Suleyman Films

In keeping with my promise for a weekly blog, here is the first non-announcement blog post! See, I stick to my word.

I wanted to write about a game that is near and dear to my heart and has been on and off for a long time. It’s a game that seems to mark new chapters of my life, and I can almost always look back on it as a time when something new and exciting was coming aboard the ship of my life.

Magic: The Gathering (from here on out, it’ll just be Magic because that’s a long name…), after the Pokemon trading card game, is one of my earliest memories of card games that weren’t Go Fish or War. These games had pictures on them, and the pictures were pretty damn cool.

Terror is a card that always stood out to me because of its horrifying art: a grotesque creature (or a man?) is afraid of…something. There is so little context to the art and the card and seven-year-old Suleyman was equally afraid. The card sat in my sister’s dark green binder aptly labeled MAGIC in black Sharpie, alongside dozens of other cards with equally iconic art from the game’s early era. I had no idea how to play the game – and had no interest either because it wasn’t Pokemon or, eventually, Yugioh – but I found myself flipping through that green binder just to look at the cards.

For the uninitiated, Magic is a trading card game by Wizards of the Coast initially created by Richard Garfield decades ago. In it, you use cards to build up resources to spend on monsters, characters, and spells to defeat your opponent by reducing their “health” to zero. There are many different “formats” (ways to play the game) and thousands of cards, but the core is still the same throughout: use cool cards to do cool stuff, and get your opponent’s health total to 0.

In 2015, I was to start my first job after graduating from college: Bethesda Softworks. Yes, that Bethesda, the one that made The Elder Scrolls games and other big-name titles. But that’s a blog and a story for another time. The big point I’m making here is that I knew my fellow nerds at Bethesda played Magic from my first foray into working there during college. I wanted to be part of the crew that played during lunch or snuck in games when they were supposed to be working (I won’t name names; don’t worry, former Bethesda employees who loved to play the format Modern). So, I headed over to Labyrinth Games and Puzzles in Eastern Market and grabbed three starter decks: one for me, one for my wife, and, what the hell, one for my sister. At our second apartment a few blocks from Waterfront in Southwest, the three of us learned how to play, messing up the rules and shuffling cards without protective sleeves but having a ton of fun.

That summer and fall, we spent a lot of time (and money) learning the game and buying more cards than we could ever use or need. Most of the time, we foolishly purchased booster packs (think lottery tickets but with randomized Magic cards) and accrued an extensive collection. But money be damned, it was fun. I remember the first time my wife opened up an Expedition from a booster pack (sticking with the lottery ticket analogy, it’s the equivalent of winning a hundred bucks, maybe more…). I remember getting two Gideons from a few booster packs when a friend and I snuck out of Bethesda to grab some cards at Barnes and Noble.

For me, that time was peak Magic. Everything was exciting and new, and I found an entire world devoted to a card game that once only existed in my sister’s green MAGIC binder. Magic had tournaments, live-streaming players, videos on YouTube dedicated to opening booster packs, and, my favorite, Grand Prix. Grand Prix were massive tournaments held in huge convention centers worldwide. My wife and a few friends met up at one hosted in the DC Convention Center. We discovered artists who created the iconic magic art, purchased their art prints, had them sign cards, and chatted with one about Iceland and our recent vacation there. I couldn’t believe Magic had a dedicated art scene, but I was glad we’d discovered it. It added one more layer to the game I loved.

Over time, my dedication to the game dwindled. I got a new job with a schedule that didn’t allow me to go to Eastern Market, and – arguably worse – nobody at the new job played the game. Gone were the lunch breaks of Magic at Bethesda. I picked up other games to collect or try something new, but none of them scratched that itch.

A few years passed, and I somehow convinced a few American University friends to try Magic. Now that I think of it, I bought them starter decks like I had for myself, my wife, and my sister years ago. So, maybe it was less a case of convincing them and more guilting them into playing. I did spend my hard-earned cash, after all. A few more people got interested, and before long, we went to game stores a few times to play, I bought booster packs for everyone to draft during lunch (draft is a style of playing the game wherein everyone opens a booster pack, takes one card, and passes the pack until they can make a deck), and it seemed like Magic had finally found its way back into my life.

Then, like everything else good in life, Covid had to come and ruin it.

The Magic scene died as people worked from home, as game stores shuttered their doors, and when I left work to pursue my master’s degree and writing career. But that didn’t keep me from buying cards I didn’t need.

Magic grew more than ever, creating cards from IPs I loved, like Godzilla – little kid Suley was in love – The Walking Dead, The Lord of the Rings, Warhammer, and other popular brands.

But I didn’t play as much and eventually found myself interested in other hobbies to spend foolishly on. I bought some stuff over the years – mostly collections from Warhammer and The Lord of the Rings – but it wasn’t what it once was.

Until last Tuesday.

Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in. And with new art, too. It’s no Terror, but man, do I love these new cards.

A friend from my old job asked if I wanted to meet him and his friends for game night, where they played Magic for hours on end. The introvert in me was nervous because new people are scary, but damn was it fun. I got two good games in and met new people, and now I’m spending hours on end that I should be using to do homework and write, looking up cards online and buying them for new decks to play with.

Is it a coincidence that I started playing Magic again when I began to pursue my MFA degree? Or, deep down, is there a part of me that picks the game up when I begin a new chapter of my life? Both? I genuinely don’t know, but I don’t know if it matters.

What I do know is that I am three for three with my dinosaur deck, and I don’t plan on losing any time soon.

Until next time, thanks for reading, and I hope you have a hobby you can look back on with the same fondness I have for Magic.

If not, it’s never too late to swing by your game store and grab a deck. Or two. Why not make it three? Oh, and grab a booster pack for good luck.