Magic Deck Vortex: Parasitism: Revisited.

Upon the publication of my recent article, “Parasitism: The Devolution of Magic Players,” there have been loads of passionate requests, asking that I rethink my position of netdecking and its effect on the game. I'm sure those who have requested this are absolutely giddy in their seats, excited that I am taking them up on their offer. However, I will disclaim right now that, if you are looking for an all out concession and a retraction of any stated point, you will be disappointed. If you are expecting me to change my views at all, you will, once more, be disappointed. But I feel, as many others have, that a closer look at parasitism is necessary.

Once more, attention must be paid to the common parasite, a lesser breed of the Magic player, using what isn't its own to succeed, essentially reaping the benefits of somebody else's hard work. Why, oh why, should there be more discussion of such creatures? Upon dissection of their grotesque cadavers, a discovery has been made. There actually exists two different species of these parasites. There is the parasite in casual Magic, and the parasite in tournament Magic.

At the dawn of the parasite's existence, we can speculate that their presence was mostly in a competitive tournament environment. While the pioneers of certain decks relished in their great achievements, they weren't the only ones doing so. A policy changed to allow whole decklists that these forsaken professionals had put together themselves, for themselves, to be published online. It was a sad day, and not a few moments later, the parasite moved in and set up shop.

At first, their presence was disdained, but now, it seems that netdecking is the norm for the tournament setting. This is an inherent problem to the game, itself. While some argue that netdecking helps Magic financially, they ignore that Magic is more than just a business. Magic is a game deeply rooted in its creative opportunities, and no reasonable person should argue that the creativity isn't severely crippled by the abundance of parasites. Their creativity begins after the hard work put into a winning rogue deck, and it ends at the few cards they switch around and add to the sideboard. And even that isn't very creative. It's all working as a machine. It is the primitive instincts of the parasite that wills them to change one card out for another, when they know that they will need that card for an upcoming match.

Irish playwright and journalist George Bernard Shaw once said "Build a system that even a fool can use, and only a fool will want to use it.” The fool of all fools is the parasite that tricks itself into believing it is anywhere near as good as the player that built and successfully piloted the deck.

Speaking to the foolishness of netdeckers, Kelly Digges wrote an article entitled “Multiplayerizing,” where he said “Anybody can win with a winning deck copied off web; it takes a real Magic player to brew a winner from scratch.”

Proponents of netdecking, usually parasites themselves, hiss and screech of the amount of work it takes to successfully pilot a netdeck, factoring in metagame, the vast amount of testing, etcetera. But they've eaten away half the work that the rogue designer did. It took far more time and effort to make a design, test it, rebuild it, and then flesh it out to fit the metagame. As you see, fleshing it out for the metagame was only a mere fraction of what the rogue designer had to go through. But, undoubtedly, in the tournament they were preparing for, they will face parasites, and odds say they will be beaten by these parasites that simply acted on primal notions of devouring what is good.

However, parasites still maintain that netdecking takes far more skill than players give them credit for, and that deckbuilding isn't really a factor in competitive Magic. Testimonies of Pro Tour Hall of Famer Raphael Levy would say different. Though claiming to not be a fan of deckbuilding, he still concedes in a segment of “Ask the Pros” that “Netdecking is, let's say, the easy solution that bad (or just unsuccessful) deckbuilders turn to when confronted with problems,” later adding that “Competitive Magic is tough, and deckbuilding is a part of it.”

What Raphael Levy said is a legitimate reason that people go parasite: they aren't successful deckbuilders, thus they let someone else do the building for them. Even Raphael Levy claims to not be a good deckbuilder, and he's in the hall of fame. So wouldn't one have to turn to netdecks in order to have any chance in a competitive environment? No. Although the lack of skill is a defining parasitic characteristic, you can treat this illness at the start, before becoming a parasite entirely. Rather, it is very easy to take the concept of a deck (i.e. the core combo) and build off that your own way. If you need help to find out what cards to put in, a quick Gatherer search can help you with that, or a trip to your local card shop. At certain shops, the cashiers there are usually some level of DCI judge and know what they're talking about. There isn't any shame in asking for help.

Other parasites take a more spiteful approach to opponents of their actions. They simply tell others to go rogue and win, themselves, if they don't like netdecking so much. The only problem is that there isn't any permanent place for rogue designs anymore. Once a rogue deck makes it to the top, it is immediately devoured by the vast hordes of unresting leeches, and it will no longer be known for its creative and original accomplishments, only the amount of insects that have clung their bloodsucking fangs to its spine. So parasites have made themselves a permanent home off of the temporary home that the rogue tried to build himself.

So, with parasites on top, sucking their netdeck milk cartons into oblivion, the only thing that keeps them on their high horse is the fact that they are there. The fact that they have won is all that matters to them, not how they won. It is reasonably argued that winning is the one and only thing that matters in competitive Magic, and everything else should be saved for casual. This opinion was also taken by the Plansewalker Nicol Bolas in the article “On Winning,” where he said things like “What they call villainy is no more than the will to win by any means available.” This article then outlined the ways in which to win in the most efficient way possible.

Among these ways to win, Nicol Bolas included Cheating. Although he later stated it was more risky, he first said “If you win by cheating and are not detected, you have won. If you win within the rules, you have won. There is no difference.”

So, if parasites are to adopt cynicism as their scripture and claim that winning is the only objective and how you achieve it is unimportant, then they must also acknowledge cheating as a perfectly acceptable way to win, because, as they claim, how you achieve victory is of no matter.

Enough on the competitive parasite. Reading of them may have infected you all. Let us move now to the even more vile casual parasites. Though similar in both anatomy and behavior, they are demonstrably different than a competitive parasite, in that they are far worse. See, these parasites have no desire to win any prize, and have no desire to be recognized on a greater scale. They simply want to make themselves appear like the better player over the rogue that they defeated.

Worse, once more, is that the minuscule amount of “hard work” that competitive parasites put in is completely diminished in a the stomach of the casual parasite. Upon defeating a Grapeshot-Elves parasite online by playing down Underworld Dreams, I tried to give it suggestions on things to add to avoid being handed an easy loss. It simply stretched his gaping mouth open, showed its teeth and said to me “If it's good enough for the pro tour, it's good enough for me.” Before my personal ban on playing parasites, I had run into many parasites of this nature. They are hungry for the netdecks, for the power that they give them, but they give nothing back to the deck environment. They don't do any extra work, and their venomous fangs do nothing but drain from the game.

Barring the very, very few exceptions, casual parasites are nothing more than immature vermin. They hold winning above all else, when they aren't really winning anything. It still warps my brain to ponder what sort of pride they can get out of doing something that any random bloke could have done. But it seems that something in their anatomic structure of their digestive system is designed to extract every tiny bit of pride and they store it in a central storage unit atop the stomach. This pride builds up, so that they are able to excrete large amounts of it, in unwarranted or lackluster circumstance. The fact of the matter is that most of these casual parasites are random blokes. They have achieved nothing more than a basic tournament experience, and a few decks created on MWS, but their internal systems allow one casual victory to be the equivalent of a Pro Tour Championship.

So the question then becomes, "why"? Why do they netdeck? There are of course the obvious reasons, such as the anatomic self-satisfaction and lack of skill, but what makes them netdeck, above all else? It seems obvious that the casual parasite looks to the competitive parasites as role models. In what is essentially “monkey see; monkey do.” The parasites see that the competitive players win by being a parasite, so the illusion is created that, in order to be successful in Magic: The Gathering, you must be a parasite. Just like that fellow said, “if it's good enough the pro tour, it's good enough for me.” And since every successful rogue deck becomes a netdeck, this illusion is carried.

Ultimately the cycle is just as vicious as the parasites themselves. Magic is being transformed into an environment where casual and competitive Magic is home only to parasites. And the Magic player is not necessarily devolving, as I have said in the past. But there is no more evolving. Evolution being defined as “a process of gradual, peaceful, progressive change or development.” Therefore, netdecking and parasitism are incapable of evolution, because they are all about what has been. The rogues are the ones that evolve, making the new decks with new ideas. The game itself evolves, putting out new cards and new combos for rogues to discover. Sure, parasites use the new, but since they, themselves, aren't becoming anything new, they don't evolve. One of the characteristics of parasites is that their actions are like a virus. They will spread quickly. Rogues will drop off the map left and right. There will come a time where parasites run far more rampant than they do now. Less and less rogues equal less and less evolution. The game evolves frequently, and it requires the player to do the same. But soon they won't.

Parasitism doesn't necessarily cause the devolution of Magic players, it merely halts evolution indefinitely.

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