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The Powerful True Life Story Behind Why We Choose to Do Good With Magic

Please see our blog for the complete Powerful and True Life Story of why we chose to do good with magic, areas of focus and our long term goals of working towards the ability to support online mental health and Children's Hospitals. 

This story also explains: 

  • How Magic is Meaningful and Why The Community Around Magic Matters

  • How We Found Renewed Hope, Love, and New Friends in the Magic Old School Community

  • And How Magic and Visiting the Shores of Imagination Can Actually Save Your Life 

What We Stand For: Starting A Old School Magic Group Focused on Doing Good & Creating A Positive Community

As a result of the personal experience that I and my partner Brook went through over the past two years and 9 months, I have started an Old School Magic players group Called "The Four Horsemen, along with my Co-Founder Nick Brier. 

 

The Four Horsemen Old School Magic Players Group is focused on creating a Positive Community.  We are building a community focused on social interaction with great camaraderie, lots of good old fashioned Old School Magic Fun, and hopefully make some good friends along the way!

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We aspire to support Online Mental Health, Mental Health Awareness by creating a positive community focused on Increased Online Connection, Interaction, & Socialization, with Magic the Gathering and online and in-person gaming and community building at the center to help grow a positive community.

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Remember what it was like to cast a big creature and proceed with a massive beat down, amidst extended and intense creature combat and creature-based battles for the win.  If you're the type of person who likes to have fun playing Magic, this is the format for you.

If you like to smile, laugh, and have a good time with a beverage of choice over some vintage 'cardboard crack' throw down, this is the group for you.

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Our Mission, Goals & Philosophy

We promote positive online mental health amidst increasing stress, anxiety, isolation and mental health issues by creating, nurturing, and supporting A Positive Community focused on Increased Online Connection, Interaction, & Socialization, with Magic the Gathering.
Our Mission is to leverage the internet, social media, community building, interaction, one-on-one connection, conversation, gaming, and events to provide a nurturing community that naturally combats the negative impacts of toxic online behaviors and the inherent destructive and addictive aspects designed into social media platforms.

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What We Stand Against

We specifically do not support Internet trolling, online hate speech, online bullying, cyber harassment, cyber stalking, psychotic and abusive social media-based assaults, sociopathic behaviors, attacks on individuals or groups who are trying to do good, and related destructive and abusive behaviors demonstrated by an alarmingly large number of online individuals who are toxic to the community we are trying to build.  We encourage such individuals to seek professional mental health assistance.

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We Are: Pro-Truth, Pro-Facts, Pro-Free Markets, Pro-Capitalism, Pro-Charity, & Pro-Old School Magic the Gathering Fun! 

 

We Are: Anti-Hate, Anti-Trolling, Anti-Cyber Bullying, Anti-Cyber-Harassment, Anti-Online Toxic Behaviors, Anti-Hate Speech, Anti-Narcist, Anti-Fascist, Anti-Communist, Anti-Socialist, Anti-Racist, Anti-Social Media-Based Assault, Anti-Defamation, Anti-slander, & Anti-libel. 

 

If you values align with any of the things we stand against, we are sorry, but this is not the group for you and there will sadly be no place for you within our community.  We encourage you to seek professional mental health care treatment and focus on introspection, looking inward, and to evaluate critically how you can become a better human being.

The Principles of Four Horsemen Old School Magic

 

Increase The Magic Fun

- Enhance and encourage the fun and interaction of the OS MTG 94 feeling and game play.
- Keep the Four Horsemen free of hatred, trolling, bullying, and harassment.

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Be A Different, Unique, & Interesting Format within Old School

- Be different from other OS MTG Formats where you face the same dominant decks and same cards over and over
- Provide a Different and Unique Experience You Cannot Get from the OS MTG Formats.

 

Attract Players & Open Old School Magic to All

- Allow everyone to experience playing with the old cards. Proxies allowed, Not “Pay to Play”.
- Attract More players who will participate in out Weekly Thursday night meet ups, play in our online virtual tournaments, & join In-Person Events
- Make the Format as attractive, interesting, and appealing as possible to the Maximum number of Players

 

Have A Balanced Format that Encourages Broad Card Pool Play

- Move away from the same "Usual Suspects" power cards in ABU that are in all the other formats and encourage play of cards not commonly seen in most decks.
- Enable rules that encourage a broad pool of cards to be played, as opposed to the same few deck themes, and that promotes the play of cards do not often see game play.
- Have A Fun, Balanced, Competitive Format, Where Luck is An Important Factor, & Where Underdogs Have a Chance. Magic is Not Chess.

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Goals of Four Horsemen Old School Magic

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Grow the Community of Active Involved Members

- Increase our community of members who are active who participate in our events, who contribute positively to the community and stay involved. - We do not want a large community who is not active.  

 

Keep Magic Fun & Active

- Ensure the format and group keeps things fun and interactive
- Always keep the Four Horsemen free of hatred, trolling, bullying, and harassment. Keep anyone who violates the group rules out permanently.

- Ensure member participation is positive and contributes positively to the format and the community.

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Achieve A 50 Player 4HM Tournament

- Have a Online Virtual Tournament that has 50 players

- Work to Evolve to A point where we can do Good in the Community Formally
- It is the long-term aspirational goal and intention to over time hopefully be able to evolve this endeavor and mature our group to the point where we can transition the Four Horsemen into a more formal entity that can do good in the world and help with some good causes.

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Host One Annual In-Person Event Per Year

- Host an din-person event annually that attracts at least 40 players

- Utilize any proceeds to make a charitable donation to a North Texas Children's hospital

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We are in the Midst of A Mental Health Epidemic Crisis

Mental health issues are at epidemic levels in our society caused by the intrinsic addictive aspects intentionally designed into social media platforms and other societal factors. More than ever, individuals are vulnerable to isolation, loneliness, anxiety, stress, insecurity, self-doubt, depression, anger issues, suicidal thoughts, body image issues, psychological disorders, and mental illness.

 

We strive to create a positive, mentally-healthy online community based on person-to-person interaction via web camera, meeting rooms, open forum discussions, and private one-on-one discussions. We leverage our community to increase positive socialization, social interaction, and personal connection and communication combined with the playing of collectible card gaming and community activities that increase interaction and socialization. We also coordinate and sponsor events, gaming tournaments, and community gatherings.

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Most Men Lead Lives Of Quiet Desperation

The famous author, philosopher, and Transcendentalist, Henry David Thoreau wrote the famous line: “Most men lead lives of quiet desperation."  And this is true for much of humanity.  However, in this particular hobby, sadly what we encounter more often than one would expect, is "men" who behave like adolescent children trapped inside adult bodies who lead obvious and blatant lives public desperation, self-aggrandization, narcissism, along with various forms of psychopathic and sociopathic mental illnesses and behaviors. Sadly, such individuals personal lives are even more miserable than the outward image they portray.

 

Often to attempt to disguise their true faltered and deteriorated mental states, these individuals work diligently to attempt to present to the community that they are a superior recognized expert in a field, or claim to have achieved a level of certification or status within the community that they think will make them appear to be respectable on the surface to attempt to compensate for their misery and their mental illnesses and their self-loathing.

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Sadly, in this hobby, it is truly unfortunate that we encounter a surprisingly high number of mentally deranged individuals who demonstrate recognizable signs of extreme anger management issues, severe mental illness, psychotic, sociopathic, and psychopathological behaviors, the worst forms of narcissism, destructive obsessive compulsive disorders, and delusional behaviors where individuals live in a fact-less, falsely-created, and imaginary worlds which they conjure up in their minds. 

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Such individuals often go to shockingly extreme lengths to attempt to make themselves look better or superior or more successful than others.  These individuals will even sometimes resort to dark tactics, outright lies, conjuring up fabrications and making baseless false accusation in order to attempt to thwart the efforts of others who are doing good, who are more successful than they are, or who they have targeted for their obsessive compulsive hatred and self-loathing combined.

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As long as they have someone else they can blame for their lives besides themselves, someone they can demonize, they can then direct all their hatred and self-loathing onto them and never accept responsibility for themselves and their own actions. They can continue playing the games they play and never look inward, never accept responsibility, never heal from the past, and never move on to create better lives or to evolve into a better human being.  They just continue hating and targeting one person who can be increasingly demonized unjustly and often without any actual reason or facts, and that is sufficient.

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Often these individuals are what some have more recently called "In-Cells", who are unable to have any form of successful, loving, compassionate, intimate, romantic, or sexual relationships with any other human beings.  Instead, their world revolves around hate;  self-hate and often a lifelong issues of self-loathing, that progressively worsen over time until such individual have a mental break with reality and become evil shadows of what could have once been a good human being.  They spend their lives staring into the abyss and the abyss gazes back and welcomes them in.  They fight their self-deceived perceptions of what they think are monsters( other people) but the true monsters are their own inner demons and they become monstrous themselves.

 

Whether some of such individuals realize the eventual outcome and destination to which they are heading (often eventual suicide), and perhaps some do not, one thing is certain; Such individuals are often beyond any capacity to self-improve or mentally heal or evolve on their own.  Their only hope in life to climb out of the hellacious, repetitive, frustrating, hate-filled, anger-filled, depressing and pointless life in which they are living and have been for decades is to seek professional mental healthcare help.

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When the Four Horsemen encounter such individuals, we strongly encourage them to seek professional mental healthcare help and treatment immediately.

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Ways You Can Participate & How You Can Support Us:

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Check out all the cool swag at the Four Horsemen Etsy Store here!

Being just a few months old, the Four Horsemen Old School Magic Players Group went from two guys with an idea, to where we are today!  Here is what the Four Horsemen have been up to:

If you are Looking for a positive Old School Magic Community where you can make friends and sling some old cardboard, join the Four Horsemen Old School Magic Camaraderie and Fun Here! 

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