I started playing Magic in NYC in the summer of 1994 with the release of "Revised Edition". Shivan Dragon and Lightning Bolt were king. My friend, Zjadler, still has all the old dual lands from that set: Tundra, Volcanic Island, etc. Me not so much unfortunately. We spent a lot of our allowance at The Compleat Strategist, which still exists. That school year, you were either into Magic Cards, Pogs, or you were cool I guess.

I got back into magic again in 1998 with the release of Urza's Saga. My friends and I played in Type 1, as it was called then, tournaments at Comic Fortress in suburban New Jersey. I was rocking a 60 card counter-everything mono blue deck with 4 Force of Wills purchased from the former NYC staple Neutral Ground. I split some tournament victories back then, beating dudes in their 30s who I assumed lived in their mom's basement. It was thrilling. And I still have some of the in-retrospect-overpowered Urza-block cards in my collection, Gaea's Cradle, etc.

We had a good 60 card meta going for a few years among my friend group: big stompy Timmy mono green decks, super quick white weenie decks, etc. We were actually playing multiplayer free for all at the time - just gravitating to it as everyone could play at once.

I returned to Magic once more in 2015 once a few friends, including Lo_Pan, introduced me to EDH, which is now the only format I play. I took that old mono blue deck, purchased some cards from the Twenty Sided Store in Williamsburg, and converted it to my first Commander deck. This hobby has really snowballed over the last several years as I've gone up to ~15 Commander decks. Before the pandemic, I was playing weekly at The Uncommons in NYC or the Brooklyn Strategist. But now I'm only playing online, and my regular playgroup features icefrigi, blackman10100, and DrunkMonkeyx

So there you have it, 25+ years of Magic the Gathering, going strong.