Magic: The Gathering, Part One

All throughout my childhood I was heavily influenced by a game called Magic: The Gathering. Magic: The Gathering is a trading card game published by Wizards of the Coast. Magic, like other trading card games, have cards that do things, like creatures and spells, and land cards that produce mana to pay for these things. Magic has a following counting in the millions, being receptive to both casual and competitive play. I was introduced to the game by my older brother Robert. He himself had been introduced from our high school babysitter when he was in middle school. This game was one of the most influential things in my adolescent life. I played it for hours on end, initially only with my oldest brother, then with my brother and his friends, all the way to me branching out and making some good friends at my local game store. I would wait outside of my brother's room anxious to ask him to play. I would knock on his door and he would ask me "What's up?" Only for me to tentatively ask him if he would want to play some magic. When he answered yes I would bubble with excitement and reveal my deck that I had been secretly holding in my hand. We would play for hours in his room, trying out different decks, being fully encapsulated by the game. This pleasant sphere had to come to an end and so we would pack up our cards, and most often go down for dinner. These are some of the fondest memories I have as a child, always making me smile when thought of. As our gaming slowly ramped up, we bought new cards and created stronger and stronger decks. We became competitive within our little two-person playgroup, always trying out new things to deal with the others best deck. When my brother was in high school he started to bring in his friends and whenever they would come over I would salivate at the chance of playing games with them. My brother's best friend ended up joining me and Robert in our casual competitive gameplay. I would love being able to play with both of them, and when they were over I felt like my brother's best friend was my friend too.

My brother went above and beyond to create interesting gameplay, organizing tournaments and even at one point creating his own format and rules. One of these tournaments was a fifteen dollar deck challenge, where each person could only use cards from one expansion set. The set that was chosen, Shards of Alara, had many concrete archetypes in it so as to allow one player to be each of these archetypes. It was amazingly fun having to create a deck that fitted the budget, and looking through all the cards that each person was allowed to use for their deck. When my brother was in high school I had non stop fun playing with him, but all things must come to an end and so when the bells toned for him to go to college I was scared. Who would I play with anymore? Would I still be interested in this game I had loved for so many years without him? These and many more questions popped up in my head, leaving me to have to wait for the future and its answers.