Yesterday, I packed up and moved home from college. Tomorrow, I leave for Europe, where I’ll be backpacking for a few weeks with two friends. Italy, Germany, Austria, and the Czech Republic are on the itinerary, and I couldn’t be more excited. Along with writing, food, and Magic, traveling is one of the things I really enjoy in life, and I try to indulge whenever I can.
This post will probably be short and all over the place. Final exams ate up a lot of my time and Magic has been pretty low on my priority list for the last month, right by eating three meals a day and sleeping.
Packed and ready to go!
Earlier today, I moved my suitcase downstairs and found my old Magic box. I started attending events some time last summer, but I’ve been cracking packs and buying decks for the last few years. I don’t remember much about my previous Magic conquests, except that I haven’t improved much since.
For some reason, I kept my special cards in a hollowed-out Bible, where most normal people would stash handguns and flasks of whiskey. I dunno.
I’m not entirely sure where the second whale came from.
A lot of cards have sentimental value to me, but I’m the person that can find nostalgia in paperclips and crumpled receipts. Along with leftover commons and bulk rares from the old drafts I’ve attended, I have an event deck, duel deck, and what, at some point in time, may have possibly been a constructed UW deck. Some cards stand in particular, like this guy.
BAM.
Foil Primeval Titan was in my first booster pack, included with a starter kit I begged my parents to buy at Target. And for the longest time, I thought he was a seeded card, the kind of mythic rare promo that Wizards throws in to entice new players. I didn’t bother to price check him until a few years after, when I was gearing up for my first prerelease (M14!) and looking to unsleeve old cards for the event.
Speaking of my prerelease:
Shiny wolves—strictly better than their boring cousins.
I don’t know why, but I was really drawn to this card. Flavor, art, and character: Briarpack Alpha has it all. Snap first pick.
And speaking of pretty good first picks:
Jace, Memory Adept: Making mill almost-kinda-viable since 2013.
Slammed Jace first pick, third pack. He was totally out of my colors and my sad GB deck ended up getting mauled. But opening a Planeswalker was absolutely amazing to me as a new player. Wizards knows how to get people addicted. I guess it’s not all bad. One year and a couple hundred dollars later, I found a pretty neat hobby and a group of awesome people. Not a bad deal.
If all goes to plan, my next missive will be from Munich, Germany. Because things rarely go according to plan, just assume that I’ll be in Europe somewhere, furiously typing this post on my iPhone at some train terminal or old cafe. Hopefully I would have found a cool game shop somewhere along the way. If not, I hope you like bad travel photographs. I’ll have tons.
Tony is the Hipsters’ resident scrub. Follow his travels at tonymei.com.