I still remember it like it was yesterday, it was the summer before I started highschool and I was pretty much bored out of my mind. Most of my friends were away for the summer and I didn’t really have much money to do much. One day, a friend and I happened to enter my local comic book/sports card collectibles shop and I was immediately drawn to a display for a cardgame called “Magic: The Gathering“. I asked owner what it was since I thought it was a new set of Tarot cards or something. He told me it was this cool new card game where you are wizards and you cast spells and creatures to beat your opponents. My friend and I were immediately sold since we were into Fantasy/Sci-Fi and we enjoyed role-playing games like Dungeons and Dragons. We both bought a starter deck each and we headed home to give it a try. We opened them up and found out that each deck was unique in that we different cards.

When we read through the rules, we found out that the game takes place in a world called Dominaria and each player takes on the role of a Plainswalker (or wizard). The game centres around 5 different colours (Red, Black, Green, Blue and White) whereby each colour has their own strengths and weaknesses. In order to cast spells or creatures, a player must harness power (called “Mana”) from the different colours. The way to accumulate mana is to play lands of the appropriate colour (Mountain = Red, Swamp = Black, Forest = Green, Islands = Blue, Plains = White) and “Tap” it (turning the card to a horizontal position to signify that it is used). At the start of the game, each player starts with a deck (of at least 60 cards) and 20 life points. In order to win, you can either reduce your opponent’s life points to 0, reduce the number of cards in their deck to 0 or there may be specific winning conditions placed on cards.

So we played for a bit and found it rather complicated since there were special abilities that we needed to refer to from the manual. After playing a couple of games, I saw the potential, but it was starting to get stale after only a few days. When we headed back to the store, they were selling smaller “Booster” packs which contained more cards you can customize your deck with. I saw the brilliance in the concept…people buying booster packs to customize their deck to keep it “new” and “fresh” and at the same time, the company, Wizards of the Coast was raking in the dough from the constant sale of packs. Wizards also created different rarities for the cards so that people would pay a premium for rarer cards (thus creating a secondary marketplace for selling cards). After a couple of months, a new expansion set would be introduced with a new background story, new cards and new mechanics which kept the game interesting to players.

When I entered highschool, I thought the game was one of those obscure games which only a select few only enjoyed, but I was TOTALLY wrong! I found out that quite a few of my classmates were Magic fanatics and we almost played on a regular basis. In the years the follow, the game exploded in popularity in North America and then all over the world. Professional tournaments were held annually and that gave birth to the Pro Tour and professional Magic players (people making a living playing Magic!). Magic was so popular, that many other game companies took notice and created their own card game in order to capitalize in the Collectible Card Game market. But till this day, Magic has survived all imitators and is still going strong till this day.

I want to commend the games creator, Richard Garfield, who made such a well thought out, customizable, fun game that can be played on a limited budget, in a limited period of time and in a limited amount of space. Not only that, I’ve had the opportunity to participate in local tournaments and it has allowed me to meet new friends and talk about what we enjoy (which is typically Magic-related). I feel that the only downside I can see is the “collectible” aspect of the game. There is a tendancy for players spend A LOT of money to buy A LOT of cards in order to complete sets or create the decks that they want. Since all the cards have different rarities, prices tend to climb for more valuable cards and are no longer affordable to younger players.

Even now as I write this blog entry, I’ll be playing Magic with some friends of mine tonight…it’s a great excuse to get-together with my buddies and just hang out. My suggestion is that if you want to learn how to play Magic, head to your local hobby/game store and they usually have Friday Night Magic tournaments and/or demos to teach novices the game and it’s mechanics.

-Stephen