I first laid my hands on Magic cards back in 1994, when I was an exceptionally cool 13 year old.
It was a hot summer day and I was helping out at a tag sale in the driveway of a family friend. Since he collected all kinds of comics and cards and toys (with the sole intent of eventually profiting from them), it was always fun to help out and take home anything that he didn’t feel like packing away into his dank garage again. On this particular afternoon, I was handed my first set of Magic : The Gathering stuff – a sealed box with a paperback-sized first edition rulebook and a good handful of cards – all with pictures of dragons and warriors and magical items on them. And it felt special.
I was very much into Dungeons and Dragons at the time, drawing serpentine beasts in the corners of my notebooks, listening to Jethro Tull, and fascinated with the Renaissance Faire for reasons that extended slightly beyond the bounteous cleavage present, so everything synced up sublimely. I spent the rest of the afternoon figuring out the puzzle of the cards – what symbol meant what, the terminology and the rules, and trying to understand the high concept that playing cards didn’t need to be emblazoned with hearts and clubs in order to be useable. This was, after all, the very first example of a collectible card game (or CCG) since 1904. It was a lot to take in.
Magic : The Gathering, or MtG, is a card game in which you, the player, represent a powerful wizard. Using a store of magic powers (your deck of cards), you summon creatures to attack your opponent and defend yourself with, and cast spells to various ends – make a creature stronger, or take away the life points of another player, or give a creature a special ability, and so on. If an opponent’s monster or spell manages to break through your battlements, you lose some points off of your life total. It’s that simple and that complex.
Using a vast, vast variety of Magic cards (well over 45 standard sets worth), the player constructs their own deck of roughly 60 cards to go into battle with. In this deck, the player includes Land (which provides magic for spells), all manner of creatures from dragons to moths, and a good deal of magical spells to help and hinder the creatures at battle. Given that three or four sets of 100+ cards have been coming out consistently every year since 1993, the variety of cards that is presented to the player is staggering. The biggest challenge for a competitive player is to see past this huge collection of beautiful, challenging cards and to hone their Magic deck into a finely tuned machine – and then hope that their most effective cards happen to enter their hand quickly from the randomized deck. It’s very tempting to make an army of Merfolk or Tree People or Giants, but will it work effectively in battle?
MtG has undeniably been the standard, driving force behind all of today’s popular collectible card games : Pokemon, Yu-Gi-Oh, Upper Deck’s Vs. system, and so on. To remain consistently selling millions of cards over a 15 year period is a testament to the universal appeal of MtG as a paramount example of strategic gaming, as well as stellar aesthetic sensibilities.
My own history of collecting the game is something that informed many of my ‘collecting’ attitudes. We were still in those fabled pre-internet days, so I was completely unaware that any cards existed outside of my basic set until I came across more by accident. I remember long car rides with my uncle to hunt down packs of new, mysterious cards. Legends, Antiquities, The Dark, Fallen Empires – all different aspects of this world that we were dueling in, represented in collections of new creatures and spells. We’d tear open the plastic packs of randomized cards and celebrate the new, rare additions to our armies or lament the quintriplicate cards that we were cursed with. Of course, multiples of the same card in your deck can work to the player’s advantage, but when you pull your 35th Uncle Istvan card, they lose their appeal quickly and you begin considering avunculicide. Or, like one player I met this weekend, sent all of the guys into battle in one deck and see what happens. An army of indestructible, ticked off, old Russian men with axes is nothing to scoff at.
For a variety of reasons, I faded out of playing in 1999. The local game shop was shutting down, so the generous owner was no longer going to be around to give me a free pack or two with every purchase I made. At least a quarter of my early collection was accumulated through the generosity of John Callahan. The gaming friends I had introduced the game to became more interested in drawing naked bits onto the Elves than actually using them effectively in a game. I began focusing on art and writing. The rules were starting to get convoluted. Still, even after I stopped playing, I collected the cards for a few more years, very casually, because I remained in love with the artwork, which did an excellent job of making the Magic universe a little more real. Over time, I even started communicating with some of the cards’ artists about art and illustration, and learned a few things that remain an influence on my own art-things to this day.
So, I suppose that MtG played a far more integral part in my mental and creative development than I’d previously realized, and when I attended the 15th Anniversary Celebration / 2008 US National Championships in Chicago this past weekend, it all came back to life, as strong as ever. My huge boxes of unused Magic cards that were once on their way to eBay were relevant again, and I was already leaps and bounds into creating a collection of these things – this time for play. The rules of the game had gone back to basics, the art was better than ever, and I had more fun playing games in a weekend than I can ever recall having.
I’d always sensed that there was a real culture behind the game, but when I heard that there were worldwide tournaments of Magic, broadcast on ESPN and with thousands of dollars in prizes, it was just a little intimidating. I’m not competitive by nature. Hell, my uncle and I used to glue our own art and text onto existing Magic cards just for fun, and I hid behind the telephone pole during high school baseball.
I quickly learned that there was absolutely nothing to be afraid of – the strange lexicon, the hardcore players, the structure of the tournament – everything was saturated with goodwill, a solid code of polite and moral gaming, and above all else, the fun of matching wits and skill against other players from around the United States – whether you were a seasoned champion, or a complete neophyte. I learned new games, relearned an old one, and was quickly reminded why I was so enraptured with the game in the first place.
You can’t get this at a comic con. Stay tuned for an exhaustive recap of the thrilling weekend.
