Rocky Mountain Yetis

I often think back to my early days playing Magic, and the mystery that those cards held for me. I’ve now been playing Old School longer than I played the first time around. But those first memories have stuck with me after all these years. This is my origin story. Back in those days, I would ride my bicycle through the creek in the woods where everything smelled of wet earth. I’d watch the fireflies flick through the open fields of grass. I hung out with my friends eating ice cream sandwiches in the summer heat, sitting on pavement because we didn’t have anywhere else to be. And it was on one of those aimless, childhood days when I was introduced to the card game Magic: The Gathering.

Mysterious Symbols

I saw my first cards on the bus ride. It was August of 1995. I had just started going back to school. The bus route was new. It took me to neighborhoods I had never seen. I didn’t have a favorite seat, or regular friends that I always sat with. I was just a kid going to school. 

One day, I sat next to one of my friends. Out of his backpack, he pulled a stack of pictures. Each had a tantalizing image on a piece of cardboard. They held otherworldly creatures, and humans manipulating the world around them. I was fascinated, but it just seemed like another new toy that someone had brought on the bus. But it would become more than that. Much more.

I remember a few cards distinctly, even 30 years later. I remember Krovikan sorcerer. I wanted to learn how he did that trick with his hands. He bent this glowing blue light around his head. That seems like something fun to do. I saw a Johtull Wurm. Was this a really ancient creature that hunters had fought in the ice age? It lived along wooly mammoths and dinosaurs? I wouldn’t want to encounter one of those walking on a snowy path. It seemed to be able to take on a whole troop of humans at once. I don’t remember the rest, but in the weeks that followed, I would see gazes of pain where people cut slits around their eyeballs to access otherworldly powers. I was introduced to an invisible, floating wall outlined in pinpoints of light, flying over a castle skyline. Lava tubes penetrated the earth and seemed to reach down to tap into some unknown power.

In the beginning, there was so much I didn’t understand. There were so many cards I didn’t know. I barely had a grasp of the rules. But I had fun. It was Magic as Garfield intended it. And through it, I met some of my best friends that I am still friends with today. Over the years, those friendships evolved from Magic to chess, to movies and girls, to bachelor parties and having kids. Much of that I owe to discovering Magic: The Gathering in 1995. 

Initiation

My friend offered to teach me. I was ho-hum at first, but it seemed as good a way as any to hang out with a friend. He had opened a coveted unlimited icy manipulator in a pack, and traded it for a stack of revised black cards. That was probably a ripoff at the time, but it opened a whole world for the two of us. He might have had 200 cards but it seemed like his collection was endless.

He painstakingly explained the rules to me. I bumbled through phases, forgetting untap steps and trying to figure out attacking and blocking. Every now and then a new card would come out and rock my socks. Hypnotic specters and howl from beyond made appearances as he notched yet another win. The card I feared most was his rare, and water-damaged, royal assassin. He’d tap it on his turn and kill anything he wanted. Oh to be an assassin. 

We played mirror matches all Fall on the sidewalk. The days kept getting shorter. Each of us took a stack of black cards from his collection for our deck. He hoarded the pestilences for his cleverly named “Pestilence deck”. He played the enchantment, then killed all my creatures. Sometimes we remembered it died at the end of turn, but sometimes not. We turned all manner of dark minions sideways like lost souls, slugs, pit scorpions, erg raiders, ogres, and rats. He had a shimian night stalker that always seemed unfairly bigger than anything I could summon. Drudge skeletons were treasured and could stop anything. It took a while before we learned you couldn’t just pull them out of the graveyard by tapping a swamp. Revised and Fallen Empires were plentiful, so we played with every flavor of thrull. We had a Hymn to Tourach, but it didn’t seem very good since you couldn’t attack with it.

I didn’t fully know the rules, but I decided I needed my own cards. He had all the pestilences after all. I wanted my own collection so I could keep up. I talked my parents into driving me to a store my friend told me about, Maverick’s in Cincinnati, OH. I purchased my own starter pack of Fourth Edition for $9.99. I had decided I wanted to play blue, so my friend gifted me an Italian Devouring Deep. I had no idea what it did. I couldn’t read it but it looked intimidating. It took years before I learned the name of the card. 

I forked over my 10 dollars in cash and received one pristine brown box of cards wrapped in clear cellophane. I marveled at the display case. It had single cards many times more expensive than my starter pack. I recall wondering at Ring of Maruf and Pyramids. Would I own those one day? On the drive home, I excitedly opened my pack. I had to read every card. Twice. They came in so many variations! I had seen the 5 dots on the back of the cards and knew about the five colors, but I’d never seen more than a few white or red cards. This was more blue cards than I had imagined.

I thumbed through my stack of crisp cardboard and remember a few that looked good. I had an ironroot treefolk that looked intimidating. The land leeches were huge. Imagine getting one of those stuck on you. I found odd white cards like pikeman and amrou kithkin. I didn’t get what these tiny banding creatures were attempting to do. I still don’t understand white. I found a scary looking sengir vampire and a powerful-looking junun efreet with his arm on fire. That looked cool, but I was playing blue, remember? As I searched through my stack, I found this floating mouth looming over a house. I looked down at the stats. 10/10! Are you serious? That’s way bigger than anything I even knew existed. I’d hit the jackpot! I was definitely playing this guy. There was something about having to sacrifice islands when he attacks. Hmm. Well I only had 5 islands. That’ll be hard. But looking deeper I found a phantasmal terrain and a twiddle. That will help me untap him and get more islands. Great! 

I remember opening a crusade and seeing the endless parade of knights in the Mark Poole art. It looked so cool, but again, it couldn’t attack so what use was it? I traded it to my friend for odds and ends.

The Brotherhood

That night I went over to my friends to build my own deck. I quickly realized the dozen or so blue cards and 5 islands wasn’t enough for a blue deck. I was disappointed. He said I would have to add another color. He offered to trade me his Norritt for untapping my leviathan. I begrudgingly agreed to add black to my blue deck that night. I then played that blue/black monstrosity for most of the following year. It grew in size to 200 cards, and I never really had enough lands to cast the cards in it. So what.

I took my cards to school and convinced some other friends to get cards too so that we could play together. One friend opened his first pack and got a lightning bolt. Three damage to any target! For one mana! We started so many games with one player at 17 and immediately behind. Lol. He opened a bog imp with those muck-crusted claws. I saw his burrowing and I pondered hard how I could use this. What were other people playing that they wanted this card? I knew that it had to serve a purpose. I kept trying to figure out what it was. I met other friends that already had cards. One showed me his ominous Aladdin’s ring. That was so much power that could fit on one person’s finger. Soon after, I taught my brother to play so our collection could grow even more. 

We took to jamming games at school and in the evenings. I played my gaseous form on a friend’s carnivorous plant. He ridiculed me for making it immune to being killed. In these long games, my deck would eventually draw down to my phantom monster or junun efreet to attack through the sky and finally end a game. We had games with 20+ creatures on each side and nobody could break through at all. We loved it. 

I tried to get my hands on as many cards as I could. I poured through 5-cent common stacks for cards. I spent every dollar I had on me. It wasn’t a lot. I hated using my scarce funds to buy basic lands, so I never had enough mana. Instead I bought cards from a sticker vending machine for a quarter, and got my first card from The Dark, fissure. I wasn’t using that. It was red. I was a blue and black mage.

My blue-black monstrosity continued to grow full of good cards, and bad cards. Eventually, I decided I had gathered enough cards that it was time to take some out. I wanted to see my favorite cards more often. I sat down one evening after school, and sorted out the cards that looked super strong. Power leak and erosion got moved to the extras pile. Word of binding stayed in of course. I realized the pile of strong black cards was a lot bigger than the pile of strong blue cards. I had gotten a taste of winning and I wanted to beat my friends, so I made the eventful decision to turn away from my blue spells. I’d focus solely on the promising power of death and destruction. I slotted in the bombs from my collection like lord of the pit and cosmic horror. Bad moon found a home. Drain life and pestilence were in. I’d gotten the shimian nightstalker and giant slug from my friend and added them to my unstoppable pile. I’d go on to get not one, but two demonic tutors and add them to my deck. I started beating friends with my clearly superior cards and I started to look for more competition.

The Elders 

I heard rumors about a store where kids got together to play. I wanted to beat them too. I got my parents to drive me there one evening with my buddy. I thought they’d be even easier to beat than my friends. I was way off. I recall playing against juggernaut and vexing arcanix. Those older kids killed me so fast. I couldn’t even do anything against their decks.

I got called out for cheating one game. I had just cast my second demonic tutor. My opponent tried to explain to me that there was a restricted list. I’d never heard of such a thing. It sounded preposterous. Why couldn’t I play my cards that I’d collected? However, when he realized I was searching for a black knight, he let it go. I barely had any swamps so it was about the only thing I could cast. I didn’t win that game.

That night I played against a memorable deck with sinkhole, icestorm, black vise, and underworld dreams. I hadn’t seen any of those cards before. I was enthralled.

I played against a deck with land tax and land’s edge that seemed so novel. I still love seeing that deck show up today, 20 years later.

At the peak of that night, I faced off against one of the older kids there. I played my erg raiders and drudge skeletons. He played shivan dragon, juzam djinn, and vesuvan doppleganger. Oh my the power he had. I couldn’t stop one of those summons, let alone multiples. He quickly stomped me. 

I was fascinated by what I’d seen. I went back the following weeks just to learn about what cards were out there. I was always outmatched. But I didn’t care. I wanted to get a taste of what they had. I tried to trade with them and level up my deck to compete. I remember trading for a taniwha and a teferei’s isle for my phasing deck. I had to give up one of my few legends cards – an Italian acid rain. I got ripped off at the time. It’s funny to see what those prices have done over 30 years. It turns out I did okay after all.

Exodus

As the seasons came and went, more of my friends stopped playing the game. My friend who taught me the game became my only competition once again. Our decks got more and more tuned for each other’s deck. He acquired all the red cards and built an unstoppable burn deck. I pivoted back to blue and filled mine with counterspells. I wielded cards like power sink, spell blast, and mist folk. I won with the huge leviathan. It was too big to be disintegrated. But he matched me. He added counterspells and flash floods of his own. I was shook. How dare he adopt my blue magics. So I scoured the local card shop and added red cards of my own, dropping my beloved leviathan. Thus began my favorite era of Magic. We slung fire and water at each other round after round. Games went by for 10 or 20 turns just playing a land and saying “go”. Eventually, they devolved into a fury of burn spells, counter spells, and counter counter spells. Either one player emerged victorious, or the following turn the other one untapped and knocked out his depleted opponent. 

My friend shifted from sorceries to instant lightning bolts and incinerates. I followed in kind. We added arcane denials when alliances hit the shelves. Our competition escalated each time we played, each of us trying to get an edge.

Mirage came out and we added a few cards to our burn decks. Kaervek’s torch and volcanic geyser entered the fray. Ventifact bottle charged our sorceries to the max. But mostly we played the same cards and same decks. We didn’t buy much Visions. We bought even less Weatherlight. Magic was dying. Then Tempest came out. I went with my friend to buy as much as we could. I’d been reading the spoilers for weeks and this set had everything. I wanted to have all the cards for once. I spent $40 to buy 10 packs. I ripped open my packs and discovered more of the world of Rath than I had ever known of Dominaria. I was finally getting the hang of this game. 

Shortly thereafter, my buddy quit Magic for girls and sports. He sold all his cards. I kept playing my brother for hours at home. But eventually we played less and less. Other things in life came to the forefront. I still saw my friends. We just did other things. Those other things made my life fuller too. Our friendships blossomed from just opponents for a game to having endless inside jokes and deep conversations about all of life. Occasionally I’d think back about Magic and those younger days and what fun it had been. I figured that chapter was closed permanently. It had been a good one. That was okay.

Then, years and literally decades later, I read on the internet that people had started playing Magic again with only old cards, like really old cards. And I learned that there was a local chapter not that far from me. I thought I’d check it out. And that is a tale for another day.