And sometimes, you see everything you wish you had

Morgana stared across the table at Nick with a twisted smile spread across her face. She started to chuckle. “Hehehe… it’s all over Nick! Next turn, my army of zombies will lose their summoning sickness, and I’ll swing out and kill you!”

Nick looked at the swarm of tokens Morgana had amassed on her side of the board. “…Look, Morgana, you know I’ve never played this game before, right?” He said with an amused sigh. “You could go a little easier on me.”

Morgana smirked with pride and sank back in her seat. She started fanning herself with her hand of cards. “Sorry Nick,” she crowed. “I’m a black mage- we don’t believe in mercy!”

When Morgana came to Nick a few minutes ago and asked him if he would play a few games of Magic: the Gathering with her (it was her favorite card game!) he confessed that he’d never played it before, and that he didn’t know the rules.

Morgana was stunned to hear that.

“What? Oh, Nick, you’d just love it! You’ve really never played? It seems like the perfect game for you, though!” She said, awestruck.

Nick blushed. “It… it’s a game you play with people,” he reminded her. “I played some Pokemon as a kid, but that was it. And after Dakota…”

Dakota had been Nick’s only real friend in his childhood. This had been the case regardless of the timeline. So without her to play with (and even in the reality where she’d survived, she didn’t show any interest) Nick wouldn’t have played a game like this one.

That being said… Morgana wasn’t wrong. He’d heard a lot about this card game in particular, and Morgana happily loaded him up with an overwhelming amount of information the second she got the chance. And before he knew it, she’d “bought” a few decks from the faerie at the counter for them to play with.

Apparently, their suspicions about hypersexualizing everything was wrong. Not even Dakota’s powers could overcome the might of Wizard of the Coast’s legal team, and thus the cards remained unchanged, much to Morgana’s delight.

That being said… Nick had never played this game before. So while Morgana was summoning big monsters, casting spells, and creating an army of zombies to roll over him with, he was still struggling to figure out what his cards did.

“I’ll pass my turn,” Morgana said smugly, looking like the cat that ate the canary. “Good luck, Nick.”

Her voice was oozing with sarcasm. Frankly, Nick didn’t even care if he lost. He was happy to see Morgana opening up so much to him. This was absolutely the right call, she looked like she was having a ton of fun. And seeing her so happy…

Yeah. Maybe he could learn this game if it would be a way for them to bond in the future. Morgana wasn’t shy about expressing her interest in teaching the other girls how to play, now that she had a shop she could go to. She’d been playing online for such a long time… this was her first opportunity to play the game in person!

How many times had she wondered what it would be like, to make friends at a card shop and bond over a mutual love of the game? Sadly, the clientele that frequented such places always gave her pause. But it would be so, so much better when it was Nick and all of her friends who would be playing with her, instead of a bunch of sweaty old dudes who would probably be leering at her and making her feel small or like she didn’t belong. (Or lusting after her, which would be even worse.)

Nick drew for his turn and looked over the white cards in his hand. He’d been intimidated by the mass of creatures on Morgana’s side of the board, more than enough to overrun his feeble defenses. But lo and behold, by believing in the heart of the cards or whatever, he’d managed to draw the perfect out!

“Don’t forget to play a land for turn,” Morgana urged him.

He rolled his eyes. “Yeah, I know,” he said, putting down a Plains, one of the five basic lands she had told him about. It tapped for white mana, although the card itself was more of a light yellow. “You get to play a land every turn. I got the hang of that, what, ten turns ago?”

Morgana shrugged. “Just reminding you,” she said sweetly, and he couldn’t be mad at her for trying to help, even if it was starting to get a little annoying. She was just trying to share the game she loved with him. He needed lands to tap for mana to play his spells, even if he didn’t know exactly what the spells all did. Any help was welcome. Besides, he had other stuff to care about right now, anyway.

And he was probably going to make her more upset in return.

“…Wrath of God?” Nick questioned, playing the spell. It was a sorcery that set him back four mana, but would destroy every single creature on the board. AND they couldn’t be regenerated, whatever that meant. There were a lot of terms Nick wasn’t familiar with.

Morgana deflated like a popped balloon. She sagged into her chair with a frustrated groan. “Come on, a board wipe? Seriously!? That’s not playing fair…” She dejectedly shuffled her mass of creatures off the board and deposited them in the graveyard, giving Nick room to breathe again.

“Okay… so I can still play stuff now, right?” Nick asked, glancing at his untapped lands. He’d only used tapped four Plains to use that spell.

“Yes, you can,” Morgana said, nodding. “As long as you have mana open, you can cast as many spells as you want.”

Nick nodded back. “Right, so… I’ll play Sierra Angel,” he decided, clumsily tapping five more Plains to play the elegant-looking white angel card. “She has 4 attack and 4 defense, and she flies, and… what does vigilance do again?”

“Vigilance means she can attack without having to tap,” Morgana explained for what must have been the fourth time this game. “Also, she’s called ‘Serra Angel’ not ‘Sierra Angel’.” Morgana couldn’t help but snicker while Nick’s face heated up.

Nick glanced at the two untapped lands he still had left, and then took a look at the other cards in his hand. He didn’t think any of them would be useful right now, so he decided to move to combat.

“And I can’t attack yet, right? Because she doesn’t have haste?” He asked.

Morgana nodded. “Creatures can’t attack or use their tap abilities the turn they’re played, they have summoning sickness. Unless they have haste. But white doesn’t get a lot of haste, that’s more of a red thing.”

Nick nodded slowly. “…Right, right… the colors…”

Morgana puffed up her cheeks. “Yes, the colors,” she said with a huff as she started her turn. “Every color has its own strengths and weaknesses! Green plays a lot of big creatures, red casts a lot of fast creatures and burn spells, white is really good at making a big army…”

“Wait, white is the color of making an army?” Nick asked, surprised. “Because you assembled that huge army of zombies really fast.”

“That’s because black is the best color in the game,” Morgana said smugly, drawing her card for turn as she untapped her Swamps.

Morgana continued her diatribe, “It can do anything! Card draw, make armies, draining your life away, making extra mana… everything the other colors can do, black can do better! …Oh, except counterspells. But only losers and jerks play counterspells.”

“…Okay…” Nick wasn’t sure what any of that meant, but he didn’t need to be a professional Magic player to guess that Morgana’s favorite color would be black; he probably could have figured that out before walking into the store.

“Because of the effect of my Phyrexian Arena, I get to draw an extra card and lose 1 life,” Morgana chirped, turning over the die she was using to mark her life total. “Sure, it may be slowly killing me, but you’re going to be dead LONG before that happens!”

Of course, her hand was full of useless Swamps after spending all of her good cards on building up her boardstate and losing it to the sweeper last turn, but Nick didn’t need to know that.

Then her face lit up when she saw the extra card she drew and she started to laugh.

“Oh, and there’s something else that black is really good at,” she said, peering up at him from under the brim of her hat with a wicked smile on her face. “Resurrection! HAHA! Eat this!” She slammed the card down on the table and quickly started tapping her lands. “Rise of the Dark Realms! That means every single card in the graveyard gets to come back to the field under my control! HAHAHA! Both mine AND yours! Suck on THAT!”

“What!? No way you can do that, that sounds incredibly broken!” Nick protested, grabbing the card and reading it over.

“Yup, says I can!” Morgana said with a triumphant grin. “You are SO dead next turn, Nick!”

Nick shook his head, stubbornly refusing to accept she could just win the game out of hand like that. “No, but… my Wrath of God says they can’t be regenerated, so that means you can’t bring them back, right?”

Morgana shook her head. “No, that’s not what regenerate means.”

Nick frowned. “What does it mean, then?”

The goth girl shrugged. “I dunno. Nobody does really. But those are the rules, sorry Nick!” She said in a singsong voice, already digging through her graveyard and picking out all the creatures. “At least my tokens aren’t coming back!”

Nick frowned. “So, wait, you’re just bringing everything back from our graveyards?”

Morgana nodded joyfully.

“…And that’s not casting them, right?” He clarified.

“Right,” Morgana confirmed. “Casting a spell would be if I was paying mana for them. I’m paying mana for the sorcery, but the creatures are just coming back. …I mean, there’s also cards that let you cast stuff from your graveyard for free, but it would say that on the card, and that’s not what’s happening here.”

She paused. “…You don’t have a counterspell, do you? Because white decks shouldn’t be allowed to do that! Well, I mean, there are a couple, but…”

“No, it’s not a counterspell, I don’t think?” Nick asked. “I mean, I have a spell that would put counters on my Serra Angel…”

“That isn’t what a counterspell is,” Morgana immediately interrupted him.

“…It’s not?”

“No.”

“…That seems really confusing,” Nick said, rubbing his temples.

Morgana giggled. “It’s really not.” She found it adorable how little Nick seemed to get this game. It was so cute! After feeling like the innocent and naïve child around him for so long, she finally had something that she knew better than he did, and she was going to milk it for all it was worth!

…Maybe a more emotionally mature person would have gone a little easier on someone when it was their first time playing the game, but Morgana was barely out of high school. She still had her Petty Pass for a few more years.

“Quick question, before that all happens, can you tell me what flash does again?” Nick asked. “You said that lets me cast stuff on your turn, right?”

Morgana sat up in her seat and blinked. “What? Oh, well, kind of, yeah. ‘Flash’ is a keyword ability that allows you to cast the card that has it any time you can cast an instant. That could be on my turn, or on your turn.”

“So I could cast a spell with flash right now?” Nick clarified, eyeing his open mana.

“Yeah, sure, not like it’ll help you very much,” Morgana said, shrugging. She’d finished going through her graveyard, and was now digging out the creatures in his graveyard. It felt wrong having all these white creatures mixed in with her vampires and zombies and horrors, but if it won her the game, who even cared?

“Okay, so I’ll tap a white and a colorless and play my spell,” Nick said, tapping his two Plains for mana to cast his spell at instant speed.

Morgana shook her head. “You’re just casting for two white,” she clarified.

“Huh? But doesn’t that ‘1’ in the corner mean it’s colorless? That’s what you said, right?” Nick questioned her.

She shook her head again. “No, those are generic mana it’s completely different. Colorless is a whole separate thing. You can use any color of mana to pay for a generic mana cost, so you can use white to pay for it, even if it doesn’t need to be white. If it said specifically it needs colorless mana to pay for it, then you would have to use colorless mana to pay for it, but you shouldn’t have any cards like that.”

It wasn’t like this was complicated or anything, why did Nick think it was confusing?

“…Well, okay then, but I can still play it, right?” Nick put down the card to show her. “My Containment Priest.”

“Uh-huh, you should be able to,” Morgana nodded. “…Wait, what!?”

She snapped the card out of his hand and read the card to see what it said.

“Containment Priest says that if a nontoken creature would enter the battlefield and it wasn’t cast, it gets exiled instead, right?” Nick asked for clarification. “And all those creatures you’re bringing back aren’t being cast, you said?”

Morgana’s face went pale. “Th-that… I mean…”

“So… they all go away, right?” Nick pressed, his confidence swelling as he watched Morgana’s dreams of victory come crumbling down around her.

“…Yes,” she conceded, her shoulders sagging as she tearfully removed all her creatures from the board again and pushed them to the side.

“So… do I win?”

Morgana puffed up her cheeks and gave him a sulky glare.

“That’s dumb. White is a dumb color. That wasn’t fair!” She huffed.

Nick didn’t mind her being a sore loser, he thought it was pretty cheesy himself, even if he was pretty proud of winning his first game.

He wasn’t exactly being the most gracious winner himself, either, if he had to admit.

“I beat you, didn’t I?” He asked gleefully. “Even though it was my first game, I still beat you?”

Okay maybe he was rubbing it in a little, but he was so happy!

“Yeah, you won,” Morgana huffed, shuffling her cards back up. “But that’s just because you had a dumb card! White doesn’t play fair, always boardwiping! It’s a dumb color! I’d totally beat you if you were playing a more fair color!”

“Okay, sure, I’ll play something different,” Nick shrugged. He was just happy to enjoy himself. “What about blue? What does blue like doing?”

“Blue is also unfair,” Morgana nixed that idea. “All you do is draw cards and counter spells, it’s like I can’t even play anything! You’re not allowed to play blue, only jerks do that.”

“Okay, I’ll play green then.”

“What, and ramp out a bunch of mana with elves so you can play huge creatures and run me over?! You think that’s fair? No way!” She kept pouting.

“So… red?”

“Red is dumb because you’re just going to burn my face before I can do anything,” Morgana said, vetoing that choice as well.

Nick stared blankly at her.

“…So all the other colors are unfair, that’s what you’re saying?” He was trying really, really hard not to burst out laughing.

“All the other colors except black are unfun and stupid!” Morgana huffed. “…But you can’t play black either, that’s MY color.”

“…So you want to stop playing, then…? Because I’m not really seeing any other options here…” Nick pointed out.

“No, I want another game!” Morgana said, suddenly looking worried that he wasn’t having fun. “But you just can’t play anything stupid and unfair. That isn’t fun.”

Nick raised his eyebrow. “You made me discard two cards on your first turn,” he reminded her.

Morgana gave him a confused look, not sure what point he was trying to make. “…Yeah? So what?”

“…And that’s not unfair to you?”

She shook her head slowly, still confused.

“…Right…” Maybe this wasn’t the game for him after all.

Seeing the exasperated expression on Nick’s face made Morgana’s heart ache. She chewed slowly on her lip, not wanting to end things like this.

“Look, um… Nick… I’m sorry if I’m being a little… too much,” she apologized, feeling her face heat up. “I can be a bit salty if I lose… I’m sorry…”

Yeah, maybe just a bit.

“It’s okay, Morgana, I had fun, really, I did,” Nick assured her with a smile.

Her face lit up when she heard that. “Really!? You really, really did?”

Nick nodded. “I did. Yeah, the game’s really complicated, way more complicated than Pokemon was when I was a kid, but it was fun.”

Especially considering Dakota’s “house rules” for playing Pokemon where you got a deck for all your energy cards on the side you could draw from. Nick found the game a lot simpler with that.

“I’m so glad you like it,” Morgana said, relief washing away all the frustration from her loss. “I really like this game, so I really hoped you would, too, so I’d finally have someone to play it with…”

Nick was surprised to hear that. “Wait, but I thought you said you played this game all the time back home?”

Morgana jumped. “Oh, uh… I meant… we-well, I played it online a lot, and I bought a few starter decks for real, but, um, I’ve never actually, uh, gone to a store, and, like, played with another person before, so, um…”

Her shuffling suddenly got really frantic as she started to fret. “…So this was… kind of my first time as well…”

No wonder she’d seemed to eager and enthusiastic. Nick could forgive a bit of poor sportsmanship from her given that little revelation. It was probably her first time losing in person, then.

The idea of little Morgana raging in frustration at her computer after losing a game was also pretty adorable, he thought. He decided not to mention that, though.

“…Anyway, it’s fine if you want to keep using that deck,” Morgana assured him with a smile. “I’ll go grab a different one! I think they’ll let us pick out our own cards to build our decks, right? I can build one of my personal ones from home!”

“Sure,” Nick said, nodding. “That sounds fun.”

“Great!” Morgana hopped out of her seat. “This one is, like, my favorite deck. It’s a mill deck, that’s okay, right?”

Nick had no idea what that meant, so he just shrugged. “I guess so?”

Morgana cheerfully skipped over to the counter to go build a deck while Nick dug out the rulebook and tried to figure out what “mill” meant.