In a previous column I delved into the different player archetypes of Magic: The Gathering.
I exalted the virtues of being a “Johnny” player and how my 60-card deck is an expression of my creativity, versus the “Spike” player with their in-it-to-win-it competitive nature.
But it’s common to forget about “Timmy.”
According to Magic: The Gathering’s head designer, the Timmy is often characterized as “young and inexperienced.” They are often the ones who avoid the Friday Night Magic (FNM) competitive scene. On limited budgets, they seek out the $1 overstock or “junk” rares that everyone else has seemingly forgotten about or discarded.
Timmy knows that they will not win them all, so they set their motivation to achieve something different: make the big plays or cast the biggest creatures that affect the game.
In a multiplayer game, they randomly add chaos to the board state by throwing the game completely into an opponent’s favour, or fuel a kamikaze run that can knock themselves out of the game, while taking down another.
Despite being overlooked and dismissed, Timmy is an integral member of the community. We all discovered this game at some point and enjoyed the simple wonderment of opening our first booster pack to find out a spell’s true potential for the first time.
They remind us that having fun doesn’t necessarily involve winning.
If we were all able to channel our inner Timmy, what a great place the gamer landscape would be.