about Star Wars, and my online presence kind of revolves
around Marvel and Lego and building bricks stuff and hobbies. But I also play
a lot of magic gathering. I've made who knows how many Commander decks,
and I always love as soon as I find that Commander deck that I really
like, going and buying an altar of it and supporting some artists somewhere I
go to as a guy in Spain to just it's just so much fun building
a Commander deck that is almost nothing like anything else I've seen from other people
that make the same commander and I think that's one of the best parts about
this format in general. Definitely. Yeah, Will and I we met,
I believe for the first time in person at a Commander event to Command Fast
Vegas. I'm almost really happy that for the first time I have on a
guest, Nile Joan Rivers. Many of you who are in the Magic content
creator space probably already know Nile, but for everyone else, please introduce yourself.
Yeah, thank you. I am Nil, Nile Joan Rivers on Twitch,
Twitter, TikTok, wherever you can find me. I make Magic the
gathering content of all varieties, really, but the main things I try to
focus on our making queer centric content. I'm in the middle of series that
I call Commander Versus where we do a two edit giant Commander game that'll be
like one queer group against another queer group. So we've done like Twins,
First Dolls, Bears, First Buys, Days, First Gays, stuff like
that, just like silly little names, but it's an it's a fun way
to bring that part of the community to the forefront. And then I also
try to focus on new player friendly content. I try really hard to lower
the barrier to entrgue for Magic as much as I can, because it's a
very intimidating game for new people to pick up, and I try to make
that easier for them. Definitely, I love that, and I love especially
what you talked about there because one of things certainly that I've experienced we'll talk
about this more down the road in this episode, is that while Magic itself
is slowly but is becoming a lot more queer, welcoming, and friendly to
all sorts of folks, the Commander spaces that I've been in have been overwhelmingly
where I found that the most not exclusively by any means, and there's a
lot of work to be done, but it is a great connection. I
think we'll definitely be talking about And let me actually just start with because we
aren't. This isn't gonna be specially about Sheldon Meny, but about kind of
the ideas he put forward and things like that, and I want to focus
mostly on the ideas. But first you're starting with Sheldon. Now, I
don't know how much you had interacted with him or knew about his content,
but kind of what did you know about Sheldon? Yeah, so I never
got the opportunity to interact with him directly, but I feel like his influence
is very very easy to identify and feel throughout the entire community, especially the
Commander side of the community, and it's been it's been really cool to get
to see all of the all of the posts from all of my friends who
did get to interact with him about what those interactions were like and how genuine
and evolved of a guy he was. Yeah, it seems it seems like
his impact was only positive. Yeah. One thing I was really struck by
was how many people posted things like I completely disagreed with Sheldon on everything he
thought about how magic should be played. Most of my online interactions with him
were arguing back and forth, and I felt like we became good friends through
that, which is given the nature of most online discourse and how you know,
the fact that he was able to generally disagree with people in very friendly
ways and things like that is just really a great statement to him. Will
what about yourself? I guess this speaks more to his legacy than anything else.
But so I've never interacted with them, interacted with him. But when
I hear the name Sheldon, I think of magic before I think of Big
Bang theory, and I feel like I feel like that's a statement in and
it of itself that is a victory for geeks. But when yeah, when
the news came out that he asked my Twitter if ease I mentioned before we
started recording that like half the people I follow on Twitter are magic people,
and that's like the closest to me creating that being expressing my magic fandom as
I currently am. But my feed was just full of anecdotes and stories about
one time interactions with Sheldon in person, or seeing him at an event,
or a small conversation that they had in passing, or even especially the next
day, people rallying about in Sheldon's name, let's go to our local lgs
and promote magic and teaching more people how to play magic and how to get
into Commander and all this, and just again to the same point that now
made like Sheldon's impact is so much bigger than I thought it was, and
it's it seems to be primarily positive, and that's the dream. You can
only hope to be that positive in so many people's lives. I will just
say a quick interruption for those of you who mostly listen to this podcast because
you want to know about the fcs of robots and vigilanteism and superheroes, I
promise we will explain some of these terms that we're talking about. You don't
have to know commander or magic the gathering. We will explain all that means
in just a few moments, I promise, and now they'll let me.
As kind of a way of starting that, maybe talk to us a little
about your journey, because I know you did not start in magic as a
commander player. Yeah, not even a little bit. So I first started
playing magic in two thousand and seven. Around then, when the Lore one
sat was out, I was given a preconstructed deck of mur Folk, which
for the non magic listeners are mr people, you know, Mermaid's Mermaid,
that kind of thing. And I just immediately fell in love. I mean,
I grew up. It's like a Pokemon kid, a Uvo kid.
It was like the natural pipeline I was. I was built for it.
I was the Targets demo for sure. But fell in love immediately and played
off and on just kind of like with friends casually throughout middle school, high
school after all that. Didn't seriously get into it until the last year and
a half or so where I started to get really into the competitive scene in
magic, which actually started with a group called the VML. Which the VML
is a magic league that takes place online that is specifically for people of marginalized
gender, so women, non binary people, Transmit stuff like that, and
I participated in their leagues and I did pretty well in them, and that
just like got me more and more into the competitive scene. And since then,
I've been doing a lot of rcqs, which are regional Championship qualifiers and
other tournaments like that. And while doing all that, I'm also like making
magic content on Twitch and all that stuff, and eventually that leads me into
the Commander area. And my experience so far with Commander players has been very
positive. I've made a lot of really good friends in that space. I've
made I think some of my best content in the Commander's space and really just
like kind of found a home for myself there. Yeah, that's wonderful,
but it's a very It's definitely an interesting perspective coming into the Commander's scene from
the competitive scene because it's the same game, it's the same cards for the
most part, but totally different worlds, very very very different worlds. Yeah,
and that's a lot we're going to talk about today, And I'm so
glad you are here because I think that one of the things that happens with
Commander and I promise I'm about to give the explanation for it after this comment,
and he replies, but I think one of the things that happens in
Commander is that because a lot of the Commander world is not where the focus
is not primarily on competition, you know, there can be some defensiveness and
some you know, a kind of like Jets and Sharks thing happen where it's
sort of like, oh, where the good players and they're the competitive ones,
and the competitive ones say the same thing. And I really love that
you're coming from. You know that you love both, because I think that
is a needed perspective, because even myself, I could sometimes be a little
bit uh, you know, I try to gently tease my more competitive friends,
but it can probably not seem as gentle sometimes. And let me explain
that. But let me tell my own story about how I came into it
that I'll hope will give a good explanation for it. I played Magic Nile,
I think, possibly before you were born, certainly before a lot of
my audience was born. I played in the very early days of Magic Alpha
Beta in the late night in the early nineties in high school, kept playing
through college. Most people stopped playing around that time. The mid late nineties,
people weren't really into it, stole off my cards. Someone gave me
three hundred dollars for a piece of cardboard just because it said mocks Emerald on
it. I thought that was like clost money in the world. I will
never look at the price of it again. But I got into it.
It was a lot of fun and I was I was decent at it.
I was not great. I went to one or two tournaments, didn't really
love that. And it's, like I said, kind of fell out of
it in mid college. Then when I got back in some years later,
I got divorced. I started looking for new community, and I started playing
magic again and wound up getting into judging as well. And I really liked
judging and I really like and I found that I kind of liked judging more
because honestly, I just didn't have that. I didn't have it in before
the competition. I loved playing I loved limited it especially, but like spending
a whole bunch of money on a deck wasn't my thing. Doing all the
research, like I want to really honor again. The amount of work competitive
players put in is amazing, and like I don't want to play the Olympics.
I just wanted to play in my backyard, and so I was happy
mostly being a judge and playing some events for free. And then at a
gathering of queer folks in Medicine, I mentioned that I used to play Magic,
and some people said, well, do you want to play Commander with
us? And I said, what's that? And the way they basically explained
it to me was, it's a different kind of format, it's multiplayer,
it's different kind of deck building rules and the idea of it as they saw
it, And I think this is a big part of how Sheldon saw it,
was that it was meant for people who wanted to enjoy this game more
as a social activity than as specifically about winning, you know, and that
it could be because they just wanted a way to hang out with their friends.
It could be kind of his will was saying, although it don't let
me put words in your mouth. You know a place too. There was
a mechanic in a set three years ago that looked really cool, but it
just wasn't good enough to function in standard or limited, and Commanders a way
to build you a ridiculous deck that just does something really fun because you don't
need to build the most efficient deck possible and so yeah, so it was
this kind of world of let's play the game and figure out how to have
fun with it. Now. Of course, the problem can be if one
person's idea of fun is let's spend ten dollars on a deck and just let
everyone go to town, and another person's idea is let's all spend a thousand
dollars on a deck and hopefully someone has won by turn three and then we
start over again. That's really going to get complicated and people are not going
to often work. And what I think show then me and he did.
I don't know if he invented this idea or if he just kind of really
helped to push it forward, because there's certainly a big advocate for it.
Was the idea of the rule zero conversation. And this is the idea that
like, before you sit down and play a game of magic with new people,
you have a rule zero conversation, which is the less decide. It's
not officially in the rules, but like at this table, we're going to
ban this kind of card, or we're gonna say we're changing this particular rule
to make it a little easier for people to function or we're gonna do other
things that I, as a judge and person who gets paid to host official
magic events, cannot mention on air, but you might be able to figure
it out. Although that's not inherent to Commander, but that's something else entirely.
But yeah, and so that was kind of always my understanding of it
and of what Sheldon really gave it to. It is this idea of magic
can be very competitive, and that can be awesome. And it might be
that the social environment you really enjoy is hyper competitive and that's awesome too,
but that the focus is on how do we make a fun experience for everyone
involved? Totally. Yeah, I ran into, I guess, like a
couple of issues that I had to solve when I first started getting into the
Commander world from the competitive world. The first being having to adjust to the
different expectations of the table because, like you sit down to play a one
v one best of three at an RCQ against your opponent, you are both
trying to crush each other, you know, like that is the game.
If you don't hit a land drop on turn three, I am going to
choke you out the rest of the game. I don't care if you get
to play another card, you know, like, I, that's the game,
and that's what we're both expecting. That's like our equal expectation. They're
not going to get to the end and be like how dare you? Like
you didn't even let me like play any of my cards, you know,
like it's going to be like, yeah, I just didn't hit any lands
and you capitalized on my disadvantage. Now, the other thing was I came
into Commander. My one Commander duck was made of my mirth Wolk cards from
when I first started playing. So I had a blue white deck, so
I had counter spells, I had board wipes, I have cards that exile
your stuff. I had cards to bounce your stuff, and then I could
also make a giant board of fish. I had to learn other people's expectations
of you know, when is it appropriate to wipe a board, When is
it appropriate to counter something? When is it inappropriate to do these things?
Because again from the comp world, that doesn't matter. The appropriate time to
do those things is when it wins you the game and that's it. But
in like a more casual format like Commander tends to be, it was hard
for me to figure out, like wait, what do you mean? Like
it upsets you that I countered your commander, Like isn't that that? Isn't
that good? Like doesn't that like ruin your plans? Isn't that great?
Like it isn't that all we're here to do? But I what finally made
it click for me is I started thinking about it through the lens of content
creation. Actually, because when I play Commander on stream, when I have
people on before the stream, I always tell them like, hey, our
first objective is be entertaining. Our second objective is play magic. You know,
like I don't care if any of you are like good or bad or
whatever. I don't care what your decks are, like make it fun,
don't make it like not fun to watch. So doing that made it easy,
like it clicks for me where I could be like, okay, is
it more fun for me? Like is it more fun for the table if
I counter your spell? Or is it more fun for the table if I
let your spell go through even though I can counter it, even if it's
worse for me? And you know, this is like this is very casual
expectations. This is a very like we're playing a board game together, not
we're trying to win together. Sometimes. I think commander games, the expectation
is more competitive, and I think that can be really fun. But you
know, setting and meeting that expectation, I think it's critical because if if
any one person is not on the same wavelength as the rest of the table,
it becomes a very awkward time, very fast. Yeah. But as
long as you all agree, like this is the kind of vibe we're going
for, you know, do whatever you gotta do. Absolutely, I'm shutting
up. We'll let you comp in. Oh okay, So no, I
to play off of the like the casual let things happen mindset, Like I
feel so because I I've dipped my right pinky toe into competitive DH versus where
my decks typically sit are like high level, I guess is what's called where
it's it's strong and powerful, but it's not competitive because I don't run all
of the five hundred dollars cards that are better versions of what I run.
But so in the casual DH community, you can build a deck just for
fun and really just play around with a mechanic or or or a creature type
that you don't typically see in the competitive space and just go with it.
And just like flood the entire battlefield with random tokens just because you had this
ten mona spell that you normally wouldn't be able to cast ever, but you
survived until turn eleven, and you're like, you know what, it's time,
I'm going to create one hundred and fourteen flying one one peg aside.
Why not? And it's it's so much fun because like I have a deck
that just keeps on cycling my cards, Like I go, it's one hundred
card deck, but I draw like one hundred and fifty times on average because
I just keep on put looping my cards to the bottom of my deck and
just draw and draw and draw it from Argin the something something I forget it's
title, but his name's Argin and he's awesome and he's Sphinx. But like,
drawing cards doesn't win me the game, you know, like just conceptually,
but like when you play something that's a little more chaotic and you have
no idea if you're going to win, that's just so much more fun to
me than playing the lockout spells and the instant Just get rid of my deck
and then drop down a fastist oracles for the for the immediate win type stuff,
and it's just that's where you like really let your creative juices flow when
you're playing casual and you're just like, well, let's just see how this
goes. Yeah, I'm very much of that mindset. Some of my if
I would describe some of the best games of magic I've ever played, some
of them are games I've won, but some of them were games I've lost,
where but I got to do this really amazing thing that knocked out two
of the players but didn't quite get there, and so the third was able
to destroy me in like half a turn because I was, you know,
had completely spent all my resources. And I think it ties back to what
Nil was saying, because I love what you said there. But it has
to be about the shared expectations, because there's no reason for me to go
down and sit down with a couple of competitive players and be like, no,
no, my version of magic is better that it isn't. It's just
what Will and I love and what Milesins like you sometimes love, and to
me, that should really be the goal there of not trying to decide which
one's better, but just how do we create that space for the people who
want one kind of magic to find each other and and o there's others because
I did go a little bit of the same thing and that I wanted a
casual thing where everyone just got to do their thing. But to me,
the fun way to play is I will counter all of your things, fully
expecting that eventually you'll get something through and you probably will win. It turns
out that not everyone finds that it's fun as I do. But like I
have a good friend who's a STACKX player. Stax Is is that kind of
lockout kind of game, and she and I have had some great games with
other maniacs. We can convince that this is fun where she's trying to lock
everyone out and I'm trying to figure out how to counter or everything she's doing,
and the other two players are just like, what in the world is
going on? But because we can, you know, it's there are people
who find things fun that I don't think find fun, and that's it can
go both ways, and that's perfectly fine. Well, and I'm a big
believer, and you can power up or down just like your piloting of a
duck. Yeah, yeah, a table's expectations because like I think a lot
of times people have this misconception that they're like I have this that I can
only play in like really casual pods, and this deck that I can only
play in really competitive pods. But for me, I'll play any deck in
any pod. And if we you know, like I've got like my Calia
deck, which is pretty mean. If she comes out, you know,
like on turn four she's swinging, I'm bringing out like Avison's and all sorts
of like big scary creatures. You know, it's got a lot of like
brutal stuff in the deck. But if we sit down and we're like we're
gonna do this casual, I'm just gonna play different, Like I'm gonna play
more casually, you know, like if I have Platinum Angel, maybe I'm
just not gonna put her on the board. For those non Magic listeners,
Platinum Angel is a creature with highly oppressive text that says your opponents cannot win
the game and you cannot lose the game. So until they can deal with
Platinum Angel, no one's winning except for you. So you know, like
if we're not in a competitive you know, I'm not going to put down
Platinum Angel and give it hex proof. You know, like I'm not I'm
just not going to do that. Whereas also on the flip side, I've
been in pods before where people are like, here's the deck I'm playing,
and I'll be like, I'm just gonna play this precon and they're like,
oh, if you're playing a precon, I should power down my deck and
I'm like, no, you play what you want. I'll play my precon.
It'll be fine. And then you know, like I win the game
or whatever, and it's like it's just like you can play at a competitive
level with your lower power decks, and you can play at a lower power
level with your more competitive decks. You know what I mean, absolutely well,
and especially I love that, especially because for one thing, like I
love the example you used a while ago about if you sit down next your
opponent and they stumble on lands, which is basically like assembling your resources at
the start of the game so that you can do more things, You're just
gonna cut them off and take over the game. In Commander, a lot
of times, if one person of the four is really kind of struggling,
like no one in general, like no one's gonna just like knock them out
of the game early because that just considered like, no, give them a
chance. I did play in a group where someone was they started building their
decks to always go slow because they figured they could take advantage, and so
some of us had come on, man, you gotta like not try that.
But the other side of it, I think this kind of goes into
what you're saying is that like building the deck is an important skill, playing
the deck is an important skill, but any multiplayer game also adds a whole
other skill, which is politics and bluffing, and which I primarily as a
poker player. It's why I really love DH because I'm really good at convincing
people that know this person over there you need to be afraid of them,
don't look at the really good cards I just dropped. I'm only doing it
to help you against them. And politics is like, but some EEDH groups
will be like no politics. And that's also totally fine, because some people
think I'm a memiac for enjoying that kind of stuff, and that's again totally
fine, but it's it is nice that it like, there are definitely games
where I have felt like I have the worst deck and I'm not as good
at you as playing the game. But if I identify early who's the biggest
threat, I can make sure they get knocked out before I do. And
that's just, you know, it just it just adds another skill set that
can be really fun. Yeah, I love politicking and commander. I think
it's I think it's one of the most fun aspects of the game and probably
one of the biggest reasons to play it. I had a game recently where
there was one player that was just dominating and it was very much like he's
probably gonna win. And then there was another player who she was kind of
struggling, but she had sort of amassed a little bit of a board and
it was about to be her turn, and I was like, all right,
listen, if you don't attack me this turn, I'm gonna cast scheming
Symmetry next turn, which is a card that says me and target opponent both
find a card, put it on top of our deck. But I can
choose anyone at the table who also gets that benefit. And I was like,
if you don't attack me, I will target you with scheming Symmetry.
You can get any cards you want, you can stabilize whatever. But then
I was like, if you do attack me. I'm gonna target this guy
who's probably definitely gonna win, and we're just all gonna lose. Like I
will blow this table up if you don't take this deal. Yeah, she's
like the deal. So it was great, and it's also it's one of
the reasons why I think one of the best ways to play Commander. And
again, for those warrant into Magic, I promise we're going to branch this
into a larger conversation about community in just a few moments. But I think
all of this can tie into community building pretty clearly. But I would just
say one other kind of addition to that is the it's fun to just sit
down with like some random people and play Commander. But I'm honest, I'll
be honest, I very rarely do that. Mostly I like to play with
the same group of people because, ay, we all get to know each
other and we all get to kind of know our things, and we can
say, like, you know, in the group chat, hey I have
kind of a more powerful deck. Can people bring more powerful decks this time?
Or hey, do you mind if we have like this thing that we
often don't have, So that can be great. But also if I sit
down with three random people and play Commander and I offer someone a deal and
I stab them in the back. Okay, but if you do that in
a group of friends, that person's going to remember and a it might be
harder for you to do deals next time. But also, like I've seen
times if someone did that a couple of times, and someone just sat down
and said, I want everyone to know the goal of my game is to
defeat them like anything else is fine, because they just have to have me
in the back so many times. And like it, just like any community,
you know, you gotta the fact that, like every interaction that happens
in the game is also just going to play into the larger relationships your building.
I just love. I will sometimes say the like Telltale Games text out
loud when someone targets me, and I'll be like, Nile will remember this
so good? Yeah, yeah, and entertaining, I'm sure. Yeah.
I have a thing about planes walkers. Sorry, well no, just anytime
someone's plays a planes walker, I'm known for trying to immediately remove that planes
walker plans walker has gun should use. After my time in Magic and so
I'm I still refuse to accept that they're in my Magic. Hastag my magic,
but its zone brings out of planes walker it needs it needs to leave.
I did not abide by planes walkers. I mean when I came back
to Magic, I didn't understand plans Walkers. But it's been like ten or
fifteen years, Brom. I know, Michael Keaton was really good as Batman,
but there have been other Batman's. Well, so let's kind of broaden
this out a bit because to me, all the things we're saying, especially
kind of let's kind of runs out of it because to me, all the
things that we've been saying, especially for both of you, about like you
know, setting social expectations, and like, am I right in thinking that
that's kind of just a mirror of what happens in any community or like how
we build communities and friendships and friend groups in the like, Yeah, I
think definitely. I Mean this happens all the time when making friends or having
friend groups. You know, like if you're if you're not all on the
same page about like the expectations of your friend group, it's not gonna work.
You know, Like if you if you have a friend group where like
some of them are like, hey, we're gonna hang out once a week,
twice a week, whatever. This is like what we're committing to,
and some of you can't make that happen, Like it's it gets uncomfortable because
some of these people have these expectations that you're going to be committing all this
time that you just like don't have or don't want to spend. Whereas you
know, some friends you have, maybe the expectation is set that like,
hey, we're going to see each other like twice a year, but those
two times are going to be really solid. Yeah, you know, I
think it's very common for someone to be like, this is my best friend
who I've known since I was five. We talk once a year, but
it's like a big catch up session, you know. And as long as
everyone's on the same page about that and everyone is cool with the relationship taking
that form, that's fine. But if people don't have matching expectations, then
like those relationships just aren't going to work. Yeah. Absolutely, I guess.
I will say playing magic, the gathering with both strangers and my friends,
has helped me developed my communication skills about expectations specifically. It's also it's
also taught me the importance of grammar and the difference between you know, like
may or not man and you know, stuff like this. So like,
you know, magic, the gathering just in general is ingrained in my blood
for the you know, the adult that I've seen myself become. But yeah,
communication setting expectations, Uh, you can't. It's hard to have a
universal good time without that. Yeah, totally one of my favorite examples I've
seen this where someone clearly had like learned the language from magic, because,
as I said, there was you know this rule zero conversation. It's that
likes, it's the specific let's set our expectations. I was with a group
of friends who often play eedh and there was a birthday party for one of
them that did involve a lot of friends who were from outside that particular group.
And within that group it was the kind of folks who just if you
said anything that couldn't any way be taken as a sexual innuendo, they were
going to say it. And and so one of them just said, hey,
it's great meaning you like, you know, can we just have a
rule zero conversation about the conversation and sexual innuendo? Like half of the people
are like, what do you mean? For the rest of us were like,
that's actually brilliant, because what do you mean it was? He just
like, hey, what is you know, this is something that some of
us enjoying conversation but could make other people uncomfortable. Let's figure it out.
And like the people who aren't used to that were like, that's really weird
but really kind of awesome. Sure, yeah, let's figure it out.
We figured out like, yeah, it wasn't some of them were a littless
comfortable, so we adjusted it as needed, and it was just it was
just such a great example of using this kind of you know, tech to
to say, yeah, we're in a new group, let's just let's talk
and figure this out. Yeah. And I think like all relationships, and
for the record, I feel like the word relationship applies to a lot more
than a lot of people think. Like, I think every connection between two
humans is a relationship. I think you and I have a working relationship.
And I think even if you look at like our discord messages together, we
had like a rule zero conversation about this recording right now, where you know,
yeah, we set expectations about like when we're going to do it,
how long we're going to be doing it for what we're going to discuss,
you know, is it going to be filmed or just recorded? Am I
expected to record? You know, like all these things, we got on
the same page about what it's going to be, and now we can do
it and it's a smooth and easy time because we're both on the same page
about it. Yeah. I love that. I've never thought of in those
terms, But you're so right. And part of why I think it becomes
so important is, especially when you're trying to an Adia. As an example
of this, find people who share a common interest because, like I think,
another version of this I've seen is within the Star Wars community, because
there's an awful lot of people who like talking about Star Wars online, and
some of them come from it from very different perspectives. And I quickly realized,
like, I don't want to talk to people who are going to constantly
make me defend liking Ray or you know, thinking that maybe women have a
place in the Star Wars or queer people have a place in Star Wars,
and so little kind of sub communities have formed themselves, and that's more of
a clear like good and bad. Yeah exactly, yeah, exactly. But
I think it could also be true of like I've definitely gone to gatherings of
you know, polyamorous people or like music lovers or disabled people or non binary
folks, which I am, and you know, found like like I remember
when going to a polyamorous group in New York. Always I had like every
polyamoris community had been a part of until then was very geeky. And I
made a science fiction reference in this particular group in New York and no one
got it. It was like the cool kids from high school. I discovered
polyamory and like they were nice people, they were great. It wasn't really
my community, but we kind of had to have a little bit of like
you know, I think in a lot of these spaces, if you're able
to have more that rule zero conversation of like, yeah, this is the
level of you know, discourse we're expecting, and this is the kind of
you know respect. We want to have a lot of formal meetings. You
know, if you have a meeting that says like please don't interrupt, step
up, step back, you know, we want everyone to try and speak,
but leave room for others to speak, use eye statement, stuff like
that. All that is a rule zero conversation. Yeah, I'm glad you
brought up polyamory because I think no one is doing rule zero better than the
poly community. If you ever, if you've ever been involved, if you've
ever either been in a polyamorous relationship or gotten awf of someone in one,
there's like, immediately just like this litigious conversation of like, here's how we
do it, here's our rules, here's our boundaries, you know, like
this is what I do, this is what I expect, and like anyone
who's in a successful, healthy polyamorous relationship is like no stranger to this conversation
and has to be having it with any potential partner encounter whatever. I completely
agree with you in terms of the theory of polyamory. I also need to
say, my sweet summer child, if that has been your experience in polyamory,
I am so well. Okay, I want to be very clear that
I said any successful health Okay, I've seen the bad side of polyamory,
don't you worry. But no, I'm not having those conversations. Yeah,
No, it's really true, and it's I think it's it's you know,
workplaces, like if you know, going into a workplace, I think I've
been watching The Office recently and just continually reminding myself, like, these are
people who I mean. Part of the problem with the rule zero conversation is
it assumes some level of everyone's on the same power level, and when you
have power dynamics, it can be really hard. But yeah, I end
up sorry about the good rule zero to make it about me. I tend
to have to kind of navigate a rule zero type situation when talking about like
Marvel stuff, because over the last decade and a half more people know about
who Iron Man is and who Captain America is or they saw, you know,
the the X Men movies, and then there they come to me and
ask and try to have a conversation about X y Z Marvel property, but
their only frame of references from the movies when they don't know where I'm coming
from and we have a difference of opinion on how something went down because we
came from two different, two very different experiences, and it has led to
I get, for lack of a better phrase, awkward conversations because we didn't
have this rule zero, Like where are you coming from with this? What's
your frame of reference? How can I you know? Taylor my response to
whatever question you're about to ask me, how do you feel about thor being
a woman, and like random stuff like that, because I don't know where
you're coming at me from. And so if there was this socially established rule
zero for just the way that everyone interacts with everyone, we would be such
a happier community. Yeah, I totally get that. I've definitely started,
because I think when you're talking about Marvel is very similar to when Star Wars
and other online communities like that, and I've started. If a new person
messages me, I'm always really thrilled by it, but I'm often going to
check like a little bit of their you know, Facebook or Twitter or whatever,
and to be like, Okay, do I see some stuff in there
that indicates to me that we are not starting or ending with the same frame
of reference that I might just be like, yeah, that's an awesome opinion,
thanks for sharing it, instead of like, let's let's engage here,
because yeah, I've definitely been I've definitely been kind of suckered in there a
little bit. And it's just you know, sometimes and sometimes it's like again,
things where it's like, you know, I'm not going to say like
homophobia or queerophobia or you know, sexism, racist learning that are like equally
valid positions. They're definitely not. But I do think there are also some
things where it's like, you know, I respect someone who's just like I
think that everything that you know, like I hate the original movies of Star
Wars and it's just not my thing. I'm like, Okay, that's really
legitimate. We are not going to have a productive conversation, so I'm just
gonna kind of pind move on, you know. So I think one of
the things that is also really interesting about how this all play out. This
is kind of pulling it back a little bit too magic itself, but I
think it can. It really is illustrative of all of this is that you've
both kind of pointed out that, you know, while Commander may have been
a really set up as this happy little land if no one wants to win
and which wants to have fun, and that's mythology to be sure, Like
it's always you know, there's always been some level competition, but now there
is becoming more and more of Wait, but what if we do really want
to win? What if it is the way we want to have fun and
it has merged the point where actually CEH competitive EH is Elder Dragon Highlander,
it's another name for the Commander format. There's a whole set of politics there
that I can't discuss from other two months till my NDA runs out. But
putting on aside, like, I'd love to hear your both thoughts on that
because I think a lot of people within the I think there's been a lot
of tension between Commander and c EEDH, and a lot of it has resolved
around this kind of rule zero stuff, and I think I kind of see
a lot of fault on both sides. I don't really I'm not here to
adjudicate that necessarily, but just talk about, like what has that been like
in terms of seeing this more competitive side of Commander of all, I think,
first of all, everyone who plays magic needs to just like chill out
a little bit about everyone else who plays magic. Hell. Yes, I
just we're all playing the same game. We're all on the same team.
You're not You're not mad at me, You're you know, I don't know
who you're mad at. But it's not it's not the Commander players, it's
not the comp players, it's not the CDH players. It's not their fault
that whatever cards you didn't like cat printed. So I think everyone needs to
chill out a little bit, first of all. Second of all, I
think that the benefit to competitive formats like CDH or Modern Pioneer or whatever is
it circumvent the rule zero conversation a little you know, like a there's like
a there's a pre agreed upon social contract entering into these things. Touched on
a little bit earlier. But you know, you sit down on one of
these games and you are expecting everyone to do everything in their power to beat
you. They are not going to do anything to make sure you have a
fun time. It's not about that. It is about trying to beat you.
And for me, and I think for most competitive players, that is
the source of the fun. You know, knowing that, like you are
going to do everything in your power to beat me means that if I beat
you, then like there's nothing you could have done to stop me, right,
Like you did everything you could think to do to stop me from winning,
and I still want That's amazing, That's an amazing feeling. That's why
I do it. It's fun. It's just it's just fun. I think
I think that it makes it makes total sense that CDH would form out of
DH, because you know, it can get even when you're having these rule
zero conversations, it can get a little tricky, especially if we're talking about
like how strong your deck, which I think is sort of a useless conversation
to have every period, especially if you're using like a one to ten thing,
you know, because you know, there's like the meme of like every
decks to seven or whatever. But because of the meme, it makes it
even more impossible to say, because what if your deck is a seven,
you can't say it, So now you either have to say it's a six
or an eight. It's just like it's impossible. It's useless metric, it's
impossible. And like I said earlier, you can power up or power down
your own skills. So you know, maybe I say I've got a deck
that's a five, and you say I've got a deck that's a nine,
and then we play together anyway. But maybe I'm just like better at magic
than you, you know, and maybe I'm just like playing differently than you're
playing, and it feels like I didn't bring a five and you didn't bring
a nine, and so like were we dishonest or were we just piloting different
you know, like it's it's complete, like it's rule zero is not an
easy conversation to have because not everyone's speaking the same language all the time.
So if you want, if you like Commander and you also like all the
stuff that comes with the competitive side of magic, and like, of course
you're gonna want to marry those two things, well, I think I think
competitive anything is just the natural outcome of multiple people playing multiple games over and
over and over again. I mean, like, you know, you have
your pet deck. As soon as it loses, you start looking into how
to make it better, and then just eventually enough people go through that iteration
enough times and you're going to have this community that just has like the most
tuned and tweaked versions of their deck. But I will say that going for
me personally, going from my playgroup and how we have like made ourselves get
stronger and have better decks and learn how to play and I learn how to
read the board to my experience there and then go to a con and then
sit down with randoms and they're like, hey, you don't want to play,
Like sure, absolutely, let's do a pickup game. So rule zero,
what you know? What are you? What are you working with?
I'm like, I've got goblins, I don't what do you. I don't
know what else to tell you other than I'm going to run a mono red
deck. It really likes tokens and it tries to do mean things with it.
I don't know where that sits in terms of power level for me.
I don't know where that sits in terms of power level from your perspective.
But I've been told that this is high power. So here you go.
And but like, I don't I could never even begin to tell you what
that means. Yeah, I think it's so true, and I'm gonna make
a weird analogy here, but I think it makes sense because you're talking for
about monogamy and polyamory. I think you're right that polyamory requires a rule zero
conversation in part because, like you said, with competitive magic, like most
competitive games, there's an assumed rule zero. I think the cultural assumption of
monogamy is the assumed rule zero. And you know what, I would say,
they're in that case, there was not exactly the same because I think
part of the thing is that And again here. I don't think polyamory is
better. I just think that the way monogamy is taught and understood is problematic
in that it's the same thing most people say, like, don't get too
close to someone else, So okay, well what the hell does that mean?
You know, And someone thinks that texting someone of the gender you're attracted
to late at night is cheating, and someone else says that, like doing
these kind of karaoke with them is cheating, and someone else thinks, like,
no, all that's fine, just don't kiss them, or someone else
thinks kissing is fine, just don't like the Instagram is not okay, right,
and like and even with magic, I would say, like, I
have been in places where some amount of trash talking is completely legitimate and expected,
and other places where that would get you thrown out of the store or
at least given a strict warning and maybe thrown an out of the store.
So all that you used to say to say that and then specific to magic,
I agree with you that, yeah. That So one of the things
that can make rual zero so much better is when you get more specific,
you know, so like in my play groups, it was never really officially
said until we all kind of realize that, yeah, we're doing this,
let's just agree on this. The general rule is you don't use tutors for
wind cons. You know what I mean by that is like tutors are a
kind of card that goes and finds another card. And so because the idea
of being that one thing that we like is as you were saying, will
the chaos and that you don't you have a hundred card deck. Each one
is different. You don't know what you're going to get, and so every
time a person plays a deck, they're always tutoring for the same card to
win the game the same way. That's just not what we play find fun.
Others it's, you know, you don't like the fast manner cards,
the cards that allow you to build up resources really fast like others. It's
more, you know, you know whatever it is, it's the it's how
do you have that come station? That gets a lot more specific because you're
right, which is power level. We can be saying the same words but
means totally different things. Yeah, definitely, I think it's I think it's
really tricky. I think I think, honestly, what people need to try
and be better at is kind of managing this on the fly a little bit
in games because I think for me, a lot of a lot of how
this goes is very improvisational, you know. It's very kind of like what
you said earlier, like if someone's stuck on two lands, I'm gonna like
treat them with kid gloves until they get set up. I'm not gonna even
if, like you know, if I was in like a tournament, playing
like a competitive format, I'm just gonna bully that person till they're dead,
you know, Like I'm just gonna be like, oh, you've exposed a
weakness. I'm gonna take advantage of it. That's the game. But this
is like a casual format that's made for fun. Something I'll say a lot
Inmander games, especially on stream, is I'll start my turn and I'll look
at a person who I know I can kill that turn, and I'll say,
hey, do you not want to be playing anymore? Do you not
want to be in this game any longer? Which is kind of like a
very life It's kind of a very intimidating thing to ask somebody, but it's
it's a very gracious question, you know, to be like, hey,
do you want to keep playing or are you good? Because like I could
take you out. I could, I could take you out right now.
And you know, sometimes people are like, yeah, go ahead, take
me out. And sometimes they're like please one more turn, I beg and
I'm like, all right, I'll just you know, whittle down this other
person, no big deal. And maybe they take their turn and they go
off and they win. But that's cool because like, yeah, we're all
just we're all just goofing off. I think it's yeah, yeah, I
helped you get there. But I think it's also important to be very clear
and honest throughout the game before and during about like what your deck is doing
and like what is threatening about it. Like when I play my Collie at
Zack. Before the game, I'll be like, I'm gonna get Collie out
the first turn I'm available to do. So if you don't have an answer
for her, that's bad news for you. Like you need to have an
answer for her. She might be able to swing the turn she comes out,
you know, like you need to be prepared for that. And then
like they know before they even draw their hand, like I need some mulligan
until I have like at least one removable spell. I need to answer Collia
or I'm dead. And if they don't do it like I did my best
I like, I'll play her and be like, all right, she's here,
Like I'm not gonna tell you what's in my hand, but you can
bet there's an angel or devil or whatever in here, you know, like
it's gonna get scary if you can't do anything about it. Or when I
play my Merfylkzak, I'll be like, hey, I played this guy.
It's gonna next turn. Let me go get this thing. I could potentially
take infinite turns, just so you know, you know, like just be
because there's so much to keep track of. There's like a million cards to
know. It's it's unfair to your opponents to be like you should know.
Justin a game I had the other night, someone was choosing where to put
a single point of damage and I was like, hey, I know the
board state is really crazy right now, just so you know this one one
creature is the one you want to kill. And they're like, okay,
thank you, and I'm like, yeah, you're welcome. I love that,
And I know that it ties in really well to something you were talking
about the very beginning, which is how do we make this game more friendly
to new players? Because in many ways, e DH is the game that
a lot of new players are finding, in part because it is a social
thing. It is, Hey, I'm having friends over the house to play
this game Tuesday night. Do you want to come and join? I can
teach you the game. But also, like to people who know the rules,
that seems absolutely, you know, bonkers, because it is so much
more complicated rules wise, and I know that can be a real feel bad
is if you're invited to and you're constantly a situation like, oh, I
didn't know that when you did that it would lead to this and so and
so I think helping players like that is so great and and so that leads
me to a question of like, how do you That's a great example,
but beyond that, what else do you do to kind of help make EH
more friendly to new players? Because I think it can be super intimidating when
it's all these cards people don't know, people don't want to ask to read
every single card, but there's so much things on the board. How do
you how do you build that community? And that's to both of you,
So I'm not personally an MTG content creator, so I can only speak from
like the experiences that I've been part of, but I want to I want
to add my uh star of approval for the like open communication like I've been
I've had the opportunity to be on a couple of different creators twitches, twitch
channels, playing with absolutely brand new people and being open about my deck and
them being open about their deck of like, hey, since you guys didn't
counter this, or if you don't counter this, these this is the cascade
of things that's going to happen, and I'm going to win. Just I've
never had that experience in person, like at a at an event or anything,
and so like, I feel like the format of all of us being
not in front of each other and staring down each other's boards has ended up
creating a situation where hell, hey, look, communication is important and so
we're more open about this kind of stuff from my experience when I'm when I've
been playing with like with my neighbor's he plays and he has a very different
power level. Cool I just perpetuated, but he plays very differently than me
and my friends do. Like, for whatever reason, he and his friends
don't even track Commander damage because for X y Z reason. I don't entirely
know why, but because it's annoying to do, I guess, And so
that's my friend of reference. And so I know that they haven't seen a
handful of cards or texts that I will be bringing to the table. And
so when I first play a card, I'll play it up. I'll play
it facing them, so I can just easily show them and just be like,
hey, I'm going to play Goblin Engineer, I guess, and so
like I'll scoot it over and let them read it, and like, I'm
not going to play the three cards that this main phase one that I want
to play until everyone understands each card that I am going to play, and
so likes it just slows down the pace from what you, as the deck
owner might be used to, but from a community and bringing new people and
teaching new things perspective, letting people read the cards and not expecting everyone to
know every single damn card because there's only a few thousand. It's just makes
things easier for and I feel like makes for a better experience with the whole
pod, the whole table. Yeah, So I've I've brought a ton of
people into magic. I'm very familiar with teachings someone how to play magic.
I think I'm pretty good at teaching people how to play magic. For starters,
I would say I would never teach someone magic with Commander. That's never
what I would what I would do. I think Commander is the game that
like you learn magic and then you can like play Commander. But the way
that, the way I always start when I'm teaching people in person is you
know, I'll get a couple of pretty simple decks. We'll do like a
one v one, but we'll both play with our hands exposed, so we'll
fail their hands exposed, and I'll like walk them through their turn, their
phases, what they can do. We'll talk about options because they'll be like,
oh, I could play this creature or this creature, and I'll be
like, which one do you think you should play? Why do you think
one's better than the other? Right now, get them to start like thinking
like a magic player, and we'll do that one or two times, and
then play a game with our hands closed and do that and then you know,
just wait till they get the hang of it. But it's so hard
with Commander because there's four board states, there's potentially like four hundred unique cards
at the table in your deck. There's definitely like upwards of you know,
ninety nine unique cards or a hundred unique cards that you could have just on
your own. That's so much like that's so much to draw hand, and
there'll be seven different cards you've never seen and they're like, all right,
take your turn, Like what do you mean I have to read like a
novel before I can even like understand what's going on here. So I think
just like guiding players through it as best as you can, being very clear
about like what you have and what's scary. And I mean, if someone's
new enough, you kind of need to just like I don't want to say
like baby them, but like you need to treat them like the player who's
stuck on two lands at least a little bit, you know, because you
all need to be cognizant of the fact that they aren't like it's going to
take more for them. Like everything they're doing is harder for them because they're
learning everything as you're laying it down and you're just like, all right,
I played this is this trigger Like all this stuff that's like automatic for all
of us have been playing it for a long time, but just like extremely
overwhelming for a new player. And I think it's also important to let them
know when they can turn their brain off a little bit. You know,
you're like, hey, this person's like doing this like combo thing. Don't
even worry about it, like you you're tapped out. Just let it happen.
We're just gonna see what shakes out at the end of it. Who
cares, you know, like you do not need to be tracking this,
And then like the relief that washes over their face and they're like, oh,
thank god. I was so confused, and I was like, yeah,
don't worry, it's it's weird. Yeah. I used to teach magic
at a story I helped run or I manage their events, and I'm in
the same way. I would never teach someone DH, but I certainly know
others who do. And in my friend group, as someone who sometimes brings
someone who like like, yeah, I haven't teaching the Mediah. This is
gonna be their first game with other people, and yeah, we'll do very
much that same kind of a thing. And I think part of that is
and that's kind of been a big part of this whole conversation is there's a
very big difference between sitting down with strangers versus playing with a group of friends,
you know. And to me, I mean, the best way to
do that is like get people over on a Tuesday night. I love to
cook for people. But also like, if you just go to your lgs
pretty regularly, you know, you're mostly going to see the same people and
you're going to develop friendships or at least, as you were saying, Nile
like relationships or some kind and and levels of trust and understanding the expectation of
each other. And I think, you know, as a total of a
total newbie who no one knows it comes in and asks to learn Commander.
Yeah, I'm probably not going to shoot them out of the game. I'm
gonna try and direct them in some other way. And when it is that
new person, like really hope it's with a group of friends, because yeah,
I think all the things you're saying, like there's an attitude of yeah,
Okay, this won't be the most fun Commander game I play. But
if we do this, this new person gets to be part of our you
know, group, and they're a friend of mine. I want them to
hang out with me on Tuesday nights. So of course let's do this.
Yeah, if I if I have my pick of like if I have to
teach someone magic via Commander, the way I want to do it is there's
five people at the table, and I am just like playing with the new
person, you know, like, yeah, I am sitting over their shoulder,
I'm their yami yugi. I am like there their guardian who's just like
I'm gonna like, you're gonna be making all the decisions. I'm just gonna
like point out what's possible. We're going to talk through options together. I'm
gonna make sure you're not gonna get bullied at the table. I'm going to
make sure that you stay okay. Uh yeah, I think that's that's I
think the best way if like you have to bring a new person into Commander
Rand much self, Rand Muchself. So I want to bring up one last
question and then in our member only section, we're gonna talk a little bit
more about community building and things like that. And uh noill, I know
the stuff that now let's talk and you know the stuff that now let's talked
about about specifically doing queer content. I want to ask her about that,
and so that'll be in the member only section. The last thing I want
to ask is and this comes off of a point you made now, but
also Will I think that's what we're elevant to you. Let me give it
a bit of background here. Some of the terms that are used in magic
are spike and what are the other psychographics that I'm Timmy, Yeah, Timmy,
And the idea of them is that magic did the study of like trying
to understand all the different reasons why people play magic, and that spikes where
the people who now you were talking about like who the primary joy that get
out of magic is winning, and that Timmy is more kind of I think
what I'm probably getting get wrong because there's Timmy and there's a third Johnny as
a third one, and one of them is that I really want to express
themselves with their deck, and a third one is like kind of stuff you
were talking about, Will if you want to do something like wild and crazy
with your deck that you haven't gotten to see. And I got into magic
around the time that that discourse was really strong. It's kind of faded over
time, but one of the things that people told me a lot about Commander
is it's a place to get away from the spikes. And I admit that
I'm saying this in a little bit of a kind of like self lap laughing
at myself way, because I think it's a little unfair. But I think
there was a strong attitude of yeah, we don't. We don't want that
kind of competitive idea at our table. This is something that no spike is
ever gonna have fun at because they're gonna lose seventy five percent at the time
probably or else. We didn't talk about their deck level or their play stile
and Nile is making eyebrown movements that I wish we were on video for.
I have this feeling, Nile that if you'd come into my playgroup, you'll
like lose the first couple of times and then just dominate. We'll all feel
like we got hustles, but it'll be fantastic, okay, like quick aside.
One thing I've learned playing poker is because there again, like the way
I played poker with my friends and the way I played poker at a casino
is very different. But I intentionally try to be very entertaining at a casino
because I want people to feel like they're getting they're getting their moneys with because
they're probably going to give their money to me, but I want them to
feel entertained anyway. My point is, I think, and I think so
for a lot of people, there was this kind of like this is our
place away from the spikes because we're frustrated that so much of magic is all
about the spikes. And this was many years ago, like today, I
think if you go to a magic event, especially the magic cons but anything,
there's a lot of Commander out there, and there's commander decks and all
this stuff. But commander used to feel like the redheaded stepchild. And I'd
say that as a redhead who has a stepmader, And I think that was
part of why a lot of us kind of got our hackles up when we
first started, when when c Eedh first started coming in, and I think
there's problems on both sides. I think a lot of people were were upset
about it. And I've definitely come to a much befferent place and now hearing
a story like yours of someone who can really have that competitive mindset but also
enjoy other things, it helps a lot. And so I want to hear
you from you, but also from you will, like how do you shift
that mindset? Because or maybe a way to start is when you're in that
mindset of I want to win, and that's what's going to give me joy.
I imagine losing isn't the most fun thing in the world. And so
how do you how do you deal with losing when you're in that competitive mindset?
But also then how do you change the mindset so that you can find
a different kind of fun. Well, so for me, and I have
been referred to before as a Spiko path to give you a concept of like,
Okay, how I approach how I approach this stuff. To me,
losing does not bothering me, especially especially losing in competitive situations. It doesn't.
It doesn't really bug me. It doesn't get me down. If anything,
it drives me to want to play more. It's like my whole my
whole thing is just like if you beat me, I'm just gonna think about,
like what could I have done better? You know, Like I'm always
my competition is always against myself, you know, Like my competition is always
what could I have done differently or better? And sometimes the answer is not
a whole lot. Sometimes the answer is, well, maybe if I had
taken this line, who knows where I would have ended up that game,
And that just that excites me, that like keeps me invested in it.
You know. I think if you really get down about losing, then the
competitive scene just like isn't for you, Like you just you're not gonna You're
not gonna have a good time because you'd forged in Fire through losing in that
scene. It also super doesn't bother me in Commander because there's three other people
there. You know, it's chaos. Even if I'm like playing my heart
out, I still like I'm I'm at the mercy of three people, you
know, Like you now, I don't think I'm losing seventy five percent of
my games, which is why I was good. But I get it,
I get it, but yeah, I the hard thing for me when I
was first getting into Commander was getting like getting into the mindset that not everyone
is a crazy little spichopath like me. You know, like not everyone,
like some people are affected by losing, and that's okay, Like it's not
it's not bad if you feel bad about losing, but you know, just
like getting your decent person about it. Sure, yeah, yeah, as
long as you're not like salting off at the table. But it's okay to
be invested in what you're doing. Like sure, but you know, having
to get into the mindset of like, oh, you know, like these
people aren't extracting fun out of like getting all of their spells answered, you
know, like they don't they don't like it that I haven't answered all their
threats. That's just like not that's like learning how to approach it in a
way that was most entertaining for everyone at the table was tricky. It was
tricky to turn off, like the competitive part. But once I was able
to, like, it's a very it's it's a very fun like board game
experience I feel playing Commander, Like it's just it's a fun way to see
like what weird stuff people brought, what weird bruise people came up with.
It's fun to get to like be the threat and like do a little bit
of spiky stuff and you know, pop off a little bit and have like
three people try to stop you. Even when they succeed, you're like that
was fun, Like I got to be the heel. I got to I
got to be the thing everyone wanted to kill. It was a fun time.
Yeah, I guess the I don't mind if if I lose a good
game, Like if everyone's doing their thing and I went in hard and I
lost, that's gonna sit with me mentally, and I'm going to go through
all the different other paths I could have run to try to change the outcome
of that game. As far as feeling that the negative side of competitive nature,
what bugs me is playing with people that that I don't want to say
something just mean, but like we read the board differently. If you have
someone who doesn't have much and you see a Collia on the board and from
their personal experience, they're like, oh, goblins are the devil. We
gotta get rid of that. Like, I'm clearly not the threat. You
don't need to cancel my my couple of goblin tokens. If we're sitting here
dealing with a colleague that's about to get rid of her some summoning sickness like
that bugs me. But if it's with strangers, I can't say anything.
When if we're playing online on somebody's switch, usually there's way more communication and
talking through everybody's decisions and that doesn't typically happen. It's really at the cons
whereas someone's just like, well, I don't like what you're doing, and
just will, from my perspective, make a terrible decision that just leads to
someone else just running over the board because now no one is equipped to deal
with it from and the competitive side of me comes out internally. I don't
take it out on anyone, but just like that was a terrible decision,
and that's really that that bugs me to my core. And so from the
from not competitive dh perspective, but just the competitive nature in myself, that's
kind of where it comes out. But that same nature is what makes me
want to be a better player. It's what makes me want to learn how
to pilot my deck differently. It's what makes me overall become, in my
opinion, a better Magic player. And so I'm okay, I'll take I'll
take that negative with the more positive. And I think I feel like in
Commander, you get more opportunities to explore that side of I get more opportunities
to explore that competitive side of me because every game is so different that like
the situation the board is going to be so different every single time someone's going
to have a better draw, someone's going to play either deck better or differently.
Someone's going to switch the deck that they want to play in game too,
and that's fine. And then where it's going to be a completely different
situation. And because no two games are the same until you run a deck
that's all fetches in one wind con then you can you learn to be mentally
adaptive, which then makes it so your deck is super adaptive, so you
can be a yugi yami for yourself and like a Caribo actually has a place
in your deck for some reason because it's going to take down a slide for
this guy Jock or whatever. Like just it's it's so much fun. And
the only way I feel that's going to happen is if you kind of if
you embrace the natural competitive side in in yourself, but you keep it in
control so you're not lashing out of people in flipping tables. You're using that
to drive yourself to be a better magic player. Yeah, I think you're
so right. Well, they're like you know in some ways, And a
lot of this podcast is my kind of apology to Spikes and my apology to
see eight you're great people. Sometimes you're just not the people I want to
play magic with it, where sometimes you can be because you can be a
spike and a Timmy. I mean, I'm I'm certainly a spike and a
Timmy when it comes to poker, you know, And so I get that
a lot more now. But I think that's it's also just okay to be
like you know. But because I think a part of what I'm getting out
of this is that a lot of things that we were thinking of back then
when we talk about like we don't want spikes at our table, was we
don't want sore losers at our table, and that a spike doesn't mean that
by any means. It often though, can go together, but also you
can have other people, like a Timmy can be very salty if they don't
get to do the thing their neck wants to do. But like, I
don't think I ever realized I was doing this until we were really thinking about
it. But I remember now when I was playing at a store, quite
often I would generally not like I would invite good friends of mine because already
knew them and trusted how they're gonna act. But I was playing magic against
someone, you know, how I knew they wanted to play ADH, I
probably would invite them to my home games until i'd seen them lose a couple
of games and i'd seen how they responded and if they were able to lose
and be like, oh, good game. You know the person I played
like, she had this great, great deck and I just I learned,
you know, I couldn't beat it, So I gotta put these cards in
my deck so I can beat her next time. Like, yeah, that
sounds like gonna be a great you know, if the person's like, oh
my god, it's so unfair. I can't believe they printed that card and
they played this card. It was unfair or they they they must have cheated
or something like that. Yeah, I don't watch up my ADH table totally.
Yeah. Well, this has been an awesome conversation. Thank you all.
Either you have any kind of last things you want to say about the
community stuff we're building or Rule zero or Sheldon or any kind of like last
wrapping all this up. Yeah, So the last things I guess I'll say
about this is I think Commander is a very fun format. I think it
is as fun as the people you're playing with and with any relationship. It's
all about finding the people who mesh with you and the people that you get
along with, the play well with, and as long as you do that,
you're gonna have a great time. Yeah. Yeah, to play off
of that, I love magic and I've just just weird tangent, just like
how track and field in high school is the only like co ed sport,
and so you just it brings the most random groups of people together for the
same purpose. Magic has been that for me in my adult life. I've
met more diverse people from all kinds of different walks of life and different hobbies
and circle and like friends groups, playing magic, just sitting down at a
pod and just getting to know the people across from me and next to me
than any other thing hobby I've ever done. Marvel people you come across generally
the same type of person. Star Wars people you come across, very strongly
opinionated people, a lot like I'm not very strongly opinionated person. How dare
you think that you're come exactly right? But then you come you sit down
at a magic table and you have one person who is completely decked out in
cosplay. You have another one in like nursing scrubs. You have someone in
their pj's, and you have someone wearing like a three piece suit, and
we're all sitting down having a fun, casual game together. And that is
so cool. And I highly encourage anyone who is even relatively interested in checking
out Commander and or Magic to at least at least look into it and see
if something about that that world brings you in. Yeah, I thinks such
a great way to put I think it's it is for me, it has
been the basis of a lot of my friendships. Has been where a lot
of my friends were founded or grew. Since it back getting a podcasting,
that's changed in a lot of other ways too. But as you're gonna want
to end with, just like honoring again Sheldon, and I think he became
kind of the public face. And I want to say that, like,
there's a lot of other people on the rules committee, and I know a
lot of other great minds went into all the stuff with rule zero, But
just that it is, it is such a great concept. It's not a
perfect concept. As you both, I think it had a great thing to
say about will you will you know you point out all these things about like
you can have a rule zero conversation, but if using different language, even
if it's the same words, it's not going to go anywhere. Like a
lot of times, I think rule zero is about establishing a community that plays
together again and again not just strangers, but you can do it with strangers
too. And also, now, as you said, even after rule zero,
when you find that you're not all on the same page, you can
adjust and that's important too. But I just like, I think it is
such a great idea for any kind of community, like any kind of gathering.
You know, hey, we're going on a hike. Okay, does
that mean that we're gonna hike for like two hours and then drink a bunch
of beers or does it mean that we're like gonna go for eight hours?
You know, what's what's the idea here? You know, we're going to
the rainfair. I can deal with an hour, like two hours of that's
so whis can people five hours that have the rules zero conversation? It's just
such a great concept. So, and we're gonna kind of build off of
what Will was just saying. They are about community and stuff, and who
work at NIL is doing in our members only section, but for people who
aren't members and want to just learn more about the two of you, Nils
starting with you. Where else can people find your content? Yes, I'm
on Twitch, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok. You can find me on all
those at Nile Jones Rivers. I post a lot of different kind of magic
stuff. I post comp stuff, I post DH stuff. I'm all over
the place. I play it all, I love it all. It's all.
It's all really really really queer. And for those who are magic people,
you will be at Magic on Vegas. I'm correct, I'll be a
Magic on Vegas. I'll also be a Commander's Sealed this weekend. I fly
out in the morning. For anyone, I mean, this will be I'm
sure you know it'll be long gone since Latimus comes out. But yeah,
I'll be at Commander Sealed, I'll be a Vegas and I will be at
dream Ac Atlanta in December. Awesome, awesome, tod and will Where can
people get hyped up about comics, especially in a time when a lot of
us are not watching comic book movies and TV shows but want to go back
to the original source. Where can they go? Yeah? So I have
a podcast as well, it's called Type's my superpower. Me and my best
buddy, Steve, who actually taught me magic back in ninety four. Have
we talk about Marvel comics. He's reading all every single Mutant comic that's come
out. I'm reading all of the current comics that are coming out, and
we just talked. We talked about it together and it's a lot of fun.
Outside of that, I'm on Twitch, Twitter, Instagram to talk other
places probably, Oh, I have silver Dreamer dot com so as Silver Dreamer
Silver with a why if you are interested in anime, Marvel, Lego,
Random Bees, and especially Marvel, come and find me. Let's be friends.
Well, and this is actually given me a great new idea because Will
and Steve have both been frequent guests on both of my podcasts, and I've
had so much fun. They're nice enough talk about Rules zero to let me
talk with them about comics, even though I don't read comics. I just
my brain doesn't work that way. But we should have an episode about what
would a rule zero conversation look like for the X Men, for the Avengers,
for the Fantastic Four, Like, what you know all these different comic
groups, what should their rule zero conversation be because Steve I knows, also
wanted to be on this and he couldn't, so that that's an episode you've
just volunteered for. Congratulations, Okay, well and everybody else, they said,
members are gonna having more content a second, but everyone else if you
want to, If it's your first time listening to this, you can find
more about my podcasts at the Ethical Panda dot com. That's where you can
find all the ways to give us feedback. I'm on Twitter, I'm on
TikTok. I will eventually be on some non Twitter thing. As I said,
I will jump off the ship when everyone agrees what is the ship we're
all jumping off to. I just I have a blue Sky account, I
have a Vine account or whatever it's called. I just can't monitor all of
them, but definitely do check all those out. It's a great way to
give us feedback. It's a great way to share the show with others.
And in the show notes you also find all the links to that, as
was all the links to my two awesome creators who are with me today.
You'll also find ways to become a member of this podcast from the five dollars
a month you get ad free content, you get bonus content, and you
get to support this podcast. And one of the things that I'm doing right
now is that during the strike, twenty five percent of all the money that
I get in from that I'm donating to the Strike Fund. This is a
great fund that's working to help all the people who are affected by the Hollywood
strike, both the writers and the actors themselves, but also you know,
the caterers, the hairstylists, the people who you know, the security people,
all the folks who are also out of a job because they're not working
on the sets where these people are on strike. So it's a great time
to become a member. And the last thing I'll promote, and granted you
only to hear this about two days in advance, but hopefully it will work.
If you're going to Magic on Vegas and you're getting there Thursday, you're
looking for something to do Thursday night. On Thursday night, I'm running a
charity function called Charity the Gathering Vegas. If you go to our website Charity
the Gathering dot com, you'll find out all the information, or you can
find us on Twitter at under Charity the Gathering. UH. It's an event
to benefit trans Lifeline, and we're doing this. This is a third event
we're doing. We're gonna do a number of these events going forward, all
to benefit queer and related causes because something's really important to me and really important
to so much of the magic community is trans causes and queer causes. And
we have commander pods. We're gonna have limited pods. We're going to have
a number of creators are going to be there doing like, hey, jump
into this pod with this person, or jump into a commander draft with this
person. So it's gonna be a lot of fun. If you're free on
Thursday night, go to charity the Gathering dot com dot org, check all
the information out and it'll be right there. Hopefully you can join us Thursday
night, so on behalf of myself will nil. Thank you all so much
for listening. We have spoken. What are you