Evolution of Magic

[olwen]

I started just before Urza's Saga, about August of 98 when I picked up a discounted 4th edition box at a Barnes and Noble sales.

First sealed tournament I attended was the Urza's Saga Pre-release (9/98), where I went 3-3-1.

First constructed tournament was in October at PTQ Rome, first round against Worth Wollpert playing Trade-Awakening (1-2 drop with 1 bye). It was quite interesting watching all of my permanents returning to my hand!

 

[rkoelsch]

During the Dark, I was at the comic store earlier that year and they had this new game, Magic the Gathering(unlimited packs) and I decided I didn't need another game. How wrong I was. I was trying to remember how much the packs cost.

 

[sageridder]

http://www.magic-singles.com/cpa/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=415&highlight=when+did+you+start
I started in ice age.

 

[Spiderman]

Thanks, sageridder.

Boy, the original thread actually combines two recent topics: When you started and when you thought the Golden Age of Magic was.

Well, here it is anew...

 

[Mr_Pestilence]

I started playing between The Dark and Fallen Empires. I enjoyed Magic then, and I enjoy it now. I loved the old all-day multi-player matches with 8-10 people, and, being a competitive person, I like the modern cut-throat head-to-head competition, but there are problems:

1) In Standard, the variety of Counterspells is ridiculous! Consider Undermine, which counters a spell, and deals three damage to its caster. This is just too good! While Blue needs a solid, non-conditional 3 cc counterspell (what was wrong with Dissipate?), compare this to poor old Black, who doesn't have a spell that can deal 3 damage for 3 mana!

And if you thought Force of Will was broken, you'll LOVE Thwart, Foil and Misdirection! A Blue mage being tapped out don't mean nuthin'!

2) Speaking of FoW, I think the Extended environment is terrible just because of this one card! WotC (finally) killed off most the best (or worst, depending on your perspective) combo cards in Extended, but they left FoW as a thumb in the eye to every non-control deck player out there. Worse, they have taken away all of the tools to combat heavy control, such as Pyroblast and Red Elemental Blast.

3) Please, please, please rotate 5th Ed out of Extended, and preempt a plague of Forsaken City/Stasis decks in the next Extended season. The cards available for this deck are just heinous, and a preliminary deck list looks so good I'm tempted to try it, and I HATE STASIS!

Anyway, good topic, glad to participate.

 

[Griffith_se]

Started dabbling in Urza's Block, started getting a little obsessed with the game when masques' came out.

 

[Hetemti]

I came in about the same time people were preping for Masques.

I remember my first "big" purchase.

$15 for a box of Masques commons...about a dozen of each one.

The day I "lost my innocense" was one day I went to the shop and started buying some boosters. $60 later, with a little left in my pocket, I realized that I could have bought a Mox or Library, and it would have been wise...for NOTHING in the $60 of boosters was playable, except for a Fireslinger, two Mogg Fanatics, and a Wall of Blossoms. ALL the rares and uncommons were absolute shine-ola.

I've never bought a Booster with a sence of hope of getting a good rare again. Now, it's only impending dread of wasting $3-f'n-50 and expectation of seeing False Dawn or Chromat staring me in the face.

Yes...I try to buy singles, but it sucks to get a $4 single, pay $1 shipping, $0.50 for the M.O., $0.35 for the stamp, 7 days to get there, 7 days to get it back...

 

[ErinPuff]

All my life I'd been certain that I started in '95, but I just found out that I started in '98.. I was cleaning my closet out and I found my diary from my scary-preppy-preteen-girl-who-says-like-every-other-word days, and it said something along the lines of, "OMG, my brother's teaching me to play Magic. Yuppys, that's the game with, like, a million rules and stuff. It's sooooo totally confusing!" I absolutely refuse to believe that.. it doesn't make sense! I remember when Exodus was new and they had the colored expansion symbols and I was all excited because I could rip my brother off with them .. and I was already good at the game. I had been playing for several years. I THINK. I don't understand how I could get so screwed up in the timeline of my life..

And plus, I refuse to believe I was ever a typical ditzy little female.. *gag*

My favorite edition of the basic set is, by far, 4th. That's the set I thought I started with.. 5th and 6th were just blah to me, and I like 7th pretty well. I think that Magic is better now (at least to someone like me who has no connections whatsoever to the tournament scene) than it has been *cough*Urza*cough*, but it's not as good as it was.

 

[Apollo]

I started about 5 years ago, in Ice Age. And I am sure of that, ErinPuff. (how could you be 5 years off??)

I think that the game was better for me then, because everything was new. Every time I played, I saw new cards. I think that the best time was during Tempest. I was just becoming a really good player (meaning I was winning local store tournaments a fair amount of the time), but there was still that innocence, I guess. I could start a game and not know the exact content of the deck within the first few turns.

But the most recent few sets have had little that interested me, and some of my friends have stopped playing, so there's less for me in the game.

 

[Necrosavant]

I got started because a friend played <I think this was around revised/unlimeted, cause I had a bunch of Craw Wurms...how I loved them >, and he let me go through all his cards, pick out the doubles I wanted, then screened them to see what he wanted to give me, and then I learned the ropes. I made horrible decks, played at school a bit, and I only remember buying some of 4th and 5th, wasn't able to get any expansions because I wasn't that into it. In high school I only really played with one friend once in a while, then I went into the Army for three years, and kinda feel out <the last stuff I remember buying for a while was Homelands/Fallen Empires...I thought Fallen Empires was a great set, btw> for a long time, then right before I got out, I had a week or so of nothing to do before getting back stateside <I was in Korea at the time>, I had seen some Magic stuff at the Army store, so I bought the box with the coolest name, as I had no notions about "Blocks" or things like that (the set was Nemesis). Ever since, I've been collecting again. Finally got the chance to play at a card shop and went 4-1 to be #1 for that week . Gating creatures are fun
I can't really say when I thought the Golden Age was...I'm really enjoying the current sets though. I'm also really happy because I finally found a really cool place to go play.

 

[Istanbul]

Heh. Fallen Empires WAS pretty good, as long as you played and didn't speculate.

Goblin Grenade, Hymn to Tourach, Thallids, Derelor, Saclands...

 

[Necrosavant]

I remember it was Christmas shopping time, and i was at the Mall....I bought a pack of Homelands and it had a Baron Sengir...I was so stoked!

 

[Mundungu]

Well I told part of my story earlier but I started collecting Magic in September of 97, when my sister opened a card shop.

I had been confronted with the game back in 93 or 94 but found nobody to play - that was in Germany and Magic was only available in English -

From 97 'til Apr 99 I waz in China, b4 the game was legal there and could play only about every 3 month, when I would return to Europe. Each booster opening confronted me with new cards but by 99 I already had bought many boxes of products from mirage to Legacy.

This was my "golden age" where new cards where a new discovery, where I didnt know about the internet "Magic" and when I traded my morphlings away for white knights ...

I spent hours deck building, for those elusive moments I could actually play ... two or three month later.

Arrived in the states in Apr 99, I discovered this healthy ?MAgic community, and it became my hobby #1 since I had no friends, my wife wasnt with me and I simply had nothing else to spend my salary on.

After a few thousands dollar spent on products, and a really great collection thanks to wise spending and heavy trading (4 mox, libof alex, all 40 dual lands, almost all sets complete tempest to Apoc with 3 or 4 of the "big rares"), I feel I am entering my second golden age of magic, where I find myself a average to good player with a decent collection and a good knowledge of the game.