My Magical Mystery Tour

Until this year, I think everyone had played Magic: the Gathering except for me. I moved overseas literally months before it debuted in 1993, and it totally passed me by. I never felt like it was a big gap in my life, but as I got further into the hobby it started to feel like the proverbial elephant in the room, a bizarre oversight considering my obsessive love for Magic’s most obvious ancestor, Cosmic Encounter. My taste in games has grown to embrace games with built-in imbalances and bizarre card interactions.