“Magic” is a trading card game that started in 1993 and grew more popular and has stayed like that up until now. There are a few students at Harrisonburg High School (HHS) that play it themselves. These students include Juniors Max McDaniel, Urie Conis, Ashton Landes, Joey Sun, Jacob Blagg and others.

Junior Martin Beck got Conis into the card game and Conis continues to play because he thinks it’s fun. Conis also said that the places he played were most commonly at school and at fellow players’ houses. Conis is somewhat of a rare player who gets the majority of his cards from online stores whereas the majority of players collect booster packs and prebuilt decks from stores.

Landes is another frequent player of the game and is the president of the Tabletop Games Club. He says “Magic” is fun because he has the possibility of winning, but he does not recommend it to others.

“You have to pay money and if you’re not good you’re not good, and some people [like] Urie pay hundreds of dollars for their decks which means they are really powerful,” Landes said.

To Landes, the rules are natural.  

“[To play “Magic”] you have a deck with different cards, some are land and you can only play one a turn unless something says otherwise. Then you can activate them to get mana, and you use the mana to pay for spells and the goal is to defeat the opponent using spells to deplete their health.

Landes doesn’t often go to conventions for playing but he knows of people who do and the largest tournament ever was a “Grand Prix” tournament in 2015 which had a record of 7,551 people participating.

“One time I was playing and one guy made me send all my cards to the graveyard then exiled them,” Landes said.

“Magic” isn’t the most played game in HHS but it is certainly a worldwide card game that is played by hundreds of thousands if not more. Maybe if you are considering playing heed Ashton Landes’ warning and decide for yourself.