Stolen Goods: Road to Recovery, Part 1

[Today's article comes from guest writer Evan Forster and is part one of a two-part series. Enjoy!]

"Wounded soldiers looked up, grateful for her appearance. But she passed over them, her eyes firmly on their foe."

My story begins during the summer of 2013. I had finished playing in the Modern PTQ season with my friends and teammates of CasualNet Gaming and I was getting ready to go on a fabulous vacation to Europe! When I got back from the trip, I had to get something from my car and noticed that my car was messier than it had been before I left; compartments were emptied of their contents which were scattered around in the general area from which they came. My jetlagged brain brushed this off as no big deal, "maybe my dad had to grab something from my car right before we left and couldn't find it," I thought. It was until that weekend when I was at my good friend Javier Remy's house and getting ready to play a game of commander that I realized something was amiss. Previously, I always left my Magic cards in my car. Since I used them so much, it seemed only natural to always have them with me. This time, when I went out to grab my bag of cards, I realized that they weren't there. My mind flashed back to the disheveled state of my car when I got back from my trip and I automatically knew what had happened: my collection had been stolen. I went back inside and told my friends that it appeared that I had left my cards at home and I borrowed Jav's Grimgrin, Corpse-Born deck for the game. We played a pretty long and enjoyable game, but I just couldn't get into it.

As far as collections go, mine wasn't extremely valuable from a collector's point of view, I would say roughly $1500-$2000. The thing that hit me hardest was the loss of my commander decks, specifically my Jenara, Asura of War deck, which I had been working on for about 3 years. The deck was my baby, my first real EDH deck. A deck that had grown from a collection of cards and an idea thrown together for a quick EDH game, to a force to be reckoned with at the table. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the loss of that deck was what crushed me the most. I stopped going to the card store for a while and stopped playing Magic in general. Realizing that I couldn't play a deck I created anymore in my favorite format of Magic made me question whether it was worth it to continue playing the game at all.

However, later that summer, the Grand Prix tour was coming to Miami, FL, a mere 4-5 hours' drive from my hometown of Orlando. I figured attending this was possibly a once in a lifetime opportunity, and I decided that if I was ever going to get back into Magic, this was the time. I built the deck that I thought was best, Bant Enchantments, because it allowed me to play my favorite colors: blue and white. I began playing the deck at FNMs in the Orlando area and enjoyed playing it for the most part. It had a solid matchup against most of the field and had a pretty straightforward plan. So I went to the GP and figured that if I could put up a decent showing, I'd enjoy playing Magic again. I was expecting a lot of aggro, which I could easily race. My only downfall was against control decks, which were getting pushed out of the format by aggressive Burning-Tree Emissary decks and attrition-based Junk reanimator decks, as far as I knew, so I shouldn't be seeing a lot of them. I considered picking up a Cavern of Souls to put into the deck, just so I could stick that Geist of Saint Traft which spelled doom for control decks. However, again, I wasn't expecting a lot of those decks, so against my better judgment, I passed it by (It was a Korean Cavern of Souls, WHAT WAS I THINKING!?!?). Nevertheless, we spent the first day at the GP prattling around, looking at the vendors, getting cards signed by artists and generally just hanging out having a good time. Aside from a slight hotel mix-up that evening, everything was going great. Going into the first day of play, I was feeling confident.

I saw 3 control decks in the first 4 rounds and scrubbed out hard.

Needless to say, I was not happy. I came to the GP to prove to myself that Magic was still worty my time; that I could rebuild; that things would be ok. They weren't. During the PTQ season, when I scrubbed out of a tournament, it turned into a fun day of "hang out with friends, meet new people, and play EDH." This time I had no such EDH decks, so it turned into a long two days of "sit around and try not to be bored." During these two days, I began to seriously think about giving up the game that had been a pretty big part of my life for the past five or so years, and a major force in the development of some of the best friendships I have today. "Is this worth it?" I thought to myself, "can I keep doing this?" After thinking about it, I realized that I wasn't having fun playing the deck that I built for the GP or, to be honest, playing Magic in general at that point. Competitive Magic has never had a very big draw for me. I mostly play in events because I get to hang out with friends. I know some of you are asking why I didn't build a new EDH deck, and the honest answer was that I had no desire to. I didn't want to invest so much time and money into a deck again. To me, when you build a commander deck, it has part of your personality in it and I didn't want to invest so heavily into something that could be stripped away at the whim of a stranger. I also knew how much time and effort went into building a truly fun deck and since my local EDH metagame is filled with very powerful decks and great deckbuilders, I didn't feel I had the resources to rebuild a decent EDH deck that I would enjoy playing.

Quitting looked more and more likely. I looked into selling off my little collection (which consisted mainly of my Standard deck), quietly asking a few of my friends how much they would value some of the more expensive cards. But in my heart I knew that if anything could get me back into Magic, it was commander. I decided to wait until the Commander 2013 product came out in November to decide if I wanted to play the game again or not.

Fast forward to November. I hadn't really been playing a lot of Magic in the previous months, skipping the Theros pre-release and release parties (which used to be some of my favorite events), and generally not hanging out at the card store. I managed to find the Commander pre-cons at a local Target and picked up the Bant one. The theme of the deck was similar to the Jenara deck that I had loved so much previously, so maybe--just maybe--this would be the deck to get me back into the game. I took it home and made a few changes with the cards that I had. The next day, I headed down to UCF to meet up with a few of my friends to play with my new commander deck. After the first couple turns, I was hooked again. I forgot how fun commander games were! I was playing a deck that I owned again. I decided to remake Jenara, but this time it would be different. This time I would have new tricks.

This was Jenara 2.0

Continues in Thursday's installment of Stolen Goods: The Road to Recovery, Part 2

Check out the Casual Net Gaming Archive and Like us on Facebook!

-Evan F.