Magic: The Gathering

I’ve been slinging cardboard for a long time — like late-90s allowance money long. My first cards showed up around 1998–1999, and one of the clearest memories I have is my mom taking me to a comic shop in Denbigh so I could pick out a few boosters and singles. I still remember shelling out $7 for a Yawgmoth’s Will… which I still own, and which still feels like one of the most absurdly good purchases of my life.

I played a ton with my brother growing up, and we still manage to get games in when life cooperates. These days, I’m mostly a Commander person (with the occasional draft — especially cube nights or new set releases when the vibes are right).

What I like about the game

What keeps me hooked isn’t just the cards — it’s the layered thinking. The “I have a plan” part is fun, but the real juice is the other plan: the one where you’re playing as if you were your opponent, anticipating what they’re representing, what they’re bluffing, and what the table politics are about to do to your perfectly reasonable line. Commander is a diplomatic format whether people admit it or not, and I love that it rewards both tactics and social awareness.

My deckbuilding vibe

I build most of my decks myself. They’re generally not cEDH, but they are streamlined — I like decks that have a plan, execute it consistently, and don’t spend the whole night pretending they’ll “eventually do the thing.” I’ve got a soft spot for black, blue, and green, and I’ll happily splash white removal because, honestly, sometimes you just need to delete a problem and move on.

Lately I’ve also been doing a long-overdue cleanup pass on my collection: trimming it down until most cards are either:

in decks,
queued for decks, or
true collection pieces I’m keeping on purpose.

(Also: huge shout-out to my mom for helping me amass this collection over the years. A lot of those early cards exist because she made the time and space for it.)

Decklists + what I’m working on

I keep my Commander lists on Archidekt (and I actually update them), so if you’re curious what I’m brewing, tuning, or obsessed with this month — that’s the best place to look.

Where I play

If you’re around central Virginia, I’ve played at The End Games in Charlottesville, VA from time to time — good people, good tables, and a solid place to jam Commander and catch a draft.

…And of course, my dining room table.

Stella, judge and catastrophe

And yes — there will be photos of Stella lounging nearby like she’s the judge, the tournament organizer, and the moral authority of the table all at once. If you’ve ever played Commander with a cat in the room, you already understand: she’s not “hanging out,” she’s supervising.

…until she isn’t.

Because Stella also has a second job title: local, unsanctioned disaster. One minute she’s calmly overseeing diplomacy like a tiny sphinx, and the next she’s firing off unplanned board wipes through dice removal, top-deck “tutoring” (read: theft), and the occasional full-on deck-tumble that turns a carefully tuned 99 into a chaos draft.

So yes — she’s either the table’s serene guardian of order… or the sudden arrival of an Eldrazi-sized annihilator, here to remind everyone that nothing you’ve built is safe, and the only true constant is: shuffle up.