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With the coming of each New Year, people always like to sit around a cozy, warm fire and take turns telling each other their resolutions for the upcoming year. Most people fail in their resolution within a matter of weeks, some may last a few months, and yet still a select few people may even last the entire year and successfully complete their resolution. However, most of us sit around, drinking heavily, making mighty tall orders and never even attempt to uphold our resolutions. I initially thought I would take a few minutes and noodle out a few resolutions that might sound good and would be cool if MDV would actually fulfill it, but knowing our past a little bit, I know that we most likely would never even last a few weeks. That is when it dawned on me. Out of the depths of utter humiliation and despair, a true resolution came forth! Sounds pretty good right? Do I have your full attention now? My resolution is to not walk forward and blindly into uncharted waters. Instead of doing new things, perhaps we should turn around, look at what we have done, and done well, and embrace it. There are many different things that we have done over the course of the previous five years. A few samples might be our numerous contests, our deck database, or even the archive of our old articles. I think it would be nice to get better at what we do and have done. We are the casual site of the world, and perhaps we should really concentrate on the resources that we have and to improve them. I will start with the contests. We can definitely improve our quality of contests, and that is being proven by the last few contests that Cashew has presented. For those of you who are unaware, Cashew is the MDV Contest Administrator, which means he sits around for countless hours, thinking of cool contests and makes up games for us to play. Obviously it goes much deeper than that, but rest your little heart with the knowledge that Cashew is constantly brainstorming new contests, writing up storylines for those contests, running the contest, and presenting the final results for those contests. He really does spend a lot of time doing this, and I’d like to recognize his efforts and let you know who the guy is that will be leading us into the New Year with our contests. What does this mean for us forum users who really don’t care how it operates? It means that we are going to work hard on making quality contests that will keep everyone entertained. Our plan is to not just recycle old contests, but to use those contest themes, and challenge you. We want to see how good you are in your research, presentation, following directions, and in your competitive natures. We want to make contests of varying degrees of difficulty, as well as degrees of visibility. This means that you will be able to find easy contests, as well as harder contests, but also can find contests where only five people are playing, or 35 people are playing and the contest is being shown on the MDV main page. Next I want to mention the main resource of the website; namely the deck database. This was the original purpose of Magic Deck Vortex. Streetz wanted a place to store and share his Magic decks, and thus created a huge, and ever growing, database. He later began creating different filters and categories for those decks, and now you should be able to find a deck of any style that you are looking for. Earlier in 2007 year, Streetz created the ‘Deck of the Day’ feature, which selects a deck in the database, and then gives a brief description of the deck. Where you might think there is nothing more we can do, I say Horse Feathers! There is always something else we can do. We can discuss them. We can add to them. We can use it as research for articles, contests, etc. While at this moment, I do not have anything to offer you; I am willing to hear your suggestions. Please send me your thoughts, ideas, etc., that can be discussed in order to more fully utilize and improve the deck database of MDV. My final MDV resolution is in regards to our articles. We have an extensive archive of articles that Streetz regularly revisits. I sat down with him last December, and we organized the archive, as we both came to the conclusion that we should have easy access to any article we were looking for. If a new reader wanted to read old articles written by a certain author, then they should be able to find a list of those articles. Because of this discussion, our article archive is now very well sorted and you can easily find an old article by your favorite writer. Considering that the very first article written was by myself back in 2005, you should be able to keep yourself entertained for a long time just reading old articles that you may have missed, or simply want to re-read. I want to bring those old articles, decks, and contests to light. I want to keep our traditions close to our hearts, and not forget about them. I want to establish a definite tradition of MDV. I want it to be known that if you ever want to participate in a fun contest that you go to MDV and you will find one or five. I want you to be checking in for new articles at least twice a week. I want you guys to be able to easily find any deck that you are looking for in a moments notice and school your friends with your new deck, and I want to hear your stories of that schooling. Finally, I want to set a personal resolution. Call it a challenge, call it setting myself up for my own kill, call it what you will. As I mentioned earlier, the first article published on MDV was written by me in 2005. We are entering the year 2008 now, and I have never won the Most Impressive Writer Award. Not once, not twice. Not three times. Zero times. It is the trophy that I covet, and I want it. I have won the MVP award and while I hold that one close to my heart, it is not enough. I desire two other awards, and I am gearing up to tear them off of thier owner’s shelf and set them on my mantle. First is the Most Impressive Writer and the other is the Best Article Series. I am bringing them home to Cleveland, Ohio in 2008. I am calling my shot and am going wire to wire. Here is my official notice: Beebles, Luther, Amadeus, and all the other guys in the back… look out, the Old Dog is back and is looking to steal the gold from around your necks. Are you wondering who has won awards in the past? Now you are seeing what I am leading you to see… MDV has tradition, we simply need to embrace it and set it out, front and center, to be seen by all.
-Chris Newton
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