Our gold-border addict comes out on top at the February tournament. And as is tradition, it is his turn to answer our questions.
Can you tell us your full name and your nickname, if you have one?
Antonio Manrique. Golden Boy?
Age?
38
What is your favourite film and/or series?
That is a very hard question. I like every genre (as long as the film is good). I love Tarantino (and to avoid repeating Pulp Fiction, which I think Joe said last month, I will go with Kill Bill and Inglourious Basterds); I like horror (The Ring, The Conjuring 1 and 2, etc.); I like Nolan (The Prestige, Interstellar, The Dark Knight); I like a lot of the “obvious” sagas (I would put Star Wars above the rest), etc., etc., etc. I could spend an hour on this and still not settle on one. But thinking about it properly, there is one film that I end up watching every single time it is on TV, and that is Forrest Gump (I assume because I identify with it). To finish: as a kid I watched Ghostbusters and Tim Burton’s Batman a thousand times. Nicholson’s Joker is why mini-Manrique has been on the villains’ side ever since. I could say the same about series, but so as not to go on any longer… I will say Game of Thrones.
Favourite music genre and band
I listen to a fair bit of everything too, although in truth not much current music. I do not want to ramble again, so I will go with Rock and with Queen (who I am listening to as I write these lines, as it happens).
Favourite comic/book
Here I am clear that I am more of a comics person than a book person, and more anime than American comics. The series of my childhood is Bola de Drac, but today I would take One Piece: a Shonen with a story and characters that are MUCH more developed. Blackbeard is my favourite, while we are at it.
Besides Magic, what other hobbies do you have?
Video games and collecting in general. Mostly I collect cards — from other games too, but especially card collections as such, not tied to any game. I have a lot of old collections (and some rather newer ones) of Japanese cards: Dragon Ball, Evangelion, Final Fantasy, Dragon Quest, Street Fighter, Capcom/SNK, Chrono Trigger, and I could go on, but you can see where my tastes lie. I also collect some manga, figures, original production cels from animated series, art books, merchandise of many kinds, etc. On another note: does going out count as a hobby? I used to go out a lot, but those days have gone to a better place…
Wine or beer?
I am more of a gin and tonic man… Ballantine’s and Red Bull, and Jäger shots, like the young folk.
What year did you start playing Magic, and how?
Owning cards… I would swear it was 1995. My father would sometimes buy me loose packs because I liked the pictures (I was 10). I started playing around Tempest (1997), maybe a touch earlier. A friend taught us one summer in Calafell. He had read the little rules booklet that came with the decks. Obviously he taught us to play terribly… Those rules could easily have spawned a whole new bizarre format. Naturally, once we learned to play properly we threw that lad out of the friend group and never spoke to him again. I quit around Mirrodin, when that horrific design change arrived. I came back for a year at Time Spiral, and then came back for good in 2009 with Zendikar.
What is your favourite colour?
Black and lilac. If you mean in Magic: black and blue.
What is your favourite Premodern card?
Ooof, hard as well. There are cards in Premodern that are among my favourites in all of Magic but which I have barely played (or never played) in the format, like Dark Ritual. But since the subject is Premodern, I suppose I will say Phyrexian Dreadnought, which is what has put me here today answering these questions (and it has given me a few other happy moments before, hehe).
Which formats had you played before?
A bit of everything: standard, legacy, vintage, draft/sealed, modern and above all premodern. Others too, but only occasionally.
Do you currently play any formats other than Premodern?
Right now I am also trying to get a monthly Legacy in. So as of today my heart belongs mostly to Premodern, and after that to Legacy.
What is your favourite deck? Why?
From any format? I really like combo, and within that style my favourite is some variant of storm with Ad Nauseam (one of my favourite cards).
Which card do you think is underplayed in Premodern?
Dark Ritual. A card that lets you do abusive things but which, because the black pool in premodern is not especially broken, cannot shine the way it deserves to…
If you could only play one deck for a whole year, which would it be?
In Premodern, Mono Blue Gambas, I suppose. And in Legacy, Storm.
Which deck do you hate the most? Why?
Since I love playing combo, I tend to find it a chore to play against control, or against the classic deck that strips your hand card by card. There is no one deck I hate, or that has traumatised me. But if I can avoid playing against control… all the better! When I see Landstills around the Olimpia, I start praying to dodge them. And that is despite control being my second favourite thing to play after combo, hahaha.
Which card would you ban?
None at the moment.
Which card would you unban?
Necropotence, because it is my favourite card in all of Magic.
Tell us a crazy idea you would like to try out in the format. (for example: swapping decks with a random player at the start of the tournament)
A tournament with no banned list. On another note, a tournament where we lose an item of clothing for every game we lose could be interesting. I have been trying to find out what hides beneath Edu’s and Roso’s garments for a while now, with no luck…
Do you have a funny story from any tournament?
Well, my whining. Which, when combined with Agus “bullying” me about that very whining, ends up turning the situation around and winning me those games. Also the magical power of summoning my wife, my daughter and the dogs to bring me luck, or the videos of my daughter to try to soften your hearts into conceding. But it never works… You are bad people.
Which cards are on your wishlist this year?
I have taken a fancy to building a foil deck (as foil as it can be), trying to keep original art and retro frame. The Dark Rituals, for example, would stay original and non-foil. It would be a suicide black, or the black/green our favourite artist sent me yesterday. But when I see the price of some cards… I am still thinking about it. I also want to make some of my legacy storm cards “pretty”. We will see how it ends up…
Do you have any particular quirk when you play?
Yes. I like the opponent to be the one who decides “my luck” on certain things. For example, instead of rolling high for the die, I try to make it odds/evens and have my opponent roll. Something similar happens when I shuffle and someone says “don’t worry, I won’t cut, it’s fine like that” — I make them cut anyway, so they decide what I am going to draw. I still use pen and paper for life totals. If things are going well I try to keep playing at the same table. Madman’s business, basically. I am also aware that I fiddle with the cards in my hand a lot (fairly common in the average Magic player). I already knew, but watching some of the league’s videos I realised I do it far more than I thought. And I straighten cards, decks and so on, all neat and square, sometimes. Tiny adjustments, barely anything, haha. I noticed that from the videos too. My wife has already booked me an appointment with a psychologist.
This is the question Joe left in the previous interview: do you think any set could be added to the format? Fallen Empires, for instance?
I would not add anything. But sure, Fallen Empires could be tried. Basically it would mean adding Hymn to Tourach, High Tide and Goblin Grenade, right? Without analysing it too deeply, and going from memory, there is nothing else with a notable impact. High Tide would improve the storm deck, which is not very powerful at present. Goblin Grenade could make goblins a touch faster still, though you would have to ask the experts whether they would run it, and how many copies. And Hymn to Tourach would give a boost to monoblack decks, which are generally not very strong. But the Hymn would surely be getting criticised before long…
And finally… ask whatever you like to the next interviewee!
I don’t have to answer this one, do I? Hee hee hee. Well then…
We are saving this question for the next interview. So if you want to know the answer, come back and see us next month.