Old School Mtg

Every now and then I am bequeathed a rare blessing as the innkeeper of this blag. April was such a month, when I was contacted by a man named John on the prospect of him writing a blog post regarding some minutiae of Alpha printing patterns. I welcomed his idea, and was then pleasantly surprised by both the quality his writing and his deep knowledge on the subject. I, however, kinda suck at updating this blag these days, so this post is like a month overdue for everyone else who find gleeful passion in going deep nerd on the very first print run. So enough stalling. It is my great pleasure to finally give the soap box to John Molseed. /Mg out This blog has occasionally noted some of the variations in the Alpha run of the first edition of Magic. It has explored the existence of an Alpha edition Volcanic Island (it doesn’t exist), pondered print runs and rehashed rewordings . A couple posts make passing note of the color variation between some Alpha and Beta cards. Let’s tie these al...

There was this Guinness commercial around the turn of the millennium. I think I saw it before I ever tasted a Guinness, but for some reason I still vividly recall it. In the commercial a fit but aging Italian man is swimming from a buoy in the ocean towards a small harbor. The beach town is cheering him on as he desperately races to a pub, trying to get to it before the bartender finishes pouring a perfect Guinness. He gets to it just in time, and the pub erupts in cheers. The town's annual tradition is a success. But the voice-over continuous. "I'm getting older, he says. One day I'll lose, he says." I related a lot to that man in the weeks before n00bcon 13, more so than I've ever done before. Apparently I had it in me to organize n00bcon three years ago, but could I still do it? Even back in 2019 I was getting older, eager to pass the the World Championship torch to Italy, and planning for n00bcon 12 to be a scaled-down Scryings event with a mo...