Old School Magic the Gathering

Forgive my nostalgic ramble here but, the very first "Geek Game" I ever played was Magic the Gathering. It was Christmas 1999, and my cousin taught me how to play, and a few years later I was making my own decks, and playing with my friends.

My First true introduction to the advanced game was during the Invasion, and Odyssey Blocks. Like most players I hold my first couple of blocks with high regard; a nostalgic memory of how wondrous the game seemed in my youth. Well 2002 rolled around, and I fell out of playing magic in favour of other tabletop games like Warhammer 40k, and D&D 3, and didn't honestly come back to the game again for another decade. Sure I dabbled in it from time to time, but nothing serious until 2013: JADE was in its infancy, and we were all looking for new games to play. So, remembering how much I enjoyed it and how relatively easy it was to get into, I recommended we try out Magic the Gathering, and JADE first gaming obsession began in earnest.

Oh when Gatecrash was new.

Getting back into the game was a fairly jarring experience. The card designs had changed, the rules had changed, and there were a ton of new abilities and new strategies. Cards consider valuable and excellent, were now worthless in both price and power against newer cards. Coming from Invasion and Odysessy and playing with cards as old as Ice Age, and even 3rd edition Magic the Gathering, it really seemed like a new game.

Not that kind of game.

 And the truth is, I really like the new rules, and the new additions to the cards. It has changed the game up, and overall made everyone's decks more powerful than they once were. But, for me at least, I never got that same feeling I got when I opened up the old cards. I just wasn't as intrigued by their mysteries, I never got lost dreaming about the art, etc. it just wasn't the same.

That is not to say that I don't like the new cards. The truth is I have spent more time building decks in the modern format than any other, but for me, magic will always be the old cards with the old design. The sad thing is that many of these cards are no longer legal in modern, meaning if I want any sort of deck building restrictions, I can't use my old cards. So to get around that I started looking at other alternatives, like Legacy and Vintage. But the problem there was more often than not, the newer cards work and combo together far better than the old. Frankly Unless I was playing something like 1st-3rd Edition, or using heavily from the Urza's block, my beloved old cards were simply outclassed.

After a few years of searching, I finally decided that I would give Block Construction a try. Block Constructed decks only use cards from a specific block, limiting what you can use, but also allowing my to use my old cards. The first block I went with was Invasion. And it did rekindle some of the "magic" for me as I searched through Gatherer focusing only on Invasion, Apocalypse and Planeshift cards.

What do you think? Do prefer the changes made to Magic the Gathering is recent blocks? or like me do you have a soft spot of the old game?


Written by: Andrew Gregory