This was it. It was life or death.

I took a sharp breath in. For one of us, it would be the end of the line. I reached down to grab my weapon of choice. I brought it up, making a half-fist. And in one fell motion, ready to move ever closer to making the kill, I slammed my hand down and…

Set my Wild Mongrel on the table, tapped and attacking. “Any blocks?”

This was Magic: the Gathering. And when you’re 13 years old and trying to make it through the last chance qualifier to play in the next day’s Junior Super Series championships – an event with thousands of dollars in college scholarship money on the line – it feels like all that matters.

Me and my opponent had both lost our first rounds, and losing another one in this event was tantamount to elimination. I had already lost the first game of our three game series, so my back was against the wall.

This time though, I was in a leading board state. I passed the turn to my opponent. He tapped three mana and calmly set down some enchantment I had never seen and probably didn’t care about. I didn’t read it. All he had was a Mongrel of his own.

Back to my turn. Back to keep on the attack. Back to killing the enemy. Back to –

“Discard two Basking Rootwallas, Madness them both. Trigger Equilibrium twice. Pay 2 and bounce both of your creatures.”

I looked up. My opponent had a gigantic grin on his face, one that The Joker himself would have been proud of. I picked up the three mana enchantment my opponent put down. Read what the card Equilibrium did. Set it back down. Looked back up at my opponent, who was still wearing that absurdly large grin. “Yeah, you basically can’t win,” he said.

And that was the first time I would meet Ari Lax.

After the match, he hung around the table for a bit and we talked about the matchup. He comforted me by letting me know there was a good chance those would probably be the only Equilibriums I faced all day. He gave me a few pointers on what mattered. And then, we parted.

I didn’t see him again after that. He was off, busy winning matches – and, suddenly, so was I. While I was out of contention, with some of what this stranger had said fresh in my head I rattled off four wins of my next five matches. And at the end of the tournament it was time for me to go. Time for me to meet back up with my mom and brother.

I walked out of the tournament zone, still thinking about my discussion with that round two opponent. I was outside of the hall, with my brother and my mom, walking off to dinner. When, all of a sudden: “Mom. Can you just… Stay here? I really have to do something.”

Without waiting for a response, I sprinted back off to the event hall. I ran up to the head judge, who was still wrapping up the event.

“Can I help you?”

“Hi! Not to bother you mister head judge sir, but can you tell me the name of my round two opponent?”

“For what?”

“Oh, I just need to tell him something.”

“Uh, sure.” He scrolled around on the laptop for a second, grabbed a piece of paper and wrote down a name. “Ari M. Lax. Here you go!”

I stuffed it into my pocket and ran out, to go find my no doubt confused mother. At least I had a name to work with. That would have to be enough. *********************************

Now, you have to understand, this was in 2003. This was before Google was widespread, it was long before Facebook happened, and even if there had been quick-moving social media at that point I doubt I would have had an account. The odds of me actually finding somebody based on their name alone at that point in time was absurdly low. Improbable, even.

But improbable is not impossible.

And so when I noticed a user named “Armlx” posting on an internet forum we both frequented in 2005, I figured there was a chance. I sent a message to strike up a conversation.

It was him. And that’s where everything really started.

At first, Ari was a little reticent to share information. He had claimed that his area had broken the Mirrodin-Kamigawa Standard format with some “tech deck,” and that the entire local metagame had – and I quote directly – “devolved into tech versus anti-tech.” Now there’s an Ari Lax statement for you!

He couldn’t share, of course. But after Ari had dropped enough subtle hints over a few days, I slowly began to figure out his local tech was Mono Green Aggro – a deck which, coincidentally, I had also been thinking about! I showed him my ideas, and he opened up like a cracked dam ready to burst. We compared notes and came up with the best list we could. A few weeks later, both Ari and I were qualified for JSS champs with our list!

But it was that summer that everything would truly change forever for me and Ari. If there was a single turning point in my entire Magic career, I would pinpoint it here. I wanted to go further with Magic. And when I heard the audio interview with Antoine Ruel after he won Pro Tour Los Angeles, one word Antoine said would stick in my brain and refuse to leave: “Team.”

If the pros had teams and I wanted to be a pro, why didn’t I have a team? The equation seemed simple. So, just like that, I decided I’d create one.

I pitched the idea to two of my other friends who had experience making forums work, and we built up the forum for the team to use. After the people that helped create the forum, Ari was one of the next people I invited. He was essentially a founding member.

Among other things, this was in the initial message: “We plan on our team being competitive and actually, over time, becoming a real force at large tournaments, so we could use your help.”

Well, how about that.

I took the deck to Regionals that year – and ended up making top 8. I didn’t qualify for Nationals, but still, it was my first major top 8 ever. I was ecstatic! And I had Ari to thank.

Ari and I talked plenty more before JSS championships that year. He decided to play a different deck, and I stuck with my guns and rode trusty Mono Green to a top 16 finish! (This was forever immortalized by a rather poorly written tournament report by a 15 year old Gavin that you can find here.) And perhaps most importantly, that weekend Ari and I hung out and just generally had a lot of fun together. It really solidified the idea of a team to me. Ah, the days of the JSS.

The team, aside from having a horrifically pretentious name, was fundamental in expanding my deckbuilding skill and introducing me to people around the world. And a huge part of that was Ari.

Before I go further, did you know the website for Team Unknown Stars (yeah, as noted above, our team name wasn’t the greatest) still exists? The internet never forgets, I suppose. At the top of the page talking about who’s on the team is a header saying “NOTE: THIS PAGE IS OUT OF DATE.” Scroll down a bit further and you’ll find this:

“Ari Lax

Ari has had numerous successes on the JSS circuit, including one money finish and one finish two spots out of the money at the Junior Super Series Championships. He also has had a few PTQ top eights as well as two consecutive top sixteens at Michigan Champs.”

If I figure out how, maybe I’ll go in and update that a bit.

Ari was part of team RIW Hobbies in Michigan. This is where some well-known luminaries such as Patrick Chapin played, but also a cast of characters you may or may not recognize the names of, such as Kyle Boggemes, Phil Cape, Paul Nicolo, Alex John, and Dan Cato. Not only was Ari playing with some of the best, but he slowly brought many of them into working with us which meant I got to work with them too.

But just as important as the deck technology was the lingo technology. For those who don’t know, the Midwest, and specifically RIW hobbies, was likely one of the largest exporters of ridiculous Magic lingo in the world. (Alongside, perhaps, LSV and Paul Cheon.) When Ari wasn’t busy going over strategy, he would introduce all of us to whatever the newest Midwest lingo was.

I mean, of course, you have the ever-crucial zeeps and zoops, but Ari went deep. In what is probably the highlight, we had an entire thread called “the stray kitten thread,” which basically amounted to pages and pages of people finding new ways to call each other stray kittens. (“Stray” being a term that was used for a while to describe a card, deck, or other thing you thought was suspect.)

Ah, those were the days.

But it wasn’t just all stray kittens and giving cards ridiculous nicknames. Ari gave me one of the most fundamental pieces of life advice I’ve ever received.

We had a clan chat on Magic Online (clan Team Unknown Stars, of course, making us look wonderfully pretentious to everyone we ever played) and there were many long nights of ridiculous chats that happened in there with the crew.

But one night, Paul Nicolo was complaining about something. Maybe it was mana screw, maybe it was bad draws – it’s hard to tell. Paul complained about luck a lot, and Ari was always ribbing him for it. But tonight, while Paul was complaining, Ari said something that’s always stuck with me:

“I find that if you stop complaining, soon you’ll find you have less to complain about.”

I don’t complain much – and it’s mostly because Ari said this in chat once. I’ve found the advice to be true, and it’s made my life better. Complain when you need to, but only when it’s really something worth it.

*********************************

Time went on, and we kept working together. We worked on Faeries together – a deck which we both grew to know in and out. I qualified for Pro Tour Berlin with the list we had all worked on as a team, and decided it was time to make team polo shirts for everybody.

Though Ari was committed to wearing his RIW hobbies shirt since he was sponsored by his store, he still bought one of the shirts anyway. He never really wore it that I saw, but I still appreciated the gesture.

When the Extended GP Vancouver happened, Ari flew out and stayed at my parent’s house. Then again for GP Seattle. Ari made top 8 of that GP – and I was glad to have been there for it. To this day, my mom still asks me how Ari is doing with Magic. I suppose he’s just a guy that makes an impression.

We worked together, won together, and lost together. We fought side by side in Grand Prix and Pro Tours. One of the most legitimately fun experiences I’ve ever had was getting to work with Ari for a week in person at the beach house in San Juan.

Ari’s excitement for Magic and endless energy to quest for a better deck is astounding. I can’t tell you how many times I thought we had a good deck, and then he would just shake his head and say he was looking for something better and more broken than that. He pushed everybody to build better. Ari is always looking for the best option.

In his early days I think that was more of a weakness – Ari switched decks too easily – but he turned that into a strength by learning how to adapt to play anything on the fly. Now he has the volition to switch decks late in the game if he needs to, and he tends to know what to look for. Ari has come a long way.

Years passed by. Somehow, 2007 had suddenly turned into 2011. And finally, it was time for our Magic paths to diverge. Ari was breaking through and cracking the top 8 of GPs semi-consistently. I had been offered a job at Wizards. We were both reaching toward dreams in different ways.

Things had changed. But even though I stopped seeing Ari every few weekends, it was great watching his ascent continue. Whenever we happened to be at the same GP, we would hang out and eat dinner with our mutual friends at some point. And when Pro Tour Return to Ravnica in Seattle rolled around in 2012, Ari asked if he could stay with me – and of course I told him he could.

There were many great highlights from that weekend. Watching Ari go on a crazy run with his Infect deck only to end up just outside of the top 8 was exhilarating – and then heartbreaking. (Though Ari is never deterred – “I can’t complain about this finish,” I remember he told me.) But the thing that really brought everything full circle was this.

I strolled into the Pro Tour tournament hall on Saturday afternoon. I talked to a few people, and then I finally found Ari. We started to talk as normal, and I looked down at his clothes.

He was wearing his Team Unknown Stars shirt. At the Pro Tour. In Seattle.

Everything came rushing back. All of the JSS years, all of the forum posts, all of the late night clan chats, all of the testing sessions. And in that moment I just saw it all: we were two kids who loved the game, played it endlessly, and had gotten pretty far with what we wanted to do. That match in 2003 seemed so long ago, yet close enough to be yesterday.

To be honest, even writing this all out now, I’m not quite sure how this all happened. I’m just glad it did.

Two weeks ago, I was at GP Orlando. Ari was there, and, as always, we hung out and played some games. We battled some Limited, some Standard, and I even had the pleasure of sitting in on one of his team’s dinners as they were all talking about preparing for the Pro Tour.

As someone who had worked with Ari for years, I could tell there was an air of seriousness in his tone that wasn’t always there. I saw hints of it when working with him for Pro Tour San Juan. But this was the first time it seemed fully fledged. In the moments he wasn’t talking about Standard at dinner, he was leading a discussion with some of his teammates, running through every single card in Khans and working to identify which cards were worth picking over nonbasic lands in draft.

“I want this Honolulu Pro Tour to go well,” he told me. “Honolulu has accounted for my worst finishes on the Pro Tour. This time, I’m going to be ready.”

“Plus, the first time you lost your swimming trunks in the ocean.” (That’s a story you’ll have to ask Ari about if you want more details.)

Ari cracked one of his joker-style, ear-to-ear smiles.

He went to Hawaii, tested for a week, and in an incredible bit of serendipity, Ari ended up playing the same kind of deck in Pro Tour Khans of Tarkir that I played the most when working on Khans of Tarkir: Abzan Midrange. Some of our details certainly differed, but it sill brings a smile to my face knowing we were both beating down with Siege Rhinos, just months apart.

Ari and I played our first game against each other over 10 years ago now.

When he made top 8, my eyes widened. When the top 8 matches started, I left my convention in the middle of New York to go watch them on my phone. When the epic game 3 of his semifinals was on, I was so glued to my phone that I forgot to eat the food I had just bought and it got cold. Watching him win the finals last night sent shivers down my spine.

Well, Ari, I have some bad news for you: I don’t know if it’s really fair to call you an Unknown Star anymore.

Congratulations Ari M. Lax!

Pro Tour Khans of Tarkir Champion.

My former teammate.

A longtime friend.

And forever the strayest of kittens.