Hyperfocus of the Week: Magic the Gathering

Well, I’ve reached a new level of nerdiness. That’s right, Moss and I have learned how to play the card game, Magic the Gathering…sort of. 

Perhaps I should say, Moss and I are in the process of learning MtG. The mechanics are fairly straightforward but with tens of thousands of card combinations out there, the specifics get complicated. 

So why did I pick up a new dabble? Peer pressure? Procrastination? Because it makes someone else happy? All of the above. 

In Magic—or at least the version we are playing—a player has a deck of 100 cards. They have a “commander” with a special power like pulling cards from the discard pile or making everyone else stronger. The rest of the cards either function as manna—payment to play other cards–Creatures—cards that can be part of the army—or buffers—spells or artifacts that let the creatures do cool things. 

Game play runs in turn order with the player starting with laying down a manna card, then using accumulated manna to lay down a creature or buffer (or several if they have enough manna to cover the costs). Then the creature abilities or buffers are played out, along with counter plays by other players. Finally the player can decide to pit their army against other players. 

So why is MtG so popular? Good question. It certainly has a loyal following. I am not a loyal follower yet, but given the cute little cards and potential adjacent crafting projects, I am on board. 

It was a fairly busy week otherwise. Violet and I worked at the Wooden Boat Festival for Strait Turners; I worked on several turning projects and started Christmas projects; and choir has started again. We’re still working on getting into the swing of everything. Writing wise I did some necessary editing. 

Tomorrow is my first day of LARP and Novel Writing classes which should be exciting. Stay tuned for happy children beating each other with foam swords…and novel writing. 

Happy Writing! And other things this week.