All Tapped Out!?

The saying in Spider-Man goes "With Great Power comes Great Responsibility", but in real life it is more something along the lines of "With Great Responsibility comes a Dramatic Shortage of Time for Geekiness".


Now don't get me wrong, I love the GF and adore the Munchkin, but having a steady, one day going to evolve into an engagement, then a marriage, kind of relationship forces you to make sacrifices.

This has definitly been the case for me...

After Crisis 2012, I waved goodbye to "dedicated" wargaming and my friends from the Tin Soldiers of Antwerp (TSA), whom I shared the battlefield with for 15 years.  The reason wasn't that I didn't feel like playing anymore, but more a case of having no time to tackle Lead Mountain with a brush.
Some might say "but, just play then", but for the odd ways my mind functions in, painting, even after 20 years of experience is at an "above average" at the best of days, is a big part of my hobby.  If I can't paint new models for my forces to POTENTIALLY use one day, I get demotivated.  And don't feel like playing then...

And now the same is happening with Magic: the Gathering.  Due to an overfilled calendar of social obligations, school, and general messing about, I just can't make it to the local watering hole.  I've been tinkering with my "not really RDW / Rakdos aggro" deck for months, invested in a heap of cards, only to have it completed about a month before rotation.  And didn't have the chance nor time to get there and try it out, seeing some 10+ EUR cards just cycle out and dramatically drop in value.

Talk about flushing money down the drain...

This year, there is the GP Antwerp, and I had already bought some cards for the deck.  And Modern is expensive!
Result: I can't attend the Main Tournament at all on Saturday!!  Maybe, just maybe, I can do one or two side-events on the Friday or Sunday, but once again, a sour investment of dollars and euros I could have used elsewhere.  American GP promo Goblin Guides come to mind...
No, then I prefer to only spend hobby budget money on entry fees in the future, at least then I know when, where and if I can play.

This is why I have made the decision to stop playing Constructed formats and trade / sell off the cards in my collection, in order to get more budget for Saint Seiya cards.  Look at my post about trading card strategies for my Modus Operandi I tend to use for this.

Am I quitting M:tG alltogether?  Hell no!!!  I like the people and community I play with, but instead I'm going to turn my attention towards Limited.  I'm a "grey middle area" level player anyways, so it's not going to make a difference in Planeswalker Points, and I have to rely on the dice roll for the extra FNM promo cards anyways ;-)

But the benefit now is that at least I don't have to worry about the 'top internet decks' on my path.  The playing field at the start is more level, due to the higher luck factor of what 'Booster One' grants you.  Okay, skill, knowledge, build-talent and bluff are large parts of drafting, but I tend to stick to the BREAD principal when drafting (Bombs - Removal - Enhance- Attack - Defend).

So yes, I've just started trading off my cards, but no, I'm not quitting at all.  One can say I've just settled into a niche, not per se the one most to my liking, but at least the most playable for my situation.  And I'll always end up with a bigger pool of cards to trade around with ;-)

So yeah, perhaps the title should be more like "Another way of Tapping" or something along those lines.   

'Cause I ain't retiring boy, ya hear ma!!

Now let's see if we at least can get some drafts or sealed's in during this final season of 2013, and silently hope I can make it to either of those Sealed / Draft GPs in 2014, being either Warsaw (9 - 11 May) or Strasbourg (28 - 30 November).  Unfortunatly, the most intresting one was Utrecht during the last weekend of June, not to far away by train, School's Out for Summer...  but also the GF's birthday weekend.

"With Great Responsibility comes a Dramatic Shortage of Time for Geekiness"