When I was still in high school, my very odd cousin Damien (real name) asked me if I wanted to play a game. I stepped back slightly and eyed my clad-in-black cousin carefully. “What kind of game?” I asked.

“It’s a new card game, called Magic the Gathering.”

I was reluctant, but nodded yes anyway. Little did I know that I would fall in love with the game and continue to play throughout college, right until the Ice Age expansion came out. I remember playing game after game in the basement of the service fraternity while my friends waited for people to ask for an escort home. I pretty much stopped playing immediately after graduation. Most of my friends who played moved away, and I never considered venturing out to a game store to find new players.

Fast forward ten years. My friend Stilts had been playing again and kept bringing his cards up when he would visit me. We stated by playing a few casual games, then we’d play all day, and the next thing I knew I was going to “booster draft” style events sanctioned by the DCI.

I wanted to buy some cards of my own, and possibly introduce some of my friends to the game. The problem with that plan was that I had been out of the game for a decade, and even when I was playing the game I was pretty casual. I wasn’t sure if anyone else would want to learn how to play, either. As such, I was reluctant to spend a ton of money on something I might never play outside of my time with Stilts or sanctioned events.

Under Stilts’ recommendation, I checked out the Wholesale section at Star City Games. I plunked down $20 for 2000 cards — 1000 basic lands, and 1000 common and uncommon cards from various sets over time. Star City Games didn’t make any promises about receiving unique cards, but they did assert that there would be some variety. For $20, who cares? And like I’ve said before, at least it would make for an interesting Gibberish entry.

Well, this is what 2000 Magic cards look like. It was an interesting mix of (mostly) brand new cards, with a few that had been in someone’s collection purchased wholesale by SCG. I think that the new cards were unwanted cards from tournaments or from packs opened by Star City Games while looking for more expensive rare cards. The distribution of the common/uncommon cards was as follows:

• Black: 279
• Blue: 180
• Green: 68
• Red: 224
• White: 126
• Artifacts: 98
• Lands: 79
  • Swamp (black): 21
  • Island (blue): 23
  • Forest (green): 18
  • Mountain (red): 16
  • Plains (white): 21

  As you can see, there was a major discrepancy between green cards and the rest of the pack. It pretty much makes that color unsuitable for play, and a four-color game of Magic isn’t very interesting. I know there was no promise of even distribution, but how about something a little more even? There are nearly twice as many white cards, and even white is lagging far behind the other three top colors, distribution-wise. Artifacts are playable by everyone, so it’s OK that there were only 98 of them.

  The most-repeated card was the Nosy Goblin, with thirteen copies in my box of 1000. This card sucks, even among cards that suck, so I felt a little jilted.

  Would I recommend the Box O’ 1000 commons and uncommons for anyone? Probably not. The chance of getting stuck with very few of a color is just too great, even for $10. I might recommend buying TWO boxes of 1000 C/U cards and not buying any land at all. I didn’t read between the lines and didn’t realize that the C/U box would come with land, and as such didn’t need to buy another 1000 copies of plains, islands, and so-forth.

  Star City Games appears to be out of the “Instant Magic Collection” right now, but if you’re interested in taking a totally casual, random start to the game it may not be a bad idea to pick up two of these. Even though most of the cards are crappy, it’s just as expensive as buying two “starter” decks at retail or five booster packs.