Past, Present, and Future. Thank you?
Past
March 3rd 2021 we published our first article on this platform. It was my Araumi deck tech that got a more modern rewrite not too long ago. Two people on the team knew how our website worked. The built-in editing tool was new to almost everyone and looking back at the older articles we have published, it’s quite clear we were still figuring out what we were doing.
Poor spacing in between paragraphs and pictures, an image carousel that may or may not work fully sometimes, no way to zoom in on cards, zero optimization towards mobile readers, which make up the largest portion of our visitors. ‘Just put as many images in there as we can I guess, it fills up the space nicely.’
It took us a while to decide what we wanted to do with content on our website. ‘If anyone wants to write something, we have a space for that’. We ended 2021 with a total of 12 articles, had no cadence or structure in our release schedule, no tags, no categories, no search bar and no way to easily have access to every article we made anywhere on our front page.
Mid 2022 ‘we’ – Chief, Tragic Poet and myself, Exxaxl, Vessel of Paramnesia – took position as the people in charge for the articles on our website. Scheduling, writing, editing and formatting articles just like this one. Plan the articles around WOTC’s product calendar, come up with interesting topics to write about, keep up with new sets, product types, deck techs, and previews. It’s hard to fathom that Secret Lair Drops have already been around since 2019.
Vent and complain towards my writing partner in crime Chief when cards leaking early meant we have to postpone, edit, or cancel an entire article. Recurring readers might have noticed we’ve stopped writing those articles altogether. Cast a wide net and see what sticks. Poll our members on the type of content they’d like to see. Strive to publish one article per week, a feat we almost achieved with 51 articles that year.
Spend time learning and teaching others how to work with the editing tool, focus on mobile accessibility and legibility, figure out what terms such as SEO, Bounce Rates, and Click-Through Rates mean. Settle on a new design, think it’s the best thing we ever did, look back at our 2022 articles in 2023 and feel like they already look dated compared to this year’s articles.
Behind the scenes I’ve brought up wanting to retroactively edit several of our older articles to be in line with the design we use now, knowing full well that the 2025 content team will have to redo the 2023 team’s updates again. It doesn’t seem like a sustainable activity to do. We might at some point in the future, but as long as more important or interesting topics present themselves in our regular day to day workflow, it’s something that’s on the backburner for now.
“Don’t wait. The time will never be just right.” ~ Napoleon Hill
Present
This brings us to the present. Chief’s Top 10 articles are evergreen content I feel people will still read years past their initial estimated lifespan. Our first collaborations outside of our own Discord server with projects such as Monarch Media are taking shape. People whose content we’ve been thoroughly enjoying for many years such as Phil Gallagher from ThrabenU, have had their thoughts and opinions published on our platform.
Me personally, I’m still struggling to adapt to American English, colour, optimiszing, and using em dashes (–) over hyphens (-) . For those unaware, hi, I’m Exxaxl, I was born in Belgium and ‘we talk English about each other, because otherwise he heard everything’ over here.
If you told me in 2018 when I returned to Magic, that I’d be writing biweekly bimonthly several thousand words long articles in English on a website for a Magic format I wasn’t even playing at the time I don't even know how I’d have reacted.
As I mentioned earlier, we stopped doing prediction articles early 2023. We had a period in time where both Chief and I were working on a seperate prediction article each since two sets were releasing in close succession. Cards for one set were already getting previewed, some of the cards of the set after that made it to another WOTC stream, and new cards coming out after these two sets started leaking online all at the same time.
We collectively deemed prediction articles as not sustainable and instead opted to write more evergreen content for people to read. Previously we mostly focused on new products coming out and keeping up with the current set. I feel our focus shifted in a positive sense to be a nice mix between currently relevant Magic news and articles that fulfill a specific need, such as highlighting cards in a specific color or taking a deep dive into old versus new card design.
Click on the image to read the article. We don’t normally do image links, but we might do it more often.
There’s a big demand for general deck advice, information, deck techs, opinion pieces and underused cards people can put into their EDH brews. There are currently 25 220 cards legal in our format – I still refuse to use decimal period or comma which we just don’t do in most of Europe – and by the time this article gets published that number is about to change again with The Lord of the Rings: Tales of Middle-earth releasing this weekend.
We started publishing our league winners deck-highlight articles, we try to write about every precon and how it fits within our current servers meta, Chief still counts to 10 and I still have way too many cards, but at least they’re sorted in a proper way. The For One Mana series is about to come to its conclusion, we’d like to utilize our platform for more people not currently on PlayEDH’s staff roster, and Commander Masters is coming out this year. Chief is still playing his competitive Heliod, Sun Crowned deck. We’re 2023 and for now, we’re just going to keep doing what we think will work.
“For the Present is the point at which time touches eternity.” ~ C.S. Lewis
Future
I wish I knew what PlayEDH five years from now looked like so I could already start trying to optimize and streamline the way we do things. We like the direction our content is heading towards and it’s hard to make precise predictions on what we have planned for the future. In January of 2021, PlayEDH.com got made. Two years ago we started writing articles, one year ago we picked up speed and this year we have third party content creators actively contributing to our platform.
For a while I had severe imposter syndrome. Do what others are doing, write and talk about what they’re talking about, they clearly know what’s up. Do I even belong here? Is there a trend we’re missing? I’m just happy we never pursued a PlayEDH NFT ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°). You didn’t think you’d read an entire Exxaxl article without that face somewhere in the article now, did you?
Chief and I intend to keep you entertained through 2023, though I will have to take a break of currently undisclosed time since I’m looking to make an international move. Outside of PlayEDH, I’m an idiot for old, rustic, and handmade. I think my power tool collection out-values my Magic collection, though it’ll be a close race. Chances are whichever house we end up purchasing needs a good bit of renovating and remodeling done, and I’d like to fully commit my time there, on top of learning the local language, figuring out my rights and duties, finding my bearings and integrating into a culture that outside of some tourist visits the past 10 years is still foreign to me. En svensk artikel in 2024? Vem wet.
"If you don't think about the future, you cannot have one." ~ John Galsworthy
Thank you?
It’s hard to express the happiness and satisfaction I feel knowing people actively choose to take a few minutes out of their day to see what we have to say about one format of a collectible card game that has been around since 1993. Magic’s as old as Doom, Beanie Babies, the entry into force of the Treaty of the European Union and Nelson Mandela’s Nobel Peace Prize. It’s less fleeting than I thought it would be initially and I get to be a part of it now, for the time being.
Current day PlayEDH would not be where it is without the neverending support of our community. Almost every article we write we mention our supporters at the end. ‘Articles like these are made possible and kept ad-free due to the support of all of our Patreon, Twitch and Discord Subscribers.’
I feel our current readers and members underestimate their own value at times. If there was no interest in any of the off-server activities we were doing, there would be no point in doing them. Why organize a League if nobody participates? Why write articles about any given subject if they fall on deaf ears and get no engagement or views?
We’re more than just an online space where people can use automated queues to fire off EDH games. To some, we’re their weekly few minutes of EDH related news on their commute to work. To others, we’re their LGS alternative because theirs closed down or the nearest by one is a 4 hour drive away. We’re a platform where people living in conflict zones can participate in the shared hobby all of us enjoy from the safety of their own home. We’re a space where many people have chosen to make it part of their daily life to actively take part in building, shaping and maintaining our community.
Thank you seems like an incorrect expression to use to close out this article. Thank you in the context of what people have contributed to PlayEDH feels not worded strongly enough. It’s something you say after someone connects you to the right person on the phone. Thank you is an expression you use when someone helps you find your final card for your deck. It’s all-saying and all-encompassing yet at the same time will mean something different to everyone. How genuinely did you mean your last thank you?
I’d just like to acknowledge how much the community has given back to us. Your support means the world. Let’s continue striving to make 2023 as good, if not better than the previous years. A writer is nothing without their readers, a card game is nothing without its players, and a Discord server is nothing without its members. For now, I’ll leave you with my final quote.
“Let us be grateful to people who make us happy;
they are the charming gardeners who make our souls blossom.” – Marcel Proust
This article is unofficial Fan Content permitted under the Fan Content Policy. Not approved/endorsed by Wizards.
Portions of the materials used are property of Wizards of the Coast. ©Wizards of the Coast LLC.
