This weekend, I went to the Magic Celebration, which celebrated 20 years of playing the world's #1 trading card game, and as I was playing (and losing) I really started to think about my experience in the game.
I started playing in 1996, so 3 years after the came premiered in 1993, and started playing in September when I started school, so 17 years to the month I have been playing this amazing game, with breaks here and there.
My nostalgia was triggered when playing with a couple of new friends of mine, who were like me, who played old school MtG, and stopped playing in Mirrodin, back in 2003. I have played here and there online since then, but nothing major.
In this even, you got to choose a pre-built deck and got a M'14 booster pack of 15 cards. As a person who likes control, and because I have historically played blue, that's what I chose.
You were allowed to put what you got in your booster pack into your deck, and add another color into the deck, I added 5 green cards in, because they were way tasty. It created a control / stomp kind of deck that made up for the weakness in the deck, which was defending from attacks. That being said, it was one of the weaker decks that was available. The red and black decks stomped, but while a blue deck won, it's because he drafted (pulled from the pack) Jace, Memory Adept, which unbalanced his deck completely.
As you can tell, that's what kind of brings up this retrospective, cards like that. There is such a thing called "Power Creep" that exists in all games, what that means is that powers on newer items will be MUCH stronger than older items. While there are some really awesome older cards, like Dark Ritual
and Counterspell
Which are easy, and powerful, but then you have items like Jace which completely overpower and dominate. Considering there are an average of 60 cards per deck in this, removing TEN of them every turn is insane. Not to mention events like this where the average deck is 35-45 cards, it's complete face smashing.
All that aside, there is a release coming up this month, for a new set called Theros, which is an entire block based on Greek-type gods and mythos. I think I'm sold on getting back into the game with both feet. After 17 years, I'm still fully vested in this game...
http://www.geek-io.com/cjs-boathouse/2013/9/9/magic-the-gathering-a-almost-20-year-old-retrospective
via CJ's Boathouse - The Geek I/O Network http://www.geek-io.com/cjs-boathouse/
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