The fifth age
January 20th 2012 22:15
Strength will be right and reverence will cease to be; and the wicked will hurt the worthy man, speaking false words against him, and will swear an oath upon them. Envy, foul-mouthed, delighting in evil, with scowling face, will go along with wretched men one and all.
-- Hesiod, Works and Days
“Iron Man” is not just a superhero who also starred in two pretty good console games and two terrible ones; it was also a way to play Magic. Since Magic doesn’t have saved games, detective vision, or any other ease-of-use mechanics that make your life easier, Iron Man games resorted to a rather crude method of ensuring commitment: if a card goes to a graveyard from anywhere, you must physically destroy it. Most players would tear them into two to six pieces, but I’ve also heard stories of people eating cards or lighting them on fire.
I’m much too attached to my possessions to ever play an Iron Man game, and destroying what is essentially an eternal window into an imaginary realm feels very, very wrong, in the same way writing on the wall in a museum does. But I’m a little surprised it never caught on among a certain subset of player. It seems like it might overlap with the mentality that common cards that aren’t good in Standard (or Legacy, or limited, or whatever) are “junk” and “filler.” They basically throw away large parts of boosters anyway, abandoning them on tables or store counters after limited events. You also have the people who deride the Reserved List and the idea that cards should have collector’s value, describing the contents of the List as “just cardboard.”
This may be getting close to the territory of reductio ad absurdum, but it seems like it’s only a very short step from saying Magic cards have no value outside of their gameplay value to playing Iron Man sealed deck. Yet when it comes time to put their money where their mouth is (in an indirect but literal sense), very few players are willing to follow through. Even the most ardent opponent of the Reserved List, the kind who uses adjectives from The Protocols of the Elders of Zion to describe collectors, balks at tearing a Magic card into pieces. This, more than anything, should convince collectors that their cause is just and must prevail.
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-- Hesiod, Works and Days
“Iron Man” is not just a superhero who also starred in two pretty good console games and two terrible ones; it was also a way to play Magic. Since Magic doesn’t have saved games, detective vision, or any other ease-of-use mechanics that make your life easier, Iron Man games resorted to a rather crude method of ensuring commitment: if a card goes to a graveyard from anywhere, you must physically destroy it. Most players would tear them into two to six pieces, but I’ve also heard stories of people eating cards or lighting them on fire.
Fact: when you play sealed with the Ravnica block, there’s almost always at least one foil dual land somewhere in one of the players’ pools.
I’m much too attached to my possessions to ever play an Iron Man game, and destroying what is essentially an eternal window into an imaginary realm feels very, very wrong, in the same way writing on the wall in a museum does. But I’m a little surprised it never caught on among a certain subset of player. It seems like it might overlap with the mentality that common cards that aren’t good in Standard (or Legacy, or limited, or whatever) are “junk” and “filler.” They basically throw away large parts of boosters anyway, abandoning them on tables or store counters after limited events. You also have the people who deride the Reserved List and the idea that cards should have collector’s value, describing the contents of the List as “just cardboard.”
Just cardboard.
This may be getting close to the territory of reductio ad absurdum, but it seems like it’s only a very short step from saying Magic cards have no value outside of their gameplay value to playing Iron Man sealed deck. Yet when it comes time to put their money where their mouth is (in an indirect but literal sense), very few players are willing to follow through. Even the most ardent opponent of the Reserved List, the kind who uses adjectives from The Protocols of the Elders of Zion to describe collectors, balks at tearing a Magic card into pieces. This, more than anything, should convince collectors that their cause is just and must prevail.
Follow me on Twitter for more insight, sarcasm, and references to obscure folk rock songs.
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