Magic: The Gathering, Part Two

Part One

When my brother left for college my own love for the game of magic was put in jeopardy. I loved playing magic so much, but the only people I knew who played the game were my brother and his friends. I was too petrified to ever bring the game into my now middle school world, where the only possible outcome I could see was ridicule. Due to this lack of friends who played the game, and fear of trying to find new people who would, I had no one to play with on a regular basis anymore. Despite this, I still had all my cards and whenever my brother would come home I'd jump at the opportunity to play. It was a love that lingered on the coattails of someone far far away. When my brother came home for winter break he started to introduce me to a different side of magic. He had found a plethora of people who loved playing the game in college and had joined them in their competitive gaming. They played the magic format called modern. This format included the third most cards of any of the four major competitive formats, standard, modern, legacy, and vintage. Standard included only a couple of the most recent sets, with cards rotating out of it whenever a new set was made, while the other three formats did not include any rotation. The difference between modern and legacy was how many sets were included. In modern, all sets going back until 8th edition were included, while in legacy every set was included. Vintage was the mother of all the formats including every single card with no banned list, which standard, modern, and legacy all had. I knew about the competitive formats in magic, but my brother and I had never gotten into any of them. Thankfully, modern had the most overlap with our collection of cards. As Robert taught me the format, I started to create a deck. My deck was a BUG midrange deck, which stood for Black, Blue, and Green, not bug creature cards. Even after my brother went back to college, at the end of his winter break, I still tried to edit and strengthen this deck. I had something that I could do while he was away. Being further helped by the plethora of free magic deck builders online, allowing me to easily edit things. When the summer came, and Robert came home, so did come a new enjoyment out of this game I already loved so much. Robert brought me to my first PTQ, pro tour qualifier, which if won would give the player an invite and round-trip airfare to the pro tour. The lead up to the PTQ was exciting, playing practice rounds with Robert and talking to him about everything he knew. The PTQ was held in a large empty conference hall, with hundreds of players sitting at rows of tables. I got to meet many of my brother's college friends here for the first time, as they had all come down to play. I did fairly mediocre, getting four wins and five losses throughout the whole tournament, but the enjoyment from playing made me feel like I had come in first. As we walked back to our transportation I could not stop blabbering about my games, and going to other tournaments in the future. I truly felt awesome being able to go and play with so many people who loved the game just as much as I did. This drive that was kindled that night at the PTQ unleashed itself fully in the coming years, with me creating competitive decks, and playing in many a tournament... To be continued