Nostalgia

 Nostalgia is a powerful force. I'm 39 years old and I'm still obsessing over things I loved when I was a teenager. Marvel Comics (mostly X-Men), indie comics (primarily the works of James O'Barr, including The Crow), and Magic: The Gathering (especially the sets I played during).

 My original affair with Magic began with Fourth Edition. A friend brought over his mono black deck and taught me the rules. Junún Efreet was the first piece of Magic art that really struck me. Where could I get some of these cards?

 My answer was Sport Stop, a local sporting goods store that stocked Magic alongside their baseball cards. I bought the Fourth Edition Gift Box to start my collection. My neighborhood friends got in on the game, too, and we played kitchen table Magic for the next four years until the release of Sixth Edition. I didn't like the way the cards looked and thought it was lame that the creatures no longer said "summon" on them. The end of high school loomed, and it was time to move on to other hobbies. I boxed up my cards and stored them in a closet with my comics (which I had also stopped buying) and moved on to DVD collecting during my college years.

old school storage

 

 Ten years later, I was recently divorced and looking for something to do. I dusted off my collection and my friends and I played a few games. This group included two of the guys I had played Magic with in high school, as well as two new friends we introduced the game to. Sport Stop had closed its doors the previous fall and a new shop, BC Comix, had just opened a few doors down in the same plaza. While I initially saw this as an opportunity to reignite my comic book hobby, I was instead drawn back into the world of Magic with the release of M10. I participated in my first draft and played FNM for the first time. I was hooked. For the next two years I played constantly until taking another break after the Innistrad prerelease. One highlight of this era for me was a PTQ top 8 finish alongside Bob Huffman, owner of BC. There were four Tempered Steel decks in that Top 8 (including Bob's) while I was an outlier playing Goblins (Lightning Bolt, Goblin Grenade and Goblin Guide were all legal in standard at the time- how could I NOT play Goblins? I'm sure I'll write more in a future post about my love for red cards).

 In 2014 I was the public librarian in Montrose, Michigan, and a kid walked in with some Magic cards and asked me if I knew what they were. It was that time again. I built a $20 red deck (Theros-M15-Khans) which I dubbed the "Montrose Special" and started hosting Thursday after-school tournaments for the kids. It was a great exerience watching another generation learn the game, and one of those kids went on to be involved in the local Legacy scene.

 In 2015 I sold most of my cards and all but one competitive deck, Modern Burn, and headed to the SCG Modern State Championship in Bay City, Michigan for one last hurrah. I walked into the store with 73 cards (I bought 2x Molten Rain at the counter to make 75) and hastily filled out my deck sheet. I then proceeded to take down the event, beating Affinity in the finals to become State Champion. Felt good! I was leaving Magic with a bang, not a whimper. I was 33 at this point and considered myself retired from the game. I did go on to attend a Grand Prix in Detroit later that year, but that's another story.

 A few years passed. I couldn't stay away forever. My girlfriend and I visted Ziege Games, a then-new store near her parent's house, with the innocent intent of buying a board game. There were Magic cards behind the glass at the counter, and I couldn't look away. Before long my girlfriend and I were both playing FNM and we attended every pre-release from Amonkhet until War of the Spark, after which the the store sadly closed.

 Sometime during this period I beacame aware of the Old School format and put together some budget decks (mostly with Revised cards, EC rules) and got in a few games with a friend. It was like stepping into a time machine. ABU cards and expansions before The Dark were in sparse local supply in 1995, so  I wasn't missing anything from my original Magic experience. Don't get me wrong, I'd still love to build some Sweedish legal decks someday (my Goblins deck is almost there) but I also started thinking about the Old School variants that have cropped up, and a possible format that mimics my experience: Revised through Urza's Legacy. The Nostalgia format.

 More to come- John