The players shuffled up their cards and draw their opening hands, with the usual enthusiastic snap-keeps from some and groans when lands don't show up for others. They exchanged the customary good lucks, pregame chats, and then started gaming. A normal scene of normal Magic players enjoying a game over their lunch break at work.
The only twist? This game was played almost 7,000 feet underground. Think anyone was playing
This game of Magic was played 6800 feet underground! 😮
— Star City Games (@StarCityGames) August 19, 2024
What's the strangest place you've played? 🤔#MTG
Thanks for sharing, u/manahydra7! pic.twitter.com/r4KJvB3aa9
When it comes to Magic being played, it's easy to take for granted that it's a global game. From the games's beginnings in the Pacific Northwest of the United States, Magic went on to take the world by storm. Today, we see Regional Championships across the world, and one of the most lasting hallmarks of the Pro Tour circuit is to play the game and see the world, with Pro Tours this year in Chicago, Amsterdam, and soon, Las Vegas. We've streamed almost 24 straight hours of Magic from across three continents in a single, combined show before; I've seen firsthand the reach this game has.
So, why not more than a mile underground, too? Even dark matter and neutrino researchers need to get their games in.
When hundreds of Magic players come together at the Pro Tour and watch 16 rounds of high-level play, followed by a Top 8 and all the interview content that follows, we're seeing only a tiny fraction of both the Magic being played and the human beings who make Magic what it is. Every Pro Tour story starts somewhere, and usually somewhere very different.
And Magic is played everywhere! We've all heard stories of Magic being played at summer camp—one player shared that they would set up in the dinner line hours early to get in games uninterrupted (and get fresh food as a bonus)—or classrooms, of course, or late-night drafts at the pancake joint that might as well be early-morning drafts. It's practically a rite of passage.
But that's just the beginning.
How about Magic in the mosh pit of a heavy metal concert? Did you know there was once a "Magic cruise" and it even turned in a famous Standard deck ("Boat Brew") back in the day? How about inside the Roman Coliseum? I personally took a picture outside Pompeii with the Mountain depicting the surrounding area, part of a trend that has created some of the coolest content imaginable—while also showing off Magic's rich history.
APACランド pic.twitter.com/APZNgYxRbZ
— Ryuji Murae (@era0405) November 14, 2021
We've done Magic underground, how about under the water, too? Magic and military deployments often go hand-in-hand, and that means Modern Fish have been played while swimming among the fishes. Or how about at the top of a mountain?
Then there's the famous "Skydraft." Also known as "connect to airplane wi-fi and hope desperately it lasts long enough for you to complete a Draft or two on your flight to an event." On busy flights, you can actually look out across the cabin and pick out the Pro Tour players getting in games against each other separated by two rows and a drink cart.
What about when things go wrong? I vividly remember playing out a win-and-in Draft at a $10k under cozy cell phone light from judges (whose arms must have been exhausted) because the lights in the venue went out. It's never ideal, but there's tales of places closing and high-stakes games of Magic being played out in the parking lot or hotel lounge chairs.
The point is, you can take the Magic player out of well... anywhere, and drop them anywhere, and sooner or later the decks are coming out anyway.
Even in a bunker. Under mortar attack.
"They weren't landing near us, but we had to be in the bunker as a precaution in case they shifted toward us. While we were stuck in there, we cast Brainstorms and Dark Rituals," recalled Michael Miller, a Pro Tour qualifier for whom Magic wasn't just a hobby.I It was home.
"I played Magic during my entire twenty-plus year active duty career. When I was stationed somewhere where there wasn't a Magic scene and I had to play by myself, I would build multiple decks and playtest them against each other. Magic has played an important role in my life, and especially while deployed. It was my outlet from all of the chaos; my missions were high tempo and all outside the wire. Having Magic available to play with my friends and have some feeling of home forget about all of the chaos was so important to me.
"The military was a huge part of my life, I did twenty-plus years and retired. Magic is just as important, if not more. While I was deployed, I brought four Legacy decks with me and taught a couple of friends how to play. Whenever we had any downtime, we would play as much as we could. They got so into it that they would write letters back home to have their family or friends send cards over to them so they could build their own decks."
It's a tale as classic as those Dark Rituals Miller was casting. Magic has had that effect on people for over three decades now, and in most major cities around the world, you can find a local gaming store and be playing Magic within a few hours. But more than 30 years after Richard Garfield first put Birds onto the battlefield, the game continues to evolve. We saw it with Magic Online and MTG Arena, There's millions of Magic players aroundthe world, and they like to play the game on any platform they can. No one wants to miss Friday Night Magic.
That's what led Travis Norman to include his beloved Magic decks when he set off on the road trip of a lifetime a few years ago.
"My wife and I wanted to act on the age-old advice of 'travel while you're young,' and I had always thought of van life as something well out of reach, reserved for Instagram influencers," he explained. "But after researching it at length, it was closer than we thought. So, we sold our cars, downsized our possessions, bought a van, and hit the road. We worked remotely, traveling to 45 U.S. states in the process."
See the world, play the game?
"My Monday night group was formed during the early days of the pandemic, coming from friends I had never met in person before. They invited me in, and we kept the weekly games up despite the highs and lows of the time. When every day feels the same, game night you something to look forward to, some texture to the weekly calendar," he explained. "I couldn't leave it behind when I hit the road."
And so, he didn't. Among his precious few tokens were a laptop, a webcam, and his Magic decks. The game went on anywhere a hotspot connection could be found.
"I'd typically play either on a picnic table at a public park or standing at the end of the bed in the van," Norman recalled. "When people think of van life, they think of things you see on Instagram; sweeping views of Monument Valley or driving between the California Redwoods. There's some of that, but a lot of van life is spent in transition on the way to a more photogenic place—I played in a charity stream from inside the van, parked behind a Cracker Barrel in St. Louis."
As someone who has seen a lot of cool sights thanks to Magic, but is also a veteran of the travel lifestyle, I can certainly sympathize with that last story. Norman has some pretty special sites on his list—he's slung spells at national parks and cast Lightning Bolts from atop some of the finest Mountains in the world. He's stood atop a thousand-foot dune in the moonlight of the Colorado night sky, then woken up at dawn to the sounds of the boundary waters in Minnesota.
"This trip was life changing. The journey began to wind down, by design, after we were expecting our first child," Norman concluded. "When the view outside your doorstep changes daily, it helps to have a few routines you can rely on. Magic was a constant I brought from home life onto the road, and my friends were familiar voices in unfamiliar places. But none of it comes close to seeing my son smiling at me in the morning; one journey into the next, and I'm glad Magic is there throughout it all."
The Road to Magic World Championship 30
Magic World Championship 30 is coming up at MagicCon: Las Vegas, which is now less than two months away. As we get closer and closer to the event—and reigning world champion Jean-Emmanuel Depraz's run at defending his title—Frank Karsten and I are taking a look back at all of the previous events that brought us here.
Today brings us back to 2016, and it came with a nasty shock for me. Frank informed me that it was in fact he and I who provided web coverage that weekend, and despite my protestations that this was a historical series and there's no way we went back that, it turns that, as always, Frank doesn't miss, we were there, and now my back hurts.
"There," in this case, being Seattle, Washington, where 24 of the world's best players came together for a three-day event that saw them battle things out across Limited, Standard, and Modern. At that time, the World Championship fields were much smaller, and were comprised of players who earned a special invitation. One of those invitations was earmarked for the players who put together the best season across global Grand Prix events, and that included Brian Braun-Duin.
BBD was a content creator, fan favorite, and ultimate example of hard work paying off. Unlike some previous World Champions who shuffled up their first 60 with a preternatural talent for the game, Braun-Duin didn't find success immediately. Instead, he worked his way up the ranks a little at a time, from FNM to local events to regional events to regional tournament circuits to national events to the Pro Tour to the World Championship and then all the way into the finals against Marcio Carvalho.
And when the dust settled on the Bant Company mirror and Braun-Duin was crowned the 2016 Magic World Champion, his victory was more than just a well-earned win many years in the making: it was a statement to the world exactly what true dedication in Magic could accomplish.
