But where was the staircase?  Where were the small steps along the way, that I missed on this path?

Reading all the shade being thrown around at JKR and the Hogwarts house system, it's finally become more obvious why I never liked house Gryffindor.  The "good guys" house...I always knew that if I were to be sorted, I would wish for anything but Gryffindor.  The house of crusades, of righteousness, of heart, action, and exuberance.  Go to Gryffindor if you want to be a main character.  Blegh.  No thanks.  I pledge my allegiance to the MtG color green.....because the natural way is best.  The way where nothing needs to change.  The way that things were meant to be.

Perhaps the coolest MtG experience I've had was when I 4-0d the Khans of Tarkir prerelease with a really strong Temur (green-blue-red) deck.  Primarily blue-green splashing for a bit of red...apparently Mardu (white-red-black) was winning at most of the tables, with an aggressive go-wide strategy involving a morph that spawned 3 1/1 goblins, and the card Trumpet Blast, which gave +2/+0 to all your attacking guys.  But my deck was a tempo-oriented deck, one that preyed on everyone's greedy 3-color mana bases and slow morph plays.  I'd play a 2/1 on turn 2, attack, play the 4/2 bear for 3 on turn 3, then on turn 4 I'd cast savage punch in order to kill a thing and then attack for 8!  I had a morph, icefeather aven, that was a 2/2 flyer for UG, but could morph for 1UG and bounce a creature to its owner's hand.  I feel like a lot of people played that card as a morph for value when they ought to have just played it face-up.  Sure, bouncing a thing is good, but getting a wind drake and then paying 3 mana for a bounce spell is just.....slowwwww.  Compare that to just getting a 2/2 flyer out on turn 2 and start chipping away at their life total.....

Anyways, the point was that it was not only a strong deck, but a neat deck to play, since I really enjoyed tempoing out people, and the best part was that I've always known that Temur is sort of my closest affiliation to MtG colors and wedges.  I've always been faithful to the virtues of Green, but I also dabble in blue and red at times.  Probably more blue than red, though, which I guess makes it even more fitting that the deck I did so well with was simic-based.  It was a rare time in a limited player's lifetime when the deck you ended up building with the pool ended up not only being the best deck but fitting both your personality and playstyle.  Yeah, I still remember playing that deck, to this day.  I crushed that event too, the only match that was any difficulty was the last one (against someone in my play group at the time)...a Mardu deck which ultimately I won over with the strength of Sagu Mauler.