In the fine tradition of internet writers everywhere, I am going to share my Magic story. Any resemblance to your Magic story is strictly coincidental.

When I was younger I went to High School, but did not play Magic... It wasn't invented yet. I went to College and didn't play Magic... It still wasn't invented yet, but I did know some folks who were playing this new thing called D&D - I tried it a couple of times, but just couldn't get into it. I also got to take a Science Fiction course to finish out my English requirement... Very nice.

Went to graduate school and didn't play Magic... It still wasn't invented, but I did find a cool new computer game called Wizardry. Back then, there was only Wizardry... No Wizardry I, II, or such. If Wizardry wasn't the first computer RPG with graphics, it was darn close - and I loved it. I'm still trying to track down a PC version so I can relive some of my youth. I also subscribed to two Science Fiction and Fantasy short story magazines, and would devour them on weekends for a study break.

I finished graduate school, found a job, found a woman who would have me, got married, and fathered a child... Magic still hadn't been invented. The year my second child was born, Magic WAS invented, but I didn't hear about it. My third child was born around the time of Alliances, and my life became utter chaos...I still hadn't heard about Magic, but I think that I might have noticed some packs of cards in the local bookstore on my way to the SF/F section.

Around the time that Visions was released, life was calming ever so slightly and I was in desperate need of a new hobby. Something I could do with, or at least around, small children without fearing for their safety. I had always liked collecting things, but sports cards held no interest for me and works of art were plain old too expensive... I have three kids to feed, clothe, and send to college.

So I looked and I looked until one day I noticed a short article in US News & World Report about Magic a collectable card game. They even told how the price of one particularly rare card, the Black Lotus, had increased in value to over $100 just since 1993!

All right, I had found my hobby... Collecting cards wasn't going to be dangerous to my children, the fantasy artwork sounded like fun, and clearly card collecting wasn't going to cost too much. (I got the first two right anyway... I'm still coming to terms with that expense thing.) So I set out to find some cards and start my collection.

Some of the details are a bit fuzzy, but some time between the release of Weatherlight and Tempest I started buying packs of cards. One day I happened on a store with a Magic the Gathering sign in the window (Dragon's Den, Sioux Falls, SD) and went in to find out what was up.

The proprietor was nice and went about explaining the game to me. I think he gave me a funny look when I said that I really didn't want to play; I just wanted to collect the cards for the pretty pictures. (Yeah, sure... I still had visions of buying cards that would turn into the next Black Lotus... It would take me several months to realize that Black Lotus-type price increases would never, ever happen again.) I spent about $25 on some packs (and an issue of Scrye, I think) before I left and wondered how I was ever going to explain spending that kind of money on some cards to my wife. I decided not to, but that's another story.

A few days later I had purchased some packs from the local bookstore, a plastic box to hold my newfound treasures, and a dozen nine-pocket pages to organize my collection (yes, I actually believed that twelve pages was going to be enough). I had not yet opened any of these packs! It was now time to open some of my packs. The first pack I opened was from Alliances and contained an ARTIFACT... A Mystic Compass - surely a rare and valuable card! After all, in fantasy novels artifacts are always rare and sought after. I looked carefully in my Scrye price guide and found that it was an uncommon, worth only about $1.00...hrrummph! How could you have an uncommon artifact!? Indeed!

Undeterred, I opened the rest of my precious packs of cards over the following week. My collection started to grow. It started to dawn on me how many packs of cards I was going to have to open to complete any of the sets I was working on. (I think I started with Alliances, Weatherlight, 4th Edition, and Chronicles.)

At this point I could have stopped. I even thought about stopping. It would have saved me a lot of money. It would have left me some time to focus on my career. But I didn't stop. I looked in the Scrye and noticed that there were stores that sold full boxes of cards over the internet at a substantial discount to retail.

Okay, says I, I'll spend a couple of hundred dollars to get boxes of Alliances, 4th Edition, and Chronicles, make substantial progress on my collection, and have some cards to trade for what I didn't open. After that I was convinced that the worst of the spending would be over and I'd only need to buy a few packs a month.

Two boxes each of Alliances, 4th edition, and Chronicles later I didn't have a full set of any of them. But, I did have some pretty good progress. I figured it was time to go buy some singles. I bought a few... I got all but one of my missing Chronicles cards that first outing and found out that, gasp, the storeowner allowed trading in his store! How cool was that!?

Two weeks later I was back with my trade stock and a list of cards that I was looking for. By this time I had started working on Weatherlight and had my second Thundermare among my trading stock. A lot of the rare cards I was trading for were crap rares, and the kid I traded the Thundermare to couldn't believe I would part with it for five chaff rares that he couldn't trade for uncommons with anyone else. He asked me two or three times if I wanted to go through with the trade...Hey, I was getting five or six cards for one card, I figured I was doing okay. Little did I know.

I continued buying boxes (so much for a few packs per month) and would manage a trading trip every four to six weeks for the next few months. It took a while for me to realize that not all rare cards were created equal. I started to study up on the game so I could have some idea of which cards were valuable and which weren't. I still didn't intend to play; I just wanted to improve my trading skill.

Somewhere between Weatherlight and Tempest, I discovered the Dojo. How cool it was to be able to learn about my discovery from folks who were already seasoned veterans.

It was my second or third visit to the Dojo when I saw my first ever "Magic is Dying" article. Yes, Tempest was coming and would destroy the game forever. The old players were sick of buying cards and were bailing out big time. In six months there would be no one left to play.

Oh NO! How could they?! How could they let this new game that I had only just discovered die before I even had a chance to get to enjoy it?! I didn't know who they were, but I was very, very pissed at them. All of them.

Of course as we all now know the sky did not fall. Magic has continued to grow and prosper. There are now so many of us firmly addicted that Magic will not die. At least not any time soon.

Notice anything missing so far?

There is no other person involved yet. I didn't get introduced to Magic by anyone else. I didn't find anyone in my town to play with, or against, until around Urza's Saga. For the first several months my social interaction surrounding Magic involved sporadic trading trips and reading on-line articles and trying to teach my then 7 year old daughter how to play Portal.

There is also no real mention of playing the game. I came to this game as a card collector, not as a gamer...but that was about to change.

Around the time of Stronghold, the Dragon's Den storeowner and some of the players ganged up on me and talked me into trying an actual game. At that time, the storeowner kept some all-common decks around for teaching newbies. (A great idea which I now practice.) He pulled a couple of these decks out and proceeded to beat me three games straight - two with one deck, then we traded and he beat me again with the deck I had been playing. Despite being smacked around, I knew then that I had to build my own deck and play some more.

This is the end of anything resembling sanity surrounding my involvement with Magic. (Okay, not really... Anything resembling sanity left when I ordered my second box of Alliances, since it was all over at that point. It is just that at the point when I started playing it was no longer enough to have one of each card for my collection... Once I started playing, I needed one copy for my collection and four for deckbuilding, which was really quite insane.)

I built some sort of a green concoction after Stronghold came out. I never actually got to play that deck, and had to rebuild it after Exodus was released. I am proud to say that I actually built a fairly decent Stompy deck and had sense enough to include Wall of Blossoms. I actually won a few games with this deck. What I can't to this day understand is why I didn't have any Verdant Forces after all the boxes of Tempest I opened. Maybe I was unlucky... Maybe I just traded them away to fill out my collection. I just don't know, but I never had a Verdant Force while they were Type II legal. Even today I have only two of them.

At this point I was thoroughly hooked. I kept buying cards and building decks. Every once in a while I would even get to play a game or two. But for the most part, I built decks that never got played, bought cards, and surfed the websites for every scrap of Magic reading I could find.

I also started to participate in the online community in a fairly limited way. I wrote a few things that got posted on the back pages of the Dojo. Nothing spectacular, but you have to start somewhere.

Shortly after Urza's Saga was released, I was thrilled that I would finally be able to sneak off for my first tournament. (Remember those three kids I told you about? They take up a lot of time, and... Oh yeah, I have a job too. Getting the opportunity to spend a day away at a tournament is a huge thrill.) I got to the tournament early, had my Stompy deck as tuned as I could get it and a sideboard ready to go. (Yes, I played green Stompy at the height of red burn's reign.) Unfortunately, only four others showed up so it was a small, unsanctioned tournament. I took second, losing to a nasty red burn deck. (Okay, I'm not sure if it was that nasty of a deck or not, but it beat me and left me refusing to play red until Invasion was released.) Not a bad start to tournament play, I thought.

Also around this time I finally found a play partner...Lou. Only managed to get together for a game every month or two, kids do take a lot of time, but it was nice to play without having to drive the sixty miles to Sioux Falls.

Let's see, that puts us at about the fall of 1998...I've been involved with Magic for about 18 months at this point. Fast forward a year to fall 1999 and my regular reading of the Dojo leads me to a new site, StarCityCCG.com. I'm still reading every word I can find about Magic. A few new writers at a new site means that I have a new stop to make on my lunchtime tour of the web.

I've still been mouthing off on the Dojo from time to time and getting a few things posted on the back pages. But wait, what is this? This new site is holding a submissions contest... Free cards for the best article submitted - hey, I figure I like to write about Magic and here is my chance to get an article posted and maybe get a few cards to boot.

The rest, as they say, is history. I win the weekly contest with my first post. A few weeks later, I win again with my second article. Pete offers me a job as a Feature Writer. I take it on the condition that I only have to write one article every couple of weeks, since I'm not really sure my busy life would allow for even that. Pete says okay.

The rest of my Magic life is well documented in my articles... Most of which are available in the StarCitygames.com archives. (Or will be once we get them updated - The Ferrett)

So that is my Magical story...I started late in life as a collector because of a magazine article. I was transformed into a player and eventually a writer.

Who'd a thunk it?

Michael Granaas
Michael continues to hold his Hasbro Inc. stock.