Welcome

First and foremost - HELLO! You've stumbled upon the Feast of Magic blog - a spot for collectors and appreciators of Magic: The Gathering cards. This blog is dedicated to the collectibility and pure aesthetic value of MTG in it's purest form: the cards. A great deal of Magic blogging is devoted to gameplay and who has the "best" deck in standard at the current moment. This blog is different...

 

Before I continue, I feel I should introduce myself. My name is Brasif. I'm an avid collector of MTG cards, and occasional player... (and I do mean VERY occasional). I wanted to start a blog for a few different reasons, the first of which is for me. It may be selfish, but with so many things going on in the Magic world, sometimes it's hard to keep track of how I feel about all of it. It'll be nice to look back in 3 weeks, 6 months, or two years and remember how I felt about what when. My second reason for starting this is my simple hope that at least one person will actually read it, enjoy what I have written, and comment and share with me what they think and enjoy in return. This may be just a whim, but I hope not... Thirdly, I wanted to start a blog about Magic because I feel more appreciation is due to the "collectible" part of this collectible, trading card game. Too much focus is given to the mechanics of the game and top decks and such; I have never felt there was enough for the collectors... Surely I understand that MTG is firstly a game, but for me (and many others) it is so much more. It is the sheer thrill of opening that first booster pack after a new sets' release, or finally finding that elusive ancient rare that you've been looking for for years. I don't collect so that I can play or compete (I actually have a rule that I can't put anything into a deck until I have 4 duplicates to keep for my collection) - that's just not for me. Maybe it's not for you either. Maybe this is more your speed; your style. If it is, you may want to keep reading...

This blog is for all of the Vorthoses out there. For all the people who, as Mark Rosewater puts it, "started collecting cards because [they] liked the art, then read some Magic novels, then saw [their] favorite characters appear on some cards and decided to learn to play." According to Mark, "Vorthos understands that Magic can be fun even when you're not playing the game." This is the feeling that I want to instill throughout this blog. I want to take a whole article just to talk about a particular card's art or about the feeling it evokes from people. I want to talk about old favorites that are no longer legal, but are too good to forget about. I want to remember what was worth searching for and what I yearned to have so badly...

Magic is something that should never stop inspiring people. It should create an emotion in them that they feel compelled to come back for again and again. I remember my first pack. It was 2003 - the original Mirrodin set had just come out and I had no idea what Magic was. I was in a store in our local mall and walked past a silver, metallic booster pack of a game I had heard my friends talk about, but my mother wouldn't let me "get addicted to"... My dad must have seen the look in my eyes because he said, "You can get one if you want to." I pretended for a minute to not be interested, but I ended up walking out of the store with it in my bag. I got home and went straight to my room to open it and the first card I remember seeing was Malachite Golem; the rare was a Mindslaver. I read every card probably four hundred times, and only understood about half of the words that were printed, but that didn't matter. It was the feeling that came over me every time I took them out from under my bed and held them in my hands. It was the excitement to maybe, one day, have the chance to buy more. Needless to say, it was many weeks until I bought another pack, but eventually I did and I've never turned back since.

To close this introductory post, I want to tell you that if you love Magic: The Gathering, never let it stop inspiring you. Keep collecting, playing, and having fun. And if you've liked this blog so far, check back often because there's so much more to come!

Happy Collecting!

-Brasif

P.S. To view Mark Rosewater's full post about Vorthos and who he is, click here.