Carrie now lives in Denver. I miss her presence.
My first memory of Carrie is the final round of a GP Trial in Twenty Sided Store’s early days. It was a win and in to Top 8 for her and a win and in or tie and in for me. We went to time. She had the win either on board for the next turn or very soon. My only out was time. She would win if we hadn’t gone to time. We went to time so she couldn’t win. I only needed to tie. I decided not to concede and to make the Top 8 where I lost in the quarter finals. I’m still not sure if that was the right thing to do. I definitely wanted to play more Magic that day. If it happened today I’d make the same decision. It’s an awkward position to be in. Carrie took the tie in stride and crushed a side draft (if memory serves). There haven’t been many moments like this in my Magic life. Moonsilver Spear is the real villain of this story.
My team played Carrie’s team for our final Team Draft League match of this season. It’s been harder than usual to schedule TDL matches. We have to move our match three times. I wanted to make sure I could hang with Monique and Rob, two awesome people I don’t see enough of, and Carrie (her looming departure very much on my mind). Thankfully we were able to reschedule for last Sunday and great hangs were had.
The draft was confusing as most six person KTK team drafts are. I never know what’s open. I try to go two colors.
This is my deck. It was warrior-ish. Dave said I should only run one, maybe two Rush of Battles. I YOLO’d three cuz it was the last week of TDL.
I beat Carrie 2-1, lost to Monique 1-2, and snot whipped Rob 2-0 (he was mana screwed both games).
Dylan was able to not 0-3 and we won 5-4. Carrie was frustrated. Even so, I think we had a great time and most of our games were fun.
Our availabilty was all over the place this season and I never made t-shirts but I love these guys. No “I” in Temur 4eva.
I’ve been in a rut in the studio lately. Bored and useless last Monday, I convinced Kadar to sleeve up the Team Draft League cube. The cube consists of all the non-valuable foils opened this season plus other random shit people donated. It’s not balanced.
Kadar and I winstoned it a bunch of times and easily had the best time playing Magic I’ve ever had.
This is the first deck I made. It crushed Kadar’s deck. Cultivate is insane.
This is Kadar’s deck. I’m pretty sure it hated his guts.
Wednesday night we posted to the TDL list that we wanted to try out the cube. Abe, Pena, and Bones said yes. We drafted in some weird manner involving five packs of nine each. Abe and Kadar drafted as one person. Their deck was amazing and they crushed us all. We ran it back. I 2-1’d both. The cube continued to be tons of fun.
That’s it. I don’t have Destiny here in Webster (visiting my parents for the holiday) so I’m pretty bored. I’m reading a book about white priviledge that’s fucking with my head quite a bit. I continue to practice TM for 20 minutes in the morning and 20 in the evening. It’s very relaxing.
Thanks for reading.
Very best,
Matt
Matt Jones (born 1980, Rochester, New York) is an artist living and working in Brooklyn, NY. Matt works between a variety of inter-related genres that explore mythology, archaeology, ancient history, theoretical physics, comedy, and the paranormal—all developed and inspired by research and personal experience. Together his bodies of work form a way for Matt to evaluate, negotiate, and play with the world around him. You can check out his art at www.mattjonesrules.com. Matt’s played Magic since early 1995, took a break for a decade or so, and came back to the game the weekend after the Scars of Mirrodin release. With Hugh Kramer he formed New York’s Team Draft League and is one of the original writers for Hipsters of the Coast. Matt’s been sober for seven years.