GenCon is an awesome convention. It’s a place where gamers from around the country gather to share in our collective passion: gaming. This year marked my tenth trip to GenCon, and I wanted to look back at my experiences there over the years.

As you may know, the Magic: The Gathering of 1995 that I enjoyed is a little bit different from the game we know and love today. First off, the Internet wasn't really a thing yet. Second, I didn't have a widespread group of people to play with. Basically, only my brother and cousins played, although after a while I found out that a few of my friends at school also learned to play. I don't think I played against more than ten different people for the first three or four years that I played Magic. To us, it was like another video game—something to do if it was too cold or rainy to go outside and play sports. And something else to get addicted to.

The game was also played quite differently. Let's face it; the Magic rulebook has never been a thing of beauty. The game is simply too complicated to cleanly explain how to play. Therefore, my cousin took the liberty of explaining how the game worked. Ideally, you get five players, one for each color. Each of them gets a deck of that color (we just ignored all the multicolored cards) and tries to kill the players of the opposing color. Red and blue try to kill each other, black tries to kill white and green, and so on around the color pie. Allied and enemy colors are in the rulebook!

Welcome to my first column for ChannelFireball! Today, I will mainly talk about Standard: I will crunch numbers from GP Warsaw, discuss an interesting match between Jund and UWR Flash, explore GP Kitakyushu, and give a preliminary look at the post-Theros format.

This column will be one of hopefully many to come, as I intend to play and write about the game more seriously this upcoming year. That will mark a change for me because I haven’t really focused on Magic since my Pro Tour Hall of Fame induction in 2009. Back then, I wasn’t driven anymore and had just started a PhD project (in game theory) that swallowed up my time. As a result, I skipped several Pro Tours, I didn’t spend much time preparing, and, heck, I showed up withHighlander decks! Basically, I still loved the game and competed for fun from time to time, but I had had lost the competitive fire.

But that fire didn’t stay unlit forever.

I wrote my Master’s thesis on young adults learning philanthropic behaviors such as donating to nonprofits. A major aspect I had to explain was how people entered into donating, as it’s a learned behavior. Explaining every path took months, but analyzing every touch point has definitely stuck with me since then. Wizards of the Coast does considerable research into figuring how nonusers interact with everything, from branding colors in packaging to giving random people introduction packs and see what they do with the contents. It’s easy to market to enfranchised consumers, but documenting new user experiences and advertising accordingly is a real struggle.

We no longer see Magic commercials on television. The Pro Tour is no longer on ESPN2. Our ability to experience Magic is a self-selecting endeavor as of today. This soon will change.

The game has simply too many users, too many consumers who interact with it on a daily basis. Hasbro has had numerous presentations and earnings statements commenting on Magic’s recent boom in player base and revenue.Duels of the Planeswalkers is the tip of the iceberg. You don’t think we’ve noticed all the talent from rival gaming companies and Disney that you’ve been gobbling up? The digital recent hires alone have been hinting at larger efforts. Something is coming, and it’s more than just more paper Magic stuff.[...]

Today, I give you seven products that are in the near future for us to purchase:

I’m old.

Not in real-world terms. I’m “only” thirty, after all. My legs only hurt for like two days after soccer games. I can totally drink two beers without having a hangover. I only receive AARP mailings once every few months.

But in Magic terms, I’m kinda old. Every once in a while, I’ll have a conversation with a younger or newer player, and inevitably, I’ll be forced to admit that I’ve been playing Magic for longer than he or she has been alive. Heck, our current world champion was two years old when I opened my first Starter Deck (those were things back then, kids).

The thing is, I’m not alone. Someone inevitably chimes in that he or she started around the same time I did (Ice Age) or soon thereafter. And as the game ages, so do many of the old guard. And we keep on playing because we love it.

We’re pretty much the crowd Wizards seems to be aiming for with From the Vault: Twenty. Newer players just won’t get the same chills we do seeingImpulse, Wall of Blossoms, and Tangle Wire in a foil, collectable box. For them, it’s a new Cube card or Interesting Shiny Thing. For players who are like I am, it’s about where we were, what we were playing, and what that card meant. Not every card will strike the same chord, but for long-timers, many of them will carry some kind of story.

Here are some of mine.

If you've been playing Magic for longer than one block you've probably started using Magic sets to keep track of the passage of time. If you're new to the game, welcome—it gives me great pleasure to share this vision of your future with you. I don't have any developer insight to share with you today. I can't tell you anything you don't already know about how Magic weaves itself into the fabric of your lives, serving both as a seed from which relationships grow and the trellis that gives structure to our personal and shared narratives.

And it's in that spirit and with the utmost respect that I share my story today. I'm leaving Wizards of the Coast in little more than a week, on good terms and with a glad heart. My wife, Amber, and I are moving back home so we can start building our life there. It's where we want to be, so we're going, but not before I've had a chance to look back on where I've been. These last two-and-a-half years have been special to me (I certainly don't want to minimize the awesomeness of this experience), but a big part of that is just how significant Magic has been in my life. I care so much now, working this job and leaving it, because I've cared so much since Day One.

Does the Community Team have the stuff to win back the Community Cup, or will their dreams be dashed yet again by the overwhelming power of the Wizards Team? The world will find out this weekend with live video coverage of the Community Cup from PAX Prime!

The hopes of the entire Magic community rest in the hands of eight talented players: Reid Duke, Melissa DeTora, Michael Jacob, Matthew Watkins, Tom Delia, Kenji Egashira, Jan van der Vegt, and Keya Saleh. Standing in their way is the powerhouse Wizards team made up of Aaron Forsythe, Mike Turian, Dave Humpherys, Worth Wollpert, Alexis Janson, Sam Stoddard, Ryan Spain, Sean Gibbons, and Brian Clinton. The teams will battle across Modern Masters Draft, Wacky Draft, "Ironroot Chef" Constructed, and Cube Draft to determine the 2013 winner of the Erik "Hamtastic" Friborg Memorial trophy.