A long, long time ago, in the ancient time known as 1994, I was but a hideously awkward teenager drowning in the abyss that is high school. I hadn't hit my growth spurt yet, my "look" consisted of a homegrown buzz cut and enormous Coke-bottle glasses, and I was firmly ensconced in the super-nerd subclass of my school's social strata.
Suffice it to say, I wasn't doing too great.
But at the end of my freshman year, a chance encounter at a party suddenly brought me in contact with a huge new group of friends. At first, I was just invited along to their Sunday afternoon pickup games of Ultimate Frisbee, but after a few weeks I started to get invited to hang out at people's houses afterwards, when I made the pleasant discovery that my new friends were lovers of games of all kinds.
Instead of spending our post-Ultimate Sundays in front of a TV, gossiping about our classmates, or complaining that there was nothing to do in our plain suburban town, we gathered around dining room tables, sat in circles on the floor, and played whatever games we had on hand.
Often we needed nothing more than a deck of cards: playing round after round of spades, hearts, or gin rummy or a game that used its own specialized deck of cards, like Phase 10, Rook, or Set. Other times we'd break out a board game like Risk or Settlers of Catan (and this was in the mid-90's, when the only way to get that game was to import "Die Siedler Von Catan" from Germany and hope that somebody had been able to get their hands on a translation of the instructions!).
And, a few months after my new friends brought me into their group, they introduced me to the newest fad to hit the "trad gaming" scene -- Magic: The Gathering.
Man, you make we want to play again. I stopped playing about 5 years ago, but I have cards from every set up until then, starting with the Alpha release. I couldn't even begin to tell you how many I have, or what they're even worth at this point.
I tried the demo of MTGO, but I couldn't really get in to it. It's always going to be a social, face-to-face game for me.
I just had one of the craziest games ever. I was playing a white-red-green deck whose aim is to spew out a lot of innocent-looking weenie creatures (1/1 Soldier tokens and 0/1 Eldrazi Spawn), then plop down a Coat of Arms and have them all get really big; and my opponent was playing a mono-white Ally deck, where the goal is to plop down a ton of little creatures that all have some sort of ability that gets triggered whenever another Ally enters the battlefield.
Fortunately for me, I managed to get down a couple of Soul Wardens right in the beginning (they give 1 life every time another creature enters the battlefield) and fortunately for him, he got a Ally down that gives other Allies lifelink (damage done by your creatures translates into life gain for you). So for a while, he would play an Ally, I'd gain a bunch of life, then he'd attack with his creatures and gain a bunch of life back for him. I then got out a Nomad's Assembly, which puts a 1/1 Soldier on the battlefield for each creature I control, and it also has rebound (which means you can cast it once, then cast it again at the beginning of your next turn for no mana).
So I gain a crapload of life and put another 11 creatures on the board, but he gets out another Ally that gains him one life for every Ally he controls, so he gets to 148 life (you start at 20!) and *then* puts down a creature that says he wins if he has more than 40 life during his upkeep.
He thinks he's got things completely wrapped up, but that's when I take my last gasp at it and throw down the Coat of Arms I'd been holding, which meant that all of my 1/1 Soldiers suddenly became 20/20! I then used a planeswalker ability to give all my creatures vigilance and attacked with everything, and when the dust had settled, we each only had like three creatures left and I'd only been able to get through for 40 or so damage.
He still ended up winning, but that was one of the wackiest damn games I'd ever played. Although reading back over this, like so many things, I guess you had to be there. =)
Oh man, this brings me back to my extremely nerdy middle school days. I had a huge collection of Magic cards. Played and played and played until one day my friends and I collectively decided to stop. No real reason why.
The cards gathered dust along with my baseball cards in my parents house until last year, when I found out my younger cousins were into the game. I opened up my decks and let them pick out whatever they wanted. I couldn't believe people were still playing it!
I can't see myself ever getting back into the physical card game, but maybe I'll give one of the video game incarnations a shot. Thanks for the memories, Brian!