Mike Long

Last updated: 31 July 2009 Source: Event Coverage at Wizards.com

By his retirement, Long had won a Pro Tour, a Grand Prix, and an Invitational and held the record for being on the most winning national teams and was in the top lifetime money winners. Long's legacy also included one of the first player teams, created while he was still in college. He was responsible for several technical innovations; he designed a Vintage format combo deck, named "Long.dec" for him, that used Burning Wish to fetch Yawgmoth's Will out of the sideboard and set up a kill with Tendrils of Agony. Subsequent Vintage combo decks that use tutoring to set up a Tendrils kill have retained the name although the original deck was rendered unplayable by restrictions. In 2005, former organizer Mark Rosewater nominated Long for the Hall of Fame. This ignited debates over Long's impact on the game. Rosewater wrote, "He was an early pioneer in deck design and had an influence on how deck building technology evolved. He was a tournament organizer. He wrote about the game." Others felt Long did not qualify his entry due to the playing controversies. During the Pro Tour Los Angeles in 2000, Long had been given a warning for improperly shuffling his deck. Darwin Kastle made a further error when he cut Long's deck instead of shuffling. During the US Nationals Draft Challenge held at United States Nationals in 2000, Long was disqualified without prize and given a one-month suspension for presenting a deck that was not sufficiently randomized. The controversy over Long's place in game history and Long's response are featured in the documentary I Came to Game (2014).

Long was born in Albany, New York and later lived in Gambrills, Maryland where he attended the Severn School. He attended college at James Madison University in Harrisonburg, Virginia. At James Madison, he was a varsity wrestler and played on the James Madison Dukes football team. He began competing at Magic: The Gathering tournaments in 1995. After graduation, Long owned a game store called "The End" in Charlottesville and wrote strategy articles in addition to working on the professional tour. He began using Internet marketing for both his strategy articles and for card sales, and also started a search engine optimization business.

Magic: The Gathering was released in 1993 and a Pro Tour launched the following year. Long proved to be an early celebrity champion. He was known for his charismatic persona, and often presented as a "villain" in the Magic tournaments. Long's first individual tournament win was at the Paris Pro Tour during the Magic: The Gathering Pro Tour season 1996–97. During the Paris tournament, Long debuted a "combination deck" called Prosperous Bloom that was notably the first successful combination deck in tournament-level play. During the last game of the finals, Long was playing against Mark Justice and faced losing when Mark played Coercion to find out Mike was holding the only Drain Life in his deck (and his only way to win). Despite this, Mark pulled Cadaverous Bloom instead, thinking Mike could get the Drain Life back with Elven Cache if allowed to generate the "cadaverous mana" for a large Prosperity. Little did he know Mike had sideboarded them out (as he pointed out before draining Mark's life for a total of 44 points). At the 1998 U.S. Nationals, there was controversy when a key card was found on Long's chair during a game. The head judge issued a match loss to Long, who went on to finish second in the tournament. Long won that year's Magic Invitational. The award was the chance to create a new card and inclusion in the card's art. That card, Rootwater Thief, was printed in the Nemesis set.