I woke up Christmas morning like it was any other day and checked my Discord messages. To my surprise, there was a PM about a guest piece for the website as a “Thank You” to the community and I felt it pertinent to immediately share this with you. I don’t want to spoil any of it, so we’ll get right to it and also, Happy Holidays to all of you.



There’s been a lot of discussion recently about the state of the game and while I think there’s some negative trajectory, I’d like to focus on what this game and community have meant to me and really call out what I’m thankful for this past 18 months.



For the first 41 years of my life, minus a 4-year college stint in Northfield Minnesota, I lived in the near north suburbs of Chicago. Cubs/Bears/Blackhawks/Bulls fan through and through. But in the spring of 2018, my wife and I decided, for a variety of reasons (taxes, family, State of Illinois being in the shitter, etc) to move from Chicago to right outside Ann Arbor Michigan.



From those of you that know me, it may surprise you to know that I’m actually a fairly shy person when meeting new people (yes this is quite at odds with the drunken Karoke guy that unleashed Metallica upon Claus and the UK contingent at Worlds but that’s another story for another day). So what they don’t tell you when you decide to move across 3 states as a 41 year old dude, is that settling into a new town of 9000 people can be fairly isolating and lonely.



Guys don’t generally meet people by wandering up and asking “hey, you look fun, wanna be my friend?” Guys bond with shared experiences, which is hard when you’re the new guy in a smallish town where half the town grew up within 10 miles. So while moving from Chicago to Saline Michigan was initially great for my kids (who met a ton of friends just at the bus stop for school) and my wife (who initially wasn’t working and made a ton of friends in the neighborhood), for me personally, it was hard.



So before I get into what I’m thankful for, I want to highlight a bit about myself when I was younger. I was REALLY competitive in high school. At everything. Basketball, Golf, Axis and allies drunk with friends; you name it, I wanted to win. My high school nickname was “Sore Loser Bill”. So when Magic: the Gathering debuted at that first Gencon, it was a match made in heaven. Several of the more competitive players at my local shop all banded together to kick ideas and decks around and generally become better at the game. For the first time, I’d found my Tribe. We’d get together twice a week and through the magic of dial-up bulletin boards, IRC, and newsgroup on Usenet, we kept together even after graduating high school, even to the point of qualifying for the first MTG pro tour in NY.



But we all moved on, from MTG and competitive CCG in general, and in the summer of 2018, some 11 years after my last competitive MTG tournament, after spending the whole spring driving from Chicago to Michigan once a week playing construction manager on our house, my wife suggested I take a weekend and go to Origins. “5 days dorking it up” as she put it…..and so I did. A good family friend suggested I do the Star Wars Destiny Learn to Play. His exact quote was “dude, it’s cards and dice and Star Wars but you won’t lose any money unlike craps”. So I did and I was hooked.



After we moved into the house, it was easy for my wife to meet people in the neighborhood since she wasn’t working at the time; but having a national position that was either working from home or getting on a plane to customers, I was having a rough time meeting people. But luckily for me, there was a different store I could play Destiny at 4 days a week within 75 minutes of me: Eternal Games on Monday, RIW on Tuesday, a variety of stores on Wednesday, and All Play on Thursdays. When I first started, I asked around about how to get better at the game. The Hyperloops discord was mentioned by multiple people. I was on Discord for a mobile game and after a brief trial period, I was hooked.



And I can tell you this, between the local guys that have taken me in and welcomed me, to the folks I know through discord and met at Worlds and elsewhere; YOU ARE MY TRIBE. I’ve never said vocally how much this community has meant to me, but you’ve made a difficult life transition so much easier for me, so I’ll take this opportunity to thank all of you here, and know this: the friends I’ve made through this game will easily outlast the game itself; and that’s the best Christmas gift I’ve gotten in a very long time.



~ Dante2377