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It was a cold and snowing day in December and for some strange reason my car decided to start. I was home for Christmas from Uni and was having coffee at some café with my cousin. Well, actually in Aberdeen, South Dakota, there aren't very many places that would actually pass as a café, considering that one usually defines a café as a place where good coffee is had, as opposed to the brown water that passes as American Coffee. In any case, he had an interesting box with him (revised starter deck) that was filled with interesting cards. I distinctly remember Flood and Wall of Ice as I skimmed my way through the cards. He happened to (yeah right) have another deck there and he showed me the basics and before long I was fireballing his Merfolk with reckless abandon. Bright and early the next morning, I went with him to the local game store because he was after something called "booster packs". I waited patiently while he happily opened some packages called "Fallen Empires" and was quite taken with something called a "Thrull Champion". After opening something called a "Royal Assassin" from something called "Revised", much to the delight of everyone in the store, I thought perhaps I could do with a few of these Magic Cards of my own... Sigh...

Back at uni in Chicago I quickly found quite a number of people who regularly played the game and shops that held tournaments. Never one to do things half-heartedly, I dove straight into the Magic scene. A few months, an unspecified amount of money and an enormous amount of time later and I was Channel-Fireballing and Ball Lightning-Beserk-Forking with the best of them. My magic week consisted of Tuesday night casual play, Wednesday night tournament, Friday night tournament, Saturday 2 or 3 tournaments, Sunday tournament. Oh joy, oh rapture. Lest you think I neglected the purpose of my being at Uni, I reserved Thursday nights for studying. Well, most Thursdays.

Looking back, my class notes generally looked something like:
"The Market is most efficient at the intersection of Supply and Demand... The law of Diminishing returns states that... 4 Birds 4 Elves 4 Kird Apes... Adam Smith states that monetary policy is only really effective if... 4 Hymn, 4 Necro, 4 Hippie, 4 Dark Ritual...

You get the picture. I distinctly remember one weekend when I had an extremely important research paper due on the Monday which I had yet to start. This of course did not deter me from playing the gambit of 4 or 5 tournaments that weekend and finally starting off at 10pm on Sunday night or so. I spent a couple of hours rambling on for 10 pages or so (I type fast) added a staple and went to bed. Much to my dismay during class the next day we had to fill out this form regarding our papers and one of the questions was "How long did you spend on this paper?" Well I couldn't bloody well put that I had spent an hour skimming some books and two hours last night typing up the rubbish I had just passed in, so I put down 12 hours or something. As I walked up to the front to hand it in after class a quick glance through other students forms revealed 60 hours... 70 hours... 100 hours... sigh. At least nowhere in my paper "Sri Lanka - A Road to Economic Recovery" did I get to the 4 Ernham, 4 Armageddon... stage.

In the end I did manage to pass the class. Just. Made a lot of good decks sitting at the back of that class too. Education is a wonderful thing.

Then there was this tournament one Saturday morning at the Flea Market. This was an excellent venue because you could come to play Magic, eat 2 year old hot dogs, buy 10 year old DOS-based computer games and get your fortune told all in one go. I sat down in the first round to face my opponent who was obviously over 70 years old. Every time I played a spell he would reach for the card, put on his reading glasses, study it for a bit, mumble. I must have cast lightning bolt 8 times in the 3 games and he did this every time. Didn't really matter though cause his Saproling deck completely wrecked me. Next round and I played this kid. Now usually when we are talking about kids, we are referring to the 12-15 year old variety that are often seen at Magic tournaments. On the rare occasion we may be referring to someone like Leo from Eastwood, who at 7 years old now has been ALIVE for a smaller period of time than I have been playing Magic. In this case the kid was 4. He was standing on his chair. He could not shuffle his deck because his hands were not big enough so I had to shuffle it for him. He couldn't even hold his 7 cards all at once in his hand so he drew them and kept them on the table. He was a pretty cute kid as 4 year olds go and he completely and totally kicked my ass. After he won he asked me to shuffle his deck back together, he picked it up and ran past the fortune teller to the guy selling the 3 cent candy. So it goes.

And then there was the shop in the strip mall that I can't remember the name of but it was next to Rosina's where we always went afterwards because they have really excellent meatball subs. This was the Saturday afternoon tournament. This is the tournament where I saw a guy ride in to the tournament on his bike and walk home with a mox pearl and a mox ruby, having cleverly disposed of the less useful bike for the infinitely more useful magic cards. This is also the shop where I saw a guy trade the shirt of his back for a Minty Moat. Literally. Good times.

So anyway that was Magic in Chicago. Next was Magic back in Aberdeen, South Dakota. I had finished uni and was applying for my permanent resident Visa to come to Australia. As previously mentioned Aberdeen was able to support a magic shop, for the record called "Daddy K's Leisure Ways". They also sold skateboards. And shoes. And educational toys. And pogs. And some clothes. And beef jerky. And pretty much anything else that anyone was willing to buy. While great for the casual scene with players always hanging around, the tournament scene was a bit light. All hail the road trip. Bismark North Dakota. Minneapolis, Minnesota. Sioux Falls, South Dakota. Iowa City, Iowa. I had time. And a Juzam Djinn buys a lot of petrol.

Following this was PT Atlanta, where the most memorable thing that happened was me being 4 seconds late for the first game, first match, and getting a game loss out of it. The second most memorable thing was playing round two against this French guy who smelled SO bad I couldn't even think. Tactics. I think I was 1-4 drop.

Then in April of 1997 I packed my two bags and leaving no less than 10,000 Magical cards behind, I moved to Australia. I quickly found the local magic scene at King's, Atlantis, and GP and got ripped off by Lenny Collins when I traded him some Beta Ice Storms. As you do. I played semi-regularly at the King's tournaments and such but being newly married, Magic was not my top priority. I managed to qualify for Australian Nationals, went, and then quit magic altogether for three and a half years.

This past September, watching some late night television and I actually saw a commercial for Magic 7th edition... "Serra Angel is back!" or some such. I never realised she left. Hmm, Magic... why not? Dusted off the cards, built a type II deck out of whatever Revised and 4th edition cards I had that happened to have come back in 7th ed and went to the NSW State Championships. Saw a number of the old timers and went 2-3. And then I drafted Odyssey. And thus it began again....

Nowadays I play fairly regularly most Thursday nights. Correction, every Thursday night since last September barring one when I had a meeting both Thursday and Friday in Queensland that I couldn't possibly cancel. I play at all the major events and quite a few minor ones like Eastwood Saturdays. The game has changed a lot over the years, which is probably good.

I still like to open those booster packs... line the cards up and slowly peek at the last card... it's green! It could be Call of the Herd! Slowly.... Slowly... dammit another Ground Seal. Hmm. I do have a couple of more packs that I WAS going to save for Thursday's draft... Yeah, better save them.

"Damn Dwarven Shrine!"

Scott Hunstad

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