“I’ve always got something else going on when I’m playing Destiny. A football game, Magic coverage, or music.” –David “Bones” McCoy

What We Learned columnist Rich Stein follows Magic: The Gathering (the game of strategy and imagination) relentlessly. This is why his reporting on it is so thorough and clear. He hardly (if ever) plays the game. It’s likely that the last constructed match he played was with me, fuckin’ around, during down time at GPNJ a few months ago.

Rich definitely plays Destiny (Playstation). He’s an important member of the Doomed Travelers along with Bones, Joe Schumacher, Orlando, the Colpitts brothers, and me. Sometimes Josh and/or Matt (of Matt Guido’s Pasta Party restaurant fame) join us on raids, story missions, strikes, and in the crucible for PVP.

Destiny, as if you didn’t know already, is a first person shooter, massively multiplayer online, role playing game. It takes place hundreds of thousands of years in our future. We have colonized the moon, Mars, and Venus. At some point sentient humanoid robots came into existence (Exos). Humanity explored space extensively. This was the Golden Age.

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Then the Darkness came (not the band, not the Top Cow comic character) bringing its agents (the Fallen, the Vex, and the Hive with it). All hope was lost when The Traveler, a planetoid being-spirit-robot (I’m not sure what the hell the Traveler is), showed up to shoo the Darkness away. For its final act, the Traveler hovered just outside the Last City on Earth and shat out a bunch of Ghosts (sentient servant robot astrixes voiced by Tyrian Lannister).

Ghosts travel the Fallen infested wastes of the Earth looking for the bodies of dead humanoids to awaken and turn into Guardians. That’s you. You’re a Guardian. It’s time to shoot aliens and push back the re emerging Darkness.

Oh and there’s a weird evolved magical queen of the outer rim beyond Mars. We aren’t really sure what she’s up to but it’s probably not good. Her brother is an asshole.

The Doomed Travelers and I were smashing some Control matches (similar to capture the flag) and talking about how we could make a podcast that wouldn’t be the same old Magic strategy chat that I mostly can’t stand listening to (I don’t like podcasts, never listen to Limited Resources, etc.). I’ve been playing far more Destiny than Magic (almost no MTGO cuz it’s just not with it).

“We should do a Magic podcast while playing Destiny,” I said.

Silence.

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Then, “Ha-Ha! Yeah!” And thus the Doomed Travelers video/podcast was born.

Once per weekend (usually Sunday afternoons) the boys and I will slam the raid or some crucible matches while talking about the game we love but don’t play as much as we sometimes do. It’s a lot of fun to make and surprisingly interesting. I encourage you to check it out every week on Hipsters and www.doomedtravelers.com.

Thanks for reading,
Matt

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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 New Phyrexia 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.

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