All in the Family: Fun With Mom… and Hymn to Tourach

This is a family-friendly blog post about Magic Online boss Worth Wollpert. It is mostly true.

I was reading my own most recent Top Decks this morning (I do that sometimes, read articles that I wrote once they are published), which finished on the line:

“Hymn, Hymn, I win.”
-The Necropotence National Anthem

When I think about Necropotence I mostly think about Randy Buehler, who is visiting New York this week, whom I will probably hang out and draft with tomorrow night… But when I think about Hymn to Tourach — at least in the context of the classic “Hymn, Hymn, I win…” I can’t help but think of my old pal and Magical mentor, Worth Wollpert.

For those of you who don’t know, long before he was the Magic Online boss, or any kind of Wizards of the Coast employee, or Pro Tour anything, Worth Wollpert was my friend; we hung out at the same comic book store, Mr. Cards & Comics, which is on the corner of Brainard and Mayfield, in Lyndhurst, Ohio. If you live on the east side of Cleveland, you should go run to that store tomorrow night for FNM. Eli Doran, its proprietor, has been running a kind of FNM — late night play on Friday nights — for a decade longer than there was such a thing as FNM, and the results were me, and Worth, and other notable players.

Worth was kind of like my big brother in that he made Pro Tour before I did and really helped guide me early, as a player. For example he said “Couldn’t figure out your own deck, eh?” when I first decided to play Necropotence, then softened to “Well, if you can’t beat ’em, join ’em,” when I actually won that PTQ. Worth borrowed the same B/R Necropotence deck to make Top 8 the next week, resulting in a ratings invite to Pro Tour Dallas, where he was notably Top 16 (but more notably, my roommate).

Worth had other — that is real — family members, too, who also played Magic (kind of).

He was very into Magic even 10+ years ago, and even if he didn’t know he was going to grow up to be the Magic Online boss (or that there was going to be any Magic Online) his parents saw he had an interest, and his mommy asked to learn to play.

Enthusiastically, Worth taught her.

“Okay, Mom, I’m going to be the Necropotence deck!”

We can guess that she didn’t know what that meant; this is the first turn of Magic Worth’s mother was exposed to:

“Swamp, Dark Ritual, Hymn to Tourach, Demonic Consultation [naming Hymn to Tourach].”

Then, unsurprisingly, Hymn to Tourach.

Then, presumably, Necropotence.

I never heard another story of the Worth + Worth’s mommy game play… and you can probably figure out why yourself. Magic really was more fun back then 🙂

LOVE
MIKE

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