The year was 1994, it might even have been 1995. A young boy stood with his mother inside a baseball card store located behind the handball court of a middle school the boy would someday recall fondly, where the world smelled like sneaker-stained tile floors even where there was carpet. In this baseball card shop, the boy was given a pack of Legends from a game called Magic. Everyone at school was playing it, and with Power Rangers trading cards on their way out the door they came in, a new fad emerged in a tiny little corner so far from Seattle no one would have guessed it would surface. Since the boy was too short to reach the counter, his mother picked out the pack of cards. Opening it with a deftness learned from weeks of hunting for Green Ranger and Dragonzord trading cards, the boy revealed, among other cards lost to time, The Bee Lady, better known as Xira Arien, and better pronounced as Eckseera Aireien.
The years passed swiftly and the cards changed just so. Allowances were exchanged for cards, soft paper for stiff paper, and though the boy would not learn to actually play the game until 1996, he collected the cards nonetheless drawn into the fantasy pictures and hilariously mispronouncable names. The years of Magic were not a smooth line, but dotted with lapses from The Dark to Mirage, Mercadian Masques to Onslaught, and Mirrodin to Champions of Kamigawa. What man can stay so laser-focused on a dreamworld of fantasy cards and mystic battle without rest? And yet with the summer in apex, still this man, no longer a boy and not the hero he dreamt of being, collects Magic cards, wondering during the quietest evening hours just what of this game makes it so fun.
I have played Magic for a while, rarely attend tournaments, and have a fondness for the game despite being wickedly old and bad at it. My AIM is SonsOfAethel if you want to beat me up on Apprentice or trade cards with an intensity usually reserved for Greek battle tactics.
The years passed swiftly and the cards changed just so. Allowances were exchanged for cards, soft paper for stiff paper, and though the boy would not learn to actually play the game until 1996, he collected the cards nonetheless drawn into the fantasy pictures and hilariously mispronouncable names. The years of Magic were not a smooth line, but dotted with lapses from The Dark to Mirage, Mercadian Masques to Onslaught, and Mirrodin to Champions of Kamigawa. What man can stay so laser-focused on a dreamworld of fantasy cards and mystic battle without rest? And yet with the summer in apex, still this man, no longer a boy and not the hero he dreamt of being, collects Magic cards, wondering during the quietest evening hours just what of this game makes it so fun.
I have played Magic for a while, rarely attend tournaments, and have a fondness for the game despite being wickedly old and bad at it. My AIM is SonsOfAethel if you want to beat me up on Apprentice or trade cards with an intensity usually reserved for Greek battle tactics.
Have an online hug.