On Saturday, three of our minions returned home after spending Friday night with my in-laws, and the oldest boy, K (who I recently began teaching to play D&D), had a brand-spanking-new starter deck of Magic: the Gathering cards, along with a half-dozen booster packs. The children had been playing with Pokemon cards for a while (much to my consternation, as they would often leave them all over the house), but my father-in-law convinced K to try Magic.
He was thrilled. So was I.
Now, I'm sure many of my readers from the OSR probably don't care much for Magic or other CCG's, but for me, that game was a core part of my formative gaming years, in middle school in the mid-90s. We had already been playing Star Wars, Heroes: Unlimited, and Robotech when the priest at our parochial school introduced us to Magic, and soon after, DragonQuest. I hadn't played Magic in years and years, but I still had a nice-sized box of my old cards, which I immediately got out of the basement and me and the boy started building up some decks so I could teach him the game.
Our other D&D kids wanted to learn as well, and for some reason I was woefully short of lands (except Islands. Tons of goddamn islands. Where the hell did all my Plains and Forests go?) so I made a run to the Fantasy Shop and picked up the Magic Deck Builder box, which included about 250 or 300 cards, including 125 lands and a number of booster packs, to get started.
So I spent the weekend teaching my three oldest minions to play Magic, and had a great time reminiscing over my old cards. They're still in pretty good shape, and seem mostly competitive against the new cards. It's all in how you build your deck, really. We all had a blast playing, and I'm really looking forward to seeing how the kids start developing strategies and building decks. And of course, the fantasy feel of it all is like crack for my D&D imagination space.
Life is good.
But don't worry, I'm not gonna start talking all-Magic, all-the-time here. This blog is still going to be primarily about 4e D&D. It was just nice get back to my roots a little bit, and share that gaming goodness with my family. And I may have found a new source of inspiration, so there may be some Magic-based 4e D&D thoughts in the near future.
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