In my misspent youth I spent most of my time reading literature, watching television and listening to music. Eventually, as the technology became accessible, this grew into a love of video games. Somehow through this process I managed to skip over some of the staple pursuits of gamers and geeks. Among these overlooked pastimes is Magic: The Gathering.
Until very recently I had never played a collectible card game. I had avoided them for several primary reasons: cost, practicality and my friends didn't play. Knowing myself and my love of collecting things, I also avoided exploring the game because I suspected how easily I might become addicted.
Sure enough, I have. I love collecting, collating and organizing the cards. I love organizing them into decks and looking for synergistic sets of cards. Most of all, I love opening the booster packs. Sure, I could buy nice shiny special cards individually but opening the packs is a huge portion of the excitement.
My first deck was constructed through a draft at work. Everyone bought in for $15 and received 3 booster packs. We broke up into small teams, and each player opened their pack and selected their desired card. We then passed to the right and repeated the process, drawing one card from the deck passed from the left. This continued until each pack was depleted, and then repeated the process with each pack. Eventually, each player had their cards and spent a few moments assembling a small deck.
This was tough for me as a newbie. Without a lot of experience, it was difficult to tell which cards were most powerful and flexible, and which were mediocre filler. I did manage to grab a few common but powerful green creatures and flexible blue spells, so I made a hybrid green/blue deck. I was lucky to get a bit of help from our more experienced players, and then it was time to play!
My choice of the durable green creatures and blue controlling magic proved to be wise. The blue cards helped me compensate for my inexperience by allowing me to draw extra cards and stop attacks on me, and the green creatures were easy to manage. I even managed to win a couple of my matches!
I think the highlight was playing against another green/blue deck - it didn't look good at first, but I managed to get out several of my largest creatures and managed to land a killing blow with only one or two health left!
All in all, it was a really enjoyable few hours and a nice way to socialize with my coworkers. I am definitely interested in learning more about the game and the cards. It is an incredibly complex system, and once the basics are grasped there is no end to the possibilities of gameplay!
