Brainstorming – A Letter to the Magic Community from a Johnny-Spike

You’ve all heard it before. Some of you may have even been the ones saying it.

It’s round four at FNM and some Johnny, after going a whole three-and-oh for the first time in weeks with his newest, sickest brew has just been thoroughly smashed by Delver, Caw Blade, Jund, or whatever happens to be the flavor of the year. You can practically feel the eruption of angst coming as Johnny’s face turns bright red and he clucks in the back of his throat out of disgust. “Damn netdeckers,” he mutters under his breath as he slouches back to his friends to loudly complain about how awful Spike is at Magic because he can’t even design his own deck.

Not only is this perspective completely irrational, but it represents a cancer in the Magic community which damages everyone involved either directly or indirectly, through its natural consequences. It stems from a fundamental misunderstanding about the psychology of gaming and is fed by a culture which pushes for perfection but doesn’t teach how to deal with the embarrassment involved in falling short of one’s goals. Unfortunately, this misunderstanding isn’t an isolated occurrence involving anti-netdeckers raging against Spikes. Often the roles are reversed and some Spike is seething about how lucky Johnny had to be to top deck the last piece of his combo, because that’s obviously the only rational explanation for how a deck that bad could beat a trademarked Gerry T production.

So who are these people anyway? Spike? Johnny? Even if you think you know what it means to be one of these people, if you haven’t actually read Mark Rosewater’s articles “Timmy, Johnny, Spike,” and “Timmy, Johnny, Spike Revisited,” please do so now. At the very least, both articles are considered by every Magic theorist who’s credible to be in the top ten greatest Magic theory articles of all time, often mentioned in the same breath as Mike Flores’ “Who’s the Beatdown?”

http://www.wizards.com/magic/magazine/article.aspx?x=mtgcom/daily/mr11b

http://www.wizards.com/magic/magazine/article.aspx?x=mtgcom/daily/mr220b

The short and long of these articles, if you’re too lazy to read them or otherwise preoccupied, is that there exist exactly three super-archetypes of personality profiles for Magic players, and that these three types are affectionately codenamed: Timmy, Johnny, and Spike. In short:

• Timmy plays Magic to experience something.
• Johnny plays Magic to express something.
• Spike plays Magic to prove something.

Within each of these super-types are a number of sub-types which are relevant to technical discussions about Magic Theory, but which I will largely ignore for the remainder of this article; though, I will likely return to them in the future. For now, my point in bringing up these personality profiles is to make the (perhaps) controversial assertion that any and all disagreements between Magic players as to why or how our game ought to be played stem from pure ignorance regarding the nature of the Timmy, Johnny, Spike triangle and various other polygons formed by their sub-types and mixed profiles.

For example, as per the earlier allegory, when Johnny couldn’t figure out how Spike could call himself a true Magic player when he didn’t even design his own deck, what he was actually doing was making false assumptions about why different people play Magic. This fundamental logical gaff is largely excusable considering that it is in our nature as humans to compartmentalize our experiences and that it is often difficult to see the world without relying our own eyes. However, despite the admissibility of this Johnny’s behavior from a microscopic ethical perspective, the damage that he or she is inadvertently causing to the greater environment of social gaming is unmistakable and unacceptable.

What Johnny needs to learn is that Spike plays netdecks because they are, by definition, the best decks. Spike is largely uninterested in the deckbuilding aspect of collectible card games because he’s not trying to express himself in his cards. Instead, he wants to prove that he’s a better Magic player than his opponent by winning. He wants to prove that he’s more intelligent through technical play. He wants to prove that he’s worth something as an individual by making an impact on the competitive Magic community at large.

By contrast, Johnny wants to express his creativity, his sense of style, or his general uniqueness by coming up with a sick brew. In fact, it’s actually more irrational for Johnny to be upset when he loses to Spike than it seems at first glance, because of the seemingly intuitive fact that Spike’s deck was likely designed by a Johnny or a Johnny-Spike! Sam Black is almost unanimously lauded by Johnnies because of his innovative and original deck designs. So why is it then, that these same Johnnies complain the most obnoxiously when they lose to one of his decks in the hands of some random Spike? If Johnny were being rational, he’d want to play against a net deck every round so that he could prove that he is more intelligent than the fabled Sam Black by defeating a deck designed by a true Johnny master. (Not unironically proving at the same time that he has more than a little Spike in himself – expressed in the very craving for acknowledgment which lead him to this desire in the first place.)

Likewise, Spike needs to understand that Johnny plays what Spike believes to be sub-standard decks because of the expression of self which that deck represents. He needs to put away his condescension and try to recognize the existential experience which can be found inside any Johnny’s home-brew. Truly experiencing another’s personality is one of the rarest and most beautiful of human experiences and each and every Johnny is practically handing you the opportunity to share this experience with him, simply by presenting you his deck. There aren’t many areas in life where this kind of experience is so readily available, so we, as Magic players, should embrace these opportunities wholeheartedly.

Furthermore, every Johnny and Spike should take a collective step back from their inflated egos and recognize that the often downtrodden Timmy is probably the unsung hero of the Magic community. Neither Johnny nor Spike truly experiences a game of Magic the way that Timmy does, and because of this, they often laugh him off dysphemistically as a casual gamer. The truth is that if Magic is, at its core, a game which is supposed to be played because it’s fun; then Timmy is the truest Magician of them all. The fact that Magic, in and of itself, is a fun game, is something that we Johnnies and Spikes have largely forgotten and direly need to remember – if only to keep us from strangling each other and suffocating the community as a whole with our rampant negativity.

I try to be an ambassador between the two warring factions because I’m often torn with myself as to which side I’d rather represent. Anyone who has seen one of my decks knows that I’m often a true-blue Johnny, coming up with some of the dumbest looking home-brews in the history of competitive Arizona Magic. Just look at this decklist which I piloted to the Top 8 of Arizona States in 2006:

“What is this deck even trying to do?” A Spike might ask, and which my inner Spike has often asked my inner Johnny. But that’s exactly the point. In this deck we can clearly see my struggle with myself as a Magic player and as an individual. We can see the competitive elements in the Loxodon Hierarch / Azorius Guildmage theme which completely tore this particular tournament apart and would have likely tore apart the whole Ravnica / Time Spiral Standard format if I’d been a more high profile player or been more dedicated to spreading the word about this deck. And yet we also see the Solar Flare sub-theme bright as day, in all it’s uber-Johnny glory. This is two decks trying to be one, just as I’m two Magic players trying to be one. It took me a very long time to come to this realization.

This is why I feel like I have a unique perspective in the particularly nasty bouts of gang warfare between Johnnies and Spikes which often show up at FNM or any other semi-competitive tournament. I try to speak up when I can, but it’s often difficult as just one person. I try to remind my Spike friends that Johnny didn’t just get lucky when he top-decked his one-of Elesh Norn in his pod deck and simply happened to have seven mana available. He plays a deck which is capable of producing that much mana and which runs the card Elesh Norn. Only a person who is completely ignorant of statistics and the Law of Large Numbers could call this a purely lucky event; but the real explanation for Spike’s pouting has nothing to do with this. Johnny has caused Spike to question his own self worth by taking away an opportunity for Spike to prove whatever it is he’s trying to prove. In response, Spike becomes a kindergartner. It’s understandable.

But this kind of behavior needs to become as taboo as smoking indoors or being obese are in modern society. We realized in our society, that life is a little more unpleasant than it could be when you’re wading through rooms filled with foul smelling noxious vapors; just as life is a little more unpleasant when you have to sit and listen to someone deride you because of their own psychological misgivings about a card game. In the end, we’re all a part of the Arizona Magic community, so it makes sense that each of our lives could be just a little more pleasant if we can each understand and respect why and how we play Magic in the first place.