If you ever frequent the Skyline College cafeteria, you would know it is a hang-out spot for many students on campus: it’s a discussion area, the Associated Students’ turf, an Internet hotspot and a game room. Not a game room in the sense that there are foosball tables or arcade games, but the cafeteria hosts the kinds of games where people interact with each other, like cards. But not just any cards. Magic cards.

I have known about the card game, Magic, for years. A friend of mine was once taught in high school how to play. She said it was fun and really involved, but my knowledge of the game did not extend past that. In my mind, and most people’s, games that involve cards, spells, and weird, twenty-sided dice were things that only the kids who regularly hung out in the library played.

With this kind of high school association I had attached to the game, it was surprising to see people playing it in Skyline’s cafeteria. Or was it? In the past year or so, I thought it was my imagination that there were an increasing number of students playing these types of card games. But as anyone there can attest, on a regular day, at least three to four tables are packed with people eager to play.

Back in April, The Skyline View’s most Magic-informed staff member, Frank Romero, took an hour of his time to patiently explain how the game worked, but I just didn’t get it. I felt bad, but determined to learn the basics of the game. As anyone who regularly plays knows, it is quite complicated.

Not so coincidentally, the staff had been kicking around the idea to do this story, but it fell through. I decided to pick it up, however. Surely something that draws that many people a day, for hours on end, is worth checking out. Aside from that, I genuinely wanted to understand what this game is all about.

What I ended up with, however, was much more than your simple how-to lesson. Every player has a myriad of stories about this game. And for some, it is more than just a game or a pastime. It’s about strategy, money management, moneymaking, and most importantly, skill. If you ask them, those who play frequently will throw Magic jargon at you until you’re blue in the face. They don’t do this to be know-it-alls-they do it out of a passionate love for the game.

The Gathering

I ventured into the cafeteria on a busy Friday. I was hoping to drop in on a game in action, and sure enough, there sat six young men at a circular table. A huge stack of plastic-sheathed cards sat in the center. They were laughing, telling jokes, and seemed heavily involved in their game.

I asked one player, Brian McKay, if it would be OK if I watched the game for a bit and if the staff photographer took some shots. Brian said it was all right, and continued playing.

“Hey, I haven’t played my spell yet,” said Neil Abarquez, another player.

“Yeah, you did,” Brian replied.

“Oh, yeah. That’s right. I played my spell.”

One of the players (who we shall call Harry) folded as we approach the table.

“Wait, wait,” Brian said to the player on his left. “What did you shoot with?”

“He tried to pop it,” replied Isaiah Roberson.

“But didn’t he try to save you?”

“No, no. He tried to pop this [points to another card].”

“Ohhhh. OK, then. Kevin loses. Because he angered Isaiah.”

“Kevin, what’s wrong with you, man?” Isaiah jokes.

Isaiah then watches Kevin get up and walk away from the table. Brian stays focused on the game. “I think it’s Kenny’s turn,” he says.

Kevin then calls back his response to Isaiah.

“Oh, you’re camera shy!” Isaiah says while laughing. “Ohhhhhh!”

A few people walk away from the table on account of the photographer trying to do her job. Seemingly disappointed, Brian comments:

“That’s exactly what I needed. That’s horrendous.”

“We’re fine,” Isaiah replies.

“Does someone else want to concede just because they’re scared?”

The remaining players stay at the table, their silence an answer to Brian’s question.

I offer to have their faces appear pixelated like they were part of a witness protection program. They laugh. Harry walks up to the table. He’s still in. They continue playing and Isaiah gets a call on his cell phone and walks away for a moment. Neil’s turn comes around again.

The player Kenny Wright points at a card. “Scepter,” he remarks. Kevin returns to the table. “I’m here to take Isaiah’s turn,” he says. “Well, welcome back Kevin,” Brian replies, slightly amused.

Neil exclaims to no one in particular, “I want to win today!” Then he plays his turn.

“You know what I’m going to do?” Neil says while drawing a card. “I’m going to attack Victor.”

“Whenever you draw a card, you have to show it,” Brian says. Isaiah protests.

“No, no, no,” he says. “He drew his card.”

“He can get another one,” one of the players remarks.

Isaiah laughs at other’s comments, then jokes at Neil, “I don’t care! You’re gonna lose anyway!”

“Whenever you draw cards, show them to everyone, and if you don’t play them that turn, they’re gone forever,” Brian says.

“Exactly!” replies Isaiah.

“Fine,” Neil retorts. “Well, first I’m going to smack Victor over the head.”

“With a Scepter,” Kenny adds.

“Yes, with a Scepter.”

Before Neil gets the chance, Victor folds.

“Victor gives up every game,” Isaiah says while laughing. “Quitter!”

They laugh it off and continue playing. I look at my watch and I see that I have to go. I thank them and ask to speak with them on the following Monday. Sure, they say. They’ll be there.

As I head down the stairs, I can’t help but wonder what they were talking about. All this talk about “shooting” and “popping”…what is it? And what the heck is “Scepter”? I need help deciphering this stuff if I want to know how this game works.

Back in the office, I see Frank, and proceed to ask him a bunch of questions he probably wasn’t expecting, namely what exactly it was they were playing in the cafeteria. He tells me it’s called Free Magic. They take all the best cards in a game and make a deck out of them. It isn’t an officially sanctioned form of Magic, but that they do it just for fun anyway.

Frank seems hesitant about me talking to him. He insists I should talk to Brian.

“Brian knows a lot more than me.”

I replied that he seemed to be in charge of the game upstairs. Frank then tells me that it was because it was Brian’s deck that everyone was using. And it was a big deck at that. Still, Frank informs me that they don’t always play Free Magic in the cafeteria; it was just what they were doing right then.

Over the weekend, I think about the game. Did I even understand what went on? Not entirely. Thank goodness I was going to talk to someone about it on Monday.

“It’s kind of like stocks”

On Monday, I return to the cafeteria. I find Neil, Frank and Kenny sitting adjacent to a table. They’re not playing, surprisingly, but then again, as they tell me later they do talk to one another sometimes. They aren’t complete slaves to the game.

Right away, we start talking about Magic. I make the mistake of thinking they’re going to tell me how the game works, and how to “pop” cards, but I am mistaken. The first thing Kenny tells me about a local tournament called regionals and what it’s like there.

“I went to regionals, and it really smells like sweaty men all the time, because there’s nothing but…I think I saw maybe four or five girls there,” Kenny says. “But otherwise, it’s all men.”

“Sweaty, geeky nerds,” Neil says.

“Yeah, sometimes they’re really…big,” Kenny says while laughing.

“Not only that, but they were real easy to beat,” Neil replies.

“Yeah, they were actually,” Kenny says with a smile.

What are regionals, I ask? They tell me it’s a massive tournament at which players throughout the area come togethe
r and face off in rounds against each other. After regionals comes states, then worlds, which was held in San Francisco this past year. Each round at regionals lasts 50 minutes, with 10 minutes set aside for players to get set up. At the most recent competition, the group from the cafeteria was there for 11 hours straight.

In the nine years Neil has been playing, he has seen up to 800 people at regionals. Nine years is a long time to be playing considering the fact that Neil was eight or nine years old when he started playing. At his age, he is already ahead of most players.

“I went into this place called KC’s Comics, way back when,” Neil recalls. “I was going to go buy some Marvel cards, but then I was like, ‘Hey, what’s this? This is new.’ So, I went ahead, and I bought it. I remember for, like, the first month playing it, I was playing it all wrong. Every single rule… I didn’t even know it. I just made up my own rules.”

After he learned the rules, however, things got much easier. He even made it his goal to beat everyone he possibly could. Apparently things were much harder when he was eight-years-old: he didn’t have any money to invest in good cards, which, as I learn, is essential to having a good deck. Though skill reigns supreme, a good deck never hurt anyone. When a player has a good deck, it’s like being armed with a handgun-having a bad deck is like being armed with a rubber band. The pricing works the same: the less common a card is, and the more things it does, makes it more expensive.

“It does cost a lot, but that’s only for the initial investment,” Neil says. “If you play it right, you could actually make money out of it.”

How so, I ask? This is news to me.

“For me, I invested early and I bought a lot of cards, like, a couple thousand. Some of them appreciate in value because of how useful they are. So, you go and sell the expensive ones; you get new ones while they’re still cheap, and then you repeat the process. It’s kind of like stocks.”

“Cardboard stocks,” Frank says.

“Magic taught me a whole lot of stuff,” Neil continues. “I also think that Magic’s a good game for people who like to learn things and like to interact with people. Some people, they learn how to bluff, like in poker. You learn vocabulary, you learn better math, and you learn how to handle your money.”

While on the topic of money, I’m told that players who win Magic tournaments win big cash prizes. According to the group, the top prizes, like those in the worldwide tournament, can go for up to $250,000, and smaller regionals can get prizes of up to $10,000. That’s quite a handsome sum, especially when seen through a student’s eyes.

Two other ways to make money through Magic are 1) cheating little kids out of their more expensive cards by trading them ones that aren’t worth as much, and 2) selling cards at tournaments.

Neil tells me he made over $230 in card sales at regionals. I ask him how.

“You have your trade binder-you have your initial investment,” he says. “Now you have that and you sell a fraction of it to the dealers that are out at regionals. You take that money, and your cards, and you go and trade, or buy for low prices, then you go and resell back to the dealer. So, you end up with more money and more cards.”

This strikes me as funny. It’s an interesting way to look at a card game.

I ask them what they think about the social stigma attached to playing Magic-that, more often than not, they’re seen as geeks or nerds.

“Well, let me tell you something,” Neil says in a proud tone. “I will bet you 50 bucks that, at one point, Bill Gates played Dungeons and Dragons. I will bet you this.”

“I wouldn’t take that bet, because I’d know I’d lose,” Frank replies soberly. “Just because it’s considered dorky, doesn’t necessarily make it so. The vast majority of people are more ‘dorky’ than ‘cool’.”

“It’s true that there are a lot of ‘quote-unquote’ dorky Magic players, but there are a lot of Magic players that are there for business,” Neil says.

“And the money,” Frank adds.

Apparently, there’s more to this Magic than meets the eye. I thought it was just a really intense game, like Risk. I never thought I would hear “stocks,” “making money,” and “Magic” all at the same time. Then again, this is a learning process. With the background I gain, I feel it’s time to learn how the game really goes down.