Discovering Magic

We piled into my car to go shopping. As a result of my job at Arby's and the fact I was in high school, with almost no bills, I had money burning a hole in my pocket. Remember that feeling of being able to buy stuff just because you wanted it, when your wants were cheaper and the risk of emergencies lower. Anyway, I had the feeling and so did some of my friends. We would hand out as Scott's house later, but for now we packed into the little car and drove to Rider's.

I don't know if any of these stores are still open, but during my teen years Rider's was easily my favorite place to spend money. I would walk through the unassuming glass door, with a fantasy poster on it and enter what seemed to be a cavern of joy. They had the section with RC cars and planes, rockets and trains, but I was never looking at that stuff. I usually went immediately to the shelves of role-playing books. Advanced Dungeons and Dragons second edition had come out, and with it a slew of books. I was always on the lookout for the next Monstrous Compendium, a tome of creatures I could throw up against my unsuspecting party. The passengers of my car, also my players, were there looking for handbooks, these fake leather covered books that would give you more options for fighters and wizards and such.

We walked through the door as we always did. We went to the usual shelf and thumbed through the new books, but Scott, whose home we had come from and would go back to, was at the front grabbing packs of this new game called Magic the Gathering. He had bought a few and understood the game. He showed us, opening the packs he had bought and pulling out the colorful cards, briefly explaining cost and and colors. Black was death and decay, white was holy and healing, and on. He pulled a Sengir Vampire from his new pack and was lost in the card.

We each bought a starter and a couple booster packs, sat on the curb opening them up. We choose colors we liked best and traded cars to get the builds we wanted. We drove back to Scott's house and played for hours with less than 100 cards. Additionally, when you played this game, if you won, you got cards from your opponents deck. So, if you build good enough, you could adjust what you could do as you played.

The next time we went to Rider's I glanced at the book shelf, but Arabian Nights had come out, an expansion to Magic. So, the only discussion I really needed to make was how many basic boosters and how many Arabian Nights boosters to buy. I still get a thrill opening those packs and discovering the new possibilities it gives me.