I enjoy combinations and permutations; hockey pools were my typical outlet. During the most recent NHL strike I started paying attention to Magic after a 15 year hiatus (this was during Innistrad Block). I was introduced to the Limited and EDH formats, and since then I've been hooked. It's taken a while to assimilate years worth of cards and to hone my abilities as a deck builder. I am part of a good casual group and rarely participate in store events. I also enjoy the social aspect of gaming, avoiding online play to any great degree.

My deck building philosophy: Infinite combo is fine, but wins leave me with a hollow dissatisfied feeling. Instead I try to build highly synergistic value engines, or cascading effects that finish the game a high percentage of the time but still offer some suspense. Controlling strategies which completely deny resources to your opponents lead to boring shitty games. With that in mind I try to limit myself to five or fewer board wipes out of the 100, and four is a decent sweet spot. I also believe that an element of randomness is a necessary component to having fun, so I prefer card draw to tutors in my decks.

For the sake of not having to shuffle I'm replacing any and all fetch lands in my two color decks, unless they have some form of land recursion.