My Magic Story

I figured for my very first blog post I would start with my Magic story. My first introduction to the game I love was when I was in about 3rd or 4th grade when I found my older brothers cards. At the time I was engrossed in playing Yugioh or maybe Pokemon but I dismissed these new cards pretty quickly. Fast forward about a year or so and a family friend reintroduced me to the game, I was staying with his family for a weekend when my parents were away and he formally introduced me to the rules of the game. I had been playing card games since I could read (and before that it if you count looking at the cool Pokemon pictures and not following any of the rules.) so I picked up the basics pretty quickly.

Before long I was using my allowance every week to go down to my local game store and play in Friday Night Magic. However, I think the first thing that really hooked me onto the game was the first combo I figured out on my own. Out of the first cards I was given I got a Genesis and a Spore Frog, a combo that I now see is pretty mediocre but at age 12 it was everything. I felt like the best player ever because at the time me and the rest of my playgroup only won games of magic through combat damage and ran very little interaction outside of that so this combo was pretty great. To this day Spore Frog remains my favorite card.

After playing in FNM for a year or so I really started to get the basics down and started traveling with some of the older players to Pro Tour Qualifier around New England. I never did particularly well at these events but that wasn’t important to me, I loved playing the game at this new competitive level and though I got my butt kicked most events it just motivated me to keep coming back.

I remember my first Grand Prix, it was Grand Prix Boston in 2009. The format was M10 sealed deck and I opened a great pool featuring multiple copies Mind Control, Serra Angel, and Harm’s Way, my pool seemed great. I started off with the best performance at one of these big tournaments that I ever had up to that point. I won my first two matches to start the event at 2-0 and I felt on top of the world. I lost my next two pretty quickly to find myself at 2-2 one match away from elimination. I was finally eliminated in round 7 against a pool with TWO Baneslayer Angels. Despite finishing 4-3 a finish I would be pretty disappointed in today, at 15 this is what hooked me, I wanted the feeling of winning on one of highest levels of magic and I would keep playing until I no longer had fun playing competitively and here I am 7 years later prepping for four grand prixs in the coming months.