I first got introduced to Magic in middle school, through my friend who lived across the street. She saw how into Pokemon cards I was, and said I could have these binders of cards from this other game: Magic The Gathering.

Inside, I found 5th Edition cards like Primal Clay, Fallen Angel, Feldon's Cane and my personal favorite of the bunch, Craw Wurm. I was intrigued, especially when I learned many of my classmates had started getting into the game as well (though they were playing with the new cards from 8th Edition).

And then Mirrodin came out. None of us understood what Standard was (heck, most of our decks were made up of awful one-off jank,) so thankfully, we didn't get scared off at how broken the game was at the time. But I distinctly remember pulling a Darksteel Colossus from a pack and thinking "yeah, this feels like a game I want to play more of."

I would keep up with the game through high school, being enamored by the samurai of Kamigawa, the Orzhov of Ravnica, Blizzard Specter in Coldsnap, the wild frames in Future Sight and the colorful elementals in Lorwyn (my first pre-release draft). But then I went off to college, and left Magic behind.

That is until a Tolkien-obsessed friend asked me if I knew anything about Magic, because he heard there was a new set coming out themed around Lord of the Rings, and he wanted to try it out.

I busted out my old crappy decks and we played a few hands just to see if he'd like the game, and it all came rushing back to me. We went to the LOTR pre-release at our LGS together. I didn't have much affinity for the set, but I loved drafting a deck and playing against others. I placed 5th in the event.

My friend then bought all the LOTR commander decks and wanted to try that format. I'd never heard of commander before, but if it meant I could play my old friend Darksteel Colossus, I was game. I did some research, bought some new cards (proxied a couple too) and put together a pretty rude Izzet artifact deck (Saheeli's Gift if you're interested.) That was going to be my one commander deck...until I built another, and another and another.

Now I'm fully back in, building new decks of all kinds for all formats, playing Arena, watching YouTubers compare cards and coaxing friends to come over and play a few hands.

It's good to be back.