I’ve not ever written about Magic, despite having played it on off more or less since its inception. I think part of the reason for that is that the game changes very quickly, and I get frustrated with it, or with the community, or with the pay-to-play aspects of it and then I walk away from it.

I started playing back when I worked in a tiny hobby story called The Dungeon. I pretty much spent all my meager earnings on buying boosters for Revised Edition, Legends and The Dark. I taught a lot of people how to play, and my local comic book store then became a hub for playing and trading. There were no online guides on how to play. We had heard that Black Lotus was a really good card, but nobody knew why (nor had one). When we did eventually find one, it was kind of a let down–until we figured out the ridiculous combos it enables, and then I tried like hell to trade for one (spoiler: I never got one). I kept playing through Ice Age and Fallen Empires. Homelands came out (the worst set in Magic History, with probably zero cards to redeem the whole set) and Wizards announced they’d never print powerful cards like Black Lotus again: this combination of events caused me to stop playing.

I dabbled a bit on occasion over the next 10 years or so, but mostly I was busy having kids and moving around the world. It wasn’t until my kids started to get into board games again and I moved to a place where my closest coffee shop was also a game store that I started to get back into it. This was early 2011, when the Scars of Mirrodin block was being played, and Jace, the Mind Sculptor was dominating Standard. I slowly learned how to draft, and built a deck for Standard, eventually settling on playing Elves because everything else was just too expensive. I attended a few Pro-Tour Qualifiers, and did OK, coming away with more wins than losses. I traded aggressively to start to build a Modern deck when that was first announced. I became a Rules Advisor and found a Judge to mentor me. And then life happened–I don’t even remember exactly what, but I didn’t have the time or the passion to keep playing, so I stopped, sometime around the end of the Innistrad block. I sold all my cards, except for an Elf deck for EDH.

My kids got into playing it around War of the Spark, but it wasn’t until I was living on my own for a period during Covid that I really got back into playing again. I played on Arena a bunch (I have a screenshot where I was rated in the top 250 worldwide briefly) playing Werewolves in Standard. As restrictions eased, I drafted Kaldheim and New Capenna, and a few others, mostly to be social (and with Arena to pass the time while living alone). Modern had moved on a lot, but you couldn’t play it on Arena. I didn’t start to play competitively again in person.

And now one of my kids has got back into it in a fairly big way, playing daily online with their friends, and going to our local store for Commander games. I’m not a big fan of the Commander format as the games take a really long time to play and there’s a lot of not doing anything–it’s very much like a beer and pretzels version of Magic, and I much prefer the fast-paced duels. However, I’m learning to just treat it as a chance to chat rather than worrying about the playing.

I’m vaguely considering getting into playing Standard or Modern again, but the proliferation of Universes Beyond sets is … meh. Outside of this game, I’m a pretty big fan of TMNT, Marvel, and so forth. I’m just not convinced they belong in Magic. Well, it’s not my choice, I guess. And, like every other sucker out there, I’m sure I’ll spend money to have cards with some of my favourite characters on them (they better print a Garak card in the Star Trek set, just sayin’).