Tesseract #0: Introductions

Opinion

Spootyone

30 November 2018

645 views

Hello, internet! My name is Spootyone, and what I have here for you is an introductory “episode” to a new blog-type series I want to begin work on. This series will revolve around cube -- my own personal cube, and the format as a whole. But we will get to that in a bit, here. Feel free to skip to the end of this piece if you do not wish to know about me - I won’t take it personally.

First, I want to take a minute to talk about who I am, because I feel as though it’s likely few people here are familiar with me from when I used to be very active on various other sites. My name is Christian (or Spootyone, obviously). Back in 2014, I began a series of gameplay articles called “Showdown” on this site, in which I playtested decks sent to me against my own standard brews I was making at the time. For a brief stint, I began writing for LegitMTG, until I found the lack of feedback underwhelming for my creativity. I then returned to Tappedout to continue the series. This series evolved over time and some users took part in the series, culminating with a friend of mine doing the series alongside me. I also wrote some opinion pieces and deck tech articles for Standard and EDH.

Around May of 2015, a few things in my life fell apart. I also found myself increasingly frustrated with my ability to be successful in standard at FNM, and was overall burnt out and severely depressed. I put the Showdown series on indefinite hiatus at that moment and mostly retreated from the TO scene and really MTG in general. I won’t go into too much detail as that’s a part of my life I’ve put behind me at this point, but the general gist of it is that it was a combination of immaturity, jealousy, depression, etc.

In November of 2015, I embarked upon a new project along with one of my best friends, “The Top Deck”, a Magic podcast “for the good, the bad, and the lucky” (I’ll always love that cheesy intro I came up with). I no longer wanted to make Showdown articles, but my love for content creation was still alive and well and I’d recovered from my depression and life-issues. Mine and Eric’s podcast covered all sorts of things, ranging from MTG news, Pro Tour and GP results, set reviews, and occasionally something I came up with called “Quickbrews”, where we brewed up a typically-budget-friendly deck for casual or FNM gameplay. Those Quickbrew decks can actually still be found on the site if you’re curious to see them!

The podcast was so much fun. It was certainly nerve-wracking to livestream myself and talk on the fly, but it was a challenge me and Eric both enjoyed. The Top Deck stayed as a mostly bi-weekly ordeal for almost a year, until I ended up getting a new job which took up a majority of my time and made recording difficult. We didn’t want it to be the case, but at that moment we had to put that podcast on indefinite hiatus as well.

A LOT has happened since then. It’s been years, after all! I’ve since gotten a different position at another company. I’ve gotten engaged. Me and my wonderful fiance have since moved into our own place and we have a cat, because kids are too much work and money! And when it comes to MTG, boy have I changed. I learned standard just isn’t for me. I began playing more sealed and draft and started winning much more often at prerelease and other limited events. I went undefeated in consecutive prereleases for about a year which was a huge boon to my confidence. Yes, I know, “weird flex, but okay”.

Annddddd now I will attempt to bring this all back around to the here and now. The other big thing that I’ve gotten into is cubing! Cube is incredible. Creating your own cube is like choosing to become a DM for your own world. It's the closest thing most of us will come to becoming MTG set designers, and there are effectively no rules! Anyone who loves Magic the Gathering and has that desire to lead combined with that spark of the creative would surely find themselves quickly immersed in the Cube format - I'm sure of that.

I began work on my cube in mid-2017. I will get into the details of this cube in episode #1 of this series. But the main thing to know is that it is a unique take on a Peasant cube. It has very quickly become my baby, and I wish that I’d begun cubing so much earlier in my life. All these years of my life have gone by but one thing has remained the same. This same thing is what became clear to me as I matured and learned more about myself: My love of this game comes from expression, and being able to create something that others can enjoy and have fun with. It’s the same reason why I enjoyed making Showdown and The Top Deck, and it’s why I’m going to begin my new series: Tesseract.

This series will discuss my own personal cube, as well as the format as a whole. I have many ideas right now for further articles about archetypes, personal design feelings, and even stuff I just want to rant or speak about from “WOTC, why aren’t there reasons to gain life?” to “Green Aggro: a Brewer’s Dilemma”, or even "When is it right to play rares in your Peasant cube?". This series will have no set release schedule. I know this is something that people normally desire, but I also know from my past that feeling like I’m stuck to something can result in burn-out. This is going to be a casual thing for me, but I hope that doesn't deter anyone from enjoying things when I release them.

I hope you all are ready for this exciting journey, because I am.