[Editor’s Note: This article was meant to be published last Friday, but due to server migration issues, it had to be postponed.]

Going in a different direction today. There won’t be a ton of decklists, but we can still have fun right?

Oh, goodie, you are still here, or got bored and came back, whichever.

I’ll be honest. I’m not quitting, but people in the community are always leaving, talking about leaving, or coming back after quitting. This got my brain juices flowing.

I mean I have quit many things over the years. For one reason or another we all have quit various things. I have even *gasp* thought about quitting Magic. I think everyone who has played for more than a year has done so. Especially after that awful performance in that one tournament. You know the one. That one that you had such high hopes for and wound up scrubbing out horribly.

Maybe it is just me.

Even recently with “the fire” burning bright I found myself considering it. I sat looking at my binder and the numbers started clicking away and I could just imagine all those numbers going into my bank account. Don’t get me wrong. It would be in the hundreds, not the thousands that others have. Even that is a strong incentive.

I feel my ego kick in and say that I just have to try harder, invest more time, and really commit. There are only so many hours in the day. Time commitments are the main reason anyone quits.

Priorities are the only real reason to quit anything. Is it a priority in your life? Do you want to make it a priority? Once I ask these questions the decision practically makes itself. The decision isn’t easy by any stretch.

The next thought is how much I would miss it. Have you ever quit something and regretted it? Even surrounding Magic this has happened. For instance, I used to be the Chief Editor (ooooohhhhh ahhhhh, shiny title) for this here site. I also used to edit over at another site. You might have heard of it (if you, you know, listen to the Eh Team): LegitMTG.com. I was on the overnight shift at my place of employment, and not much went on, giving me time to do all sorts of things. I then moved to the day shift and took on a much larger workload. All of my editing had to be moved to after work, which in turn cut into my time with my wife. I had to make cuts somewhere and so I stepped down from editing. I find myself missing it quite a bit. I was plugged into both sites. I knew what was going on and when, but more than that, I was constantly in contact with the people around the sites: the owners, the coordinators, the writers, the artists. I think I miss that the most.

All of these thoughts race into my head as I think about quitting. I would miss it too much. I think that is what brings people out of retirement or keeps people from leaving in the first place.

I find myself thinking about these things as I ramp up the amount of time I’m devoting to Magic. I’m trying to get play sessions in and spending time tuning and working on lists. I see it starting to bleed into the time that I have with other things in my life. I might be heading down a road that needs to me to quit something again.

Quitting anything that I have invested myself into never feels good, but sometimes it is necessary.

Right now the fire is burning bright, and the important things in my life (mainly my marriage and my family) are not affected. I’ll let it keep burning until it does affect things.

What does this all mean? What is the point?

It means that the next time you see KYT say that he is quitting you should kick him in the shins. Hard. I blame him for making me think about all this shit. Then again, maybe it is a good thing. You should kick KYT anyway.

In fact, if you take anything at all away from this article it should be that. Kick KYT in the shins. EVERY. TIME. YOU. SEE. HIM.

P.S.

Okay, I lied. I have one decklist to share:

[deck title=Elves Again?]
[Lands]
4 Breeding Pool
2 Forest
4 Hinterland Harbor
2 Simic Guildgate
3 Stomping Ground
3 Temple Garden
[/Lands]
[Creatures]
4 Arbor Elf
4 Avacyn’s Pilgrim
4 Burning-Tree Emissary
1 Craterhoof Behemoth
4 Elvish Archdruid
4 Elvish Visionary
3 Faerie Impostor
3 Hellraiser Goblin
1 Nephalia Smuggler
4 Somberwald Sage
3 Soul of the Harvest
3 Village Bell-Ringer
[/Creatures]
[Spells]
4 Beck // Call
[/Spells]
[Sideboard]
4 Acidic Slime
2 Progenitor Mimic
3 Deathrite Shaman
3 Skullcrack
3 Rootborn Defenses
[/Sideboard]
[/deck]

The main change to this version is the mana base. I often found myself short on blue mana. Not only was I short, but I had everything else I needed. I literally sat doing nothing in matches that I would have handily won had I found a blue source. I don’t like the Guildgates, but I feel they are a necessary evil. What this deck really needs is a [card]Birds of Paradise[/card] variant (or [card]Noble Hierarch[/card]), any mana dork that can tap for a blue mana. I’ve even thought about trying out [card]Axebane Guardian[/card]. I haven’t been able to find a reasonable one, so I have to turn to the mana base and try to make it work.

When the mana base is firing on all cylinders, I have found that it feels like I am playing a completely different format. It feels like I am playing a budget Legacy Elves list. This sounds bad, but in a field of Standard decks, even a bad Legacy deck is awesome. It goes off faster than Wrath effects can stabilize and recovers quickly from said Wrath. Redundancy renders spot removal almost useless. I have not gotten much of a chance to test this new mana base, but things look hopeful.

The other nugget that is added is that spicy one-of [card]Nephalia Smuggler[/card]. I had previously mentioned [card]Dead-eye Navigator[/card] as something that has great synergy with the deck. The Navigator was just a bit too slow. It was another six drop in a deck that was starving for low casting cost creatures. The Smuggler performs much the same tasks, but is much cheaper. There are some downsides of course. It has to target and it has to tap to activate. Most of the time this shouldn’t matter as part of the plan is to give everybody haste, but these things bite when things aren’t going great and you need to jump start the engine. As it stands I’m leaving it as a one-of for testing purposes. If I were to take this to anything besides FNM, I would feel comfortable making it a fourth [card]Village Bell-Ringer[/card] or a fourth [card]Faerie Impostor[/card], as the card has performed remarkably well in every iteration and nearly every situation.

I also have worked on the sideboard some. I took a page from the Reanimator decks and went heavy in the D… the Land D that is. [card]Acidic Slime[/card] shenanigans are brutal. I even lived the dream of curving Slime on turn three into [card]Progenitor Mimic[/card] on turn four. I felt bad. Really.

The only other card that I think looks odd in the Sideboard is the [card]Skullcrack[/card]. It is there because around me I know there are several people with [card]Fog[/card] in their Sideboard.

Gameday is this weekend, and I look forward to getting strange looks because I drop half my deck and swing in one turn or even just because I cast [card]Possibility Storm[/card] at all. If you take one of my brews (or would like me look at one of yours), let me know in the comments or on Twitter @Writer1007.