Okay, this has gotten ridiculous, and now I'm having a lot of trouble suspending my disbelief and giving people the benefit of the doubt.
For the past several years, I thought that I was the only mage wars player in columbus ohio. Whenever I try to reach out, people almost never respond, and it's impossible to organize anything. Besides those who I introduced to the game myself within the past half a year, only three mage wars players have EVER responded, and I only managed to meet one of them to play two games fo mage wars once, and then never saw that person again. Seriously, this is starting to get really, really, REALLY frustrating.
I've been looking everywhere and reaching out everywhere for years now. WHERE ARE ALL THE COLUMBUS OHIO MAGE WARS PLAYERS? I know you exist!
I honestly can't help thinking that people are just ignoring me on purpose.
And no, that's not paranoia talking, that's "I live in a big effing metropolitan area and I have reached out again and again for the past three years on facebook, boardgamegeek, game conventions, cafes/cofeeshops, these forums, and pretty much every other place where other mage wars players could conceivably be found except for reddit and twitter, and I only got responses from three people, only two of which were willing to schedule anything with me," talking.
Now that I think about it, I've only ever played 1, maybe 2 full nonapprentice games of mage wars in real life outside of Origins and Gen Con, and they were both against the same opponent, who I never saw again after that point because I made an absolute fool of myself in my stressed and sleep-deprived state.
Let me repeat that:
I'VE ONLY EVER PLAYED 1 OR 2 FULL GAMES OF MAGE WARS IN REAL LIFE OUTSIDE OF CONVENTIONS.
ALMOST ALL of my games are on OCTGN, and I've been playing mage wars for THREE YEARS now.
If there really are "many of us", then why aren't there any meetup or facebook groups for columbus ohio mage wars players beside the facebook group I made? And why have almost all of my attempts to reach out to people been completely ignored?
The most likely explanations I've been able to come up with are either
1) there ARE NOT many of us, and runatyr was simply wrong about that as a question of fact. Or maybe there used to be more and most oft them left the area and he hasn't seen them recently enough to know that they left.
2)Everyone is just ignoring me for some reason.
1 doesn't account for how many people have enjoyed mage wars at Origins, nor does it account for why most of the local community would have left the area at around the same time without a regular local player knowing about it.
Which leaves me with 2, but then that begs the question of WHY is everyone just ignoring me? Did I do something really bad to alienate the entire local community? Is there something about me that people just don't like? These sound extremely unlikely, but every other explanation I can think of is just as unlikely if not more so.
And no one seems to have a satisfactory answer to this question.
I am BEYOND fed up now.
I have half a mind to just ask Arcane Wonders how popular has Mage Wars REALLY been at Origins? I know that it's doubtful that they've been at all dishonest about that, but I'm clutching at straws here, and any information that would shed some light on why I can't ******* get any of the mage wars players in the whole Columbus area to play a single non-apprentice game of mage wars with me, would be VERY VERY MUCH APPRECIATED.
I'm hoping I didn't waste my money on Mage Wars Arena, since I really like this game. I'm guessing I'll probably just have to switch to Academy though, since my playgroup lives an hour away and we've never had time for a full non-apprentice game, and it seems evident now that NO ONE ELSE in the columbus ohio area is ever going to play mage wars with me outside of conventions.
This is very upsetting to me, and I am completely at a loss for figuring out WTF is going on with this whole situation.
Insert obscene language here.