Hunched over a rotting wood table in a dimly lit room in Towson, two men are furtively practicing sorcery and are soon transported to the hills and valleys of the dark nether regions.
One brings forth the Hurloon Minotaur, strong enough to crush your skull with one hoof. The other counters with Holy Strength, then lets loose the Craw Wurm. In the next few minutes, the Sedge Troll, Black Lotus and the Howl from Beyond are brought forth to do battle.
They're not reliving some fanciful retelling of the Chronicles of Narnia. The men are playing Magic: The Gathering, a game that has spawned a subculture in this country, Europe and Asia. It is a collectible trading card game that allows players to take up the mantles of warrior, magician, vanquisher and vanquished, all in a span of 20 minutes.
Introduced a year ago by Wizards of the Coast, a games manufacturer based in Renton, Wash., Magic combines the fantasy element of role-playing games, the convenience and social elements of bridge, and the collectible element of baseball cards -- all to the tune of an estimated $40 million in sales.
Magic, the hottest fantasy game since Dungeons & Dragons, has reached into gaming halls across the country; into the Internet, where the Magic discussion is the fifth-most-popular user group; and, most telling, into the wallets and billfolds of would-be magicians.
"The game's growth has been phenomenal," says Renee Shallis, Wizards' vice president of marketing. "We've sold over 300 million cards and should sell our billionth card by year's end."
The object of the game is to suck the life out of your opponent by attacking and counterattacking with spells, enchantments, mystical weapons and various and sundry creatures of the night. You start out with 20 life points and, depending on how hard you're whacked by The Rack, the Icy Manipulator or Fireballs, you lose points. Hit zero and your opponent wins the game, thereby gaining bragging rights and control of Dominia, the game's fantasy kingdom.
Boiled down, the mechanics of Magic amount to a more complicated variation on the children's card game War. Each player comes to the game with at least 40 cards that represent creatures, spells or enchantments. If your cards' value is more than your opponent's, you win. If her cards are higher in value, your opponent wins. The strategy, of course, lies in how you stack your deck (which is allowed) and ultimately, the power and scarcity of the cards you own.
The starter pack of 60 cards sells for $7.95. That's an innocuous price to pay to start a collection, but as the interest grows, so do the price tags: booster packs of 15 cards, which may contain rare and powerful cards, run for $2.45.
The man who had liberated the Hurloon Minotaur, Kevin Williams, a 26-year-old computer programmer from Laurel, has spent more than $1,000 over the past six months bolstering his army of creatures, enchantments and artifacts. The cards in his war chest number 2,000.
"I don't see it as wasting money," he says, "it's a great game and an investment, too."
'A very sociable game'
Mr. Williams' opponent that night, Rob Burch, 25, a financial analyst from Towson, says he plays at least six hours a week. The two are huddled in the corner of the Game Sanctuary in Towson, where the owner stages gaming nights Wednesdays, Fridays and Saturdays.
"It's a very sociable game," Mr. Burch says. "It appeals to a broad group of people. Whereas most role-playing games are geared toward and played by adolescent males, this game is played by women and older people, too," he says, while heroically calling forth the swarthy and scythe-wielding Erg Raiders.
Sorcerer Williams cringes.
Magic is the brainchild of Richard Garfield, a former mathematics professor at Whitman College in Washington State, according to Ms. Shallis. Peter Adkison, a former systems analyst for Boeing and president of Wizards of the Coast, approached Mr. Garfield and "challenged him to develop a game that would appeal to the gamers market and collector's market, be portable, and can be played in 15 minutes."
A few weeks later, Mr. Garfield, who now develops games full-time, came up with Magic.
"It started with a basic set," says Ms. Shallis, "but [Mr. Adkison] didn't want the game to grow stale, so we started introducing expansion sets." Four expansion sets have been introduced and the fifth, Fallen Empires, is due in stores in November.
"We started with seven people, working out of [Mr. Adkison's] basement," says Ms. Shallis. Now, Wizards employs 120 people, and has set up offices in Glasgow, Scotland, and Antwerp, where the cards are published by a Belgian printer.
More than 1,000 cards
"Each of the more than 1,000 cards out there have original artwork from artists around the world, and they even get royalties," Ms. Shallis says. The artwork, she says, has contributed to the game's popularity.
"The first order for the cards last year was for 10 million, which we thought would sell out in six months. They sold out in six weeks," she says.
Part of the brilliant marketing technique of the game, according to enthusiasts, is the way Wizards puts out limited numbers of cards every few months. That keeps players and collectors enticed -- and keeps them coming back to the stores.
"It banged onto the market," says Cindy Bailey, of Jon's Comics and Cards in Columbia.
Skip Lipman, owner of the Game Sanctuary, says 75 percent to 80 percent of his revenue comes from Magic purchases. "It's kind of scary," he says, "it's like a gamer's crack. People have started calling it Magic: The Addiction."
How addicting? In a well-publicized burglary last year in Sacramento, Calif., thieves broke into a games store and stole boxes containing Magic cards. As they fled the store, they dropped payment on the counter.
The game's appeal has also bled through the traditional demographic lines of the adventure role-playing audience of adolescent males.
Chrystal Wilson, 21, of Baltimore, was at the Game Sanctuary trying to find the rare cards needed to balance her collection. "I have stockpiles of cards at home," she explains. "I buy them every week. It's an obsession. I've always liked fantasy games, and I like Magic's artwork. Now, I'm getting more out of trading and buying cards than from playing them." (She couldn't give a tally on how much she's spent on the cards).
A gender-neutral game
The game is also played by younger kids, and many married couples enjoy playing together, according to Ms. Shallis. There's not a lot of gore on the cards' illustrations, and the game is easy to learn and plays smoothly and, often, quickly. The instructions are even gender-neutral and seem designed to draw everyone into the Magic fold, with references to players as "she" and "her cards."
Mr. Lipman says players who gather at the Magic tables in his store's basement often gamble, the ante being randomly selected cards out of one's deck.
"Sometimes I feel like I'm running a riverboat here," he says. "There's a paranoia here about the cards. People huddle around them, hide them."
Players at the Game Sanctuary also barter and trade cards as they play. Although Mr. Lipman can move more than 4,800 cards a week, bartering, wheeling, dealing, price gouging and inflation are prevalent.
Limited-edition expansion sets, which initially also sold for $2.45 per pack, are so rare that their value may increase hundreds of times.
A full pack of Arabian Nights, an 80-card expansion set released by Wizards earlier this year, could go for $1,800, according to Kevin Bane of Parkville. Mr. Bane used to play but now spends his Magic time on the Internet, acting as a broker between people who are interested in trading or buying cards from one another.
"I once sold the Black Lotus card, the most powerful card, for $85," he says.
A single placard of cardboard for $85? Free enterprise does reign, it seems -- even in Dominia.