It's a battle of the brains age 9 and up at Downtown Comics in Winter Haven.
It's a gathering. But not one of the geeks.
There is a certain amount of magic involved. But it's not sorcery or devil worship. The magic is mostly in the popularity of the game -- "Magic: The Gathering."
Magic is part of an international card-playing craze. More than five million people around the world have become Magic players since its release in 1993. The game sold more than 10 million cards in the first six weeks. It is available in nine languages and played in more than 52 countries.
But these aren't your ordinary playing cards.
It's called an "adventure" card game with land cards, creature cards, enchantments, spells and permanents. The cards are used strategically to reduce an opponent's score from 20 to zero. Play can last anywhere from a half-a-minute to several hours.
Levels of play range from an introductory card game to expert level. There are thousands of cards for Magic players to choose from in building the standard 40-card deck they need to begin play. Cards can cost anywhere from $3 for a 15-card expansion deck, to $400 for a "Block Lotus" card that has been banned from tournaments "because of its power."
Players who attend practice sessions and judged tournaments at Downtown Comics in Winter Haven range in age from 9-year-old Sean Worden of Winter Haven, to his father, 43-year-old Tim Worden.
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Daniel Mondragon from Orlando Studies his cards for his next move.
Carl Christiansen/News Chief
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Tim started learning the game when his son first expressed an interest.
A psychologist with Winter Haven Hospital, Tim Worden says he wanted to make sure Magic was a safe pastime for his son.
"It looked a little like black magic," he says. "But it's just the way the cards are made to appeal to all ages."
He says he recalled how Dungeons & Dragons players immersed themselves in D&D; characters and got carried away.
"I was naturally worried."
But Sean and Tim now begin Magic games when Sean is done with his homework. Sometimes they'll finish in one evening. Other times they'll continue playing the next day.
Lee Steht, of Bartow, is one of 12 pro-tour Magic players who play four to five games in practice sessions and competitions at Downtown Comics in Winter Haven. The card and game shop sponsors the "Goodfellas" Magic card playing team which is made up of Steht, Daniel Mondragon (both of whom make a living from his Magic tournament winnings), Koby Kennison, 21, who is ranked number one in the state and 40th in the world, and Ryan Gutierrez.
"It's easy to learn," says Steht, "but hard to master."
Koby says the game is about a group of wizards who roam the plain confronting each other over property. The players summon creature cards with which they can attack the other players' cards.
Matt Millburn, owner of Downtown Comics, started playing Magic when it was first released.
The game is one of strategy, he explains. To a beginner, the description of the rules sounds amorphous: Land cards are used to pay the cost of other cards. Once they're paid for, then you can play the other cards and they do whatever they do.
The game:
Magic is played with two people with game variants that include more players.
Each player begins with a score of 20. The object is to reduce your opponent's score to zero before he or she does the same to you.
When play begins, both players shuffle their decks, then draw seven cards from the top of their decks.
The first player draws from his deck and plays a land card that provides the resources necessary to play other types of cards. Cards have varying degrees of power that dictate how much it costs to play them.
A player put a creature card in play by tapping (turning) one or more land cards to pay for the creature and then placing the creature card face-up on the playing surface. Tapping turns on the resources.
A player can attack his opponent with creatures to try and reduce the opponent's score. The opponent may then use his creatures to block the attacker's in order to avoid damage. The damage a creature deals when it attacks or blocks is denoted by two numbers in the lower right corner of the card.
The first player to reduce his or her opponent's score to zero wins the game.
Magic cards, classified as common, uncommon and rare, are used at strategic tools during play, somewhat like chess pieces. Each Magic card features unique, original artwork that furthers a storyline and complements game dynamics. Magic is sold in two-player games, booster packs, preconstructed decks and randomized tournament decks. Each product is categorized and labeled as starter, advanced or expert level according to the complexity of the product's rules, strategy and play.
There are three skill levels, explains Calder Wilson, 10, of Winter Haven. Cards from all three skill level decks are compatible. The rules, however, change between skill levels. In the higher skill levels there are more complex things players can do.
"My brother gives me cards," he says, "like the Jester's Cap." With the Jester's Cap, Wilson can tap two more cards.
"Tap this," his opponent says.
Wilson puts his Jester's Cap in the graveyard and takes three of any card from his deck he can use in upcoming hands. The graveyard is where captured cards go until the game is over. The "Jester's Cap" is worth $12.50. Some cards, which have been out of print for four years, are worth $300, Wilson says with a bit of admiration in his voice. There are three cards in the latest release of 357 cards -- "Urza's Saga" -- worth $20.
"The game is likeŠ" he contemplates, "an exercise in math and probability."
Probability? Can a ten-year-old use that word? Does he know what it means? After playing Magic for a year, Wilson has a pretty good handle on what probability is.
Sean Worden learned about Magic from people around him who were playing.
"One of my friends taught me and I taught some of my friends," he says.
Other games he enjoys playing include chess and poker, which he learned as part of a lesson from his father on the value of money.
"It's like those games because it promotes hard thinking and presents a challenge," he says. "But it's more subtle than chess."
He can use what he learns as he continues to play in tournaments at Downtown Comics and in games he plays with his friends and brother when he's not in school.
Some schools have listed the game as an official after-school activity. Teachers use it as a teaching tool in math classes because it challenges students to think strategically and mathematically.
The game was developed by Richard Garfield, a mathematics professor at Whitman College in Walla Walla, Wash. Garfield designed his first game when he was 13 years old. Now, at 32, he's a natural for the company payroll in that its business is producing board, family and trading card games.
Designers, Garfield says, come from a wide variety of backgrounds.
"My background is quite broad," he explains. "I was teaching math but I studied literature, linguistics, economics and other conflict resolution types of things. There was no study that hasn't helped me."
But he decided that designing games would be a foolish place to try to make a living and became a teacher.
Magic: the Gathering is produced by the Renton, Wash.-based gaming company Wizards of the Coast (WOTC), which also owns TSR Inc., which created D&D.;
"At its basis," says Tim Helms, a sanctioned Magic judge who lives in Bartow, "it is a strategic, critical thinking game.
In addition to creature cards and land cards there are cool monsters with artistic images that all do different things.
The strategy begins in putting the playing deck together and then deciding how to play the cards once you have a deck.
The professional tournament circuit makes six stops throughout the country and offers first prizes from $25,000 to $30,000 and pays out to a total of $200,000. There are 32,000 sanctioned Magic tournaments each year and more than $2 million is awarded in tournament settings worldwide. The next tournament is the pro-tour in Los Angeles in February.
Players are generally young men, ages 8 to 34. Pro-tour players must be at least 18 years of age. Younger players are eligible to join the Junior Super Series division and can win scholarship money. Once they qualify for the pro-tour they are no longer eligible to compete in the 18 and under class.
Last year, 17-year-old Brian Selden of San Diego, won $34,000 at the world championship at the University of Washington. Selden was older than Garfield had been when he developed his first game.
The original idea for Magic came to Garfield when he was an undergraduate student. His search for a company to produce and sell the game ended in 1991 when he met with WOTC CEO Peter Adkinson. Garfield was asked to design a card game that was fun, portable and that could be played in less than an hour. After working on the game for three months, he presented the Alpha version of Magic: The Gathering trading card game.
Adkinson tested the game and decided WOTC wanted to develop the game.
"It sold out immediately," Garfield says. "It was a brand new concept. The type of game was completely new when came out."
With a bachelor's degree in computer mathematics and a doctorate in combinational mathematics from the University of Pennsylvania, Garfield left his teaching position and works full-time for Wizards of the Coast (WOTC).
"I do designing and promoting for Wizards and work only as consultant for Magic."
Garfield was instrumental in the development of other games for WOTC and the Magic expansion called Arabian Knights. He has also concentrated on designing other games, last year working on the design of the expansion of the game "Tempest."
Meanwhile the decks of cards with names like Shivan Dragon, Lord of the Pit, Elephant Graveyard and Merfolk Assassin, Cataclysm, Entropic Specter, Necrologia, Oath of Druids, Oath of Ghouls, Oath of Scholars, Paroxysm, Plated Rootwalla, Transmogrifying Licid and Volrath's Dungeon continue to take on lives of their own.
"The cards from Magic originally were mostly my names," Garfield says, many coming from random Arabic words.
Astounded by the popularity of the game, Garfield says he never expected it. But if he were to retire, he says he would be designing games anyway.
"I played all sorts of games growing up. When I was about 13 or 14, I became interested in games as a whole."
War games, strategy games, parlor games, games of luck, no luck, card games. As long as they posed an intellectual challenge, Garfield was interested in them.
"It was clear to me that games were the intellectual counterpart of sports. Once you realize that, you wonder why this age, which is so much more mental than it is physical, doesn't see them as such."
"Everywhere I turned there were always interesting new games to learn and I was amazed at how little there was that had been written up about them."
More and more is being written about the Magic phenomenon including comparisons to games like Dungeons & Dragons that are unfounded, especially if you talk to a game expert like Garfield.
"There has been a lot of largely undeserved media attention to role playing games," he says. "The atmosphere of magic is dueling wizards. There are lots of fantasy creatures and many people find that offensive. But its roots are in literary fantasy such as Tolkien.
"There will always be a lot of people who regard anything with the word magic in it offensive," Garfield adds. "Most role playing games go far beyond where Magic goes."
Magic is like other strategy games in that there is scattered interest through many areas in formalizing game design. For example, companies are beginning to use games to train employees.
Although the large number of boys and men at Downtown Comics might lead a person to believe otherwise, there are girls who play Magic.
"If you go to a tournament it's not as lopsided. Relative to many games, Magic's proportion of women is relatively high.
When he's not designing games and giving WOTC his advice, Garfield enjoys spending time with his 14-month old daughter, visiting his family, going to the movies and reading.
"Of course, I love playing games so my professional and private lives bleed into one another."
He said he also plays some Magic versions with friends as well as some German board games.
"But I challenge people to look at games as mental sports. They teach people to work with one another and deal with winning and losing. They develop character and do all that," Garfield says. "They allow the physical component of sports to be replaced by a mental component."
Wizards of the Coast employs more than 500 people worldwide and has offices in Antwerp, Paris, London and Milan. The company also produces the games "Corporate Shuffle," which is based on the DILBERT comic strip, and "Portal," an introductory version of Magic. It has also enjoyed success with the release of BattleTech, a strategic trading card game based on the board game of the same name, and "RoboRally," a science fiction board game.
