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Well, this article was a breath of fresh air. Good to see that someone understands the Timmy psychograph. Players who play to have fun and/or see others have fun.

However, though I do laude Kelly's effort on showing why some Timmys do not spend much time on mana curves, I feel that it may be the small leak that sinks the boat. What I mean is that it still leaves room for the perception that "Timmys are bad deckbuilders because they are dead-set on thinking that 4-ofs and good land percentage are not fun. How can they be good deckbuilders if every deck they build is inconsistant?" Though I know this is not the intent, I think it comes across as making Timmy sound like someone who stubbornly builds bad decks, and less like a player who chooses to build decks how he likes. The problem might be the example, where timmy is being told how to improve his deck, rather than looking at a pile of cards and putting together the deck that is most fun to him.

Forgive me if I'm being picky, but I do appreciate this article as I feel it does a good job pointing out many things that have gone unsaid until now. In fact, it is good enough that what I said above is the only real problem with it. I personally consider myself a pure timmy, although I used to tack spike onto that because I like to build decks that are low curved and consistent. What I realized is that I do so because I find it more fun to sacrifice some randomness in favor of consistently being able to play every card I draw. Don't get me wrong, I love having versitile, interesting decks that are full of variety. I just don't like to put in cards that I won't be able to play when I draw them. While I do love the big play, I get much more out of playing a well oiled machine. Oh and I'm not a Johnny either. Keep your Zur's Wierdings away!

mutantman wrote:

A friend of mine showed me an elf deck he built, asserting that Llanowar Elves was the essential one-mana elf. I basically just looked at him funny, because I really couldn't see how the Lawnmower could beat out powerhouses like Essence Warden and Rhys the Redeemed . To me, the massive, must-answer, life-gaining, token-making machines are just impossible to top. (Maybe Wirewood Symbiote . Or Skullclamp , in moderation.)

Eh. I would say that, for an Elf deck, Birchlore Rangers (or maybe Heritage Druid ) is better. With it, you can consistently accelerate a lot of good 1-mana Elves ( Taunting Elf , Elvish Lyrist , Elvish Scrapper ) so that the third-turn Timberwatch Elf , Imperious Prefect , Alpha Status or Elvish Champion becomes all the more devastating. At least, that's how my Elf deck works, and it's pretty insane. You don't really need to attack with the small 1/1 Elves anyway, you want to wait until you get the pumpers.

Anyway, I would identify myself as all three profiles, and on the Timmy side, a Diversity Timmy. I love to build my decks to have a lot of synergy and obscure combos (for example, my Elf deck plays Vitalize and Thousand-Year Elixir to take advantage of the many tap abilities Elves have), I love to build my decks to be very good (Spike), but, most of all, I love to build my decks to have fun. Decks shouldn't be too powerful (if the game is over too quickly, nobody's having fun and the other deck didn't really do what it wants to do). I also love the diversity of Magic, which is shown by the fact that I currently have 42 (soon to be 46) decks, all with their own personality and game plan.

Great, psychographic weeks. I think I'll cycle along then, embracing my timmy side now since from time to time I fit in every psychographic. Now let's see, what shall I try to dig up and make fun with (I mean a magic card of course, what were you thinking there?) Too bad there weren't any decks as examples to fire up my timmy spark. Still, good article, enjoyed reading it.

mutantman wrote:

So I took out the Overrun s because they made me win too quick.

Timmy FTW!

Awesome! I've done similar things. Great to find a kindred spirit!

mutantman wrote:

And I have a great story about that combo too. I was playing this three-player game and my brother played his Daru Spiritualist / Starlit Sanctum / Shuko infinite life combo, sacrificing his Spiritualist, and he made the mistake of choosing, as his arbitrarily large number, 3.6 billion life. And I happened to have my Ranger with a pair of Wings in my hand. So with a little math, I deduced that despite his life total being just shy of 2^32, I could still kill him in less than 12 turns. And since the third player was a blue mage with a hand full of permission, there wasn't really anything he could do about it. Ooh man did that feel good.

Everyone else left before I could actually play the thing out though. I guess the math scared them all off.

Wow. That is awesome. I salute you!

(I've done something similar. An Enduring Ideal deck of mine has my all-time favourite combo in it, which I fetched out over the course of 3 turns: Doubling Season , Opalescence , and Followed Footsteps on the Season. I got up to 1031 Seasons in play by the time I won attacking with 11 5/5s. Next turn I would have got over a googol of Seasons. :D )