Several years ago I was working a job in “middle of nowhere” South Dakota. I had a friend who also was working the same job, and to pass our time during the evenings we used to play Magic with 60 card casual decks. We were super novices – we knew well the rules of Magic, but when it came to precision deck building, let’s just say Icatian Infantry was still seeing regular play.
Over the course of two years we improved both our deck building capabilities and understanding of game dynamics. You might say we began to formulate a sort of subconscious understanding of what was really occurring as the cards were hitting the table (or not, as it were). Around this time I talked to my friend about throwing together a table that would help define individual card power, but to do so, the scientist within told me that some sort of overarching algorithm would need to govern the process, for if not, cards would simply have arbitrary values based on conjecture.
Several years later now and I’m nowhere closer to developing a system for organizing cards by power values, although I’d still like to tackle the problem in the future, hopefully doing so in a way that would encourage very young players to more deeply consider the dynamics of the game and go beyond the artwork and fat power/toughness ratings. In this, I hold my nephew in mind.
Today I was pleasantly surprised when I was tipped off to an article written by Chingsung Chang that more or less began laying out the framework of what I had been brainstorming several years ago. Admittedly though, Chang has done a better job at explaining some theoretical ideas I kicked around better than I ever could, and beyond that, he has added more to it! Although finding Chang’s article was satisfying, I was equally ecstatic to find that a theory of Magic has been building among Magic players for quite some time. So the purpose of this article is simply to share these articles with readers, putting them in a single place in hopes that someone else who is likewise interested in Magic theory might benefit from this electronic paper trail.
That’s it. 
Mike Flores
Zvi Mowshowitz
Patrick Chapin
A.J. Sacher
Chingsung Chang
Tags: Grand Unifying Theory, Philosophy of Fire, Stock Mana
August 5th, 2010 at 4:23 pm
Middle of nowhere South Dakota- sounds AWESOME… think of how nice it would be to be away from everything!
August 6th, 2010 at 12:09 am
No Kidding!
October 5th, 2010 at 4:24 am
Spiegazioni molto chiare, grazie!