Magic: The Gathering has opened many cultural doors for me. A game with the international reach of Magic allows its players to compete in locations around the world. In places like New York, Amsterdam, and Munich, I have played Magic with strangers, armed only with our mutual love of the game as a shared language.

This became an unexpected benefit in my early thirties as I relocated halfway around the world, from Canada to China, in search of a new beginning.

On to Beijing

The process began in the first half of 2011, when I met a lovely girl in Beijing. Despite the huge physical distance between us, we talked several times a day on the phone. We visited each other in our respective countries. After a few months, I decided to give the relationship-to-be a shot in the arm by closing the location gap.

I started applying for jobs in Beijing. I had studied Computer Science in university and worked in several tech roles over the years. Through my latest gig in a tech startup, I picked up valuable experience with mobile apps. But, though I spoke Chinese, I had a Western background; how well would that translate to working with Chinese teams and technologies?

Fortunately, I didn’t have long to find out. My Chinese girlfriend had a solid connection to a multi-national software company. The company was based in the United States, but it operated a Beijing branch. Through a series of phone interviews, I received a job offer to work as a software product manager. I began packing my bags and booked a one-way ticket to Beijing.

For the first time in a long while, gaming would take a back seat. The competitive drive that had propelled my obsession with Magic would lie dormant as I steadied myself in a new country and sorted out my affairs. With a new job, new country, and new way of life, I would have a lot of adjusting to do.

And I did adjust. After six months in Beijing, I had survived the initial culture shock of living here. Contrary to my own imagined worst-case scenario, I did not throw my hands up in exasperation and run back to Canada. I fought through loneliness and uncertainty by being mentally strong and open to change.

Perhaps the biggest achievement was that I managed to live one solid year in China without doing anything Magic-related. I didn’t play, read, or think about the game. I didn’t look up new cards or research strategies online. I didn’t even investigate whether there was a local scene for Magic players. For someone whose entire life was dominated by hobbies, one year was a long time to be absent from the game.

When I left for China, I brought with me only the essentials, like my clothing and laptop. I left my Magic cards back in Canada. Not having my card collection around made it much easier to stay away from the game.

What’s more, a few games of pickup basketball in Beijing confirmed that I was woefully out of shape. All those months of working at a startup in Canada had resulted in unhealthy living habits. As a result of my physical decline, I picked up nagging injuries from the stresses of basketball. Getting back in shape, which included regular visits to the gym, became a new priority.

During my year away from Magic, I resisted the temptation to visit card stores in Beijing. Still, Magic held an undeniable allure. Once my basic life needs in China were taken care of, it was tempting to move up Maslow’s hierarchy of needs and re-visit an old activity.

I knew enough about my own addictive personality to understand that I could only dip my toes in the proverbial Magic waters. To handle my own limitations, I kept avoiding my local Beijing Magic scene. I reasoned that if I got too close to the local scene, I would not be able to resist playing every week.

After some deliberation, I decided that I would only play Magic when I visited the United States on business trips. To do this, I built a single competitive deck and kept it with me in Beijing. When I traveled to the States, I took it with me. But I did not play the deck in Beijing. Not yet.

Riding the Storm

The rules for Magic are straightforward. Each player plays the role of planeswalker—a wielder of magic and navigator of different planes (magical realms). The objective of the game is to defeat another planeswalker in a duel to the death. Each player begins the game with 20 life points. The goal is to defeat the other player by reducing his or her life point total to zero. Players do this by playing spells from their deck and summoning powerful creatures to fight for them.

To start the game, both players shuffle their decks and draw an opening hand of seven cards. Each player decides whether to keep this opening hand or re-shuffle and draw a new hand. Once both players decide to keep their opening hands, the game begins.

Success is predicated on making the right sequence of plays. Cards are designed to interact with one another, and board states—the lineup of player A’s cards versus player B’s cards—can become extremely complex. A strong player learns to see patterns and ways to break stalemates on the board. Playing out the right sequence of spells while baiting the opponent to make mistakes are both key elements of the game.

For my return to the game, I decided to play a Storm combination deck. The basic premise of a Storm combo deck is to play a powerful set of cards on a single turn to build up a Storm count. Normally, it does not matter how many cards a player casts on a single turn; Storm combo, however, makes this an important attribute to track.

After a critical mass of cards is played on a single turn, a kill card like Tendrils of Agony would be used with a special Storm attribute: the ability to copy itself once for each spell already played that turn. The basic effect of Tendrils of Agony is to deal two points of damage to the other player. Copied nine or more times, however, it could deal twenty points of damage and instantly kill an opponent.

Wizards of the Coast never intended for the Storm mechanic to become a strong engine on its own. Free spells that required no resources to cast, however, entered the picture. Ritual spells allowed for tremendous amounts of resource acceleration on a single turn. Tutor spells were printed, which allowed the Storm player to consistently find the kill pieces in every game. The power level was high enough with a Storm-themed card called Mind’s Desire that Wizards ended up banning the card from tournament play.

But the continued existence of Storm as a viable Legacy deck is testament to the ingenuity of the Magic community. (A Legacy-format deck is constructed from all printed editions of Magic cards, where nearly every powerful card ever printed is allowed for play.) Through constant iteration and testing, the best Storm players in the world have elevated the deck to a level far beyond the designers’ original intentions.

Playing Storm is like solving a complex math problem. The Storm pilot tries to figure out how to execute the kill in a glorified game of solitaire. The monkey wrench in the equation is the bothersome opponent, who will try to disrupt the combo kill. Hence, winning with Storm means anticipating what an opponent will do, stepping through intricate branching possibilities to solve the puzzle. Winning with the deck feels greatly satisfying at the cost of a steep learning curve.

Another way to think about Storm is as an elaborate ballet sequence, with one small misstep being the difference between life and death. The margin for error is extremely small when compared to other decks. With decks like Zoo, playing the wrong creature on a particular turn is a small and ultimately fixable mistake that will rarely determine the result of the match in and of itself. With Storm, however, every play is crucial.

Did I play the right spell on my first turn? Did I sequence my spells correctly? Do I go all-in for the kill this turn? If I don’t go all-in this turn, what are my percentages in subsequent turns? How do I sequence my spells so that I can play exactly ten spells for a lethal storm count and play around the counter that I know my opponent has? If I don’t go for it now, what are my chances later?

I had personal reasons to play Storm. The first was the raw objective power level of the deck. There would be games where I would kill opponents on the first or second turn before they could do a single thing. The ability to crush an opponent like an insignificant insect appealed to the black mage in me. It’s no coincidence that the key engine cards in the deck hail from the school of black magic, where self-sacrifice is rewarded with tremendous power.

Another reason to pick up the deck was the linear nature of how combo decks worked. If I only played Magic a few times a year, I wouldn’t have time to study the constantly changing Magic metagame. Combo is like a hammer; it forces the opponent to answer your threats, instead of you having to understand what their gameplan is. With combo decks like Storm, I could jam my kill down my opponents' throats and force them to have an answer for me. I would be in the driver’s seat.

A secondary consideration was cost. Storm is a deck that only needs gentle updating as time goes by; the most powerful cards are from the older Magic sets, and I already owned them. The Magic design team had already made its mistakes and would be unlikely to repeat them any time soon by printing newly degenerate Storm cards.

Listing image by James Hsu