Wednesday, February 2, 2011

Coming Full Circle

I can trace nearly everything that has ever been good in my life back to Magic: The Gathering. Maybe that sounds sad to you. For me it's anything but. Perhaps one day I will bore you with the details, but for now suffice to say that everything I have - friends, family, and home - is due in large part to my picking up a starter deck of Ice Age as a teenager.

After this purchase I was totally immersed in Magic. Deck building, trading, and competing was a daily practice for me. At around age 20 other interests began to make their way to the fore of my priorities and Magic began to fade into the background. I was never totally removed from it, but I ended up selling my collection over time and very rarely played the game anymore.

Now - 10 years, 1 marriage, and a 4 year old son later - I have decided to get back into the game for good. I have so much to catch up on! 35 expansions have been released (not counting core sets) since I last played Magic seriously. To put that into perspective; there were only 16 sets released when I previously stopped playing. There is a lot of cardboard out there I have never seen. Mechanics and rules changes I have never heard of. Forget about everything I knew regarding card prices, anything that was good back in my day is valuable. Now we have $90 type 2 cards, a new format called legacy, changes to extended, mythic rares, and somehow highlander is a format supported by WOTC!?!

It's a huge amount of info for this magic veteran to absorb. Fortunately, the game seems to be more popular than ever. There are tons of resources for information out there on a variety of topics: deckbuilding, play, finance, you name it. I'm eager to learn and glad to be back. It's a great time to be a magic player.

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