Fireside Chat: What’s your past CCG experience?
by JR Cook - 10 years ago show comments
The original Magic: The Gathering trading card game came out while I was in high school and, while I never bought any cards to build my own collection, I do have fond memories from playing the game. I was lucky enough to go to a high school that had a diverse and inclusive environment, which made it easy for me to be a “clique jumper.” Once or twice a week, I’d spend my lunch hour in the computer lab with the other ’90s computer geeks and, inevitably, we’d end up playing a game of Magic rather than working on flow charting our code. As mentioned, I didn’t own any of my own cards, so I’d pick from the extras that everybody else had and put together an orphan deck – sort of like an arena draft in Hearthstone – and get my ass handed to me. Those days of the week were my favorite. I always knew that I was going to enjoy myself and have some good laughs with good friends. After high school, I never had another opportunity to play a CCG until Hearthstone came along. All I can say is thank goodness I didn’t start buying cards back then or I never would have had enough money to buy my first car!
So, how about you guys? What was your first introduction to Collectable Card Games and what fond memories do you have?
1994 MtG was released in Germany. I was 8yo. Took around 2 years to stop being an idiot 😀 Kept on playing (Type 2 at tournaments, different stuff including houserules with friends) until 2001 and stopped when Apocalypse came out, I still have ~4k cards in a box here 😀
My only nice tournament result was 2nd place at a regional qualifier with a fast burn deck that included two Last Chance (RR, You get a turn after your turn. After that turn, you lose the game). Btw WotC, I’m still waiting for my prices…
Some time around 2003 me and my old MtG clique decided to buy some LotR cards (with the promise that no one will go overbord as we did with MtG; kinda worked out, no one got more than 1 booster box concerning big purchases) which we still play when we are not too busy playing 12+h long board games 😉
A few years ago I also found out about all that weird new stuff in MtG when I found some guys making a cube draft with tons of legendaries in it 😉
I started off with Magic as well, buying a few pre-made decks and some boosters. I had a friend that played a ton in middle school and he introduced me to it/persuaded me to buy my own cards. We eventually started an after-school club for people to get together and play, but it was short-lived.
In high school or maybe the tail end of middle school, I switched over to the Pokemon TCG and sunk A TON of money into that. I started right up when only the original release and the Jungle expansion set were in existence and played through to when they introduced their Gym Trainer series (Sabrina FTW). I never entered any tournaments and mostly played it as a collectible game, since none of my friends played, although I would make extra decks and teach them how to play.
My fondest memory though was attending a promotional event at one of the only brick-and-mortar card stores that existed in the Greater Hartford area and getting my hands on a promo Mew card. I think I dragged another friend to go, too, and he made me trade him most of my remaining Magic cards to give me his Mew. Crossover fun! 🙂