I remember when I was a first-time player- I had to use one of my credit cards to buy a booster deck and two or three booster packs- I made a green deck from those cards. There were no rules or tourneys back then (around 1995). Well my green deck didn't do so well at first and it was after I started playing the deck more that other more experienced players gave me tips about such things as why I should have four copies of major creatures and spells in my deck as opposed to having just one or two (like I did), about why having smaller numbers of cards helped your deck in becoming faster, about the right proportion of mana (I never had enough land and didn't think that getting mana-screwed was a big deal- only a part of the statistics of the game) and all sorts of other things. After they explained all these and many other nuances- there were no symbols to describe rarity of a card and they prevented me from getting ripped off- they introduced me to their "real" decks- power nine with sometimes multiple lotus' and moxen, multiple walks. I flinched when I saw that they would actually deface these cards by having them "signed"- ruining then in my mind! Legal Chaos Orbs! The moxen were still going for about $100 a pop back then for black-bordered sometimes signed- but I could never justify the cost. From there it was basically a scramble to try to build the cheapest deck possible that would defeat a P9 deck or go broke buying them. I still play sometimes but don't have any of my treasured P9 anymore. Maybe someday....
Hey, a fellow magic the gathering player!!! Twas kinda confused about the randomness of the introduction, but tis all good! Have fun walking the plains..
