Page 16 - Flathead Beacon // 10.5.16

NEWS
FEATURE
Tabletop Heroes
Recent release of expansion pack for Magic: The Gathering highlights culture of tabletop card gaming in the Flathead Valley
BY MOLLY PRIDDY OF THE BEACON
COLUMBIA FALLS – It wasn’t a long battle when the angels and the were- wolves fought near U.S. Highway 2, with massive wings beating fruitlessly against relentless attack from the shape-shifting horde.
It’s not always like this, such a blood- bath of angels. But the werewolves were fast and ready this time, starting battle immediately with several angelic casual- ties in the rst few seconds, followed by lycanthropic shifting en masse.
Within 10 minutes, the angelic host was vanquished, the werewolves lived to howl and bite another day, and John Sommers stood up from the card table to stretch.
“I stomped his face in,” Sommers said of his opponent, Chris Ingraham.
Ingraham, armed with 204 total ounces of various drinks and a soft smile, laughed and shu ed his Magic: The Gathering cards back into a respectable pile, and his angel deck went back into its protective cover.
After Ingraham’s swift loss, two other Magic players in Columbia Falls’ Sports Cards Plus, a trading card and memora- bilia shop, started ribbing him, inging insults based on a vernacular so spe- cialized that, like any intricate hobby, it sounds like its own language to outsiders.
This is business as usual here in Columbia Falls, where epic confronta- tions on battle elds are fodder for every- one in the shop, from the folks there to check out sports cards and various pieces of precious memorabilia to those dedi- cated to the card games – and lifestyles – of Magic: The Gathering, Yu-Gi-Oh!, and Pokemon.
The social culture around the game is part of the reason Magic has lived as long as it has, more than 20 years in the making. Sept. 30 marked the release date of Kaladesh, the most recent expansion for the game, its 72nd update or addition since the game began in 1993.
“To me, it’s one of the best games there are,” Sommers said. “It’s something I enjoy doing and I enjoy teaching other people to play.”
This gathering spot is new for Colum- bia Falls.
For years, there wasn’t a hobby or card shop in town, according to Tony Sibert, who opened up Sports Cards Plus a cou- ple years ago. He originally ran a trading card shop focused mainly on sports from 1990 to 1996 in Evergreen.
But a bubble in the sports cards mar- ket burst after the nine major card pro- ducers had ooded too much product too fast in the mid-1980s after inves- tors caught wind of the potential mon- ey-earning potential in collectibles.
Chris Ingraham, left, and John Sommers play Magic: The Gathering at Sports Cards Plus.
Kyle Lane looks through a deck of Magic: The Gathering cards at Sports Cards Plus. Hunter Ryan ips through a deck of
Magic: The Gathering cards at Sports Cards Plus in Columbia Falls. GREG LINDSTROM | FLATHEAD BEACON
phenomenon.
But even with the reboot of the sports
card market, Sibert knew he couldn’t survive on sports alone if he wanted his shop to thrive. He has devoted about half of his store’s space to Magic, YuGiOh! and Pokemon cards.
“I said, ‘I’m not stupid — I’m not going to make the same mistake twice,’” Sibert said.
The card games equal about 50 per- cent of his business, with sports taking up the other half. He recently moved locations to give the shop 12 extra feet of width, allowing for more playing tables.
Magic is extremely intricate and expansive at the same time, and Sibert wasn’t well versed. So he accepted Som- mers’ o er of help to advise and work on the Magic side of things while Sibert attends to the sports and memorabilia.
The shop now hosts weekly Magic tournaments and free play, including league play on Wednesdays. Every event there complements those at Heroic Realms, Sibert said, because there’s no sense in splitting up the valley’s players.
“Magic has changed quite a bit in the sense of it’s grown,” said David Blythe, who founded Heroic Realms with his friend Chris Beadles 15 years ago. “We have a dedicated player base, and gam- ing in general has changed signi cantly.”
Despite being around for more than 20 years, Magic continues to change and evolve, with Wizards of the Coast – the company behind Magic – putting out something new every three months. The game changes and moves, almost like it’s alive, Blythe said.
“I enjoy that change,” Blythe, who has played Magic since its release in 1993, said. “I have a hard time with stagnant games, like poker or Monopoly. I love chess, but at the same time I dislike the game, too, because it never changes.”
In Magic, a person playing for 15 years has advantages, sure, but the landscape is always shifting. No one is an expert all the time, each person interviewed for this story reiterated, making it an excit- ing and inviting game.
So many changes also mean a signif- icant investment on the players’ parts. Sommers estimates his Magic collec- tion sits above 10,000 cards, despite only technically needing 60 to 100 cards to play. Players develop unique, strategic decks based on their preferences. Som- mers’ werewolf deck exists because he loves werewolves in general, and started playing Magic when the creatures were introduced around 2011 or 2012.
Not only are cards important for full decks, but Magic cards are individual collector items like sports cards. It’s also still a hobby in which a player can buy a pack of cards for $3.50 and still have the chance to pull a $200 card from the pack.
“We hadn’t experienced anything like this before,” Sibert said of the bubble.
His shop closed down, and other than Heroic Realms, a hobby and trad- ing card store in Evergreen since 2001, the valley’s card shops went largely dor- mant. This was before the Internet was a mainstay in everyone’s lives, when peo- ple who wanted to play Magic had to nd each other through chance or friends or stores like these.
So when the storefronts weren’t plen- tiful, many people assumed trading cards left with them, Sibert said.
“The collectors stayed because the collectors are pretty constant,” he said. “It left the valley, but it didn’t leave the world.”
Sibert decided to reopen a card shop a couple years ago. The market is strong and interest is high, he said, largely due to the Internet. It didn’t kill trading cards or their games, Sibert said, but rather enhanced them.
For example, now that his shop is up and running again, Sibert has one of the best collections anywhere of cards auto- graphed by Houston Texans NFL quar- terback and Kalispell alum Brock Oswei- ler. He found his rst one through eBay, not in Montana or Denver or Texas — all places Osweiler has played — but in Germany.
American sports heroes have prolifer- ated in places overseas where the NFL, NBA, MLB, MLS, and NHL have contact, Sibert said. These days, there are only three sports card producers in the mar- ket, he said: Topps for baseball, Upper Deck for Hockey, and Italian company Panini for baseball, football, basketball, and NASCAR.
The producers learned their lessons from the mid-80s bubble and now only make limited numbers of cards, some- times just one or two. These are ulti- mately collectible, Sibert said.
“The whole industry premise is the individual card,” he said.
Beckett, the o cial pricing guide for sports cards, now runs a service through hobby shops that allows patrons to send cards through the shop to Beckett for a condition appraisal. Cards are rated on a scale of one to 10 for their condition, 10 being absolutely pristine and perfectly printed mint. They come back authenti- cated, serial numbered, sealed in a hard plastic case, and with the score. Auto- graphs are also scored.
Sibert recently hosted the rst trading card convention in the valley in decades, and had plenty of interest from out-of- state visitors, but few locals. He thought it was due to the lack of card shops in the valley, an out-of-sight, out-of-mind
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OCTOBER 5, 2016 // FLATHEADBEACON.COM