[rograndom]

Magic was probably the first instance of where I learned that sometimes it's ok to not try to "solve" games or put too much thought into being competitive.

I'm not sure how my friend group found Magic originally, but it was around like 3rd edition or so? We all really liked it and spend way too much money on cards. We would play around the kitchen table in a single game, 5, 6, 7 people all with decks a mile high building huge armies before someone finally gave in to break the peace and attack, usually resulting in everyone else attacking them. Great fun.

I had some access to the internet at work and during a break I started looking up stuff about Magic and found a deck that won a tournament recently. It was a red burn deck, and the tournament was a draft, which I had no idea what that meant, but I had a "winning" decklist and I had most of the cards in there. I traded with my friends for the other stuff I was missing and we set about to play. I think I killed everyone one after another with that "stupid deck" with cards the others just flat out gave to me because they were "bad". I took that deck to a tournament a couple of weeks later and found out what the difference between drafts and constructed decks were, mainly that my deck needed 20 more cards. I still get fourth place and a box of booster packs.

My friends one by one stopped playing not too long after that. I went on to win most local tournaments and play in a handful of pro tour events, but none were ever as much fun as sitting around the kitchen table.