I like reading older books and short stories. My favorites are horror short stories from the earliest era, before the genre was overly codified and when it was relatively fresh. From Edgar Allen Poe to Algernon Blackwood, and from Ambrose Bierce to HP Lovecraft, I enjoy the fresh feel of that era of writing.

Let me tell you about my epiphany in reading.

About two years ago, I read a post-apocalyptic story called Earth Abides. It was published in 1949, just before the Cold War became a major thing, and it is a very laid-back; it has a lot of innocence. It won a few awards, and it was highly regarded at the time. The author really isn’t a science-fiction writer at all, and this is one of his few works in the field. He took some serious risks; for example, post-collapse, the white, male, scientist protagonist connects with a black woman, and they marry. She is, in fact, one of the most highly esteemed and fleshed-out characters in the book—not something you normally expect from 1949 science fiction.

Anyway, I loved the book. It had a reverse view of post-apocalyptic collapse than normal. (Normally, things fall very quickly into barbarism, and then civilization and such has to be rebuilt; here, people cling to the remnants of society for their lives, and only slowly does civilization fall away.)

After I read an older book or short story I really like, I begin to explore blogs to see if my thoughts on the book resonated with others. That is when I encountered a review for The Boston Globe, from around ten years ago, by James Sallis. In it, he says that one of the major reasons really strong works like Earth Abides become lost is that they are not the newest hot thing. He then gives a quote by a French philosopher (Joseph Joubert) that blows my mind.

(After doing some research on Joubert, I discovered this is not the precise quote. It’s in French, so the translation varies, but it works, and I’ll keep it.)

It was the beginning of the next chapter in my reading career, and I fully threw myself behind it. Now my library looks a lot more like a who’s who of authors from the 1920s, 1930s, 1940s, 1870s, or whatever than it does like a list of the series fiction from Forgotten Realms and Dragonlance I used to adore.

I’ve loved it. We do allow the new stuff to push out the old. We do that with books. We do it with movies all the time. We do it with video games, television shows, and comic books.

And we do it with games, including Magic.

We just had a bunch of casual-friendly cards printed. Conspiracy was a multilayer Draft format, so that had a lot of multiplayer, casual, and Draft-oriented cards. Then, add on the great stuff from Magic 2015 and Khans of Tarkir plus the great cards from Commander (2014 Edition).

As we close 2014, we’ve ended on a high note for a lot of causal Magic players out there. That’s great!

This is the lifeblood of the game we all adore. We obsess about the latest cards. People will write and read entire articles about how one card can change an entire deck, sideboard, and metagame matchups. I’ve done the same. New sells. New excites. Magic is a game of momentum, and we see the release of a ton of product each year as a way to keep the momentum going.

And that’s the problem.

The worst thing about new cards is that they keep us from playing old ones.

I’ve always had that passion for revealing the hidden Earth Abides treasures of Magic-dom: cards that are underused, underappreciated, and undersold. If you were to stack up all of my articles about this basic topic, you could probably publish one a week and read me for two years. It’s a key part of me.

That’s why I’m bringing a new passion to this topic heading into 2015. There are so many cards out there that do amazing things: cheap, quality, clever cards to unleash on your foes—the sort of card no one sees coming, but everyone applauds.

Those are the moments that make Magic.

There are a ton of Worldpurges out there. Dralnu's Pet is great in a reanimation deck because you can use it to put a big nasty into the ’yard and grow your Pet into a huge flying beater on its own, thus increasing your threat level.

Take a look at Flooded Shoreline and Fool's Tome. Galepowder Mage is a great adjunct for your blinking deck or your creatures-that-have-enters-the-battlefield-triggers deck.

At a multiplayer table, Gather Specimens is a nasty, nasty trick to play if many creatures are about to arrive via something like Living Death, Decree of Justice, or the like.

There are a lot of great, old, cards out there: Wurmcalling; Balancing Act; Necromancer's Covenant; Scuttlemutt; Hibernation's End; Yixlid Jailer; Pongify; Void Stalker; Vhati il-Dal; Loxodon Gatekeeper; Darksteel Sentinel; Starke of Rath; Vodalian Illusionist; Holistic Wisdom.

There’s just such an amazing diversity of high-quality cards out there for you to grab ahold of!

It’s easier for me to sell you on the awesomeness of a card in Commander (2014 Edition) than it is for Commander (2011 Edition). It’s easier for me to convince you about a Khans of Tarkir card than an Apocalypse card.

People want the latest awesome stuff more than they want the old tech stuff.

All of us, myself included, tend to look at the release of new cards as this regular rite of Magic, whereby we find the Next Great Thing™ and turn it into gold for our decks. But we grow tired of the new stuff quite regularly. Often, it’s right around when the next set begins to be primed in spoiler season, and another injection of cards hits the landscape.

Often, that battle-tested card, like Avenging Druid, is going to fit your deck better than anything the next set has to bring.

As we say goodbye to 2014, let’s remember all of the Avenging Druids of Magic: the great old cards that are just as new to most of you as the new cards that’ll be released in 2015.

Because the good thing about old cards?

History has already told us how good they can be!

See you next week,

Abe Sargent