Sunday, February 7, 2016

Magic Firsts

I was listening to Mark Rosewater's latest podcast with Melissa De Tora, and I felt compelled to share my answers to these questions that they discussed about their Magic "Firsts". 

When was the first time you heard of Magic?

My memory is a little hazy on this, but I believe I heard about Magic from my friend Tom in 3rd or 4th grade around 1994. 

What was the first time you saw magic?

I was over Tom's house for a sleepover or something and some of his boy scouts friends had cards that they brought over. I was immediately intrigued as to how to play.

What was the first time you played Magic?

I must have played that night with Tom and his friends. I remember a big group game. We played the timeless "All Lands Down" variant that meant that you would start the game by putting any lands that you had in your opener onto the battlefield. Sometimes we would draw back up to seven after doing this. That is just good, clean Magic: the Gathering, as Richard Garfield intended.

What was the first product purchased?

http://www.slightlymagic.net/forum/download/file.php?id=9830&mode=view

The cheapest packs at this time were Fallen Empires at $1 or $2 a pack. The set was massively overprinted, thus the cheapness, and my early packs were of that set. Needless to say, I had a lot of Thrulls and Thallids. I also bought some Fourth Edition and a good amount of  Ice Age and Chronicles soon after.

What were the first rares you opened?

Bottle of Suleiman

 With no colored rarity symbol, I had no idea there were rares, or what they were. Looking at a visual spoiler and using my memory, some of my first rares were:  Dwareven Armorer, Ebon Praetor, Elven Lyre, Bottle of Suleiman, Dragon Engine, Ebony Horse, Kormus Bell,  and Urza's Avenger. My decks were not good.

What was the first card that wowed you?

Craw Wurm

I remember picking through the common boxes at the local card shop and finding a Craw Wurm. I had never seen such a big creature before. It looked like cheating on paper. I immediately sought out more copies and quickly bought them.


What was the first card you didn't understand?

Frozen Shade Frozen Shade
 
Looking back the card I most illegally played was Frozen Shade from Revised. I essentially played it like it got +1/+1 counters. It didn't say until end of turn! When I saw a Fourth Edition copy, I assumed that my Revised copies still got permanent +1/+1, while the Fourth Edition copies were the worse version.


What were your first decks?

Urza's TowerDisintegrate

Given the amount of Chronicles I purchased, I believe one of the first cohesive decks I built was a mono red Urza tron deck built to ramp out X damage spells to the face. I believe I was still playing "All Land Down" primarily, along with our bonus rule where we got to draw back up to seven. The deck was pretty effective!

What was your first trade?

City of BrassGargantuan Gorilla


The first trade I remember doing was my Chronicles City of Brass - likely the only card I had worth anything, for a Gargantuan Gorilla. I am pretty sure I didn't read the text box and was blinded by the fact that this creature was bigger than Craw Wurm, taking pole position as the biggest creature I had ever seen. I know for a fact that I never once activated the ability.

There is a second part coming of that podcast. I will write another post with my responses after it comes out.