Hello everyone! Robert “TheChirurgeon” Jones and Sean “Star Man” Matoon here and we’re proud to announce that today marks the first article in our “Hitting the Stacks” column, Goonhammer’s regular ongoing coverage of Magic: The Gathering. This week and every Tuesday following we’ll be talking about the basics of how to play, new sets and products, decks in different environments, and Commander.
Magic: The Gathering is one of our favorite games and while we’re starting with some Getting Started content, the majority of coverage will focus on Commander play and content for “the Casual Spike,” players who enjoy constructed play and make it to the occasional competitive event or buy a box to draft with friends. We’re passionate about the game but there’s already plenty of great content out there for high level competitive play so our focus will be on areas that we feel aren’t well-covered by the sites that already do a fantastic job making competitive content.
I’d also like to introduce you to our primary Magic: The Gathering authors:
- Sean “Star Man” Matoon is the lead writer of Hitting the Stacks. Star Man has been playing Magic since the release of Shards of Alara in 2008. He developed a taste for competitive play while playing Pokémon TCG in middle school and Score’s Dragon Ball Z CCG in high school. He’s Magic player with a writing problem. Star Man’s also been trying to pick up Warhammer 40K since 2012 and will one day have enough of a Salamanders army to get started with.
- B Philip York will be leading the charge on Commander content, talking about Magic’s most popular format, including how you can get started with the format and exploring cool deck concepts on a regular basis.
- Craig “C-Euro” Marlatt remembers owning new Magic product as far back as Ice Age, but his first run with the game went from Urza block in 1998 to the first Mirrodin block in 2004. After his playgroup succumbed to the Texas Hold ‘Em craze of the mid-2000s, he watched Magic from afar until getting back to it in 2013. When not playing or theorycrafting about Magic, he dabbles in PC gaming and stares wistfully at the pile of Nintendo games he swears he’ll get around to playing someday. He’s trying to read more too. Find him on Discord or MTGO @C-Euro, or on Twitch @ceuro327.
- Dan “FromTheShire” Gates started playing Magic during Revised with a “charitable” donation from a friend who had no idea how much money he had just cost young Dan in the long run. He tapered off around the end of the Weatherlight Saga in 2001 (Apocalypse), before eventually returning to the the game for Theros in 2013. Since then he’s amassed decks across Legacy, Modern, and Pioneer, as well as a truly upsetting number of EDH decks. Strengths include getting carried away with Suicide Black and killing himself, and cutting dozens of future EDH deck lists down to 105 cards. He currently can only be found on Discord as he never used MTGO and is only just learning Arena.
- Robert “TheChirurgeon” Jones is a name you may already know from our Warhammer content. His love affair with Magic goes back even further than his infatuation with Night Lords and Chaos Space marines, however – Robert started playing Magic in the late summer of 1994, around the release of The Dark and he’s been hooked ever since, playing off and on competitively. He’ll be periodically helping write and cover Magic content as well. Robert’s favorite way to play Magic are Standard events, or just fooling around the Vintage Cube he’s built and curated over the last decade.
What’s Next
We’re excited to start talking about this game! We’re starting this week with a Getting Started series focusing on Magic – today we’ll be covering the basics and then this week we’ll also be covering Arena, Commander, and the game’s basic terminology, We hope you’re as excited about it as we are and as always, if you have any questions, feedback, or requests for future articles, drop us a note in the comments below or email us at contact@goonhammer.com.
