At Gaming Angels we spend a lot of our time talking about video based games, the newest gadgets, books and other things coined geek.  But there is one things that we don’t spend a lot of time talking about.  That is table top games. So when Magic:The Gathering became an Xbox Live Arcade download, I believe it triggered a whole new generation into a table top card game that has existed since 1993. Which I never played until the Summer of 2008. I guess we need to begin there to understand how my first ever Magic: the Gathering tournament went.

I never was into Magic going through junior high and high school. There were kids in the school that were and I was interested but no one really gives you the time of day to teach you how to play it. Years go by and in the Summer of 2008, while I was in collage, my boyfriend and a few of his friends said “Hey, why don’t we buy a pack of Magic cards for a laugh.”  at one of the local shops of comic book, anime and table based games. I return  from a  long day of reading to find two guys sat down on the floor playing a card game.
To skip over the other details, I was taught, played and started to win. Magic was something I would haul out during some gaming lows, or when Geekdom events where held at a person’s house. I found the game to be very staregic like Chess, yet with more varitey and flare.

Fast forward to this week. My boyfriend and his friends would sometimes play in Magic tournaments down at a place called Sword N Steele, for pre release tournaments. I would never attend. I would either go out, find excuse to do somthing else that day so I didn’t feel pressured into going. To be honest I was scared. I figured that these people where l33t, and would be pwning my ass left right and center. I figured they would be very competeative and I didn’t want a game I would play for fun every once in a while to be ruined.

So, I was conviced after the million time to go down to the M10 set pre-release tournament. Of course I walk into the shop alone since my friends where running and because I was not a DCI member to regestor. It wasn’t very painful, or long sign the card, sign a form, get the card and as the girl behind the counter joking said “Sell my soul.”  I waited for the tournament to begin. I chatted up a number of firendly players and was clued into the rewards program for DCI, what kind of tournmanet a pre-release was, and had a good time.
For those that do not know, a pre-release tournmanet is when you do not have a deck to play with. You are given six booster packs, and from that you have to make a deck to battle others. You are given an hour to make the deck and then you play matches. I learned the rule of how to play in a tournament very quickly and all my oppointates where very helpful and nice.  (Expect, one who was a buddy of mine that knew how I played and was determined to win )

At the end of the night I had won two matches, had a draw (in an hour we did not finish one game) and then lost one. (To my buddy of course.) All in all very suscessful first Magic Tournmanet. Would I go back and play? I would most diffently say yes.