Started playing around Masques block (at least that is the first expansion symbol I remember) at high school. Started with a vanillaish g/w deck that was terrible. I did end up playing something of a tournament worth slide deck with onslaught, and a very very casual dragon deck that had Rith, Crosis and the like.
Also had a deck that combo'd out with a mystic snake, sunken hope, arcane laboratory
W may only be paid with white mana. U may only be paid with blue mana. B may only be paid with black mana. R may only be paid with red mana. G may only be paid with green mana. C may only be paid with colorless mana. 1 may be paid with white, blue, black, red, green, or clolorless mana.
I started during M10 (i know late bloomer) I opened up my first booster box because I got one, and opened a Baneslayer Angel I hadn't known that cards had red symbols on them (I played a tiny in timespiral so I have never seen the red symbol) so I kept it figuring it was amazing... I still have that card =) I mean I started actually playing in M10 but I had got cards from timespiral before just cause teh cards looked cool, I played yu-gi-oh before lol.
My first product was a Ice Age tournament starter deck. I started when Alliances was out though since I remember the boosters were at the checkout counter.
Everyone at my middle school was playing with janky 5-color decks once pogs got banned. Who knew I'd still be playing 15 years later!?
My 2 pyroclasms were king, since no one knew creatures healed up at the end of turns. COPs were hated as well.
Revised. Opened three packs of English Legends. I had to read and understand the rule book that came with the starter decks and teach my friends how to play.
I remember buying a lot of Revised starters and boosters back then, and even back then the dual lands were the money cards, though they were only worth like $10-20 at the time (I wish I had kept them!). I remember once I sold a Tropical Island I had, that was in rough shape, for like $4! I also remember buying Volcanic Islands for $10 a pop at a different shop
Oh man, I had a dozen or so dual lands back in the day. Had no idea how valuable they'd become. I didn't really even recognize how useful they were in a deck at the time! I ended up selling almost all my cards (except a box that got separated from the rest somehow) for like $50 the first time I got out of the game around the time of Visions.
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"For small creatures such as we the vastness is bearable only through love." --Carl Sagan
I started playing during Invasion Block because a friend of mine used to play with friends he had prior to moving close to me. I bought the 5 color precon with Last Stand and Penumbra Wurm. I think it was called Pandemonium. I stopped playing right before Ravnica came out (because my rare binder was stolen at an FNM), and then picked it up again a few months ago when RoE came out.
I saw it advertised in Disney Adventures magazine, and thought it looked more occult than the usual stuff they promoted...we got some cards and played with huge 5-color decks, not realizing there was an untap phase (games would last a while). This was right when 4th Edition came out.
I had a friend that tried to get me into it around the beginning of 2006, which would have been in the middle of the Ravnica block. That would have been a cool time to start. Though at that point, I had been playing Yugioh since around 2002, and I didn't want to play another card game. Ironically, I stopped playing Yugioh around that time and still didn't want to play another card game.
Later, a friend tried to get me into the game around around the end of 2008, which would have been around when the Alara block started. That was around the time I stopped playing Yugioh again, and I didn't want to start playing another card game after quitting another.
Eventually, around the end of 2009, a little after Zendikar came out, two friends that I had been playing Yugioh with when we all started that got into Magic. It was then when I figured I would give Magic a shot, which I did. The two of them, my brother, and I all took turns using their decks, which was a WB vampire deck and a BG deck with elves, skeletons, and zombies. The decks were mostly made from M10 and Zendikar intro packs. After playing with those, I wanted to make some derpy BR vampire and dragon deck, and my brother wanted to make a UR burn deck. Yeah, we all kind of sucked for a while.
tl;dr: I started a little after Zendikar came out. Yeah, that's pretty late compared to most people here.
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WU Near-Death Experience (Casual multiplayer) B Vintage Illegal Discard (When I want to be a jerk) GW Allies (Casual) URG Defenders (Crappy Standard) RWU Affinity (Modern)
1998, sometime during Tempest block - not sure when because it was quite a few months before I learned about sets/blocks. I was living with my girlfriend and a friend of hers who had left the game and sold off his collection taught her how to play and gave her a big box of white-bordered commons that he still had. For a few weeks I wondered what this strange hobby she had taken up was all about, and the inevitable happened; she taught me the game. For a while, we just built and played decks made from tons of bulk revised and 4th edition commons - I didn't even know there were such things as expansions, rarities, much less that they were still printing new cards! When I first wandered into a local game store with tons of expensive singles for sale and lots of booster packs (at the time there was still a pretty big surplus of Fallen Empires, Ice Age, etc) it was a pretty shocking experience, and I poured all my available money into trying to catch up and build a collection. It wasn't until Urza's Legacy, though, that I started buying booster boxes and getting into the tournament scene. Eventually I acquired full power 9 and a good amount of duals and bought a few boxes of each expansion as it came out. Sadly, due to financial pressures at the beginning of Time Spiral block, I sold all my power and rares. It's depressing that I used to own a lot of cards that I can't afford to buy any more and missed out on a large increase in value of a lot of them.
I enjoy tournaments and booster drafts, but mostly I have had a steady playgroup for casual multiplayer magic. Our weekly games of five points, teams of two, and chaos (no EDH though) are always fun and feature tons of creative and fun decks. We've been playing every week for over a dozen years!
Random amusing anecdote: my very first sanctioned match of tournament magic was against the Great One himself, Bob Maher, at a local card shop during the time when he was the star local player but hadn't yet won Pro Tour Chicago. It was extended format, and he was playing High Tide. I was playing Pouncing Jaguar + Might of Oaks. He won.
M10. I started out playing a R/B Deck my friend made for me and I learned by reading the general rules and just general trial and error. Now I can hold my own in a draft (Hell I've placed top in about 3 so far, two of those being first place. Random packs yay <3) and in multiplayer. Go me.
Started in June of 2001. 7th edition starter from a K-Mart. I didn't really think much of it until I found out a few of my summer recreation friends played, so we started a small play group for it. Continued playing until Darksteel, took a few months break, then started up again with Fifth Dawn...until the Kamigawa disaster. Stopped playing until Scars and now it looks like I'll be taking another break until 'Action' for money reasons.
Fallen Empires. Learned during a school trip. The game was free for all using a five color shared library of several hundred Revised cards and each player starting at 100 life. All creatures had the Palace Guard ability, so Living Wall was about as good as a Moat! Trample was the answer until I finally purchased the Official Pocket Player's guide and schooled by buddies on the real rules for the game. Nobody played white because it was too weak and we'd never seen Balance or Wrath of God. Why would anyone play Armageddon?
My first pack was Fallen Empires. I got Vodalian Knight and Rainbow Vale. I thought the Thallid was the coolest card in the pack. Then I went and got one pack each of Revised ($2.50), The Dark ($8), and Legends ($35).
My first decks were illegal 40 card abominations that tried to abuse Plague Rats, a deck of Hymn to Tourachs and Hypnotic Specters, and Channel/Fireball spiced with Lightning Bolts. My first game at a card shop was Ante with the Plague Rats deck. I flipped Demonic Attorney. I lost bad. The guy took pity on me and let me keep my card.
My first legal deck was five colors with a hundred or so cards. That didn't last long.
My first "decent" legal deck was mono blue steal and copy with Control Magic, Steal Artifact, Clone and Vesuvan Doppelganger. I added red to steal land (Conquer) and black to steal life (Touch of Death). Fellwar Stone added flavor and color fixing.
My first net-deck was Necropotence.
My first "good" original deck was Hippygeddon. I took the creatures and hand disruption from the Necro deck and mixed it with the Land Tax / Armaggedon combo from Erhnamgeddon. I played against Henry Stern in a tournament and he commented that the only real weakness was the mana base (I was forced to use City of Brass in Type 2 at the time). After some changes the deck went on to win many 1.5 tournaments until they scrapped the format for what we now know as Legacy.
My first piece of Power was an Alpha Mox Ruby won at auction for about $30. Alphas were considered marked cards at the time and the DCI had a "de-sleeving" rule that meant your opponent could disqualify you at any time just for having Alphas in your deck. I sold it for $54. Doh!
"A rich man thinks all other people are rich, and an intelligent man thinks all other people are similarly gifted. Both are always terribly shocked when they discover the truth of the world. You, my dear brother, are a pious man." - Strahd von Zarovich
Started right after Mirage came out, and played almost exclusively with two friends for about a year. I enjoyed that block a lot, as I'm a big fan of creatures and they were packed with ultra-efficient beaters like River Boa.
my first deck was a mix of the kamahls temper and he molimo's might 10th edition decks. One of the first decks i built myself was a "combo" deck based around mayael's aria and ajani goldmane. If I had the ajani avatar, mayael's aria and 9 or more life, I would win at my upkeep. It barely ever worked but of course my friends thought it was incredibly broken so they would kil me first in multiplayer.
Back in the summer of '97, I was in the Navy and a friend had a box of his older cards, and showed them to me. At the time, my girlfriend (future wife) moved halfway across the country and I needed a hobby. I made a janky mono B vampire deck and we played a lot. When I finally broke down and bought some product, it was a 5th edition Tourney pack. I only remeber 1 of the rares (Jester's Cap) which at the time was about $25 and traded it for a huge pile of cards. My local store had lots of old product so I bought a lot of older stuff. My first box of boosters was Ice Age and I remember it sucking. I bought boxes of Weatherlight, Visions, 4th, and a LOT of Tempest(!!!) and Alliances for $3 a pack and having around 20 Force of Will s. I also remeber selling all but 1 set for ~$10 a piece...
My first tournament deck was the Stronghold pre-constructed deck "Miagrane" with added Hymn to Tourach s. I lost BAD. Other than pre-releases, I stayed away from tournaments except a type 1 I entered right after Mirrodin came out. I made a B/W Scepter Chant deck that took EVERYONE by surprise. I placed 2nd out of maybe 30 ppl.
I got out of the Navy right after Exodus and was broke so I quit buying new stuff and introduced my friends to the game back home. I got financially stable enough to start buying new cards right after Mercadian Masques came out and went strong through Lorawyn when I moved cross country to TX. I didn't know anyone so my cards were in storage till I found my current group. I started buying again at Shards of Alara and still going strong.
Waaaay back in the day I was running the non-sports card section for a comic book store. A sales rep came in pushing some cards, and the owner sent him my way. He told me about this new game called "Magic" that was about to come out and I told him I'd think it over. I talked it over with a couple gamers I knew, and we all agreed that what we dubbed "D&D the card game" would never work.
A couple years later, my brother shows up at my house with a pile of cards. A deck and a small collection of unlimited, revised, antiquities, arabian nights and legends cards. He said "here's your deck, here's your starting collection, I'm teaching you how to play."
Legends had been out for maybe 2 weeks at that time, and was already sold out at most places and I was paying $15 a pack for it at a local comic convention.
I miss those days, back when people couldn't just go to the internet to copy the latest deck. Granted, the Magic Dojo came about soon after....
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L1 MtG judge (L2 coming soon) and Dominion tournament coordinator serving Flint MI and its surrounding cities.
I guess in a way I've always been a spike. My friends were having a Magic Tournament at this guy's house. To the best of my memory I went to the store, opened a revised starter (maybe 2 boosters?) and went to this tournament.
The land balance in these decks was aweful. I had 2 white knights, but only 2 plains, and I finally had to trade someone for lands because I never bought enough Revised to get a real deck going.
Fallen Empires hit the shelves hard after that and my senior year of HS the local hobby shop where we bought our cards had FE 5 for $2. Revised packs were over $3 so who would buy them when you could get Fallen Empires. Once I opened enough FE to get a full set, things got worse as I opened more and more trying to get a Hand of Justice and complete my set.
I split my collection in 3's going into the Black Summer and got out until my friend called me towards the end of my freshman year of college.. "hey have you ever heard of this game called MTG?" Uh ya. "can you teach me how to play".
Apparently he was working in a wearhouse that took returns off all the Battlemage(?) games that had a 4th Ed booster in them. I bought a Mirage Starter a 4th Starter and a couple packs of Visions and got back in.
I went to my first PTQ during this era having got myself a DCI Legend membership. I played a version of Mark Justices' BR aggro deck and sent my buddy in with a mono green stompy deck. He did better than me, but those decks were pretty bad.
I played my first real competitive decks in the side events after scrubbing out of Grand Prix atlanta in 1998. That tournment was important though, because I met a dealer there and came home and started selling cards on eBay. I think from that point on, I've been more involved in the financial scene of MTG more than playing the game.
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Out of the blackness and stench of the engulfing swamp emerged a shimmering figure. Only the splattered armor and ichor-stained sword hinted at the unfathomable evil the knight had just laid waste.
A friend of mine, who used to be my neighbor, visited and brought a couple decks with him. I was 18 or so at the time. He told me to drop by his place, since he lived near the store (the only one in the country at the time, I believe) and he would tell me what to buy and stuff. So, a week or two later, I went to his house, and he showed me a poster in his room: an over-sized Child of Gaea! He didn't own the card though. At the store, when I cracked my first Urza's Saga Tournament Pack, guess who was in it? My friend made such a hype about it that I absolutely fell in love with the card and its color. You can see it in my avatar.
The store I mentioned was a bit far from where I lived, so for a long time I only played casually with my brother with the cards we got that time, from Urza's Saga and Fifth Edition. Some time later, another neighbor showed with a bin full of cards (I don't remember how he got them, but he didn't play Magic. This guy used to pull all sorts of weird deals with his pals from school, lol ) and he just gave it to us. So we now had cards from Urza's Legacy to Odyssey. A few years later, due to college, girlfriend, first jobs, etc., I entered a hiatus. After a while, I went to that store (the only one I knew of) but it had closed, and since I had lost track of my friend, I didn't know where to get Magic cards.
Around 2006, I finally found a store in Google, since it was affiliated to the DCI, and I went to buy some Ravnica cards. I really loved it, but that year I got married, and between the wedding plans and the fact that I didn't have a playgroup and saw my brother less often, I didn't play much. Three years later, Alara block was already in Standard and I went back to the strore, and got some product. I got my wife to play (kinda') and we started getting together with my brother, and after some time with his girlfriend, to play, and still do.
In the mean time, my planeswalker spark had ignited so I started following spoilers here on Sally (I found the forums through the Cranial Insertion links in MagicCards.info). A couple of months later, I got an MTGO account, and I've been playing actively since; Casual, that is.
Hey, Serrated Arrows were great in my white weenie deck against my brother's Black Knights and Order of the Ebon Hands.
EDH:
UBR Sedris, the Traitor King
BGW Karador, Ghost Chieftain
RG Radha, Heir to Keld
Also had a deck that combo'd out with a mystic snake, sunken hope, arcane laboratory
Hero of the Planes Studio.
Standard:
Caw-Blade - Record: 31-9-3 (Retired)
Jund - Record: 4-1-1
Legacy:
Combo Elves - Record: 5-5
Trade Thread
My first product was a Ice Age tournament starter deck. I started when Alliances was out though since I remember the boosters were at the checkout counter.
Everyone at my middle school was playing with janky 5-color decks once pogs got banned. Who knew I'd still be playing 15 years later!?
My 2 pyroclasms were king, since no one knew creatures healed up at the end of turns. COPs were hated as well.
My first rares were Mountain Titan and Veldt.
B Lover Since '09 ~
Standard:
meh.
Modern:
Urzatron GR
Vintage:
Contol-Slaver UBR
EDH:
Drana B
Jhoira UR
Savra BG
Turned into:
Adun Oakenshield BGR
Sharuum BUW
Turned into:
Memnarch U
KiKi-Jiki R
Turned into:
Godo R
Turned into:
Aurelia RW
The Mimeoplasm UBG
Rasputin Dreamweaver UW
Turned into:
Geist of Saint Traft -French 1v1 UW
Nekusar UBR
Oh man, I had a dozen or so dual lands back in the day. Had no idea how valuable they'd become. I didn't really even recognize how useful they were in a deck at the time! I ended up selling almost all my cards (except a box that got separated from the rest somehow) for like $50 the first time I got out of the game around the time of Visions.
I started during Tempest. I haven't bought cards from every new set since then. I just update my decks here and there when better stuff comes out.
http://forums.mtgsalvation.com/showthread.php?t=353661
Later, a friend tried to get me into the game around around the end of 2008, which would have been around when the Alara block started. That was around the time I stopped playing Yugioh again, and I didn't want to start playing another card game after quitting another.
Eventually, around the end of 2009, a little after Zendikar came out, two friends that I had been playing Yugioh with when we all started that got into Magic. It was then when I figured I would give Magic a shot, which I did. The two of them, my brother, and I all took turns using their decks, which was a WB vampire deck and a BG deck with elves, skeletons, and zombies. The decks were mostly made from M10 and Zendikar intro packs. After playing with those, I wanted to make some derpy BR vampire and dragon deck, and my brother wanted to make a UR burn deck. Yeah, we all kind of sucked for a while.
tl;dr: I started a little after Zendikar came out. Yeah, that's pretty late compared to most people here.
WU Near-Death Experience (Casual multiplayer)
B Vintage Illegal Discard (When I want to be a jerk)
GW Allies (Casual)
URG Defenders (Crappy Standard)
RWU Affinity (Modern)
RGW Mayael the Anima
B Drana, Kalastria Bloodchief
BG Vhati il-Dal
BR Bladewing the Risen
GU Edric, Spymaster of Trest
WU Bruna, Light of Alabaster
RWU Zedruu the Greathearted
I enjoy tournaments and booster drafts, but mostly I have had a steady playgroup for casual multiplayer magic. Our weekly games of five points, teams of two, and chaos (no EDH though) are always fun and feature tons of creative and fun decks. We've been playing every week for over a dozen years!
Random amusing anecdote: my very first sanctioned match of tournament magic was against the Great One himself, Bob Maher, at a local card shop during the time when he was the star local player but hadn't yet won Pro Tour Chicago. It was extended format, and he was playing High Tide. I was playing Pouncing Jaguar + Might of Oaks. He won.
Yeah, so much for that. It hasn't been easy after that.
Right between the two releases of M10 and ZEN.
My first pack was Fallen Empires. I got Vodalian Knight and Rainbow Vale. I thought the Thallid was the coolest card in the pack. Then I went and got one pack each of Revised ($2.50), The Dark ($8), and Legends ($35).
My first decks were illegal 40 card abominations that tried to abuse Plague Rats, a deck of Hymn to Tourachs and Hypnotic Specters, and Channel/Fireball spiced with Lightning Bolts. My first game at a card shop was Ante with the Plague Rats deck. I flipped Demonic Attorney. I lost bad. The guy took pity on me and let me keep my card.
My first legal deck was five colors with a hundred or so cards. That didn't last long.
My first "decent" legal deck was mono blue steal and copy with Control Magic, Steal Artifact, Clone and Vesuvan Doppelganger. I added red to steal land (Conquer) and black to steal life (Touch of Death). Fellwar Stone added flavor and color fixing.
My first net-deck was Necropotence.
My first "good" original deck was Hippygeddon. I took the creatures and hand disruption from the Necro deck and mixed it with the Land Tax / Armaggedon combo from Erhnamgeddon. I played against Henry Stern in a tournament and he commented that the only real weakness was the mana base (I was forced to use City of Brass in Type 2 at the time). After some changes the deck went on to win many 1.5 tournaments until they scrapped the format for what we now know as Legacy.
My first piece of Power was an Alpha Mox Ruby won at auction for about $30. Alphas were considered marked cards at the time and the DCI had a "de-sleeving" rule that meant your opponent could disqualify you at any time just for having Alphas in your deck. I sold it for $54. Doh!
My friend Jake had all the luck early on, cracking a Baron Sengir, Crimson Hellkite and Hammer of Bogardan out of packs. Man, those were gamebreakers back in the day.
oh and btw i started just before conflux.
My first tournament deck was the Stronghold pre-constructed deck "Miagrane" with added Hymn to Tourach s. I lost BAD. Other than pre-releases, I stayed away from tournaments except a type 1 I entered right after Mirrodin came out. I made a B/W Scepter Chant deck that took EVERYONE by surprise. I placed 2nd out of maybe 30 ppl.
I got out of the Navy right after Exodus and was broke so I quit buying new stuff and introduced my friends to the game back home. I got financially stable enough to start buying new cards right after Mercadian Masques came out and went strong through Lorawyn when I moved cross country to TX. I didn't know anyone so my cards were in storage till I found my current group. I started buying again at Shards of Alara and still going strong.
I collect pre-release Stone-Tongue Basilisk
A couple years later, my brother shows up at my house with a pile of cards. A deck and a small collection of unlimited, revised, antiquities, arabian nights and legends cards. He said "here's your deck, here's your starting collection, I'm teaching you how to play."
Legends had been out for maybe 2 weeks at that time, and was already sold out at most places and I was paying $15 a pack for it at a local comic convention.
I miss those days, back when people couldn't just go to the internet to copy the latest deck. Granted, the Magic Dojo came about soon after....
The land balance in these decks was aweful. I had 2 white knights, but only 2 plains, and I finally had to trade someone for lands because I never bought enough Revised to get a real deck going.
Some of my first cards were a Fork that everyone wanted to trade for. A Dwarven Weaponsmith, Phantasmal Forces which I always liked to band with my Sea Monster. A Craw Wurm of course, and one of my "better" cards Celestial Prism.
Fallen Empires hit the shelves hard after that and my senior year of HS the local hobby shop where we bought our cards had FE 5 for $2. Revised packs were over $3 so who would buy them when you could get Fallen Empires. Once I opened enough FE to get a full set, things got worse as I opened more and more trying to get a Hand of Justice and complete my set.
I split my collection in 3's going into the Black Summer and got out until my friend called me towards the end of my freshman year of college.. "hey have you ever heard of this game called MTG?" Uh ya. "can you teach me how to play".
Apparently he was working in a wearhouse that took returns off all the Battlemage(?) games that had a 4th Ed booster in them. I bought a Mirage Starter a 4th Starter and a couple packs of Visions and got back in.
I went to my first PTQ during this era having got myself a DCI Legend membership. I played a version of Mark Justices' BR aggro deck and sent my buddy in with a mono green stompy deck. He did better than me, but those decks were pretty bad.
I played my first real competitive decks in the side events after scrubbing out of Grand Prix atlanta in 1998. That tournment was important though, because I met a dealer there and came home and started selling cards on eBay. I think from that point on, I've been more involved in the financial scene of MTG more than playing the game.
The store I mentioned was a bit far from where I lived, so for a long time I only played casually with my brother with the cards we got that time, from Urza's Saga and Fifth Edition. Some time later, another neighbor showed with a bin full of cards (I don't remember how he got them, but he didn't play Magic. This guy used to pull all sorts of weird deals with his pals from school, lol ) and he just gave it to us. So we now had cards from Urza's Legacy to Odyssey. A few years later, due to college, girlfriend, first jobs, etc., I entered a hiatus. After a while, I went to that store (the only one I knew of) but it had closed, and since I had lost track of my friend, I didn't know where to get Magic cards.
Around 2006, I finally found a store in Google, since it was affiliated to the DCI, and I went to buy some Ravnica cards. I really loved it, but that year I got married, and between the wedding plans and the fact that I didn't have a playgroup and saw my brother less often, I didn't play much. Three years later, Alara block was already in Standard and I went back to the strore, and got some product. I got my wife to play (kinda') and we started getting together with my brother, and after some time with his girlfriend, to play, and still do.
In the mean time, my planeswalker spark had ignited so I started following spoilers here on Sally (I found the forums through the Cranial Insertion links in MagicCards.info). A couple of months later, I got an MTGO account, and I've been playing actively since; Casual, that is.
My YouTube Channel