Dear Ponder, 

<3

You are crazy good. You are the pinnacle of Xerox theory, you are banned in Modern, you have been restricted in Vintage for 16 years. We met in Lorwyn in 2007, but I didn’t learn to love you until a couple of years later. 

In 2012 I played you a lot in Delver decks. Delver decks absolutely dominated the Standard metagame back then. Most of the time casting you in Delver, you felt quite straight forward, stacking the deck to flip the Delver of Secrets. After playing a lot of Delver that season I wanted something different and these Esper control decks, Solar Flare, were popping up that looked really interesting. And playing you in Solar Flare is where I learned to love you. 

I learned playing that deck, that you shouldn’t always just play you at any given moment if I had one blue mana to spare. No, I learned to play you when I needed the card selection. Staring down a board state that could get out of hand and I needed a Day of Judgment? Time to fire off a Ponder. Needed to get to that 6 mana for that Sun Titan? Time to fire off a Ponder. I learned that the better I timed you, the more I won. The more crucial the point in the game got, the more information I had about what the top of my deck needed to look like, the better I could play you. 

But I also learned something else because of you. Because every time I played you in that deck I realised that I could never play you perfectly. Timing you, making the decision if those 3 cards are going to be what I need to to win the game, stacking the 3 cards, or to shuffle. Every time you presented me with extremely difficult puzzles and each time I realised I wasn’t capable of solving them. Each time being a humbling experience. It is to no surprise you are the second most represented card in my 19 cubes with a total of 8 cubes. Because every now and again I need that humbling realisation that there is still so much I can learn about Magic. And I love you for that.

With love, 

Hanjo