Tonight I played my first game of Magic The Gathering. I remember when Magic first came out. I was in middle school at the time, and not willing to admit to myself or anyone else that I was a geek. I saw the other kids at school playing and I remember desperately wanting to ask someone to teach me, but I never did. Over the years as I became more and more comfortable with myself and came to understand that being a geek is not a bad thing I started getting more comfortable trying all the things I had always wanted to. Magic sadly was never one of them. One of the things I have loved about my group here has ben the ability to try new things, and tonight I got to try Magic.

Magic is basically set up as two magicians battling each other to the death. You can play with more then just two (we played with 5 tonight), but a standard game is two. As I understand the rules there are three types of cards. Land cards are played at the beginning of each turn. Each land card represents mana which is the energy you use to cast spells. Without enough mana or energy you cant cast a spell. The more Mana you have the more spells you can cast, and the more powerful you become.

The second kind of card is a spell card. Spell cards generally deal damage to another character or enhance something. These are generally very useful cards to have. I didn’t run into many of these cards tonight, but am told that there are some very powerful spells out there. There are even spells to counter other spells, so if you can imagin the scene from Harry Potter when Dumbledore and Voldemort duel, thats what playing spell cards is like only with cards.

The third type of card is a creature card. You use these cards to attack other players. There are so many different types of creature cards, and each one has different abilities and strengths.

That is about it when it comes to Magic. Its just a big duel game played with cards. I had a great time and I am looking forward to playing again.