Local News
| News | Sports | Business | Weather | Opinions | Archives | E-mail Us |

Sunday, Nov. 29, 1998

For fans of collectible card games, thrill of victory is Magic

Local gamers gather for spirited card competition

For fans of collectible card games, the thrill of victory is like Magic

By GUY H. LAWRENCE
Staff Writer
Thirteen-year-old Ben Bowen recalls drifting into thoughts of wizards casting spells, summoning creatures and wielding powerful artifacts in other-worldly combat as his English teacher droned on about more mundane material.
   Ben, a Haas Middle School student, is just over five feet tall, but to the several hundred local players of Magic: The Gathering, a fantasy card game, he's one of the most dangerous opponents they'll ever face.
   "He plays a really fast deck," said Kingsley Estrada, 15, who fell to Ben's card play in a recent tournament. "He can kill you in three turns."
   Since a Washington state mathematician launched Magic: The Gathering in 1993, the collectible card game genre has exploded in popularity. Besides the fantasy world of Magic, other games take players to feudal Japan, the Old West, the Civil War or fictional worlds like Star Trek or Star Wars.
   Still, Magic remains the most popular, gamers say, with competition - including a pro tour - sanctioned by Wizards of the Coast, the game's manufacturer.
   The recent world championship tournament in Seattle had $250,000 in prize money and was televised on ESPN2, Wizards of the Coast officials said.
   "Some people get into it for casual play at your local store tournament scene. Some people go all out and become professional players, where you can win big money," said Mark Arguijo, a Taft High School math teacher.
   In the Wizards of the Coast standard game ranking - one of four rankings - Arguijo is rated first in the state and 22nd in the world, while Ben ranks fourth in the area.
   But the real challenge, players say, is selecting the perfect cards among the thousands available to build a deck and strategy to slay all comers.
   "I would probably say the appeal is just in the fun of defeating your opponent," said Tom Kent, the owner of The Dugout Sports Cards in Corpus Christi. "With over 3,000 cards, the strategies are actually endless."
   

Kill or be killed

   Magic is usually played by two players, each a wizard casting spells and summoning creatures - from scorpions to soldiers to orcs - to attack the other. Each player starts the game with 20 life points.
   To begin a game, players draw cards from their shuffled deck and take turns putting cards into play.
   Players draw magic energy - called mana - from cards representing types of land to summon creatures or cast spells. The creatures or spells can be used to attack or defend.
   Creatures and artifacts have values assigned for attacking, called a power rating, and defending, called a toughness rating. Battles are decided by comparing power ratings of an attacker to the defender's toughness rating. For example, Ben can attack Arguijo with an Orc with a power rating of 2, but Arguijo may block the Orc with a Hill Giant with a toughness rating of 3. The Orc dies in the battle, and Ben loses one life point.
   A game usually takes 30 to 45 minutes, or about 10 minutes for experienced players.
   Players can center their strategy on one of five color-coded land themes: Swamps are black cards, mountains are red, islands blue, forests green and plains white. Most spell cards are tied to color-coded land.
   Part of the game's design is to make the game expandable, said game creator and Wizards of the Coast founder Richard Garfield.
   "You can get an awful lot of variety if the players are not playing with the same set of cards," Garfield said. "It some ways it was like trying to make a game bigger than the box it comes in."
   Ben said one of his favorite decks to play is called Suicide Black, because it is based on quick attacks but doesn't allow for much of a defense.
   "It is so fast they can't do anything," said Ben, who began playing Magic about 18 months ago.
   Players can build mono-colored decks or combine different colors.
   Players can find ideas for killer decks from friends, in gaming magazines and on numerous Internet sites. The rarest cards can be bought and sold for hundreds of dollars. The November issue of Scrye, a magazine guide that follows collectible card games, listed the alpha edition of the Black Lotus, a rare artifact card, at $400.
   Thousands of cards are available, and each competition deck of a minimum 60 cards is shuffled before a game, making every game different.
   "There is so much strategy. It is fun to open up a new pack of cards and say, `What can I do with this?,'|" said Arguijo, who started playing Magic in February 1997. "It involves a lot of thinking."
   

Stiff competition

   Interest in card-based games like Magic skyrocketed in 1994, said Matt Milliken, a founding editor of Inquest, a gaming guide that covered the explosion of collectible card games.
   "I think a lot of people - experienced role-playing gamers - thought it was sort of a neat concept, but just a niche game," said Milliken, now a freelance writer. "Then a lot of people got turned on to Magic."
   Magic is now printed in nine languages and is played in 52 countries by 5 million people. Company officials won't reveal sales figures but said more than a billion cards have been sold.
   One of the reasons for the explosion of interest in Magic came about from the tournaments organized by Wizards of the Coast. That raised the competitive interest, Milliken said.
   Wizards of the Coast sponsors the Arena League for casual players and the World Pro Tour for more serious players.
   Every week devotees, particularly of Magic, gather at area gaming shops to pit their decks against opponents. John Howard, owner of Gamer's Guild in Sunrise Mall, conducts weekly tournaments, sanctioned by Wizards of the Coast through its Duelists Convocation International, where players gain points and rankings.
   

A wide variety

    By early 1995, other card-based games flooded the market with titles based on science fiction shows, comic books and even the Civil War.
   "There were dozens of collectible cards games. It was pretty astounding and overwhelming because the genre hadn't existed before mid-1993," Milliken said. "It was like a league in a new sport being formed. By word of mouth, it becomes hugely popular, and two years later they have dozens of leagues."
   Other gaming and entertainment companies spun off their role-playing games, movies and television series into collectible card games. Two of the more popular games are Star Wars and Legend of the Five Rings, a game that follows a storyline based on feudal Japan.
   Other notable games in the genre include Star Trek, Babylon 5, J.R.R. Tolkien's Middle-Earth and superhero games based on Marvel Comics and DC Comics. Some companies have introduced card games based on sports like football and basketball, while one company on the Internet offers a game based on the Bible.
   The card games attracted new players, who were not the traditional gamers who vested hours into role-playing games or miniature war gaming, Milliken said.
   "The people who liked and played the card games were different and from a wider set than those who were the lifeblood of the gaming community," Milliken said. "I think you had a lot of youngsters with limited or no experience playing (games) like Dungeons and Dragons."
   The interest in the game is huge around colleges and can be obsessive for some, Kent said. The game has been the demise of grades for many college students and one acquaintance lost his job because he couldn't quit playing, Kent said.
   Although the games rose in popularity fairly quickly, devotees say they believe the genre is more than a passing fancy.
   While playing Magic at Gamer's Guild recently, 19-year-old Ruben Avila said he doesn't see an end to the game for himself.
   "As long as they keep printing cards," Avila said, "I will keep playing."
   Staff writer Guy H. Lawrence can be reached at 886-3792 or by e-mail at lawrenceg@scripps.com

Post your comments on this story in our forums.

---

  © 1998 Corpus Christi Caller Times, a Scripps Howard newspaper. All rights reserved.