magic-the-gathering

This month, comic duo Adam Bessie and Jason Novak offer us a new spin on the Milton Bradley Company classic The Game of Life.

The Game of Life has always reflected the times, even at the start of its own life, a year before the Civil War. Known first as The Checkered Game Life, Milton Bradley’s seminal game was really just checkers with spots which reflected the values, hopes, and worries of the era: Intemperance, Idleness, Speculation, Ruin, Honor, Suicide, and Happy Old Age (50). Since 1860, every generation has updated Life as a mirror—not of what life actually is, but of what the dominant wisdom tells us it should be. And just what should today’s The Game of Life be?

Come back for next month’s installment in the Board Gaming the System comic series. Missed the last one? Check it out here.

In this month’s comic, Jason Novak and Adam Bessie share a little magical thinking with a Magic: The Gathering–inspired card deck.

Before Pokemon gave us “Catch’em All,” there was Magic: The Gathering, a card game invented in the early ’90s that burned through teenage allowances faster than dragon fire. If you’ve never played Magic, you’ve certainly seen the fantasy roleplaying game at your local coffee shop, an entire table filled with animated characters—and that’s just the players, whooping and hollering after a ghost warlock decimates an upstart ice golem with a flaming spellblast. In 2017, what new magical creatures might we add to our deck?