Magic:The Gathering is one of the largest gaming platforms out there. I hope to give you some insight to this tremendously popular game. Over serveral articles I will be exploring the diffrent aspects to this game. So read on fellow gamer! Magic: The Gathering what can be said about this game? When it comes down to it, it’s just a complicated card game, just as easily played with a deck of Hoyle cards? Well aficionados of the game (me included) would argue fiercely with that assessment. There is much more to this game than meets the eye. There are subtle nuisances that can go unnoticed if you’ve never played.



So right now you’re sitting in your chair wondering what am I blathering on about. Well unless you’ve lived the last 5 years under a rock, you should know what Magic: The Gathering is. (Referred to as MTG henceforth)



For those of you who don’t know what it MTG is, I’ll explain a little bit about it. The premise behind the game is simple. You take the role of a mage, fighting in a spell battle against another mage. You summon creatures, hurl spells, and draw upon the land for your mana. Mana provides the ability to cast these spells. There are five different types mana, mountains, forests, swamps, plains and islands. Each different type of mana casts different types of spells. You must reduce your opponent from 20 hit points to 0.



I’ve been playing MTG since about mid 1995. I was walking to a class one day, and a friend came running up and said look at this man, these things are so cool. For the next few weeks, we spent every waking moment learning how to play this game.



At the time the game lacked most of the finesse it has now. The best strategy was to pound the other guy with as many creatures as you could. That would always win the game. During this time my friend and I were the only two people playing this game in our school. Tournaments were non-existent, and the current.
pro-tour was just a dream in yo mama’s eye. There was only one place in town we could buy the cards, and we felt very much alone in the big, big world.



Lets jump forward in history in order to better understand the early days. Right now the MTG pro-tour is bigger than ever. They hold tournaments in most large cities, and the prizes have grown thousands of dollars. One could, and does make a living doing something that started as merely a simple game. You can turn to ESPN and find them covering the MTG tournaments. How cool is that? It’s now a high profile sport.



So from a small home grown game to a huge force in the gaming industry, Magic: The Gathering is truly a remarkable thing. It is a game that requires skill, finesse, and intelligence. It’s a very enjoyable game, and one I encourage everyone to try.