Richard Garfield
Magic The Gathering

I belong to the "Teenage Lobotomy" generation, it's a fact. While our parents were having fun playing hide and seek, with peach pits, skipping stones in the river, or organizing "camporella tours," I look around and see more and more "homo game": thousands of kids with four neurons, as many as the buttons on a joystick, capable of composing their minimalist poems ("hi hw go xp where r u? kissing") in front of the Last Judgment. However, in the modern gray deluge, something seems to survive: the dear, old card games. Take briscola: a simple pastime that turns into a flow situation, creating a microcosm where our true nature comes to light: there's the bastard who plays slyly, the wealthy one with lots of high cards, the irate who swears and crumples the cards. Legendary, simply legendary. But the thing is, sticking to briscola, the cards are always the same forty, and after a while, one gets tired of the various "If you lose it's your loss" or of that dopey face of the King of Coins. So, what to do?

The answer was the so-called "collectible card games," which mixed the most disparate maniacal fantasies with the basest philately, originating thousands upon thousands of different cards, each with its characteristics and peculiarities. They have created new problems (the inevitable fakes, the duplicates that often turn into treasures, driving some kid crazy) and new traps. I still remember fondly, as a tear streaks my face, the good times when I tricked little kids by swapping Pokemon promo cards, the ones you got when you went to see the movie, for the legendary ones. But the first game of this type wasn't Japanese (just imagine): it was born from the mind of the American mathematician Richard Garfield, just as Minerva arose from Jupiter. I'm talking about Magic The Gathering, an event so groundbreaking that it turned Wizards Of The Coast from a hole in the wall into one of the most impressive game publishers on the planet.

I didn't say "event" by chance: when the game began to be sold, back in 1993, people were challenging each other everywhere: around a table, on walls, on the street. Describing the rules of a work (because that's what it is) so complex is an arduous and perhaps useless task; and there are many other things to say. For example, it's a game much more thought out than others, thanks to the Mana system, which makes the number of turns necessary to deploy a card proportional to its power (take that, Yu-gi-oh!). It's endowed with a palpable charm, partly due to the fantasy settings, partly due to some references across the various expansions, making it all rather organic, and partly due to the classic rare pieces, like "Proposal," the card thanks to which Richard got married, or "Splendid Genesis," dedicated to the first child.

But that's not all. Besides the plethora of strategies you can craft—herein lies, after all, the greatness of a player—Magic contains a symbolism that is quite dominant. The true genius, in my opinion, is not so much in the creation of the five colors (white, blue, black, red, green), but in having established the relationships between them. Green, the color of nature, is an ally of white, which represents good and order, and of red, which symbolizes strength and chaos, but it is opposed to blue (the color of control) and black (evil and the thirst for power): with the simple pentagonal scheme placed on the back of each card, Garfield, in defining and describing the physis, is much more eloquent than many explanations. There's all this depth in a game that, unfortunately, after eighteen years of evolution and ten thousand cards, with a thousand effects and abilities, is beginning to enter the spiral of decline (the rare "mythics" are, in my opinion, a significant clue: enthusiasts will understand).

Finally, one last consideration. The other day the DeBasio chat, from the Gobi Desert it was, became a Babel of the net and young users like me had a discussion with the old glories: the insights I gained could only be interesting. I understood that real reviews must possess a "homey" touch and be infused with a family warmth, contrasted with the disquisitions of starchy professors. Well, Magic is also like this: there are many nerds and/or pimply paupers ready to ruin themselves just to grab the one card they're missing, but fortunately, there are also sporadic individuals who remain sane. And the game is beautiful not if it lasts little (this is not the case), but if played a lot for fun with one or more friends, without obsessions, on a gloomy and rainy afternoon. Oh my, it would be even better to spend the said afternoon with a girl in front of the fireplace, with a bottle of Champagne, but, you know: certain fortunes are not for everyone and do not happen to everyone. UH!