Hello everyone.  I'm Jeff.  (Hi, Jeff)  And I'm a recovering Magic the Gathering player.  Up until this month, I was sober for two years.

 

Everyone in our Lumbersmiths group used to be a Magic player to some degree.  I was hardcore early, anticipating the first Unlimited release and playing all the early sets through Ice Age.  I was known for my Chaos Orb technique, if that tells you anything.  Jay and Joe were both huge MtG fans, too.  They both still have their collections and occasionally purchase a new set to see what's the latest buzz in the game.

 

 

Earlier this month, Joe bought a box of boosters from the new set, Ravnica.  It's becoming tradition that if anyone buys a box of boosters, we have a Magic night and do a booster draft with the new cards.  The last time we did this was with the release of Mirrodin, so it's been a while.  We met up at Brandon's house and sat around the table with the still-sealed box of boosters when we noticed something was missing.  Lands.  Who brought the land?!  Unfortunately, Brandon only had a handful in the decks he kept.  My place is only a mile down the road from Brandon, and while I got rid of my collection long ago, I just inherited a big set of cards from Karl that he didn't want to take down to Tampa.  To the Batmobile!  We cruised down to my house and the Magic night was saved.

 

 

The draft was great fun.  Ravnica focuses on a concept called "Guilds".  The guild cards are somewhat like the cards from the old Legends set, where two mana types are needed to cast the cards.  However, Ravnica introduced an "either" mechanic, where a mana cost might be "either green or black".  This made for an interesting draft.  First of all, not all of the color combinations were represented.  The guilds present were green/black, blue/black and red/white.  This meant more competition for similar colors.  In fact Jay, my partner for the first games, drafted the exact same blue/black cards that I was drafting!  I threw in a splash of green, while he chose to stick to two colors and defensively draft powerful cards in other colors.

 

Jay and I were doomed from the start, having drafted the same colors.  Joe played a green/black deck while Brandon was the only one playing red/white.  He had a killer deck.  They beat us convincingly three games in a row.  Later we swapped partners for a couple of games and Brandon and I won the last two games.

 

Booster drafting is my favorite way to play Magic.  The drafting is as fun (if not more so) than playing the actual game.  Although I don't foresee me ever buying into Magic again, I love getting together for a Magic night once a year.