So You're intrested in magic?

Hey everyone itl. I've been getting some requests for an intro into magic for everyone. So without further ado, here it is!

Do you want to play Magic? Or maybe you've seen some friends play or you started reading this blog and it seemed like a fun game. Well I'm here to give you all the information you want to know about Magic so you can decide if it's something you would be interested in.

Magic the Gathering was created by Wizards of the Coast which is a subsidiary of Hasbro. It is one of the original TCG or trading card games, only preceded by baseball cards. Yu-Gi-Oh! and Pokemon all came after this game. Magic started in 1993 and is doing better than ever now with a huge amount of players world wide as well as a great variety of merchandise and a thriving secondary economy that has to do with the sale of cards that is not directly controlled by Wizards..

Magic the Gathering puts every player in the role of a "Planeswalker" which is an elite spell caster who has the ability to travel between universes (Planes) and use spells and the 5 colors of mana from across the multiverse to defeat powerful foes. Sounds kinda role play right? Well that's just the lore behind the cards/game, which I enjoy a lot. But If you just want a fun, strategic, and challenging game without immersing yourself, Magic still has tons of things to be interested in. The immersion just adds a fun sense of flavor to the game.

The game is played by 2 or more players who start out with 20 life. The object of the game is simply to reduce you opponent to 0 life or defeat them in one of the other possible ways. Magic is always changing and has TONS of formats and game types to fit everyone's play-style. There are formats that use the newest cards, as well as some that use old cards, and even a format that use everything ever printed ever. No banned cards. Of course game type wise you have team games such as two headed giant, Emperor, and many other game types that game be played with 2 people. I've even seen single player games that involve trying to survive a zombie horde.

Now that I got the basic concept and story behind Magic out of the way I can start talking about how to get started in Magic. The best thing to do is see if any of your friends play, or are willing to try Magic with you. Because the fact of the matter is that if you decide to start and play alone you will more than likely find it boring and won't continue. Besides, it is SOOOO much more fun learning a new game with all your friends than struggling through by yourself.

 Magic is VERY beginner friendly, so once you get a friend or two on-board head down to Walmart or Target and get a "Intro deck" which is a Prebuilt deck and contains a booster pack and an invaluable rules sheet that has great pictures that show you the basics.  Once you have this it still might be hard to completely understand how to play so use other resources like Youtube or Google. After awhile you may get sick of your deck and want to build your own deck. I recommend a fat-pack which you can get at walmart or Target and it contains a awesome die, tons of lands, and 9 booster packs. It is more expensive than the "deck builder kit" but I have not purchased a Deck builder kit so I can't really recommend one.

One thing to know about Magic is that it is a hobby, and with every hobby it requires some time and money. If you don' t feel comfortable about putting a lot of money into a card or something, don't buy it. You can have a great time with Magic at a casual level with your friends and you won't have to spend more than $20. But if you want to get more competitive more money is probably going to be required if you want to place well.

Our last thing is if you want to get a little more competitive. Every Friday night local stores(usually comic stores) have an event called "Friday Night Magic" which is a tournament for all Magic players in the area. FNM is a very relaxed place, and while it is more competitive there is nothing at stake for losing and the main purpose of FNM is purely to have fun and become a better Magic player. From there you may start to want to get into even more competitive events such as large scale tournaments that can have an upwards of 500 people! Well you can find those as well as local shops that support FNM using Wizards of the Coast's "event locator" on their Magic website.

 Thanks for reading guys, I hope I gave a bit of insight. Tomorrow is draft Tuesday and I plan to do a draft on cockatrice starting at 6:30 P.M. Central. If anyone new or who wants to learn is available then feel free to come! I'll have someone who is dedicated to teaching new players at the draft. If you don't have Cockatrice you can download it here. "http://cockatrice.de/".  Cockatrice is a free program that allows people to play magic on their computer. I'll make an update on the blog around 5-6 P.M. tomorrow that lists the room name as well as the password to get in. If you have any questions at all please ask! I hope you guys have a great rest of the week and good luck to all of you.