Leon: Turn 1, land, pass. Don't look at me like that, Aren.
Aren: I’m not looking at you, I’m looking at your open mana. I play a Forest and a Cribl Pack. I’m digging for a Primate. Top five cards... and there it is. Pass.
Lindsay: Turn 1, Island. I’ll cast Cribl Edge. It’s going to let me peek at the top of my deck every time I draw. Your turn, Chris.
Chris: I’ll play a Plains and cast Cribl Stream. I’m already filtering my opening hand. I’ll pitch this extra land to draw two. Pass.
Honestly, it started off as a silly, wild-assed idea.
"Wouldn't it be funny if we made some Magic the Gathering cards that use Cribl products as spells, and maybe some of the problems our users have as monsters! We could give them out for a laugh in the booth. “
The problem - if you can really call it a problem - is that everyone at Cribl is really proud of our geeky heritage, and that includes MTG. We couldn't just joke about that idea. We had to jump in with both feet, burning our evening hours creating an ENTIRE FSCKING PLAY-ABLE SET. With boosters. And specialty cards. And counters. And… stuff.
From that initial silly wild-ass idea, things just snowballed. We quickly realized Cribl products (and not JUST products - other aspects of the Cribl solution) weren't spells. They were artifacts! Lands! Enchantments! We had to come up with mechanics for pipelines and replay. And we needed to create artwork for the cards.
SO. MUCH. ARTWORK.
To speed things up, Justin des Lauriers (once of our engineers, of course) created a whole-ass Gemini "gem" that would streamline creating card mechanics from a simple prompt.
And of course, once we had them, we had to playtest them. A lot. In multiple sessions that ran long into the night. Because we care. About authenticity. About game balance. But mostly, we care about maintaining the highest level of geek credibility we can have, and if it means forgoing sleep or proper hygiene, so be it!
We had a metric crap-tonne (that is a very technical measurement, by the way) of fun.
Chris: Turn 8. I’m going wide. Scalability Architect lets me pump my Nodes. I’m swinging 10 damage at Aren.
Aren: Ouch. I’ll block one with a primate token. Poor little TME. I’m down to 12.
But as we played, we realized these cards could also teach people how Cribl did.
It might not be as good as Cribl University (OK, it definitely isn’t. Check them out at https://cribl.io/university/) but if you want to get some concepts in your bones in a fun and off-beat way, you could do a lot worse.
This should come as no surprise to anyone who has taught professionally (massive props to all the teachers out there!). It’s been clear for a long time that we all - adults as well as kids - learn better and retain information longer when it’s presented and experienced as a form of “play”. We sing the ABC song to memorize the alphabet. We have blocks, legos, and erector sets to learn spacial skills. We play dodgeball to learn to avoid flying wrenches.
And now we can tell our loved ones that we have to play Magic the Gathering in order to build our skills in Cribl and uplevel our career. Which will earn us a raise. With which we can buy more MTG cards. It’s the circle of life, but for nerds.
Leon: (Smiling) Turn 10. I have 10 mana available plus the overflow from Cribl Lake. I’ll tap it all. I’m casting my Commander. Meet Clint Sharp, Telemetry Titan.
Chris: Oh dammit.
Aren: What’s the ETB (Enter the Battlefield) effect?
Leon: When Clint Sharp enters, I can "Route" the total power of all creatures on the board directly to any number of players. Since we’ve been scaling the data all game, the total power is 24. I’ll split that 8, 8, and 8.
Chris: I’m at 4. I’m out.
Aren: I’m at 12, but with your other attackers... yeah, that’s game.
Lindsay: I’ve got no counters left. The Telemetry Titan takes it. Well played, Leon.
Leon: That’s the power of telemetry, folks. GG no re.
My point in all of this is two fold:
You absolutely positively need Cribl’s Magic the Gathering card additions in your deck.
Having these cards indisputably proves your credibility as an IT practitioner, a Cribl expert, and a geek.
Where can you find them?
We’ll be handing them out at conferences, CriblConnects, and of course CRIBLCONNNNNNNN! We will be looking for even more ways to share the MTG joy with the world in upcoming weeks and months.
