Puppeteer. 2U. 1/2. U, T: You may tap or untap target creature.

November 29, 2013 6:19 PM

Magic: The Musical: A Magic: The Gathering Puppet Musical

Preparing to attend GP Toronto tomorrow and stumbled across this puppet musical about Magic tournaments. I have quibbles but it's a fun effort and the rap battle early on is a delight.

posted by yellowbinder (7 comments total)

I haven't watched the whole thing yet but wow, from the first song the line "Some of us need all the help we can get" really resonated with me.

I actually have a tattoo of the Magic: the Gathering symbol even though I'm not super great and I don't play much anymore. When I was about ten I learned to play Magic with my little brother and the kids across the street, then I kind of lost touch with those kids after middle school and I didn't really play so much with just my brother. In high school I made some new friends and it turns out they'd all played Magic when they were younger too, so we started playing, then they all graduated and I was on my own again. When I started college, I made new friends, in particular a couple of guys who were roommates our first year, and again it turns out we'd all played Magic in middle school and high school so again we started playing. One of those friends I have since married and the other was the best man at our wedding and is once again our roommate even though we have long since graduated from college.

I have the tattoo not because I'm so amazing at it or because it's so phenomenal but because making friends hasn't always been easy for me and this game has been a thread throughout my life connecting me with people I really care about. I'm one of the "us" who needs "all the help we can get" and Magic has been that for me, and that's why I have the tattoo.

Also, less nostalgically, when I was about fourteen and my brother was ten or eleven and I felt like being a REALLY NICE big sister, I would walk him to the comic book store because he wasn't allowed to go alone. I didn't really care about comics but there were sometimes guys around my age or a little older playing Magic and I would come up to them and kind of twirl my hair and say "Oh, are those Magic cards? My brother taught me how to play that, a little." They generally weren't really expecting a reasonably attractive girl in the comic book store and they'd often invite me to play and I'd ask questions like "What's banding, again?" which I maintain is a really reasonable question and then generally I'd win because I was fairly decent and they weren't really expecting me to be particularly good. I'd get kind of big eyes and say stuff like "Oh, so I still have eight lives and you're below zero now so...I think I just won, right?" To this day I don't know if my hustling of Magic is a blow for or against feminism.
posted by Mrs. Pterodactyl at 6:38 PM on November 29, 2013 [27 favorites]

I'm pretty sure that acts of benevolence or betrayal do not count if they occur during games in which creatures with banding enter play; their mere existence creates a karmic island divorced from the streams of everyday life we swim in.

Personally, I'm savoring this link because the only thing my spouse hates more than "Magic: the Gathering" is "musicals", and the opportunity to combine them in her presence is delicious.
posted by jsnlxndrlv at 11:23 PM on November 29, 2013 [1 favorite]

They had me with "Some of us need all the help we can get," and then immediately lost me again with "It's a magic fuckin' day". I have no problem with profanity, but if that's the best line you can come up with, you're a lazy lyricist.
posted by starvingartist at 5:28 AM on November 30, 2013

The good: The backgrounds and whole world built around the puppets.

The meh: The puppeteering skills of those involved. I found some of the characters worked pretty well, and some seemed to be manipulated by lazy puppeteers.

The bad: The music! One of the comments said that this was a Kickstarter campaign. If you've raised good money for a musical, please find some folks who can sing and don't have the electronic, Casio-quality music drown out the singers.
posted by xingcat at 6:12 AM on November 30, 2013

This is painful.
posted by empath at 6:50 AM on November 30, 2013 [1 favorite]

Kickstarter Musical. Artifact. Tap for one colorless mana. Does not untap during Upkeep.
posted by belarius at 10:30 AM on November 30, 2013 [1 favorite]

I just learned how to play Magic a few months ago. My friends are really good at it, but also have insanely good decks. I need to save up some money to get a sweet deck built so I can blast them.
posted by gucci mane at 6:55 PM on November 30, 2013