Back in the Day
When it comes to Old School Magic, "back in the day" in late 1995, reprints of cards from the controversial Chronicles set such as Erhnam Djinn were amongst my most favorite cards when I was a kid, along with Kird Ape reprinted in Revised, because they were accessible, plentiful, and so cheap that people would simply give you these cards for free!
Nothing seemed better to me back in the day than the Green and Red deck I built and played constantly that only cost me $45 total ($10 for the 4 Dual lands, $5 for the Shivan Dragon). Literally, every other card in this R&G deck was given to my by my friends, all Heavily played with no sleeves, all reprints no originals, very few black bordered cards, including:
Erhnam Djinns, Kird Apes, A Shivan Dragon, Llanowar Elves, Elvish Archers, Whirling Dervishes, Taigas, Fireballs, Disintegrates, Lightning Bolts, Chain Lightnings, Giant Growths, Blood Lusts, Stone Rains, Shatters, Detonates, Tranquility, Blood Moons, Icy Manipulators, and one ever present restricted Sol Ring and Regrow.
For me, this was "The Deck" for R&G. It was well-rounded, won a high percentage of games once tweaked, and could hold it's own on the Saturday and Sunday Tournaments at "Heros Comics, Books & Games" in Fort Worth, TX. By winning so many top three places in these $5 entry fee tournaments, for $10 per week total spent on Magic, I was able to get store credit and packs of cards, even boxes of 4th Edition, even a first place prize of a Complete played International Collector's Edition I won, for the bargain price of $40 per month! That was a good thing too, because I was flat broke, living on my own with 4 other friends as roommates in a shack off Berry Street near TCU in Fort Worth, TX, and made minimum wage which was a mere $3.35 per hour!
In those days, being poor was par for the course. Not many "Rich Kids" played Magic that I knew of. Only one of my friends could afford to buy Magic packs constantly because his dad was a doctor and he received $25 per week in allowance. The rest of us saved up, played tournaments, and "Traded-Up" like our lives depended on it for several years that I played Magic regularly from 1995 until 2005. Little did I know those fifteen years of buying and playing Magic would be one of the single best investments of my entire life. Perhaps the only better investment I made during that time was collecting original vintage Star Wars toys, both loose and in the original packages from 1994 until 2018. Yes, Hard Core Original Star Wars fan and Hard Core Magic Nerd here!
Also, A Special Thank You to Ken Meyer, Jr.
I have since decided to become a patron of Ken's and support his art by commissioned custom artwork he produced just this past month in June of 2022. Ken is fantastic to work with and has been amazing as I have gotten to know a little about him through this process.
Ken's career reads like something any child who dreamed of being an artist when they grew up, like I did when I was young, would aspire to. Ken is not only a great artist with creative talent that blows your mind with his work, but he is hard-working, honest, dependable, responsive, kind thoughtful, and generous with his time. Fun Fact About Ken: He's never really actually played the game of Magic much, if at all! He is too busy with his life's work of making art to play the game, but he does love and play tennis!
Here's to you Ken! I never thought I would imagined as a young kid back in the day that I would ever have a chance to get to know the person who's name was on the bottom of all my Favorite Arabian Nights Magic Cards and Characters, much less own a custom piece of art from you! I want to extend a sincere thank you to you for being you; for being the genuine and amazing person that you are, for dedicating your life's work to making art, which is no easy task to make a living at, unless one is as talented and hardworking as you, and for being the artist that made my childhood and Magic so fun and memorable. Cheers!
"The Goode Olde Days" - Shane, Ryan, and Bryan
I started playing Magic in late 1995 when I got a job working at Kay-Bee Toys Store in Hulen Mall in Fort Worth Texas. I was going to university full time at Tarrant County College and taking full time classes, while also working full time. I was extremely difficult to do this. I was in the honors Program called "The Cornerstone" program which focused on liberal arts, fines arts, literature, philosophy, theater, and world history.
This program changed my life forever. It opened my young mind to everything I had never known about before because I was raised going to church and was taught everything I needed to know in life "was in the Bible." This could not be more wrong. The history of Human Thought and the Philosophy and Art courses in particular changed my life in so many positive ways, I believe I am who I am today because of this program, these courses and the amazing teachers who taught them. Each class was taught by three teachers instead of one so you got very different perspectives.
Back in the summer of 1995, on the sales counter at KayBee Toys , was a box of 4th Edition, a box of Fallen Empires, a Box of Homelands, and we started receiving boxes of Ice Age. KayBee was priced higher than other stores due to the Mall retail location costs, so these packs just sat there and didn't sell much at all. However, one day at work a really tall, slender skater-looking guy with cool long hair (I was a skater and I had long hair) came in the store named Ryan. Ryan Kaybee is what I will call him because I forgot his last name.
Ryan walked up to the counter and bought some packs of Magic. I chatted with him a bit and asked about the game. I was curious because I had played some D&D and role playing games, a lot of Battletech, and had even made up my own role playing games with my childhood best friend I have known since third grade, Shane Wickson.
Shane Wickson
As kids from Junior high through high school, Shane and I played a lot of role board games and BattleTech! We read Choose your own adventure games and played DOS D&D on his 8086 PC Clone computer. I loved Shane with ll my heart, and I loved his family, his little brother Casey who also always played everything with us, and his dad who taught Spanish at the local high school and taught Kempo Karate in Shane's Living room twice per week in the evenings.
Shane's family was the family I wished I had. My parents were abusive mentally, physically, emotionally, psychologically, and in every way you can image. If my parents were raising us kids today the way they raised us back then, they would be convicted of multiple felonies and would both be in prison, and we would have been taken away and either lived with Grandparents, who were also abusive, or been forced into foster homes or orphanages, and life could have been much worse. The Wickson's home was my refuge and salvation and I would walk the 5 miles to Shane's house alone every day I could, and cried walking back every time I had to go back home.
In our Role Playing Games we took ideas from D&D, BattleTech, and Choose Your Own Adventure books, and Shane and I came up with a system of using cards with pre-hand-drawn castle rooms and dungeon rooms as a way to randomly generate new areas to play the role playing games in. Later in life, I realized holy crap, we were thirteen-years-old, and Shane and I were making up role playing games, playing them, and fine-tuning them, and invented on our own what I now consider to be a pre-curer to actual CCGs. When we made up those games and that system of using cards, and I thought, wow, what if we had continued down that path, where would we be today? Could Shane and I have invented the CCG market instead of Richard Garfield, Ph.D.? We will never know. I did end up getting my Ph.D. as well, however, in Cloud Computing in 2010.
Ryan Kaybee
Ryan came into the store a few times we exchanged landline phone numbers, and became friends. He started teaching me Magic at the KayBee counter during the summer of 1995. I asked him if he had a job and he said "other than selling weed and skating, no". I said, "Well, don't do drugs, so can't help you there, but we are short on staff and if you work here you get a discount on all store purchases, including Magic!"
I slid over an application and he filled it out right there. I told him hold on, went to the back office, got my manager, and said "Hey Barbara, there's a nice guy here named Ryan who is applying and I think he'd be great. I just interviewed him up front because the store is empty and if you can interview him next, I think you'll like him." She did and we hired Ryan that afternoon.
Ryan and I started playing Magic at his apartment where he lived with his older brother each night we were not working. Usually on Mondays, or Tuesday nights. His favorite cards were Serra Angel and Fire Elemental, for obvious reasons. He always played Red and White decks and ran four of each of these "Sexy Cards" with Savanna Lions, Tundra Wolves, Crusades, Pikemen, and Land Tax with Swords, Disenchants, Bolts, Fireballs, Disintegrates, Chains, Wraths, a sol ring, one Balance, and one Icy. He cleaned my clock a lot of the time with this deck. I cannot tell you how many nights we played so much Magic into the early morning hours and had so much fun. Those were the "Goode Olde Days".
Bryan Pigg
In the late summer of 1995, Ryan and I went to a store near Hulen Mall simply called "Hobby Shop" that sold models, RC airplanes, baseball cards, comics, games, and Magic! Ryan had heard through his other magic friends that this shop still had boxes of revised for $300, packs of Revised for $10, and tons of Revised Singles or cheap, most under $0.25 cents! They actually would do 6 for $1.00 for almost any regular card! The owner used Inquest for pricing and would always to the "ow" value amount to encourage sales. Most Duals were $10.
We went there twice a week and spent our KayBee Toys paychecks every time on Hippies, Sengirs, Bolts, Fireballs Disintegrates, Llanowar elves, Elvish Archers, Serras, Wraths, Mana Vaults, Armageddons, Balances, Mind Twists, Dark Rituals, and every last one of the Sol Rings and Revised Dual Lands they had. I remember distinctly that, at one point, I had 40 Revised Gem-Mint Unplayed Sol Rings and paid $1.00 for 6 of them. Everyone needed one Sol Ring in every deck they had, and as was my plan, I knew I could trade these away and get a lot more in trade value to "Trade Up" for older good stuff. All except four of these would later be traded away for even better, older cards from: Beta, Unlimited, Arabian Nights, Antiquities, Legends, and The Dark, "The Four Horsemen" expansion sets, which are just simply so powerful with such amazing cards, and my inspiration behind the creation of this "The Four Horsemen Old School Magic" Format.
At the Hobby Shop, Ryan and I met a very cool cat named Bryan Pigg. I didn't know it then, but Bryan was to become a great, close friend for several years during college. Bryan was at the checkout counter with the Hobby Shop owner and they were playing Magic sleeveless, as we all did back then. Bryan was playing a mono black deck running Hippies, Black Knights, Order of the Ebon Hand pump knights, Stone Throwing Devils, Will'o Wisps, Unholy Strengths, Hymn to Torachs, Sinkholes, Dark Rituals, Howls from Beyond, Four Icy Manipulators, a Demonic Tutor, a Sol Ring, and a Mind Twist, which were restricted in Type 1.5 at that time. Bryan would have flying regenerating Unholy Strength-ed Will'O Wisps out on Turn two and Hippies on Turn one with Dark Rituals most games. Hymns on Turn three. Bryan was whoopin' the owner's ass and wiping the floor with him as we watched them play three very fast matches.
After losing the third match, the owner said, "Well Bryan, wow, you're really good at this game. I worked on this deck all week since you were here last week play testing by myself right here when the store was slow. I read this here "Inquest" magazine and the strategy articles and I swore to God that I finally had a deck put together that could beat you. But every week, you show up here with a different deck and, hell, I just can't ever beat ya! I knew I should have never told you that we could always play and if you win, you get $10 store credit, that was a mistake and it's cost me. How in the world did I let you talk me into that deal?! But, I'm a man of my word, as you should be too, son. One thing I've been wondering, you haven't bought anything in five or six weeks now. So, whatcha gonna do with it all that store credit?"
Bryan knew that Ryan and I had been just standing there watching all this unfold in total amazement and awe, awkwardly holding our stacks of unplayed Revised cards in hand waiting to pay. Bryan looked over at us. Tom Petty "American Girl" was playing in the background on the store speakers. Bryan smiled at me, gave a slight nod to Ryan, and then looked back at the owner.
Bryan Pigg pulled out two $100 bills, and a business card from the Hobby Shop with Sharpie handwritten credits on it, and slapped these down on the counter top. He then reached up and pointed straight to the stack of Sealed Revised Magic the Gathering Booster boxes sitting on the shelf behind the sales counter and said "I'll take one of those." The owner turned around and look at the box, turned back and saw the two hundred dollar bills, picked up the card with the credits, looked at Bryan, looked and me and Ryan, slid over his calculator, typed in the numbers and then said "Huh.... you've got $110 dollars in Credits here, Bryan. And you just got another $10 for beating me, again. So, with your Two Hundreds there, and I ain't even gonna ask where you got those, you have enough. OK, you got it."
The owner turned around, grabbed a sealed box of Revised form his stack, rang Bryan up at the register, gave him his change after paying sales tax, and slide that pristine sealed box of Sealed Revised Magic goodness over to Bryan. Bryan smiled and said to the owner"Wow, Thanks man, thank you so much. This is the only place I can find that still has these, Everywhere else is sold out. I've been saving up for this for almost half of the year now. OK so, see you next week, right?" Bryan smiled.
The owner smiled and just shook his head, indicating "No" but he clearly was saying "Yes". Bryan extended his hand and shook the owner's hand. I thought to myself, "Wow, what a cool fucking guy. I need more cool people like this Bryan guy in my life." And I made sure to become great friends with him after that.
Bryan grabbed his Sealed Revised box and his killer black deck, put them into his backpack, turned, walked straight over to me and Ryan, and said "Hey Guys. Whatchyou guys doing after this? Wanna help me open some of these Revised pack and then play some Magic?" Boy, did we ever!
Bryan, Ryan,. and I played Magic for the next 18 months straight. Bryan lived within walking distance of the Hobby Shop and about a 10 minute drive form "The Bachelor Pad, as I called it, where I lived with four other broke, smelly college friends and my older brother. Ryan lived by the Mall, so we were together and playing Magic every free moment we had for a year and a half. Because of playing these wto kids so much , they elevated my Magic game and I started winning local tournaments and receiving great prizes, more Magic cards than I ever thought I would have in my life.
MagicAlliance.net & Markus Fagerberg - This Ain't My First Rodeo
On October 22, 1999, I was working at an Internet Service Provider Startup that I and two other guys started in Fort Worth, Texas called "Hawk Internet Services". I learned to build website and launched my own Magic site call "Magic Alliance" at www.magicalliance.net. At that time, we played Magic over the internet not with streaming live video via cameras and actual cards, but instead we played via an app called Magic "Apprentice".
I met a great guy from Sweden playing Magic in 1995 over Apprentice who I still know to this day: Markus Fagerberg. On my Magic Alliance website, you could connect with Magic players from all over the world, play games, trade cards, everything. Markus and I found the two of us were always on the site, always playing games.
Markus quickly became my best friend at that time in the Magic scene. Apprentice had a lobby function and you just connected, posted a note on what magic format you wanted to play, either Type 1, Type 1.5 or Type 2 and you could get a game going within a minute or so. When I eventually graduated college in 1999, I took a 6 week long trip to backpack across Europe and I met Markus at the Paris North Train Station we traveled Europe together. We stayed in a Castle Hostel outside of Amsterdam called "Slot Assumburg". We Played Magic in all the coolest cities in Europe seeing all the sites the summer before Y2K for a month and a half. It was glorious.
Before I went to Europe to backpack with Markus, however, recall that in October of 1999, I had built and launched MagicAlliance.net to create a forum and community where everyone can play and trade. I funded the web site by auctioning off my own cards via my own Auction Engine I built using ColdFusion so that I didn't have to go through Ebay and pay Ebay fees. I hosted Tournaments every Saturday that I didn't have to work and built my own brackets matching engineering and everything. I have always wondered if I had continued with MagicAlliance.net, where it would be today. Back then, there was basically only EBay and Troll & Toad; no TCG player etc.
Magic Alliance was very popular extremely quickly. However, when I went on from Junior College to the University of North Texas in 2009, I started taking more credit hours per semester and also was working full time. In was also around also about that time in 2010 that I discovered girls (late bloomer and too much of a Magic nerd). So, Magic fell by the wayside and on March 10, 2010, MagicAlliance went offline.
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