Black Friday Magic

In what's become something of a tradition, one of my friends hosted an all day session of the Magic: The Gathering card game on Black Friday, since none of us wanted to brave the jungles of retail. I spent some time this past week making sure I had a decent mix of decks (old vs. new, previously successful decks vs. experiments, etc.) to use for the occasion, so I didn't get a lot done other than that and work during that time.

I've finally figured out how to solve my "too many decks" problem by focusing on a few at a time in a rotation system, and must've done a good job of choosing my deck mix, as I won a lot this past Friday, especially with my newest decks. For the benefit of those who play the game, you'll understand that getting a 23/23 creature into play (and keeping it there) is a lot of fun. I've puzzled out a few new things about how the game works, and I'm starting to see results from that.

I have two problems associated with my recent Magic obsession. One problem is that I have ideas for new decks (associated with my new ideas about the game) that I can't actually implement right now. I own the cards to implement them, but I've packed away most of my Magic cards (except for working decks and new cards) preparatory to eventually moving, and it'd be a royal pain to dig them out. I've written some notes to remind myself of those ideas later, but they're still lurking around in the back of my mind, taking up head space because I can't follow through on them.

This leads into problem number two, which is that my RPG writing has slowed because my mind has been elsewhere. Now that the Black Friday session has been played, maybe I can fix that, since it's unlikely I'll play much Magic until the new year. I did spend some time on the characters for my newest In Nomine scenario during this long weekend, though it felt more like paperwork than creativity. Hopefully I'll have more positive things to talk about by next week.