Warning: The video embedded in this article contains flashing images.
If you do anything weird in public I will see it and I will ask for an explanation. It was true when people started recording gigs with a 3DS, when people started wearing suits to see The Minions, and it’s true now that two people decided to play Magic: The Gathering on the floor of a Machine Girl concert.
The video, which is circulating feeds on both TikTok and Twitter, shows American electronic music duo Machine Girl on stage performing while two Planeswalkers wage an epic battle within Wizards of the Coast’s iconic card game.
“I ran into the guy I was playing against in the merch line before the show and he was showing off some cool custom MTG cards he brought for Matt [Stephenson of Machine Girl]”, one of the competitors, Jared, told IGN.
magic sesh in the machine girl pit pic.twitter.com/KhDUyIwZZH
— arson (@moldbaby56) December 19, 2022
“He told me he had a bit planned to play a game in the pit. He brought decks but he was looking for someone to play against. I love the game and I thought it was a hilarious idea.”
The instigator, going by Big Money Cybergrind [BMC], explained they’d had the idea a month and a half ago but no one on Machine Girl’s Discord wanted to play along. It literally wasn’t until five minutes before the duo came on that they found someone up for playing.
But what decks were they playing? “From the 2005 standard format, Zoo and Ghost Dad. [We] got like five games in and the Zoo deck got kicked over,” BMC laughed. When asked if those decks had any specific significance, they BMC said: “I have a huge soft spot for nostalgia”.
It wasn’t just the pair of players who were into it either. “Everyone around us was stoked about it and when we were done people helped pick up the cards,” said BMC.
The immediate reaction from Twitter has been mostly positive, with people either making plans to do this themselves or wishing that Yu-Gi-Oh had been played instead. There are only a handful of comments dragging out the tried and true pejorative “I know it smell crazy in there“, but seeing as it was a highly energetic hardcore electronic show – it was going to smell crazy with or without the Magic players.
You might be asking what the point of this is, and we answered a similar question concisely in a previous piece: it’s just very funny. But where filming a gig with a 3DS was commentary on people needing to document an event to enjoy it, maybe the gag here is that if the traditionally violent image of a mosh pit this time saw equally devastating combat between two rival wizards instead, then what else can you do there?
IGN reached out to Machine Girl’s management for comment too, who succinctly confirmed that the duo are in fact Magic: The Gathering enthusiasts.
Machine Girl also produced the soundtrack to one of this year’s hottest games, Neon White. In our 8/10 review, IGN said: “Part visual novel, part lightning-fast FPS platformer, Neon White’s angst-ridden assassins are unbearable but its airtight level design and fantastic sense of momentum ensure its gameplay is something to celebrate.”
Image Credit: Wizards of the Coast / Fajareka Setiawan
Mat Jones is IGN’s UK Social Coordinator, and will turn back into a pumpkin at midnight.
