my golden age of Magic

In response to this tweet from Rachel Agnes:

What do you consider to be the “golden age” of Magic? #WoTCStaff

— Rachel Agnes (@baetog_) April 13, 2020

I think about this from time to time. Obviously, it differs from person to person, but it's similar to a theory I have about everyone's favorite draft format, which is that you'll always have fond memories of the first format you ever drafted, even if it was an atrocious draft format. Put this theory in action and you'll find that an alarming number of people really like Ixalan, Gatecrash, Avacyn Restored, or whatever other horrible draft format you can think of, for basically no reason other than that it was the first format they learned to draft with. It stands to reason that everyone's "golden age" of Magic will likely be wildly different, and for different reasons - ranging from anything to when they felt the most mystery and wonder from the game, when they felt they understood it best or accomplished the most, or really as simple as it was the most fun they ever had playing Magic.

As for my answer, my "golden age" was 1998 to 2005. Notably, this was before I ever played in a Pro Tour, or possibly even knew what a Pro Tour was. I didn't even really play Magic from 2000 to 2002, quitting right after Tolarian winter because I couldn't make my green Stompy decks come anywhere close to beating Memory Jar and Mind Over Matter decks, and because I was starting high school anyway.

My involvement with Magic was limited to our weekly Standard tournaments, held on Saturday nights (before FNM existed!) at Alliance Comics in Bowie, MD. (Shout out to Gerard, Amy, Auggie, big Mo, Albert, the Chamberlains, Brian Arnold, Vince, Jeff, that kid that always had Duress in his deck who cried when I finally beat him, and anyone else that made that era of my life so memorable.) Before going to that store, I had no idea what a "format" was, just some vague concept that there were Magic tournaments and that some cards were tournament legal and others weren't. I loved playing green decks with Llanowar Elves at home with my friends, but "my best 60 green cards.dec" wasn't nearly good enough to win in those tournaments, and I got destroyed, over and over. I was 13 years old, and the people who weren't ripping me off in trades were kind enough to give me advice about how to improve my deck, and what kind of cards I would need.

My deck slowly got better. It got faster, more synergistic, and the mana ratio got tighter. I wish I could remember the decklist, but my favorite opening was turn 1 Llanowar Elves, turn 2 Rogue Elephant + Harvest Wurm, followed up with Overrun a couple turns later. After weeks of trying, I finally won the weekly tournament. I remember beating Vince, one of our local end bosses, in the semis after he decided to play a Stasis deck, instead of his normal suicide black deck. I won the finals too, and I won a cash prize that was enormous for 13 year old me. I remember living like a king for the next week after carefully deciding which percentage of my winnings would go to video games and which would go to candy.

In that process, I learned what a sideboard was. I learned how to build decks, not just with cards you like, but that are capable of beating the decks other people play. Most importantly, I learned about bigger tournaments than what my local card shop had every week.

The biggest one I learned about was Regionals, and I suspect it was because it was, at the time, the biggest and most accessible Standard tournament. As far as I knew, sealed deck was something you only played at the prerelease. My store didn't have drafts (that I knew about), and I didn't even know what draft was until Odyssey came out. I didn't know what Extended was. I knew about Type 1, but that I could never afford to play it, because you'd need a Black Lotus in your deck and anyone who would spend $300 on a single card was out of their mind. Standard was the only format I played. It helped a lot that the mid-Atlantic Regionals in 1999 was held at a hotel in New Carrolton, MD, 10 minutes away from my house.

I brought my good ol' Stompy deck. I started out 1-2, and then somehow won the rest of my rounds to finish 7-2. According to the planeswalker points site, this was good for 20th place. I don't remember winning any prize, and if I was eligible for prize, I was too unaware to collect it. I didn't need any prize anyway, I only remember feeling great that I went to such a big tournament and won so many matches. It was at that moment Regionals became special to me.

It's tough to describe the exact feeling of nostalgia I get for this tournament, but it hits me every year around when springtime starts in the DC area, in April/May. The weather would start to get better. You could feel summer approaching. Your classes would start to wind down and school would become less of a hassle. Most notably, if you played Magic, this is around the time when everyone would start buzzing about what deck they were going to play for Regionals. There was no Magic Online, no streams, no endless amounts of data to sift through. There were only tournament reports on The Dojo, and that was only if you had an internet connection, which was still fairly uncommon in 1999. People were desperate for "tech". I think a lot about this article from the Dojo archives, which to me does a good job of conveying the hysteria around finding the next big broken strategy, in an era where it was harder and took longer to vet cards and ideas. If the name Jon Saso from the article sounds familiar, it might be because he's currently the CEO of ChannelFireball.

After picking the game back up in 2002, I went on to play Regionals in 2003 where I died early, tested for L1 judge certification on a whim, and ended up passing, and again in 2004 where I rode the power of Skullclamp in Affinity to a top 8 at what might have been the biggest event to date at 900-something players and kickstarted my long pro career. A career with many ups and downs, many more moments of desperation for tech, and many more thoughts about what a metagame is and how to beat it. Those moments were all special to me in their own ways, but none were quite as wondrous and magical as those late 90's / early 00's Regionals frenzies.

And so, the "golden age" of Magic is going to differ from person to person. Even in these troubled times, someone is probably living their golden age right now, with an unprecedented amount of opportunities to compete online in the comfort (and safety!) of their own home. In a hypothetical future where the production of Magic ceases and support for the game dwindles, someone might yet still experience their golden age, where the joy and wonder of the game is attached to the feeling of discovery of a once vibrant community, feeling energized to revive it and share it with others.

My golden age was when I first started to realize what the possibilities were.