Toledo, OHIO — Local hip dude, Bryan Wilcox discovered a foolproof method of staying cool in the eyes of his peers. Since reading is for nerds, Wilcox now guesses the text of Magic: The Gathering cards based on the picture.
“If books are for nerds and books have words, then I would be considered a nerd for reading a card,” explained Wilcox. “In order to maintain my current level of cool-guyness I guess a card’s text based on the picture. And no, I won’t take the card’s name into consideration either since that constitutes reading as well. Like, if a card’s image depicts a woman, she’s automatically a 0/1 since misogyny is just as cool as not reading.”
Wilcox explained how he navigates the pedantic ruleset of MTG using his peculiar method of play.
“If someone points out that I’m playing cards wrong due to my aversion to text I simply accuse them of loving to read and call them a nerd. If they accuse me of being a nerd back since I’m playing the same game they are, I flat out deny that I’m playing MTG and let them know they are ‘Such a nerd for thinking about MTG so much’. I’ve won a ton of games with this method.”
Those who have played against Wilcox aren’t too worried about his blatant rule breaking.
“You’d think an opponent using made-up card text for a whole deck would be pretty unfair. And it is, until you realize they’re not reading your card’s text either. If you can just say your cards are direct counters to whatever they’re doing, you can’t lose. Last game, I played a card that forced Bryan to pay me $1 every turn. You could tell he knew that it wasn’t a real card but was too stubborn to admit he read Smothering Tithe.”
At time of press, Wilcox hadn’t shown up to a FNM in several weeks after one opponent convinced him that Ante was a thing again, causing him to hand over most of his collection after placing last.