Magic Memories – My Return to the Gathering Part 1
21 Mar 2010 | David Li Wang
Exactly one year ago, Magic peaked in popularity with my friends. Back then, it was Year 10 and we were free from the worries of the problems that we face in Year 11. There were around 15 of us playing and also our good friend from Year 12 who played with us in the corridors of our school, with some of us playing in fear of confiscation, some in fear of our reputations being tarnished and others just not caring. We wanted to play Magic. So how did it all start? How did a bunch of schoolkids who thought they had matured from playing card games, get back into Magic? How did it end up? What went wrong?
In late 2008 prior to the release of Shards of Alara, I was bored and landed on the Daily MTG site. I discovered Planeswalkers (through Tarmogoyf) and I had suddenly reinvigorated my passion for Magic. I recalled memories of playing Magic with my primary school friends in 2005, when Kamigawa was in, before stopping in high school because it was banned at school. The next step was to find the time to play Magic and that time soon became Saturday, after or before sport. After I convinced 2 friends to play on the following Saturday, I pulled out my Goblin and Burn decks and began familiarising myself with the cards. I then tried looking for my U/R Land Destruction deck, but couldn’t find it anywhere.
That Saturday morning following basketball, I played my first game of Magic in 3 years, winning a few times and it was enough to get me hooked. The following week, there was a history excursion and as it had ended early, I decided to visit a store which I found to be the closest location to school to play Magic on Saturdays. That location was Good Games Sydney. That day changed my Magic experience forever.
Accompanying me to Good Games, were two of my close friends, Kevin and Andy. Kevin had previously played Magic with me in primary school, enjoying playing with Slivers and various other ‘Spike’ decks he had built. Andy on the other hand, had never played Magic and was slightly curious about it and so he followed us. Ascending those stairs was one of the most exciting experiences for me at that time. Then I saw the room with all the people playing and the arcade games, and I was certain I was in for a good time in the future. Seated at a table, were 3 of my other school friends (they didn’t end up with our playgroup), who I did not know played Magic. We approached them and watched them play with the new Shards of Alara cards for a while, before I moved to the counter and met Scott for the first time ever.
I had prepared a list of cards to buy, in order to build a combo deck which could deal infinite damage (Izzet Guildmage + Desperate Ritual + Lava Spike if you were wondering) and that I had wanted to build years ago, before quitting. Scott knew the cards that I read to him so well, it took him less than 2 minutes to gather up those 24 cards. I also purchased 2 $1 repack boosters and when Kevin saw them in my hands, approached Scott and purchased 3 himself. We then departed the store, excited and on the train home, we cracked open our first repacks boosters in 3 years. I can’t exactly remember what cards I got (although Cancel was among them and at the time I was surprised a card strictly worse than Counterspell, was printed) but I do remember that Kevin’s pack had a Gemhide Sliver, which got him excited slightly. After trading each other a few cards that we wanted, we showed Andy the first Magic cards he had seen in his life, leading to his remark that some of the cards had cool art, which was one of the first triggers that drew him into Magic.
Fast forward 2 months later and our Magic playgroup had 8 people, and I had built a hybrid budget variant of the Berlin Combo Elf decks of Tomoharu Saito, LSV and Jan Doise, with a manabase of pure Forests and no sideboard. The deck was extremely fun to play with, being unbeaten and seemed unbeatable, accomplishing feats such as gaining over 100 life on turn 3, which surprised several of my friends. I eventually suppressed my inner Spike and stopped playing the deck, though the deck did inspire 2 of my friends to directly copy Saito’s and LSV’s lists. At that stage I considered myself to be semi-casual, with growing interest in competitive formats, especially Extended. I continued to read tournament coverage of the previous Grand Prix and Pro Tours, attempting to familiarise myself with the Extended format. When the event coverage was not enough to satisfy my knowledge, out of interest, I searched for the decks of the Kamigawa-Ravnica Standard, then I realised that I had unknowingly built a variant of the U/R Wildfire-Magnivore deck in 2005. The U/R LD deck I had built in 2005 and loved playing, had some minor differences, with 4 Psychic Venoms and 1 Wash Out as the non-standard cards used, a playset of Lava Spikes and its manabase consisted purely of Mountains and Islands.
In early 2009, the popularity of Magic further increased in our school, and I had finally convinced Andy to play Magic. What I had noticed in our group was that there was 1 common factor that had pulled us into Magic or back into Magic. That factor was friends.
Friends motivate us to keep playing. Friends keep the game competitive. Friends spice the game up, allowing us to play multiplayer. Friends are the most important part of Magic that ensure the game is fun. Ultimately without them, Magic wouldn’t be the game it is today.
That’s all for part 1 and I’ll continue my story in part 2. In the forums, I’ll love to read about your experiences of the days of how you got into or back into Magic with your friends. What was your playgroup like? What decks did you play? Apart from friends, what kept you playing Magic?
Hope that was interesting! That’s all for this week and return for part 2! Good Games! Good Times! GG!
By David Li Wang aka RedBluePlayer on Good Games Forums and MTG Salvation
For discussion.