{"id":7,"date":"2012-11-08T13:03:50","date_gmt":"2012-11-08T18:03:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stevewagenheim.com\/mtgblog\/?p=7"},"modified":"2012-11-08T14:10:36","modified_gmt":"2012-11-08T19:10:36","slug":"welcome-to-land-boy-steves-magic-the-gathering-blog","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/stevewagenheim.com\/mtgblog\/2012\/11\/welcome-to-land-boy-steves-magic-the-gathering-blog\/","title":{"rendered":"Welcome To Land Boy Steve&#8217;s Magic The Gathering Blog"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I thought I&#8217;d start my blog with a little introduction about me, my time playing the game and some thoughts on Magic the Gathering in general.<\/p>\n<p>Honestly, my start with the game itself was totally by accident. We have to go back to the early 90s, just a few years after my daughter was born and she got me hooked on watching Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles on the tube. Well, I fell in love with the cartoon and shortly went looking for the action figures.<\/p>\n<p>Needless to say, they were NOT easy to come by. I looked everywhere. Sure, you could get the villains, like Shredder, Bebop and Rocksteady, but the actual turtle figures were very scarce, at least around here.<\/p>\n<p>So &#8230; I called stores in my area and one of them was Amazing Heroes in Union, NJ. I went down there but the owner, Steve Nemeckay, didn&#8217;t have any. Not sure how it happened, but we sort of became friends shortly after (I did buy other action figures from him) and then one day he shows me these cards. They were Magic the Gathering cards.<\/p>\n<div style=\"float: right;margin: 3px;\"><script type=\"text\/javascript\"><!--\ngoogle_ad_client = \"pub-4025562143158908\";\ngoogle_alternate_color = \"FFFFFF\";\ngoogle_ad_width = 125;\ngoogle_ad_height = 125;\ngoogle_ad_format = \"125x125_as\";\ngoogle_ad_type = \"text\";\ngoogle_ad_channel =\"\";\ngoogle_color_border = \"\";\ngoogle_color_link = \"\";\ngoogle_color_bg = \"\";\ngoogle_color_text = \"\";\ngoogle_color_url = \"\";\ngoogle_ui_features = \"rc:0\";\n\/\/--><\/script>\n<script type=\"text\/javascript\"\n  src=\"http:\/\/pagead2.googlesyndication.com\/pagead\/show_ads.js\">\n<\/script><\/div><p>The rest is history.<\/p>\n<p>I became totally obsessed with the game. It was like no other game I had ever played. My first deck was a blue control deck. My second deck was a red burn deck. My third deck was a white weenie deck.<\/p>\n<p>By the end of my first year playing, I had like 10 different decks I could play. No, I didn&#8217;t play competitively. We would play on Friday nights after Steve closed up the shop in little, and not so little, group games. They were a ton of fun and I miss them.<\/p>\n<p>Time passed and after Urza&#8217;s I kind of lost touch with Steve and the game for personal reasons that had nothing to do with either. I was just having some bad times, not the least of which was my lousy job. I still played with my daughter on occasion, but that was about it.<\/p>\n<p>Then, after life settled down, I got back into the game heavily around Zendikar. Since that time, I have played on a more competitive level going to several competitive events. I am also a regular at FNM where I do quite well these days.<\/p>\n<p>But that wasn&#8217;t always the case. In fact, for years, I was a pretty bad Magic player. I&#8217;ll be the first to admit it. That&#8217;s how I got the name Land Boy. See, I never knew how to construct a deck and almost never had enough land or had way too much land. So I either got mana flooded or screwed &#8230; a lot.<\/p>\n<p>It took me a long time to finally get a handle on this game. It came from a lot of studying and a lot of playing. Like anything else in life, the more you do something, the better you get at it &#8230; usually anyway.<\/p>\n<p>Today, I feel that I can hold my own against quite a few top players when I want to be serious about this game. Sometimes, yeah, I just wanna have fun. But make no mistake about it, I can be one tough opponent. That&#8217;s when I finally decided to write my first book on the subject of Magic, totally for beginners. I seriously doubt I could teach Brian Kibler much of anything.<\/p>\n<p>I also decided to start this blog and share some of my wisdom with others as well as some matches I&#8217;ve played and won or lost. You can learn from both.<\/p>\n<p>And that pretty much brings me up to the present.<\/p>\n<p>As for my thoughts on the game itself, maybe I should leave those for future blog posts because this one is already starting to get a little lengthy.<\/p>\n<p>But I will be discussing my thoughts on card prices and availability, tournament play, FNM, casual, the different formats, and just about anything you could think of when it comes to this great game.<\/p>\n<p>You might find some of it interesting to read.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ll try to update this blog at least once or twice a week. Knowing me, it will probably be more regularly but who knows? I have so many things that I&#8217;m into that sometimes stuff just gets lost in the sauce.<\/p>\n<p>Hopefully, that won&#8217;t happen with this blog.<\/p>\n<p>To YOUR MtG Success and Happiness,<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Steven &#8220;Land Boy Steve&#8221; Wagenheim<\/p>\n<p>Get my FREE report <strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.stevewagenheim.com\/mtg\/mtg1\/index.html\">&#8220;7 Steps To Magic Success&#8221;<\/a><\/strong> and become a better Magic player<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I thought I&#8217;d start my blog with a little introduction about me, my time playing the game and some thoughts on Magic the Gathering in general. Honestly, my start with the game itself was totally by accident. We have to &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/stevewagenheim.com\/mtgblog\/2012\/11\/welcome-to-land-boy-steves-magic-the-gathering-blog\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[4],"class_list":["post-7","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-magic-the-gathering-general","tag-magic-the-gathering"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/stevewagenheim.com\/mtgblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/stevewagenheim.com\/mtgblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/stevewagenheim.com\/mtgblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/stevewagenheim.com\/mtgblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/stevewagenheim.com\/mtgblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"http:\/\/stevewagenheim.com\/mtgblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10,"href":"http:\/\/stevewagenheim.com\/mtgblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7\/revisions\/10"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/stevewagenheim.com\/mtgblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/stevewagenheim.com\/mtgblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/stevewagenheim.com\/mtgblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}