When a Tinder date falls through and introduces you to a new Magic: The Gathering group, is it really a failure?

I thought I had a date the other night. I met a girl on Tinder and we really hit it off. We were talking about her pet chickens, recent video games we’d both played and whether I looked better with or without a beard. Then she asked me to join her Dungeons & Dragons group, so I knew things must be getting serious.

I was stoked. Less so about the girl, more so that I might have the opportunity to get my D&D on. We agreed to meet the following Sunday, with the time and place to be decided. But in true Tinder fashion, things just didn’t work out. The next morning I woke up to notifications on my phone showing she had sent me several messages at 3 a.m. She had also unmatched me. Our entire conversation had been erased, even the messages I had yet to read.

Ghosted. Maybe telling her I wanted to roll a halfling rogue or bard was a dealbreaker.

Of course, the exchange had put the local game shop (one of our potential meetup locations) on my radar. I perused its schedule and saw it had a bunch of release and pre-release events planned for the newest Magic: The Gathering set, “Dominaria.” Score.

Now, I haven’t played much MTG since my senior year of high school. My posse and I would hit Friday Night Magic every weekend and head to the midnight pre-release events for “Innistrad” (2011) and “Return to Ravnica” (2012). But college and the workload that came with it put me off MTG, mostly because the need to make rent every month took priority over my pseudoaddiction. It didn’t help that my squad grew bored with the game. Four years and three friend circles later, MTG was the last thing on my radar. A real shame because I missed “Shadows over Innistrad,” the sequel to my favorite set block ever.

But now here I am, working a new job in a new town, knowing nobody and bored out of my flippin’ mind. Aside from a potential awkward encounter with a girl who ghosted me, what did I have to lose?

Let’s just say thank Serra I work until 10 p.m. on Fridays, or I’d be going broke throwing together a deck for Friday Night Magic.

Small town game shops all have this familiar smell — slightly musty with a hint of male body odor. This particular shop was less of a store and more of a rentable space. A shelf of ancient merchandise that I can only assume had sat there through several owners divided the building into two spaces.

The back was filled with sleek gaming computers and consoles being rented out to what seemed to be kids from elementary through high school. Most were playing Fortnite while some were engrossed in more “sophisticated” games like League of Legends and DOTA 2. Their salty rants brought many a snicker from the MTG crowd who were mostly in their 20s and older.

After forking over my $30 entry fee, I sat at one of several tables set up in the front. From there I proceeded to make awkward small talk with awkward people as we waited about a half an hour for some of the regulars to show up. When the last of them drifted in after sleeping off the previous night’s midnight pre-release event, we began.

We played the Sealed format, meaning everyone would be building 40-card decks out of freshly opened packs from the new set along with two particularly powerful promo cards. My promo was just my style — green cards that focused on ramping and spending lots of mana. My pack pulls were solid. I had lot of green and white cards that favored building a field of tokens and cards that grew more powerful the more cards I had on the field.

The lynchpin, I thought, would be my two copies of Druidic Vow, which let me spend as much mana as I wanted to put cards from my deck right onto the field. Problem was it required a lot of setup to really utilize, specifically, it needed a legendary creature on the field to use. Luckily, I had three in my deck.

My first matchup was against a barely conscious player who had attended the previous night’s midnight pre-release the next town over. The first game had my opponent getting “mana screwed” and unable to play any of his cards while I finished him off uncontested. The second game had him get “mana swarmed,” meaning he got nothing but mana cards and therefore had nothing to play with it.  Two easy wins right out of the gates.

I felt the rush coming back to me. Like Garruk himself, I was thirsty for blood and ready to unleash hordes of green beasts upon my feeble enemies. Of course that exhilaration was short lived. A single win thrust me into the big leagues of the local crowd, where I was swiftly reminded how fickle a game I was playing.

My second opponent sported a long, slightly groomed, but mostly greasy beard that drew attention away from the stained hoodie covering his thin frame. The intense odor of tobacco wafting off of him suggested he’d gone through at least an entire pack of cigarettes before last bathing or changing his clothes. He had trouble controlling the volume of his voice, and his abrupt attempts at witty commentary usually ended in uncomfortable silence from both of us.

I couldn’t set up properly to pull off any of my big combos because he played a black/green deck that was heavy on removal and powerful late game cards. He stalled us late into the game where easily finished me off 2-0, and later won the whole tournament. We talked for a good while before the second match, discussing hobbies and our history with the game.

My third opponent was more on my level. Cleanly dressed and clean shaven, he likely came directly from working in an office before the tournament, and he was all business. He hardly said a word aside from what was necessary to play. To sum it up, I lost 2-0. His black/white deck had a gimmick that I just couldn’t counter. While I managed build up a big army, he whittled me down with a legion of flying creatures that I couldn’t block or destroy with my limited removal ability.

At this time I also realized my error in basing my deck around Druidic Vow. It requires too much setup to properly use in a short format like Sealed. I thought about converting my deck to black and green like my second opponent had used, but with the next round starting soon I simply cycled out my would-be trump card instead.

My final match was another easy win. My opponent had received rather mediocre pulls and couldn’t keep up with my consistently growing board. In the end I won 2-0, meaning I finished at 2-2 overall record. Not particularly impressive, but good enough to qualify for the one-pack prize pool.

Overall, I pulled some good and valuable cards, worth more than my $30 entry fee, and just had a good time overall. I had missed the strategy and rush involved with putting together a new deck and, really, it was just good to get out of the house for a bit.

Heck, one of my opponents even suggested I come back some time and join one of the shop’s weekly D&D groups. So all in all, mission accomplished, right?

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