Last weekend was the pro tour, for a limited format I haven't tried and a constructed format (standard) I haven't played in at least 12 months. I still watched some, but that is more a statement of how much free time I have right now than a signal the passion is coming back.
This is not what I expected, a lot of people called 2016 a bad year due to politics and celebrity deaths. None of that phased me, though watching Rogue One the same day I found out Carrie Fisher died was emotional. 2016 was hard, I had brain surgery late July and it was great to get it done. While recovering I went from working 3 jobs to zero though (if only for 2 weeks) and I am still feeling he consequences of that. I left one of those jobs due to a truly horrible human being of a coworker and it really shook me how awful she was too me.
Even though I was now completely free of needing to take medicine and finally healthy after 5 hard years, I was in a funk. I don't want to project my own experiences onto the game of Magic as a whole but I feel it's in a bit of a funk too. The game just looks expensive and unenticing to me. The new sets don't look as fun as Khans and Innistrad and the tournament scene just seems lacklustre. There are no GP's in Korea and rarely a regional PTQ, Suwon especially feels disconnected from the grinder scene, with an old player base slowly disappearing.
A generation of podcasters on brainstorm Brewery, Heavy Meta and the EH Team all moved on from Magic and it felt a little bit less fun and more numbers orientated (card prices/wins losses) to me.
I am sure I will come back to Magic, people always do. But right now I need something else.
This is not what I expected, a lot of people called 2016 a bad year due to politics and celebrity deaths. None of that phased me, though watching Rogue One the same day I found out Carrie Fisher died was emotional. 2016 was hard, I had brain surgery late July and it was great to get it done. While recovering I went from working 3 jobs to zero though (if only for 2 weeks) and I am still feeling he consequences of that. I left one of those jobs due to a truly horrible human being of a coworker and it really shook me how awful she was too me.
Even though I was now completely free of needing to take medicine and finally healthy after 5 hard years, I was in a funk. I don't want to project my own experiences onto the game of Magic as a whole but I feel it's in a bit of a funk too. The game just looks expensive and unenticing to me. The new sets don't look as fun as Khans and Innistrad and the tournament scene just seems lacklustre. There are no GP's in Korea and rarely a regional PTQ, Suwon especially feels disconnected from the grinder scene, with an old player base slowly disappearing.
A generation of podcasters on brainstorm Brewery, Heavy Meta and the EH Team all moved on from Magic and it felt a little bit less fun and more numbers orientated (card prices/wins losses) to me.
I am sure I will come back to Magic, people always do. But right now I need something else.
