How did you get into Magic?

[Moxlotus]

Read the title.

It was my mom's 40th birthday.  My dad bought her a limo ride to Chicago so she could see the Shed Aquarium that she always wanted to go to.  But my parents both HATE chicago driving.  We took along my dad's employee and her sons--including Brian Fisher.  They showed me how to play and I went out and bought an Ice Age Starter later that week when my mom took me to the store (hey, i was like 11).

I don't think I've seen a topic like this before.

[ErkBek]

I had some cousins teach me. I bought a starter, taught my older brother, and then showed some friends.

[T00L]

When i was much younger like 10 or 11 I would go to my mom's friends house during the summer while she worked. My mom's friend's son who was 3 or 4 years older than me was playing with some of his friends and i wanted to learn so they taught me.

[Roxas]

I used to subscribe to a gaming magazine; one came with a mini-starter set consisting of two decks of twenty or so cards each. My brother and I figured out how to play it, and while he got bored with it pretty quickly, I became interested and found other people in my grade school (I was in fifth grade at the time) who played.

[The Atog Lord]

My dad has always been really into games. He mostly plays historical war games, and has gone to Origins for longer than I've been alive. I'm 25. When I was around 12, Dad returned from a business trip with a pair of starter decks for a game he had seen being played in a local gamestore. He told me it was a card game, but was also a game where you collected the cards. Then he told me that one of the cards had you drop it onto the table while you were playing. So, I opened my starter deck of Unlimited, which included a Gae's Leige and a Winter Orb. And that's how it all began.

[Machinus]

My friends played it for years, but I never got into it. Finally after suggesting that I try it several times, my best friend at the time hid a basic Mountain inside a birthday present to me. I found it, learned about the game, and I've played it ever since.

[olli]

you all know about magic hailed as cardboard crack???

so, for me it started way back in the unlimited time, when my local gameseller gave free starters to his regular customers to promote this new, cool game (hey, pst, come over here. look, i make the first one free...)

what can i say, addicted ever since...

[Almighty]

I learned how to play at boy scout summer camp. When I returned, I asked some friends if they knew about it, and found that they all played too. Bunch of closet dorks, they are.

[Necrologia]

I was in third grade at the time. One of my friends had an older brother that was really into it. His brother taught him how to play. He also gave him a few decks made from commons. Using a combination of the rule books, mostly incorrect knowledge from my terrible teacher of a friend, and a good smatering of make believe to fill in what we didn't understand, my little circle of friends all started playing.

I distinctly remember being annoyed that Wall of Wood stopped my Grizzly Bears cold, and I couldn't draw a War Mammoth for the life of me.

I also remember thinking that Mana Vault, Demonic Consultation, and StP were all terrible cards. Not like Walls. Nothing beats a good soild Wall of Shadows. It blocks everything!

[Bob The Builder]

I was walking in a toy-store and saw what looked like an awsome game (I liked the picture on the box).  It was a starter set of MAGIC the Gathering.
One of my friends (Eddie on TMD) saw my cards and said he used to play magic, he picked up the game again after that, and dragged me along into VINTAGE format.

[zeus-online]

One of my friends from school showed me the light! 

He had moved to another school where everyone was playing magic, so about ½ month later when i saw him again he had three decks and i we just sat there playing games on the floor in my room...oh such wonderfull times.

The first lesson i learned was not to overextend, right there, on the first day.
I was playing his mono-green overrun-Aggro deck with stuff like Craw wurm etc...and i had well over 20 power on the board, but i wanted to deal even more damage to him, played 3 creatures or something, passed the turn....Wildfire. Boom! And i lost.

/Zeus

[marcb]

I was 13 at the time. Legends had just ended and revised was in swing. A friend of mine introduced me to the game. He had a few friends who played, so we each grabbed a deck of cards (probably 90 or so per deck). Each was a different color; you couldn't mix colors because that would be heretical, and we played four way magic. I remember thinking frozen shade was amazing. Pumpable seemed totally unfair.

Marc

[Norm4eva]

Set the Wayback Machine for two days prior to the Judgment prerelease...
There's this diner in Nebraska on highway 2 that stays open 24/7.  People of all age would cruis ein and out of there and do absolutely nothing all day, all night; for some reason, it was just The Place To Be.  At the time I was in the habit of waking up around 4:30 in the PM and hitting the sack again around 7:00 the next day; the diner perfectly facilitated my need for an anti-social haunt.
The only thing worth doing at that diner was playing cards.  I went from knowing shit about cards to learning hearts, spades, pitch, and probably a dozen more games that I've since disregarded.  But there was always this other game going on that I would always watch but never understood.  Finally I had to ask one day, "hey man, will you teach me how to play Magic?"
For my first game of Magic they decided to have a Fallen Empires solomon draft.  Imagine my confusion.  Nevertheless I won that bitch with a Deep Spawn and a Combat Medic.  The next day I bought the GB Madness precon.  The day after that, I went to the Judgment prerelease.  All downhill from there

[The Chosen One]

Senior year of high school(Im 30 now) a few of my friends I had been playing D&D with told me about it,
got into it casually. Just recently started taking the game more seriously as a hobby and playing competetively.

I just love the game and plan on teaching my daughter and future children to play.

[madmanmike25]

Let's just say it was a Dark time in my life. No, literally, The Dark was the current set.  One of my buddies in high school (yeah, I'm old) gave me some cards and from then on, I would buy my own packs from saving some of my lunch money.  We played mostly at lunch time against some of the jankiest decks you never heard of.

....

Then I turned 18 and got into girls(pun intended) and alcohol.  Stopped playing for ages, then I got back into MTG around Onslaught to give my liver a break, and finally got to buy all those cards I wanted when I was a kid.  Hooray for jobs.  Funny, I always used to say "I can't believe people pay so much for cardboard!" -Sweet irony.

[LotusHead]

My buddy Mike Strong was an avid wargamer, but I was more into D&D.  He said he found this card game that was like D&D.  This coming from someone who thought Axis and Allies was fun, I was skeptical, but I agreed to play it once.

He had like 100 cards (Unlimited era) and we all drew from the same deck.  No cards were cut.  It's just what he had.

Let's put it this way, after I had a Flying Firebreathing Invisible Scathe Zombie on the field, I was hooked.

I am a Magic Casualty to my Sacramento Gaming Group (I live 30min away from Sac), and I have never grown tired of Magic ever.  I've only been "competetive" since mid-Mirroden block.

[Imzakhor]

A friend of mine owned a game store, and a bunch of people were playing a multiplayer there, and he lent me a deck... It had natural selection in it. I got zero land and mana, and I kept discarding everything, and I lost without playing a card. It was STILL so much fun that I wanted to play again, but I had to leave.

I gave him his deck back, said it was fun, and said I would never buy magic cards. Everyone laughed but me, and I didn't know why.

Now I know why.

[wethepeople]

I was given a large pile of blue cards in the summer of second grade, an islands, in which later turned into a quick Mono Control list that won via Psychic Venoms, and Serendib Efreets; tech.

When grade three begun, I met some kid on the bus who played some sort of Suicide Black deck, and consistently beat me. I asked where he got his cards, and he offered to buy me some, if I were to give him two dollars. I took the risk, and gave him my allowance (in quarters), and next weekend, I had aqquired my own little Sui deck.

Months after this historic event, I purchased some "better" cards like Hyppies, Duress, and Tutors, and updated my 43 card decklist. Soon afterwards I began playing in t1 tournaments at a local store in the nearby mall. At the second one I attended, I finished in first. From there on out, I was officially the best player in Vintage, or atleast, I felt that way.

[Jank Golem]

I started playing in near the end of 6th grade when it was big in my school. My first deck was a Mono White and had 250 cards. From there I learned the basics and got my deck down to 60 cards and even started running 4 of one card. Throughout this time I never like the idea of T2, it just seemed dumb not to be able to play with ALL your cards. I then started playing at my local shop, Triple Play and began posting on mtgnews, both of which helped me improve a lot. Then I started reading TMD and playing at larger New England tournaments and taught 3 other people in my school competitive Vintage magic. Teaching them magic was a very interesting experience and it made me better at the game. Here I am now 3.5 years later still playing with ALL my cards.

[Dante]

I saw Magic at the first Gencon they were unveiled (it was back in Milwaukee then.  I'll be 30 in August), but they were sold out of alpha at that point.  I went back home and bought some at my local store (used to be Games Plus in Mt Prospect IL) when available.  My first starter had as notable cards Chaos Orb (my favorite card ever), Royal Assassin, and a Juggernaut.

Games Plus had card night on wednesdays....that was it, I was hooked.

I remember back in the day the religious conservatives telling us MTG was evil, see below.

http://logosresourcepages.org/Occult/magic-g.htm#THE%20DEVELOPMENT%20OF%20THE%20GAME

[Parcher]

I was going to the University of Maryland, and used to play Warhammer at the campus Games Workshop(how I got into that is another story).

And yes. I'm really old.

One of the Skate Punks who hung out there started bringing in shoeboxes of this new game he picked up at the local comic shop for us to play on Wednesday evenings, when the store stayed open until midnight.

While most sneered at the "D&D" type game, once we got enough cards to make real decks, we all pretty much got hooked. This was during Alpha and Beta, so we actually sold out the comic shop the moment he recieved each new shipment. Funny thing is, being Wargamers we sort of neglected the whole "collectable" aspect of the game, and basically just threw a rubber band on the decks and tossed them into a box when done. I can't imagine the amount of money we pissed away.

[Illissius]

I think it was in 6th grade or so when a few friends introduced me to it. Circles of Protection, Walls, legends, and Legends were considered the awesomest things ever. The first three rares I opened were Force of Nature, Thran Golem, and Time Spiral. My favorite deck had a ton of Wurms in it (<3 wurms), and Elvish Piper.

[moxpearl]

I was just out of college around Revised and my high school D&D friends had picked up this new card game called Magic that they were playing every night.   I tried it and was immediately hooked.  It's really funny thinking of your perception of the game back then...I wasn't impressed with moxes or dual lands, and I thought it was ridiculous that a Black Lotus could be $40.   I think I got underground sea and a fork in my first starter, and I was disappointed I didn't get the cool creatures like Shivan Dragon, Royal Assassin, or Northern Paladin.   And a subsequent pack I got Savannah Lions, and I thought the pack was missing the rare card because I didn't think a 2/1 creature with no abilities could be it!  

I lost touch with those friends around Mirage, and I didn't pick up the game again until Onslaught when a coworker noticed a hand drawn magic card in my office that my 10 yr old nephew drew for me.   I found others at my work and church than played and have been re-addicted to magic, particularly the eternal formats.

[Liam-K]

I was reading in the school library.  There were some older kids playing a game with cards that had pictures.  It looked pretty fun.

Actually I think it was called Overpower and had to do with comic book heros.  I was watching the card games because of the x-men though.

[Implacable]

I played with my friend's casual G/R deck all throughout the summer after 3rd grade, and was absolutely hooked; I essentially lived at his house, playing 6+ hours daily.  In 4th grade, my parents allowed me to buy cards, and I spent months owning my school with Cavern Harpy tricks and Marsh(?) Crocodile from the U/B Invasion PreCon.  I've played competitively ever since; Casual is boring.