I readily admit my theme is a little loose this week. I would apologize for that, but I suspect I care more than you do. I usually try to live a somewhat interesting life, and failing that, I call friends late at night to help inspire my theme for the week. Ryan Bushard has contributed more than one theme idea, and it’s usually better than what I had come up with. Sometimes, my theme ends up cool and nebulous like the one about people like Jackie Lee and Natasha, who write about the psychological aspects of the game. Sometimes, my theme ends up sorta lame, like “Midwest Grinders,” which was a pretty thinly-veiled excuse to write about people I like.

But what’s wrong with that?

Won’t I make a more convincing case for people I like? So, that’s what this week is. The theme was going to be something like “People Who Write Articles,” but forget about the pretense. There are three people I think do quality work, and if me thinking you should follow them isn’t thematically relevant enough for you to feel like this article fulfilled you on every level, I’ll tell you what: Find a way to thematically connect these three people. I’ll mail a booster pack of Theros to the person who comes up with the best connection. The judging will be done solely by me, which sounds fishy, but what if I told you that meant a draw was possible?

Since I don’t have a theme to describe in any greater detail, we can probably just get down to bidness. Don’t forget the contest I mentioned a paragraph ago. Submit your entry in the comments section right after you read “Who to Follow – Who to Follow Edition”

Chris Andersen

Where You Know Him From: Playing Elves, Glory Seekers

Current Title: Magic Player

Social Media:

Twitter

Glory Seekers Again. It's That Good.

Elves!

Remember when I pump-faked like I was going to talk about Chris already? Well that felt like it might unseat the movie World War Z for the title of Biggest Waste of Source Material, so I have wanted to come back to Chrandersen since then.

Chris is a Pro Tour–caliber player from Indianapolis, and I imagine a lot of you probably know that. With his recent first-place finish at a StarCityGames Open with a deck that it may surprise you to hear wasn’t Elves (unless you don’t know who he is—in that case, you’re not surprised at all that he didn’t play Elves. You’re all, “Am I supposed to be?” Yes. Yes, you are.), Chris has become known for breaking cards such as Transmute Artifact and Tezzeret the Seeker as much as anything else these days. Do you like Legacy and also playing unfair cards in Legacy? You’ll enjoy this deck-tech interview with Chris, also Chris (VanMeter to be exact), and Reuben Bresler. This Legacy primer, however, showcases the deck he loves to play most: Elves. He’s quite a combo Elves wiz, coming close to winning an SCG Open with the deck quite a few times. With seven SCG Open Top 8 finishes in the last two years alone, I feel his record speaks for itself.

But it doesn’t have to—Chris speaks for his record as well, both on the podcast he recently joined, Glory Seekers, and in guest spots on other casts, and he does a pretty decent job of it, too, I might add.

He used to play a game on Twitch, where he’d play a bunch of people, and for every game he lost, he did a shot. That may sound kind of immature to some of you, but in context, it was funny and not all frat-boy as you may be thinking. But the funniest part wasn’t how he would become worse and worse at playing Magic as the night wore on, but rather his mother telling him on Facebook that they “need[ed] to have a talk” because there is literally nothing funnier than an adult being admonished by his mother on Facebook—except when it happens to you.

Anthony Lowry

Where You Know Him From: StarCityGames, LegitMTG

Current Title: SCG Writer, DJ

Social Media:

Twitter

SCG Archives

LegitMTG Archives

Top Finishes

I don’t know Anthony that well, and I haven’t been following him that long, but the second I saw that they had functionally reprinted Searing Spear in the form of Lightning Strike, my actual first thought was, “I bet that Anthony dude is going to love this.”

As a brief aside, I feel I’ve really lost the war against referring to R/W/U decks as “American.” Let’s ignore the fact that there are twenty-nine other countries in the world that have red, white, and blue flags for a second. For whatever reason, irrespective of context, and no matter who says it and in what accent, whenever I hear a R/W/U deck referred to as “American,” I picture a barefoot turnip farmer in bib overalls wearing a big, doofy straw standing on the Champs Elysees saying, “Don’t none y’all speak American?” to random passersby. I realize that no one is with me and I’ve lost already, but just know what saying that around me does to me.

Anyway, I bring that up because Anthony saw no small degree of success with a R/W/U miracles deck, and in the course of my researching his accomplishments to write this piece, I saw the deck referred to as “American Miracles” no fewer than . . . well, even once is too many times, and it was more often than that, which, by my count, is too many. But it is more recently when I saw him tune up a mono-red midrange deck that used Thundermaw Hellkite and sometimes Archwing Dragon to burn people out. The deck also used Chandra's Phoenix, a card that I feel should be worth more money than it is. I feel that if there is someone who can make that card a thing, it’s Anthony, poised atop his new writing platform at StarCityGames.

The man is a red mage, through and through, and you have to respect that he knows how he likes to play, and he goes out and plays that game. He’s a good deck-builder, but he made the transition to writing about it very smoothly, which is always a plus. I have gotten a kick out of his success lately, but in case there is a person or two not aware of him yet, here you go.

Mike Lanigan

Where You Know Him From: Quiet Speculation, SCG

Current Title: Grinder, Writer

Social Media:

Twitter

SCG Archives

QuietSpeculation Archives

I was doing a minor amount of trading at GP Detroit, mostly killing time. Trading has become a little loose lately, so I tend to only do it if I’m approached, which happens. Mike was sitting at a table with some people, so when I went over to talk to him, the guys at the table asked if I had trade stuff. I gave them a box to dig through—because binders are for grinders—and I sat there waiting to see what they found, chatting with Mike. We talked for about ten minutes, and Mike had a lot of decent stuff to say about the format, and in the process of the conversation, we mentioned a few names of pros we talked to lately and people we were having dinner with in Detroit. The funniest thing was that every time Mike or I said the name those guys recognized, they would look up and look at both of us like, “Should we know who you are?” and then go back to looking through my trade stuff. Finally, I turned back to Mike and said, “Mikey, why doesn’t anyone know who the hell you are?” to which he replied, “I have no idea. Why do people know who you are?” to which I replied, “I have no idea.” One of the guys looking through my cards looked at us and said, “I have no idea who either of you are.” That sounded about right to me.

But should it be that way? I think Mike is a good player, a good writer, and someone with very good instincts about which cards in a new set are likely to impact Standard. He writes for the free side of QuietSpeculation, which means he doesn’t write a finance article, and I don’t think he realizes how good his finance instincts are. What I mean by that is that he identifies fewer than twenty cards likely to impact Standard when a new set is spoiled. Many in the finance community will look at the set and go, “That could be good, that could be good, that looks awesome, that’s great,” not remembering three months ago when they all said, “Oh yeah, Plasm Capture is too good to not be printed at mythic, and Legion's Initiative is awesome, and I bet Aurelia's Fury could hit $50.”¹ That set yielded precisely Aetherling and Voice of Resurgence, but that didn’t stop the same people from identifying about two hundred cards in Theros that will shake Standard to its core and revolutionize the way we play cards.

Mike takes a very level-headed approach to new sets, and I feel that’s very instructive. More people should know who Mike is, frankly, and my incredulity at the situation inspired me to do this grab-bag of an installment today. Again, Mike writes on QS, but on the free side, so check out a few of his articles. He makes good points and does a good job wrapping up events he played in, and I think more people should know who he is.

But they should. He might have just saved your smartphone.

Oh, and here’s a brief epilogue to the story above: It turns out the guys sitting there—who said they didn’t know who either of us was—were actually listen to Brainstorm Brewery. I should wear a nametag.

¹ No one ever profiled in a Who to Follow ever said anything like that. I hear all the finance chatter, sane and non-sane alike.