A MAGICal experience

©Wizards of the Coast

When I was little I really liked playing card game. My favourite one was Magic: The Gathering. Sadly, I stopped playing years ago when I moved. In my new school card games weren’t popular at all. Furthermore, I’ve never participated in an official event, like a tournament for example.

Since then I’ve wanted to get back into Magic for the last few years, but never got to it. That was until a couple of weeks ago. At some point during a conversation I discovered that Loris, one of the students from esaip who is also here, played Magic. A couple of days later we organised a game which went great although we didn’t have time to finish it. As our interest grew, we discovered that a new expansion was about to come out. This happens 4 times a year and is accompanied by pre-release tournaments during the week-end before the release (who would’ve thought?!). Loris hadn’t ever participated in a tournament either.

Card back of a MtG card ©Wizards of the Coast

When we got there the people were very nice. They welcomed us warmly and naturally started speaking English (sometimes even among themselves!) without us having to ask. The event went great. Although we were a bit rusty, and unfamiliar with the “competitive” environment of Magic, players were always very patient with us.

The very next week we went to another event called a “Draft”. This took place in another game store, the customers were not the same, but the reaction was identical. People were welcoming, made efforts to speak English and be patient (this was another format of games that was completely new to us).

Finally, another time, we couldn’t play because we didn’t have an appropriate deck for a tournament, lo and behold, Alexi (one of the game store managers) lent us some decks to play!

We plan to go to as many of these events as possible and enjoy it as much as possible!

Daniel

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