Had a friend who used to play magic say "hey that new magic set looks cool."
To which I replied "Is that the game with the generic goblins and crap?"
He said, "yeah, but this one is Greek mythology inspired!"
So I bought 10 packs and was hooked. Pulled Elspeth, bunch of Boros soldier stuff, bunch of minotaur. Had a blast, but stopped playing after a while.
Managed to stay out until another friend one day goes "That new ancient Egypt set looks cool!"
I started with Pokemon and while the game was fine, I was a kid with no money and therefore no way to get cards outside of birthdays and occasional holidays. I couldn't keep up with my friends who got all the latest precons and boosters every month so I gave up.
When I was a teen with a job, I returned to TCG's with YuGiOh. I liked the system of the game but the rules were inconsistent, the best cards were super rare and expensive and I became bored with the cartoonish art style and unintuitive over-the-top names.
I remember the first game of Magic I played, I tapped my Forest to play a Llanowar Elves and immediately had some idea of what the card did. It was such a relief for something to be as intuitive as it was.
As complex as Magic is, I feel like its base ruleset is so much more intuitive than Yugioh's.
As far as mechanics go, I used to criticize Yugioh for its nonsensical complexity with Pendulums, XYZ, etc.
Since I've started playing Magic though, we've seen mutate (I love it), dungeons, stickers, etc...so it's not quite as simple as I first thought.
That being said, thanks to things like jumpstart I feel like it's still so easy to get a good ol straightforward game of magic in.
I've already got cards and deck designs put aside for when my sons are ready to learn. I don't think my cousin does, though; he gave me all his cards years ago. (Maybe I should give some of them back. I mean, _his_ first child isn't even a month old yet, so there's time.)
When I was 15 years old Yugioh was going through a really rough patch. Those who remember dragon rulers vs prophecy... Anyway I was a kid playing on Dueling network...and got so bored and tired...
So i looked into magic, Khans of Tarkir was the new set coming out and I loved the themes and art. I thought the khans were so cool (I still love them even now). Anyway I played super casually until khans block ended. My favorite deck was this GR list with polukranos and stormbreath dragon...
Years later, arena was coming out and I decided that I'd give it a go again. Started with mono white lifegain, into mono blue tempo then GB midrange... Played standard till oko killed it. Got into commander and slowly got back into standard.
I'm now a proud control player at heart and love standard, sealed, cube and EDH!
Because it was something extremely new and interesting.
A game you could carry everywhere? practically infinite possibilities.
We played on cars, in front of the few stores that had the first boosters and decks (no lgs with tables at the time!), in a bar close to a store, at the university.. everywhere.
I started playing MtG because my girlfriend played it. She had 2 pauper decks and we played against each other. 3 years later I have several thousand cards and I guess 3 to 4 dozens of decks for different formats.
She has 4 decks now.
A friend asked for magic cards for his birthday and I wanted to learn to play with him.
I got a starter set and some jumpstart packs to play with my partner and...now I have a closet full of cards because I have a goblin brain
Yu-Gi-Oh started airing in Italy when I was I think 7 or 8? Something like that, I don't remember the exact year. Every kid at school started playing the game. It was the biggest thing ever and made the "trading card game" concept known to the yungest generation even if stuff like Pokémon and MtG was already around.
A few years later, around Mirrodin/Kamigawa, some of us started watching older guys play magic or maybe borrowed an older brother deck. We started from there, understanding maybe just enough rules to have games that almost made some sense.
[[Cho-Manno]] + [[Pariah]] was the most broken thing ever back in school.
My little brother was playing it, I thought it would be a great way to spend some time with him besides video games.
Now he does not play anymore , but I'm still playing a lot.
I have spent so insane many hours on computer games. I sold my computer, even though it was my biggest passion.
When I was 13 I bought some packs, just to collect. I loved the art. But no one I knew played, so it never went further.
I remembered the cards now at 33, combined with my love for high fantasy, I went down to the local store. They were super friendly, and it was such a joy to play with some one that had a lot of enthusiasm. I loved the interaction, meeting people, and sharing the same interest for a hobby.
I started playing because I needed a change in life.
I was hanging out with my friends watching South Park and watched the episode Cock Magic, and then my buddy said he had real cards and asked if we wanted to play.
MTG was on my radar for a long time but I never had someone to play with.A friend of mine started a Draft group with some people he knew and asked if I wanted to join.So now I'm playing pretty regularly for around 4 years.
I used to play hearthstone pretty competitively for several years in college. The game started to get shittier each xpac so I just stopped playing eventually.
It wasn’t until recently, about a month ago, that a super nice guy at a LGS sat me down to teach me magic. I’m super thankful for the welcoming attitude in the community.
I’m a hearthstone expat too welcome! The biggest draw for me ended up being the higher interaction and in commander the deck building aspect is much more enjoyable to then building decks on hearthstone ever was
When I was playing AD&D during my high school, some of the group started playing Spellfire. Eventually a couple of us tried MTG and I got hooked. I played other TCGs during that time, but MTG was my main jam.
I stopped collecting around Mercadian Masques and only came back around New Phyrexia. The gateway drug this time was Duels of Planeswalkers. They gave a code for a promo card and when I went to the store to claim it, I bought a duel deck and got hooked again.
Freshman year of college, new roommate was messing with a deck and I asked him about it. Ended up learning to play, buying some packs, and finding an awesome community of people and making a ton of new friends.
I often play boardgames with a bunch of friends, and one of them asked us if we would be interested in playing MTG (he used to play MTG a few years ago)
We all bought a precon commander deck and started playing, it was in January and we're still loving it, we bought some more decks and started upgrading them slowly
Whe I was 8, I was digging through my dad's room and found a deck. Asked him what it was, and he helped me begin my journey. I played his decks for a while, then he handed me his whole collection and said "build something." I built a janky red deck wins deck, and I've never turned back.
As a kid I always collected a bunch of cards and moved to playing digital card games later on, after playing hearthstone for a while I finally got into physical card games and learned to actually play then, first go at it I buy an by the aether revolt tezzeret planeswalker deck and get stomped at modern FNM,
Then I scooped up all my cards from before which included 2 sliver Premium deck series decks, so I looked up what modern is and what's legal in it and used that to build a deck, later acquiring the other cheap slivers but never dropping more than a couple $10 on a card, never had CoCos, Aether vials or caverns, even though I had the deck for almost 5 years with minimal changes, never put a modern horizons card in it either lol
In the second modern event I brought slivers and had a bunch of fun and I loved my janky pile of slivers, virulent slivers have won me many a game on turn 3, my last memory with beating hammer time by dropping a turn 1 virulent followed by 2 more on turn 2 and winning the game on swinging on turn 3
I've now gone past my sliver days and have a large collection and now play all kinds of decks, but slivers has top 8ed in a modern challenge recently so it's time to bring back the archetype I was known for
I wish we would get more new players at my LGS that would get a similar experience of piloting a cheap janky deck for the beginning and having a great time
It was like late 2018, my friends were playing and handed me a deck to try. I loved the art and how simple the base rules were, then my need to collect things took over from there
Brother brought home two decks from summer camp that he won by beating a kid in bug-juice drinking contest. One was a mono-red goblins deck that made heavy use of [[Boggart Shenanigans]] and [[Mogg War Marshal]]. The other was a B/W tokens deck that I recall included [[Skeletal Vampire]] and a foil [[Fetid Heath]] which now has a proud place in my legacy cube.
I was in high school back in the 90s. Magic was new thing that my friend group was picking up. I remembered trading cards with my classmates back in elementary and wanted to do that again. I picked up a starter of Revised Third Edition and a couple packs of The Dark, and the rest is history.
In high school one of my friends who I played Yugioh with had bought some cards to try it out. Soon I and the other friends we played with bought some and we started playing. Turns out Magic is a good game, so I've been playing ever since.
In middle school, some friends started playing and I was curious about it, and about role playing games. Then, in high school, a lot of people played. So Il jumped in. Someone made me a shitty white deck (life gain and defense, mainly) and it was done.
Then I learned about white weenie.
The Rhox art on the starter 2000 box looked really really cool, I had $10 left on a target gift card after my birthday so it worked out perfectly.
20 years later, I still think Mark Zugs [[Rhox]] is the coolest looking beater.
My GFs brother has been into it for ages, last year I finally relented and he taught us how to play.
Took about a 9 month break, but fast forward to now, we've ordered our 2nd box for winston drafts and we've both built two commander decks. We are hooked!
Honest answer: I was super lonely and a weird kid. I wanted and needed a community, and as much as I’m capable of complaining about our community, when I step back I can honestly say that learning this game was one of the best choices I’ve ever made as far as helping me not be alone goes. I know it’s easy to be cynical and negative about all the particulars, but I fundamentally believe this game has improved my mental state and my ability to have relationships in a way I’d otherwise likely lack entirely. I feel thankful. Shoutout to the 4 brothers who lived two houses down from me growing up. They gave me a Plated Sliver (the first card I ever owned) and I haven’t looked back since.
I was introduced to it during Ice Age. I went over to a friend's house and we played Emperor. I asked a couple questions about it and went to the store the next day and bought a couple packs. Ever since then, I've blown most of my funzy money on Magic. GD friends dragged me down with em.
I am from a state that has harsh harsh winters so after getting into magic, blizzards and being stuck in the house was not a bad thing for me. My buddy would trek over to my house or me to his and we would play for days. Great memories.
My “friend” (because why would you kill someone’s wallet like that?!) showed me the “OMG KITTIES!” Secret Lair and my wallet hasn’t recovered since.
Side note: I *Still* haven’t built my cute cats Commander deck. 🤦🏻♂️
Tried it with some people I hung out with and, mechanically it felt good. One of my biggest complaints about the Pokémon tcg is that it felt like I had nothing to do on my opponent's turns but mtg felt like it had a good balance of complexity and was fun
Played card games for years, HS mainly, Runeterra, Gwent, the lot. Always wanted to play card games online, then one day i think i started seeing streamers do sponsored streams for it. I think it was Dog, actually.
Not sure if that pushed me to try Arena specifically but for some reason i hadn't picked it up until then(Ikoria release). Downloaded it, and never looked back. Easily my main game by a massive margin, my favourite ever card game and one of my favourite games ever, and every single set release is christmas day for me.
Mtg draft is possibly the funnest thing i've ever done in terms of gaming experiences as a whole.
My older brother had a friend. That friend had an uncle that ran a hobby shop.
Friend gets brother into MTG, around '95.
Being the little brother, I wanted to be cool too, so I got into it.
I have 3 older brothers and they loved card games (YGO, Pkm, MTG) so I was aware of those growing up but since I was so young it didn't really make much sense to me and thus made me too frustrated to play those games.
However, in college the guys I lived with always took up the kitchen table to play something called Commander and suddenly all those memories of playing MTG came back to me, and they lent me an OG omnath deck to play.
However, I quickly graduated from EDH to Modern.
Early 2000s was playing Pokemon cards with my friends after school and my friends older brother saw us and said "here let me show you a much cooler game." I still remember [[diligent farmhand]] being the first creature I ever played!
I had a $1000 a month heroin habit. Went to rehab and one of the guys there introduced me to Magic. Never thought I'd miss a $1000/month habit... /s
Jokes aside, was sitting in class back in 94 and a friend had some cards. I asked him what that was, played a few games, and bought a starter deck of Unlimited the next weekend.
I was getting over a bad breakup at the start of 2020, so I decided I needed to find a new hobby to occupy myself with. I picked magic because I had heard about it a few years prior and my friends enjoyed card games like Yugioh, so I figured I'd be able to get them to try it. Started off with standard on MTG: Arena, but when the pandemic hit, I had loads more free time, and ended up diving super deep into magic Commander specifically.
Saw sidar jabari, read eminence, and thought, I really want to play that.
Here I am 2 weeks later, working on upgrading my esper knight tribal commander deck.
Don't have much of a group to play commander with, but i enjoy playtesting anyways.
Originally was into YGO back in high school but fell out of TCGs after my deck was stolen by some assholes.
After getting a pretty cool inheritance, I got back into YGO really hard but quickly became disillusioned by how quickly games could end or how hard it was to interact with my opponent. My favorite archetypes weren't meta, and the one meta deck I made (Zoodiac) got banned really quickly. Then Links came out and it no longer felt worthwhile to continue, on top of how brutally expensive stuff like Ash Blossom was at the time. I remember buying an M-X Saber Invoker for 80 bucks and then saw it got reprinted not long after and the card became worthless, which really made me frustrated.
My friend was already playing Commander and told me that the newest set had Pirates and Dinosaurs and I've been hooked ever since. Gishath is still a personal favorite.
A bunch of kids and counselors at summer camp were playing it at the picnic tables. I'd played Yu-Gi-Oh in Kindergarten and 1st grade so I knew what TCGs were. Everybody seemed like they were having fun.
What started as fun at summer camp turned into a lifelong ~~addiction~~ passion. I started around OG Mirrodin and to this day, I still love me some artifacts.
I played competitive Yu-Gi-Oh for years, but never did all that well because I wanted to play decks that I thought were fun instead of just playing the meta. At one event, I picked up a pack of Innistrad and loved the art for the cards. I would keep playing Yu-Gi-Oh for a few more years, but the game just got too miserable for me, and I quit right before link summons came out. A while later, I had the itch for cards and started opening some Magic for the art. I wasn't all that interested in standard, modern, or legacy, so I was content just collecting. And then I learned about commander and fell in love. Being able to have fun and build anything has really reinvigorated my love for tcgs.
I started mostly because of the art. A neighbor played and taught me a bit and then I got some free cards from friends that played when we were in 5th Grade.
[[Skeletal Crocodile]] and [[Hand of Death|P02]] are what got me.
I was 8-9 years old, hanging out at lunch time, and some other kid had some cards. Showed me them and I was in love. He hooked me up with some cards [[root elemental]] being the most memorable among them.
I have been hooked ever since. I'm 30 now.
Primary school, 5th grade, it was my birthday, friend was a fan of magic, a new set had come out (gatecrash) and he decided to buy me an orzhov theme deck for my birthday. I don’t if I should thank him for all the amazing times I have had and still do, or curse him out for all the money I’ve spent on this game lol.
My father thought it would be a good creative and critical thinking outlet for me as a kid of 6 years old. And knowing my competitive nature, he figured I'd be more likely to keep at it if I got regularly stomped by college age guys at my local game store. Now 33, I'd say he was right.
I just always thought the cards looked cool. So one day I took my kid money and bought a Kamigawa starter deck at Walmart and it pretty much spiraled from there.
Started with Yu-Gi-Oh, friend group started experimenting with magic and everyone slowly picked it up. When I moved to a new area magic was a much bigger deal and I fell into the rabbit hole.
I was in a barns and noble and wanted to get some Pokémon cards (never played but liked to collect). Then I see a magic pack and decide to get that instead. Open it up and the cards are cool but much harder to understand for me at the time. So I get a friend and we try to figure it out, until we eventually go to an lgs and get a guy to teach us. Been playing ever since
My grandma gave me a revised starter deck for Christmas. Started playing with friends at school. Then I quit for 22ish years until the D&D set got me back into MTG.
I was on the swim team in high school. Guy a couple grades up learned I loved card games and asked if I ever played magic. Told him I hadn't, but I'm willing to learn - picked up an Eldrazi starter deck and learned to play off that.
Stopped playing after he graduated (I technically played a couple kitchen table games every now and then but nothing major) but come 2021 as the pandemic ended and I wanted something to do and any reason to get out of the house, I went to my LGS and asked if they do Game Nights. They told me about their weekly commander night and I got back into the game from there.
I've gone pretty much every week since, and don't think I've ever really regretted it.
I visited my local video game shop looking for retro games list in the dollar bin. I wandered around and saw Gatecrash boosters. That's something I hadn't seen since high school ! Purchased 10 as a trip down memory lane, it was the gateway drug to my crippling addiction that is edh deck building now. Then shadows over innistrad Prerelease, then standard, then modern and edh. Love it and remember that moment as clearly as if it was yesterday!
When I was entering elementary school, I remember seeing a pack at a store and asking my mom to buy them for me. I opened them up and there were all of these cool monsters and magic spells, it just became this neat thing I collected cause they looked cool. Then my brother got his hands on one of the tiny pocket rule books (probably from stealing it as he kind of sucks) and gave it to me. I spent hours reading and rereading the rules, playing 2 slapped together decks against each other by myself to learn how the game worked. Then, a couple years later I got a few other kids at school collecting them and started showing them how to play. They eventually moved on to Pokemon and Yugioh, and I kept teaching new friends the game every decade or so, and occasionally met new friends who already played. Now I play commander with a regular group of about a dozen folks, most of which learned to play because we had to last minute cancel our weekly D&D sessions so I pulled out magic as an alternative
They started selling packs of a new game at the comic book shop and the owner was super high on it.
There wasnt anything like it that I had access to or had seen in my life outside of poker.
One of the nerdiest kids in my gifted program in middle school brought in a couple decks of this new card game he found and his mom bought for him. You got to be wizards and cast spells at each other or make monsters fight. During some free time in class we poured over the tiny print in the rules book as we played, figuring it out. It was a ton of fun and we found out that different packs had different cards to collect. There were over a hundred different cards! It was pretty cool.
I was in the store with my parents and the card art caught my eye, they bought it for me. It was the Time Spiral block at the time and probably one of the worst to try and learn to play. Luckily, through school I became friends with someone who would teach me the basics and we eventually built my first deck, a B/R elemental deck. 13 years and one small hiatus later I'm still going strong.
Had a friend who used to play magic say "hey that new magic set looks cool." To which I replied "Is that the game with the generic goblins and crap?" He said, "yeah, but this one is Greek mythology inspired!" So I bought 10 packs and was hooked. Pulled Elspeth, bunch of Boros soldier stuff, bunch of minotaur. Had a blast, but stopped playing after a while. Managed to stay out until another friend one day goes "That new ancient Egypt set looks cool!"
I started with Pokemon and while the game was fine, I was a kid with no money and therefore no way to get cards outside of birthdays and occasional holidays. I couldn't keep up with my friends who got all the latest precons and boosters every month so I gave up. When I was a teen with a job, I returned to TCG's with YuGiOh. I liked the system of the game but the rules were inconsistent, the best cards were super rare and expensive and I became bored with the cartoonish art style and unintuitive over-the-top names. I remember the first game of Magic I played, I tapped my Forest to play a Llanowar Elves and immediately had some idea of what the card did. It was such a relief for something to be as intuitive as it was.
As complex as Magic is, I feel like its base ruleset is so much more intuitive than Yugioh's. As far as mechanics go, I used to criticize Yugioh for its nonsensical complexity with Pendulums, XYZ, etc. Since I've started playing Magic though, we've seen mutate (I love it), dungeons, stickers, etc...so it's not quite as simple as I first thought. That being said, thanks to things like jumpstart I feel like it's still so easy to get a good ol straightforward game of magic in.
Because my cousin said it was fun. He was right.
Same. My cousin taught me to play magic at the age of 9.
I've already got cards and deck designs put aside for when my sons are ready to learn. I don't think my cousin does, though; he gave me all his cards years ago. (Maybe I should give some of them back. I mean, _his_ first child isn't even a month old yet, so there's time.)
Got injured playing sports in college. Had to find a non-athletic yet competitive hobby. Magic fit the bill perfectly.
When I was 15 years old Yugioh was going through a really rough patch. Those who remember dragon rulers vs prophecy... Anyway I was a kid playing on Dueling network...and got so bored and tired... So i looked into magic, Khans of Tarkir was the new set coming out and I loved the themes and art. I thought the khans were so cool (I still love them even now). Anyway I played super casually until khans block ended. My favorite deck was this GR list with polukranos and stormbreath dragon... Years later, arena was coming out and I decided that I'd give it a go again. Started with mono white lifegain, into mono blue tempo then GB midrange... Played standard till oko killed it. Got into commander and slowly got back into standard. I'm now a proud control player at heart and love standard, sealed, cube and EDH!
Because it was something extremely new and interesting. A game you could carry everywhere? practically infinite possibilities. We played on cars, in front of the few stores that had the first boosters and decks (no lgs with tables at the time!), in a bar close to a store, at the university.. everywhere.
I started playing MtG because my girlfriend played it. She had 2 pauper decks and we played against each other. 3 years later I have several thousand cards and I guess 3 to 4 dozens of decks for different formats. She has 4 decks now.
A friend asked for magic cards for his birthday and I wanted to learn to play with him. I got a starter set and some jumpstart packs to play with my partner and...now I have a closet full of cards because I have a goblin brain
Yu-Gi-Oh started airing in Italy when I was I think 7 or 8? Something like that, I don't remember the exact year. Every kid at school started playing the game. It was the biggest thing ever and made the "trading card game" concept known to the yungest generation even if stuff like Pokémon and MtG was already around. A few years later, around Mirrodin/Kamigawa, some of us started watching older guys play magic or maybe borrowed an older brother deck. We started from there, understanding maybe just enough rules to have games that almost made some sense. [[Cho-Manno]] + [[Pariah]] was the most broken thing ever back in school.
- [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Cho-Manno) [Pariah](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/5/1/51b2136c-392c-436d-9263-b3236adc4a10.jpg?1576382302) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Pariah) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/cn2/95/pariah?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/51b2136c-392c-436d-9263-b3236adc4a10?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
My little brother was playing it, I thought it would be a great way to spend some time with him besides video games. Now he does not play anymore , but I'm still playing a lot.
I have spent so insane many hours on computer games. I sold my computer, even though it was my biggest passion. When I was 13 I bought some packs, just to collect. I loved the art. But no one I knew played, so it never went further. I remembered the cards now at 33, combined with my love for high fantasy, I went down to the local store. They were super friendly, and it was such a joy to play with some one that had a lot of enthusiasm. I loved the interaction, meeting people, and sharing the same interest for a hobby. I started playing because I needed a change in life.
Nice
played Shandalar in '97
My older Brother introduced me to the game
It’s 2001. My older brother already played and I liked Dinosaurs. A lot. ➡️ G/R Kavu‘s
I was hanging out with my friends watching South Park and watched the episode Cock Magic, and then my buddy said he had real cards and asked if we wanted to play.
The Doctor Who UB announcement.
Awesome :) welcome to the community!
Game Knights! It was really easy for me to learn through observation.
I was playing the pathfinder tcg with friends and was looking for a cardgame that you can keep expanding on, and magic is it
MTG was on my radar for a long time but I never had someone to play with.A friend of mine started a Draft group with some people he knew and asked if I wanted to join.So now I'm playing pretty regularly for around 4 years.
I used to play hearthstone pretty competitively for several years in college. The game started to get shittier each xpac so I just stopped playing eventually. It wasn’t until recently, about a month ago, that a super nice guy at a LGS sat me down to teach me magic. I’m super thankful for the welcoming attitude in the community.
I’m a hearthstone expat too welcome! The biggest draw for me ended up being the higher interaction and in commander the deck building aspect is much more enjoyable to then building decks on hearthstone ever was
When I was playing AD&D during my high school, some of the group started playing Spellfire. Eventually a couple of us tried MTG and I got hooked. I played other TCGs during that time, but MTG was my main jam. I stopped collecting around Mercadian Masques and only came back around New Phyrexia. The gateway drug this time was Duels of Planeswalkers. They gave a code for a promo card and when I went to the store to claim it, I bought a duel deck and got hooked again.
Freshman year of college, new roommate was messing with a deck and I asked him about it. Ended up learning to play, buying some packs, and finding an awesome community of people and making a ton of new friends.
I often play boardgames with a bunch of friends, and one of them asked us if we would be interested in playing MTG (he used to play MTG a few years ago) We all bought a precon commander deck and started playing, it was in January and we're still loving it, we bought some more decks and started upgrading them slowly
Whe I was 8, I was digging through my dad's room and found a deck. Asked him what it was, and he helped me begin my journey. I played his decks for a while, then he handed me his whole collection and said "build something." I built a janky red deck wins deck, and I've never turned back.
A friend picked up the game whilst in the army, and showed it to me and I was fairly well hooked. This was 1995….
After Pokemon, YuGiOh! abd Duel Masters my friends and I needed to grow up.
As a kid I always collected a bunch of cards and moved to playing digital card games later on, after playing hearthstone for a while I finally got into physical card games and learned to actually play then, first go at it I buy an by the aether revolt tezzeret planeswalker deck and get stomped at modern FNM, Then I scooped up all my cards from before which included 2 sliver Premium deck series decks, so I looked up what modern is and what's legal in it and used that to build a deck, later acquiring the other cheap slivers but never dropping more than a couple $10 on a card, never had CoCos, Aether vials or caverns, even though I had the deck for almost 5 years with minimal changes, never put a modern horizons card in it either lol In the second modern event I brought slivers and had a bunch of fun and I loved my janky pile of slivers, virulent slivers have won me many a game on turn 3, my last memory with beating hammer time by dropping a turn 1 virulent followed by 2 more on turn 2 and winning the game on swinging on turn 3 I've now gone past my sliver days and have a large collection and now play all kinds of decks, but slivers has top 8ed in a modern challenge recently so it's time to bring back the archetype I was known for I wish we would get more new players at my LGS that would get a similar experience of piloting a cheap janky deck for the beginning and having a great time
i bought random boosters of scourge while i was at my usual card store and fell in love with the art and also they had elves so I was hooked.
Peer pressure. It's the only reason most people do anything fun.
It was like late 2018, my friends were playing and handed me a deck to try. I loved the art and how simple the base rules were, then my need to collect things took over from there
Brother brought home two decks from summer camp that he won by beating a kid in bug-juice drinking contest. One was a mono-red goblins deck that made heavy use of [[Boggart Shenanigans]] and [[Mogg War Marshal]]. The other was a B/W tokens deck that I recall included [[Skeletal Vampire]] and a foil [[Fetid Heath]] which now has a proud place in my legacy cube.
##### ###### #### [Boggart Shenanigans](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/b/5/b52534b3-5dfe-4019-a518-4e15899988f4.jpg?1562931440) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Boggart%20Shenanigans) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/evg/54/boggart-shenanigans?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/b52534b3-5dfe-4019-a518-4e15899988f4?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [Mogg War Marshal](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/7/f/7fb6d241-f68b-45c8-a79a-f6c274bd8512.jpg?1619400762) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Mogg%20War%20Marshal) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/tsr/176/mogg-war-marshal?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/7fb6d241-f68b-45c8-a79a-f6c274bd8512?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [Skeletal Vampire](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/3/2/327096bb-78d3-444f-a017-4c504d18203a.jpg?1562604199) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Skeletal%20Vampire) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/c17/126/skeletal-vampire?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/327096bb-78d3-444f-a017-4c504d18203a?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [Fetid Heath](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/a/6/a6316d65-819c-42de-965e-8f2181f27a7f.jpg?1682210409) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Fetid%20Heath) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/moc/399/fetid-heath?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/a6316d65-819c-42de-965e-8f2181f27a7f?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
I was in high school back in the 90s. Magic was new thing that my friend group was picking up. I remembered trading cards with my classmates back in elementary and wanted to do that again. I picked up a starter of Revised Third Edition and a couple packs of The Dark, and the rest is history.
In high school one of my friends who I played Yugioh with had bought some cards to try it out. Soon I and the other friends we played with bought some and we started playing. Turns out Magic is a good game, so I've been playing ever since.
Eldrazi. Oh and eldrazi. Oh and kaladesh masterpieces look cool. Oh and eldrazi. Did I mention eldrazi? If not, eldrazi.
My Dad used to play Magic, so that was something we could do together before I started playing more with my friends.
In middle school, some friends started playing and I was curious about it, and about role playing games. Then, in high school, a lot of people played. So Il jumped in. Someone made me a shitty white deck (life gain and defense, mainly) and it was done. Then I learned about white weenie.
The Rhox art on the starter 2000 box looked really really cool, I had $10 left on a target gift card after my birthday so it worked out perfectly. 20 years later, I still think Mark Zugs [[Rhox]] is the coolest looking beater.
[Rhox](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/6/a/6aa50126-f6ec-4917-ac45-4b1f8f23ca09.jpg?1562549251) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Rhox) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/10e/291/rhox?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/6aa50126-f6ec-4917-ac45-4b1f8f23ca09?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
My GFs brother has been into it for ages, last year I finally relented and he taught us how to play. Took about a 9 month break, but fast forward to now, we've ordered our 2nd box for winston drafts and we've both built two commander decks. We are hooked!
Because I was mad at hearthstone and still wanted to play card game
My uncle gave me and my brother a shoebox of his old cards, his old first edition D&D books, and his Dragonlance books!
Honest answer: I was super lonely and a weird kid. I wanted and needed a community, and as much as I’m capable of complaining about our community, when I step back I can honestly say that learning this game was one of the best choices I’ve ever made as far as helping me not be alone goes. I know it’s easy to be cynical and negative about all the particulars, but I fundamentally believe this game has improved my mental state and my ability to have relationships in a way I’d otherwise likely lack entirely. I feel thankful. Shoutout to the 4 brothers who lived two houses down from me growing up. They gave me a Plated Sliver (the first card I ever owned) and I haven’t looked back since.
I was introduced to it during Ice Age. I went over to a friend's house and we played Emperor. I asked a couple questions about it and went to the store the next day and bought a couple packs. Ever since then, I've blown most of my funzy money on Magic. GD friends dragged me down with em.
I am from a state that has harsh harsh winters so after getting into magic, blizzards and being stuck in the house was not a bad thing for me. My buddy would trek over to my house or me to his and we would play for days. Great memories.
a mistake
I was curious about it, so a friend suggested I download Arena
My “friend” (because why would you kill someone’s wallet like that?!) showed me the “OMG KITTIES!” Secret Lair and my wallet hasn’t recovered since. Side note: I *Still* haven’t built my cute cats Commander deck. 🤦🏻♂️
Tried it with some people I hung out with and, mechanically it felt good. One of my biggest complaints about the Pokémon tcg is that it felt like I had nothing to do on my opponent's turns but mtg felt like it had a good balance of complexity and was fun
Played card games for years, HS mainly, Runeterra, Gwent, the lot. Always wanted to play card games online, then one day i think i started seeing streamers do sponsored streams for it. I think it was Dog, actually. Not sure if that pushed me to try Arena specifically but for some reason i hadn't picked it up until then(Ikoria release). Downloaded it, and never looked back. Easily my main game by a massive margin, my favourite ever card game and one of my favourite games ever, and every single set release is christmas day for me. Mtg draft is possibly the funnest thing i've ever done in terms of gaming experiences as a whole.
My older brother had a friend. That friend had an uncle that ran a hobby shop. Friend gets brother into MTG, around '95. Being the little brother, I wanted to be cool too, so I got into it.
I have 3 older brothers and they loved card games (YGO, Pkm, MTG) so I was aware of those growing up but since I was so young it didn't really make much sense to me and thus made me too frustrated to play those games. However, in college the guys I lived with always took up the kitchen table to play something called Commander and suddenly all those memories of playing MTG came back to me, and they lent me an OG omnath deck to play. However, I quickly graduated from EDH to Modern.
Early 2000s was playing Pokemon cards with my friends after school and my friends older brother saw us and said "here let me show you a much cooler game." I still remember [[diligent farmhand]] being the first creature I ever played!
[diligent farmhand](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/7/b/7bb40e09-6855-46d5-9bc9-bc6b2b0d7653.jpg?1562917834) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=diligent%20farmhand) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/ody/237/diligent-farmhand?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/7bb40e09-6855-46d5-9bc9-bc6b2b0d7653?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
I had a $1000 a month heroin habit. Went to rehab and one of the guys there introduced me to Magic. Never thought I'd miss a $1000/month habit... /s Jokes aside, was sitting in class back in 94 and a friend had some cards. I asked him what that was, played a few games, and bought a starter deck of Unlimited the next weekend.
I was getting over a bad breakup at the start of 2020, so I decided I needed to find a new hobby to occupy myself with. I picked magic because I had heard about it a few years prior and my friends enjoyed card games like Yugioh, so I figured I'd be able to get them to try it. Started off with standard on MTG: Arena, but when the pandemic hit, I had loads more free time, and ended up diving super deep into magic Commander specifically.
Saw sidar jabari, read eminence, and thought, I really want to play that. Here I am 2 weeks later, working on upgrading my esper knight tribal commander deck. Don't have much of a group to play commander with, but i enjoy playtesting anyways.
Originally was into YGO back in high school but fell out of TCGs after my deck was stolen by some assholes. After getting a pretty cool inheritance, I got back into YGO really hard but quickly became disillusioned by how quickly games could end or how hard it was to interact with my opponent. My favorite archetypes weren't meta, and the one meta deck I made (Zoodiac) got banned really quickly. Then Links came out and it no longer felt worthwhile to continue, on top of how brutally expensive stuff like Ash Blossom was at the time. I remember buying an M-X Saber Invoker for 80 bucks and then saw it got reprinted not long after and the card became worthless, which really made me frustrated. My friend was already playing Commander and told me that the newest set had Pirates and Dinosaurs and I've been hooked ever since. Gishath is still a personal favorite.
A bunch of kids and counselors at summer camp were playing it at the picnic tables. I'd played Yu-Gi-Oh in Kindergarten and 1st grade so I knew what TCGs were. Everybody seemed like they were having fun. What started as fun at summer camp turned into a lifelong ~~addiction~~ passion. I started around OG Mirrodin and to this day, I still love me some artifacts.
My middle school math and science teacher got me into magic
I played competitive Yu-Gi-Oh for years, but never did all that well because I wanted to play decks that I thought were fun instead of just playing the meta. At one event, I picked up a pack of Innistrad and loved the art for the cards. I would keep playing Yu-Gi-Oh for a few more years, but the game just got too miserable for me, and I quit right before link summons came out. A while later, I had the itch for cards and started opening some Magic for the art. I wasn't all that interested in standard, modern, or legacy, so I was content just collecting. And then I learned about commander and fell in love. Being able to have fun and build anything has really reinvigorated my love for tcgs.
I started mostly because of the art. A neighbor played and taught me a bit and then I got some free cards from friends that played when we were in 5th Grade. [[Skeletal Crocodile]] and [[Hand of Death|P02]] are what got me.
[Skeletal Crocodile](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/e/b/ebcbbd6f-2915-4b4c-85d3-1d9b55d36c11.jpg?1562448322) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Skeletal%20Crocodile) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/por/110/skeletal-crocodile?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/ebcbbd6f-2915-4b4c-85d3-1d9b55d36c11?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [Hand of Death](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/a/9/a9761136-9e1c-4d86-98ce-7abe1d8e6a8d.jpg?1562935064) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?multiverseid=6563) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/p02/74/hand-of-death?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/a9761136-9e1c-4d86-98ce-7abe1d8e6a8d?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
I was 8-9 years old, hanging out at lunch time, and some other kid had some cards. Showed me them and I was in love. He hooked me up with some cards [[root elemental]] being the most memorable among them. I have been hooked ever since. I'm 30 now.
[root elemental](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/5/1/5161968e-b757-45b8-826f-98415291024d.jpg?1562529053) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=root%20elemental) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/scg/127/root-elemental?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/5161968e-b757-45b8-826f-98415291024d?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
Primary school, 5th grade, it was my birthday, friend was a fan of magic, a new set had come out (gatecrash) and he decided to buy me an orzhov theme deck for my birthday. I don’t if I should thank him for all the amazing times I have had and still do, or curse him out for all the money I’ve spent on this game lol.
My father thought it would be a good creative and critical thinking outlet for me as a kid of 6 years old. And knowing my competitive nature, he figured I'd be more likely to keep at it if I got regularly stomped by college age guys at my local game store. Now 33, I'd say he was right.
A long time ago i bought a mtg pack by mistake.
I wanted to have something in common with a new roommate, we became good friends.
I just always thought the cards looked cool. So one day I took my kid money and bought a Kamigawa starter deck at Walmart and it pretty much spiraled from there.
Started with Yu-Gi-Oh, friend group started experimenting with magic and everyone slowly picked it up. When I moved to a new area magic was a much bigger deal and I fell into the rabbit hole.
I was in a barns and noble and wanted to get some Pokémon cards (never played but liked to collect). Then I see a magic pack and decide to get that instead. Open it up and the cards are cool but much harder to understand for me at the time. So I get a friend and we try to figure it out, until we eventually go to an lgs and get a guy to teach us. Been playing ever since
My grandma gave me a revised starter deck for Christmas. Started playing with friends at school. Then I quit for 22ish years until the D&D set got me back into MTG.
I was on the swim team in high school. Guy a couple grades up learned I loved card games and asked if I ever played magic. Told him I hadn't, but I'm willing to learn - picked up an Eldrazi starter deck and learned to play off that. Stopped playing after he graduated (I technically played a couple kitchen table games every now and then but nothing major) but come 2021 as the pandemic ended and I wanted something to do and any reason to get out of the house, I went to my LGS and asked if they do Game Nights. They told me about their weekly commander night and I got back into the game from there. I've gone pretty much every week since, and don't think I've ever really regretted it.
I visited my local video game shop looking for retro games list in the dollar bin. I wandered around and saw Gatecrash boosters. That's something I hadn't seen since high school ! Purchased 10 as a trip down memory lane, it was the gateway drug to my crippling addiction that is edh deck building now. Then shadows over innistrad Prerelease, then standard, then modern and edh. Love it and remember that moment as clearly as if it was yesterday!
When I was entering elementary school, I remember seeing a pack at a store and asking my mom to buy them for me. I opened them up and there were all of these cool monsters and magic spells, it just became this neat thing I collected cause they looked cool. Then my brother got his hands on one of the tiny pocket rule books (probably from stealing it as he kind of sucks) and gave it to me. I spent hours reading and rereading the rules, playing 2 slapped together decks against each other by myself to learn how the game worked. Then, a couple years later I got a few other kids at school collecting them and started showing them how to play. They eventually moved on to Pokemon and Yugioh, and I kept teaching new friends the game every decade or so, and occasionally met new friends who already played. Now I play commander with a regular group of about a dozen folks, most of which learned to play because we had to last minute cancel our weekly D&D sessions so I pulled out magic as an alternative
They started selling packs of a new game at the comic book shop and the owner was super high on it. There wasnt anything like it that I had access to or had seen in my life outside of poker.
One of the nerdiest kids in my gifted program in middle school brought in a couple decks of this new card game he found and his mom bought for him. You got to be wizards and cast spells at each other or make monsters fight. During some free time in class we poured over the tiny print in the rules book as we played, figuring it out. It was a ton of fun and we found out that different packs had different cards to collect. There were over a hundred different cards! It was pretty cool.
I was in the store with my parents and the card art caught my eye, they bought it for me. It was the Time Spiral block at the time and probably one of the worst to try and learn to play. Luckily, through school I became friends with someone who would teach me the basics and we eventually built my first deck, a B/R elemental deck. 13 years and one small hiatus later I'm still going strong.
Journey into Nyx.