Okay, okay. Before this post gets too out of control, let me start over. This time with a little less emotion and a little more substance. To reply to those of you who are accusing of me being jealous of Will Hung, well you are...right to a certain degree. I remember a time when Will came up to me and introduced himself and was happy to meet me for the first time. Does Will acknowledge me now? Of course not.
Here's my problem with Will. If you are playing in a Pokemon event, you leave your excess "non-Pokemon" baggage at the door. You are playing the game as a POP player, not as the celebrity you claim to be. There's a time and place for these things. It's distracting when you use your celebrity status in this game. For example, (and I wasn't going to use this publically till now) in the Mid-Atlantic Regionals, during the T16 cut and deck checks I overheard a conversation between Will and one of the vendors. Will was concerned about leaving to go do some promo shoot thing for this vendor because he didn't want to miss the T16. The vendor/agent whatever said that "he had it taken care and they wouldn't start without him." Okay, there's nothing wrong with promo shoots or speeches or songs you sing or anything, but save them for non-POP time. What bothers me is that there are a lot of people that I talk to and help in this game that only have one shot to win a trip to Worlds. And Will just uses his celebrity and money to go to as many events as he can. Why not just buy the trip? I mean last year you win in Iowa. Okay, I've never met a single player from Iowa, and no offense to any Iowa players, but it makes me wonder if you cowtipped the cow to win in the final round. This year you ripped a deck that one of my friends built and used to win his Regionals with. You did the same thing at Nationals with Dark Slowking. Then you acknowledge and brag about stalling out one of the best damn players in the game today. Then you backpedal and say that you just "play slow." Well for someone that's so great as you claim to be, you should know from your "many practice games on Apprentice" what an appropriate strategy for certain decks are. I'm pretty sure you didn't just play a whole bunch of Rogue decks all day.
So yes, I am jealous that Will has far more opportunities to win trips and such than the regular player. People flock to him and kiss his butt because he's a semi-famous person. Players like myself, Fulop, Alex, Jason, Seena, and others like that have helped build this game around metagame and deckmaking. Jason and I fought hard for the 15+ when WotC was going to eliminate us all those years ago. I have helped hundreds of people, fixed thousands of decks, written so many articles, help out with League, everything. I help support this game. And what happens to me? I get labelled as a "leetist." One of those 15+ that just cause trouble and get stuff started on boards. So yes, I am jealous that Will gets far more recognition, more praise that I have gotten in a game where I have contributed so much. I am usually a pretty humble guy. I took all of the awards I've won out of my signature because they aren't the most important thing in this game.
But I am a WORLD class player in a league with some of the greats of this game. So I do not like it when people call the decks I play rubbish. Not one of my Rogue decks have ever scrubbed out. I have always done well with them. How many other players have won a State, Gym Challenge, and T16 at Nationals with a completely Rogue deck? I'm not calling archetypes useless, I use them too. But I use my own twists and variations. I started using Deoxys ex attack and now it's a staple in most Blaze lists. I despise cookie-cutting, and it seems Mr. Hung is pretty good at doing it.
~Jim
