[R] Magic the what now?

[TheMadHatter]

He'd managed to get out without his roommate tagging along for once and was reveling in the peace. He'd gone out to get a few more pictures and had ended up in the dreaded mall. He still really hated the place but with the holidays coming up everyone was too preoccupied to pay him too much attention.

He'd stopped by a store Rik had told him about once and picked up a couple packs of cards. Some game called Magic the Gathering. Rikard had said he'd teach him how to play and he figured that it might be good to at least look a bit interested.

He'd opened the packs and was poking through the cards while sitting on a bench. The artwork was at least interesting and well done even if he didn't understand a damn thing that the notations and symbols on the card meant.  

[Ithiltari]

Sebastian had somehow gotten separated from his roommate earlier while wandering around the mall; not that this bothered him, since they were keeping in touch via text message. It gave him a chance to shop for things that were not clothes and 'do you think my girlfriend would like this' sorts of items.

It wasn't really any sort of surprise that he'd ended up in front of a game store, since he knew most of the employees by name. And they recognized him in turn, which probably said something about Sebastian's overall level of nerd. And it wasn't hard for them to talk him into buying something, which was why he was now the proud owner of a set of sparkly pink dice.

It was going to be a brilliant joke gift for his DM, okay.

After leaving the store, he'd sprawled a bit on the convenient bench located nearby and had sent off a quick text to his roommate along the lines of 'hungry! ;A; ' when he heard the familiar crinkle of a pack of cards being opened. Glancing over at the teen he hadn't even seen sit down, Sebastian grinned. "You play?" he asked, mostly rhetorically. Some people did buy the cards just for the art.  

[TheMadHatter]

He'd been so engrossed in the cards that he hadn't noticed anyone else on the bench with him, which was a rather odd observation when he thought about it later. The voice caught him off guard and he jumped slightly before looking over.

"Play? .... oh.." he looked down at the cards in his hands for a moment. That must have been what he was talking about. "My room mate wants to teach me. "I thought ... buying cards would make ... it would show i'm interested."

Even if he wasn't sure he actually was interested it was a step toward a few more of the social skills he severely lacked. Card games at least seemed to be easier than the other games Rikard liked to play and maybe he'd be somewhat good at this one.  

[Ithiltari]

Sebastian kept the easy grin on his face; his benchmate seemed a bit skittish, and he was pretty good at being reassuring. Most of the time. "Not a bad idea," he agreed. "Probably could have gone for one of the starter decks, but if he's got enough cards to make one up..." He trailed off, looking thoughtful.

"Actually," he said after a moment, "If you take him those and ask for help making a deck using some of the cards, that'd be a good way to start." A pause and Sebastian shrugged a little, lacing his hands behind his head. "Pretty easy to learn what all the stuff means that way." He hadn't played Magic in a while, having lost huge chunks of free time after starting college. Most of it was now spent playing D&D or building rockets.  

[TheMadHatter]

"The decks .. those are the ones in the small boxes?" He'd seen a few but they'd looked like they would all hold the same cards and not be so interesting. "They seemed a bit dull" He'd picked up the particular packs of cards he had because they had interesting pictures on the front.

He looked down at the cards again and wondered if that would really work. At least it should come off like he was interested. "I could ask him that. I'm sure he wouldn't mind helping me build one." He shuffled though the cards again for a moment.

"Why are there lots of cards with pictures of landscapes?"  

[Ithiltari]

Sebastian nodded, brown hair flopping around a little. "Yeah, those are prebuilt decks, meant to help newb--er, beginners get started." He raised up one hand and wobbled it back and forth. "They're usually built around a theme, or whatever promotional story is going on." He really hadn't kept up with the game, and had no idea what the current decks would have in them.

"Oh those are uh," he said, trying to think. "Land cards? They're used to generate the points you use to use other cards."

...Right, that wasn't confusing at all.  

[TheMadHatter]

"Seems a little complicated just for a card game." He looked at Sebastian for a moment before looking back at the cards. He probably should have bought a deck but if what Sebastian said was true they probably didn't contain anything really good or interesting in them.

"You have to use land to use other things?" It wasn't Risk or anything. You wouldn't need land to just bash someone's head in and that was usually the point of fantasy stuff. Kill the bad guy.  

[Ithiltari]

Sebastian laughed at that, covering his mouth with his hand to try and stifle it. "Oh, you have no idea," he said, still chuckling. "Magic's not even a case of easy to learn, impossible to master. It's pretty fun, though, as long as you can play with people who take the game as seriously as you do." That had been why Sebastian had quit playing; a couple of his friends had started taking it entirely too seriously, while he had just wanted to have fun.

"Nooooo, not quite," he replied more seriously, stretching out the negative. "They generate points that you can use to summon monsters to do the actual attacking." There was a thoughtful pause, and then he continued. "I suppose on a philosophical level, you use the land to attack."  

[TheMadHatter]

"Like an army. You need land, which means crops and supplies and housing, before you can actually mount an attack on anything. Base of operations in a way." He nodded to himself. His voice was quiet but not so low as to seem as if he was talking to himself. "Interesting that someone making up a fantasy game could have thought of that"

Usually he thought of fantasy games as completely ignoring those sorts of things in the face of 'Magic can do anything' logic.  

[Ithiltari]

Sebastian scratched his head and then shrugged. It was as good an explanation as any, really. "That's one way to look at it." A rather....interesting way, actually; one that made the college student a bit more interested in his bench companion.

"Well, why not? It's not just a fantasy game. The same basic system is in place in most card games, fantasy or not. It's really just a strategy game with a fantasy theme."  

[TheMadHatter]

"I used to play Risk and Stragego a lot with my family ... before i moved here." He nodded slightly again. He'd always liked the games and the fact that you had to plan in advance instead of just charging ahead and hoping you'd come out on top.

"Most of the ones i've seen used energy sources or magic sources of some kind. The land thing seems more interesting and the artwork is nice on the cards."  

[Ithiltari]

"You'll probably like Magic, then," he replied. "Creating a deck based around your strategy is pretty much the core of the game." His decks had always been mixed between offensive and defensive, although he had tended to base his around whatever land cards were best.

"They get some really top notch artists for the cards," Sebastian agreed.  

[TheMadHatter]

I'll have to see what sort of things Rikard has then." If Rikard was going to each him to play he could at least try to figure out what his deck was made up of and build something that could fight it hopefully. "Though it would, sorta, be cheating to know what's in his hand and build something to beat it on purpose..."  

[Ithiltari]

"Oh, he'll probably expect something like that," Sebastian replied cheerfully. He was about to continue explaining when he jumped slightly at the sound of his cellphone making a noise; someone who knew their stuff might recognize the sound of Doctor Who's sonic screwdriver. "Hah, finally," he muttered, reading the text his roommate had finally sent in reply.

"Looks like lunch time for me," he said, grinning a bit and slipping the phone back in his pocket. "I'm uh, Sebastian," was added on at the realization he'd never introduced himself. "Hopefully your deck building goes well, and I'll probably see you around, if you keep playing." Or at least kept coming back to this store. Popping up from the bench, he offered a friendly wave before disappearing into the crowd headed towards the food court.