A gold dragon with all the moxen is Dan Frazier calling magic players a bunch of hoarders

Art by Dan Frazier. Does it make you want to be a hoarder?
Magic 8 Ball says: "Signs point to yes"

This picture by artist Dan Frazier is the nerdiest Magic: The Gathering tribute I've seen in a while. And within it's beautiful details is a statement that in my opinion is far from complimentary. But it's OH SO TRUE!

For those of you who don't know, this is Magic: The Gathering's 20th anniversary and to celebrate it, all of the original artists (people like Dan Frazier and more importantly Kaja and Phil Foglio!) have all put up some new art that's available in a book with oversight from parent company Wizards of the Coast.

It's pretty obvious that Richard Garfield (the creator) probably had no idea of the immense goldmine that would explode two decades ago from his creation. I can summarize Magic as thus: it's a strategy game kinda similar to chess, but not really, that involves micro-management of resources to the nth degree to defeat the person across from you. Catch all that? Shaking your head no? Well I'll try to explain further.

These pretty cards are very rare and very expensive. In my opinion,
any child molester could drop 10K or more on these bad babies, park
outside a huge tournament with his white van, and probably lure all
kinds of kiddos to the "park" (if ya know what I mean) by simply saying,
wanna see my moxen? It sounds really sad, doesn't it? That's because it is sad.
Parents, pay attention to your sons. Tell them a mox sapphire offered from the
door of a white van is just NOT WORTH IT. And yes I said "sons" and not
"daughters" because let's face it, Magic is a total sausage hang.

Deck design is based upon sets that are released upon a proven "money making" formula and old cards are phased out so that there's always incentive to buy the new stuff (capitalism people! Chop! Chop!). The huge tournaments offer a very comfortable living wage to anyone that has the genius to wield and overcome all those who stand in their path (like maybe buy a Mercedes wage but not necessarily a permanent niche among the 1%).

The game has excellent mechanics, is easy to learn, and fun to play. And just like any game that millions of people play, it has its share of douchebags that (if they lose) they're really sore losers and just don't make it fun to play at all. And if you get into any level of competition, you really have to be perfect, and because there are only ever really like three to four solid decks to play that someone with an IQ of 200 creates even before the new cards are made, everyone else copies those decks and that's what you end up facing all day long.

And when I mean you have to be perfect to even be remotely competitive...I'm serious. You play a card a second too soon or tap a land or an artifact out of order, and it's game over because your opponents are THAT good. And that's just in small tournaments. I've no idea what the competition is like in the Big Boy stuff. I'm pretty sure that everyone that plays at that level probably can do advanced calculus in their head.

Anyway, the one yucky phenomenon of Magic: The Gathering is that it inspires "hoarding." And yes, I totally mean that in the negatory like a picture from a home in "Hoarders" or a screenshot from the meme Skyrim hoarding. Boys are especially susceptible because boys like fantasy stuff, and jewels, and swords, and they buy all these cards and put them in order alphabetically. It starts as a small box, grows to a bigger box, and then grows to multiple boxes. Pretty soon your house is overrun with boxes of worthless magic cards with essentially cartoony art and coffee stains from having smelly teenagers over at all hours of the night to play Magic around your kitchen table. Your friends come over and wonder why there's a card with weeds on it laying on the couch and you try to explain to them that it's a plains and if you can just tap it, you'll get one white mana, but usually that starts the eye-glazing effect.

Greeted at the door: Come in, come in...I'll grab my deck of Magic cards to
play ya. I know it's around here somewhere. I think I left my boxes on that
there couch over yonder. Just gotta clear a spot so we can play...
My reply: "Yeah um...f*ck that."

So yeah...hoarding is bad...and the only way to play Magic in my opinion is digitally because it keeps the hoarding in check and nice and tidy. But don't say that to the die-hard hoarders collectors BECAUSE THAT'S JUST NOT HOW IT IS!!!

Anyway, thank you Dan Frazier for providing this awesomesauce art. That's a gold dragon hoarding all of those moxes. And the moxes (the shiny jeweled necklaces) are worth a HUGE amount of money in real life because the hoarders collectors all want them for their epeen enlargement capabilities among the nerd elite.

And yes...epeen means what you think it means.

So yeah, a gold dragon with all the moxen is Dan Frazier calling magic players a bunch of hoarders...and that's why I like it. :))

Disclaimer: I may have spent years of my life buying magic cards and experiencing all of the above things, but you will never know

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