Greetings from germany fellow card floppers
My Name is Martin, idling at the cusp of middle age, working in pre-press (print, Photoshop, etc), born again Magic player (drafting my fav. sets again, after recently discovering Forge has been released for Android
which makes me
VERY happy), who's been around since soooo close to the beginning...
Me and two friends (both of them fantasy buffs, mostly novels, some pen/paper) started with "Dark Force" in early 1994, maybe late spring(?), from the same publishers as "Das schwarze Auge", snugly aboard the MtG hype train (we had no clue about that ofc), it was the first german TCG and I think, for a while, quite successful.
We only had to figure out how to play this 2-player game (by design) with 3 players
It worked, it was fun for a while, but ONE game could easily last several hours
so, we decided to look for something else.
One of them mentioned an english TCG, which seemed quite popular, with actual tournaments being held in the capital of this small part of germany (Saarland) and the single and tiny main store selling those cards.
But since it was in english, we decided to continue looking. I didn't even have my drivers licence yet, mandatory english courses at school, at least for me, had been scarce.. it was right around that time when the last Unlimited, maybe even AN/AQ were still being sold... Legends was current at the time, iirc.
Maybe in late summer/early fall german Revised was released (as limited/black-bordered edition), we were hooked and on top of it
We played quite a while, it was early 1995 I think, when we dared to change to the original releases, mainly because there were
a lot of translation errors...
You probably guessed it: Legends packs were already scarce (at least locally) and too expensive (NOT REALLY, but we were oblivious about the collectors market, prices, rarity due to print runs, etc.. it DIDN'T matter back then, not only to us
), so we ACTUALLY bought english cards when The Dark, Fallen Empires, and Ice Age (oh yea) came along.
We were "close, but no cigar".
It was a fun ride though, we did "a lot" of tournaments these days (within reasonable reach), even some PT qualifiers...
(iirc the first two players were invited to the PT back then) and we finally decelerated spending almost all of our measily funds around
Weatherlight (at least for me that was the last set I bought/traded the usual amount).
While my friends either sold their cards or pass them along to the brother, I kept everything
when ebay came around I was lucky enough to get some sealed product, relatively cheap,
traded an UNL
Black Lotus at "Spiel" in Essen
(not sure which year, early 2000s), sold a few P9 later on (e.g.
Ancestral Recall,
Mox Sapphire), and had to, for a few months, pay the bills by selling other cards back in 2005, most of my Dual Lands were sold for "quite ok" (at that time) ~30 Euros a piece
(I had quite a few, so it was easy money).
This was
after my second run in 2004, when a local shop had launched FNM tournaments.
Mirrodin was the set which pulled me right back in
Still think it's an awesome set/block, at least MRD/DS.
And I drafted any chance I could get. It was a tournament mechanic I never tried before, but it was love at first sight
We drafted privately with a few buddies, always pre-ordering several displays, it was awesome
The japanese sets (Kamigawa) turned me off again though, I "pulled through" that block, but interest was gone again when Ravnica came around, I think I still got some Boosters somewhere, from a slightly "drafted" display
Anyway.. lots of stories/nice memories, it's been fantastic
But I'll probably never play with actual cardstock again, so, Forge on Android... Awesome
(I read Java on Android is a very skeletal environment, so it's incredible to find a program which, even in alpha, even with a few crashes here and there, simply works and, especially in landscape on a tablet, is simply a dream come true, really..!!!)
Still learning all the tricks in Forge, e.g. I always thought draft is only playable in Gauntlet mode (I want to play against all decks from that same pool), and after 5-6 beaten decks in a row, I was denied two mythical achievements in the same game
TWICE because it crashed before I could win both "Mana Flooded" AND "Life To Spare" Mythics (Mirrodin Draft, MRD/MRD/DST, WR, 55 card deck
).
So, after learning about Single Match mode in draft and finally be able to skip all previously beaten decks, I present to you the proof
(yes, I restarted for a good hand this time, since I had beaten this deck anyway AND had managed to head straight for both mythics)
(I didn't even know he had a
Sun Droplet . Nice. It's easy to get towards 300 life, when the cards fall right. With a Mirrodin/Dark Steel Booster Draft deck
Against THAT deck, of course. Only one
Leonin Bola, one
Viridian Longbow and one
Deconstruct Viridian Shaman, on his side, iirc)
TL;DR - Greetings to all, play right on, and if you should have any questions about those first german MtG sets, I can help e.g. with identifying. I even had a comprehensive post on a then famous german MtG board, but the board got killed due to server move, NO backups, but some images still roam the interwebs iirc, I attached one of them.
All the best
Cpt Kird