JandPDS
New Member
The thread on do your friends and family know you play Pokemon got me thinking about how my family got sent down on this long and strange path of Pokemon Organized play. So I thought it might be cool to hear other peoples stories on how they happened to get involved in this truly fantastic game, and the incredible community of players that are associated with it.
Here is our story....
It turns out that it is my father-in-laws fault that we started playing to begin with. Back when Pokemon-TCG 1st came out, the release coincided with the Grand Opening of the Flagship Wizards of the Coast retail store in the Northgate Mall in Seattle. We did not go to the Grand Opening, but my father-in law did and on his way home he stopped off our apartment to tell us about the cool new game store that just opened up. Then he gave us a present as he left and it was the Base Set Starter Deck.
We had no idea at the time what pokemon was let alone Pokemon-TCG. I was aware that Red and Blue existed for the Gameboy but at the time it had zero interest for me. Besides that the only familiarity that I had with Pokemon was that a Cartoon about it in Japan caused a bunch of kids to go into sizures. After he left I asked my wife why he would give us this "game"? She was just as puzzled about the strange gift as I was and we promptly set it on our bookcase and forgot about it.
Then about a month later it was a rain soaked stormy night so we decided to not go out and stay home for the evening. After not finding anything interesting on TV I happened to remember that silly game that we had received weeks earlier. I asked my wife if she wanted to try it out as we had nothing better to do. She agreed so I found it and opened it up to read the instructions. I had never played a trading card game prior to this. I had heard of Magic but I thought a game with cards was a real silly idea, compared to the standard boardgames that I was used to. But as I read thorough the instructions it actually seemed kinda interesting, but I still figured that we would play one game and then put it away, probably to never touch it again.
So we divided the cards into the two 30 card decks per the instructions, I explained the rules and we began to play. The first game probably took no more then 10 minuets to play (3 prizes) And when we were done we both kind of looked at eachother from across the table. I asked my wife if she enjoyed the game, and she said "Yes!" I told her that I had enjoyed it to, way more then I had expected to. I asked if she wanted to play another and she hurriedly agreed. After one game it seemed we were both hooked for good. We must have played for about an hour that first night each winning a fair number of games.
Then after we were done I read though the entire rule book and realized that we were literally just playing with half a deck, and that a regular game was made up of 60 cards each. I asked her if she wanted to buy some cards so that we could each have our own decks, and she agreed. The next day we purchased our first booster packs of countless packs to come, and the rest about 10 years later is history.
Here is our story....
It turns out that it is my father-in-laws fault that we started playing to begin with. Back when Pokemon-TCG 1st came out, the release coincided with the Grand Opening of the Flagship Wizards of the Coast retail store in the Northgate Mall in Seattle. We did not go to the Grand Opening, but my father-in law did and on his way home he stopped off our apartment to tell us about the cool new game store that just opened up. Then he gave us a present as he left and it was the Base Set Starter Deck.
We had no idea at the time what pokemon was let alone Pokemon-TCG. I was aware that Red and Blue existed for the Gameboy but at the time it had zero interest for me. Besides that the only familiarity that I had with Pokemon was that a Cartoon about it in Japan caused a bunch of kids to go into sizures. After he left I asked my wife why he would give us this "game"? She was just as puzzled about the strange gift as I was and we promptly set it on our bookcase and forgot about it.
Then about a month later it was a rain soaked stormy night so we decided to not go out and stay home for the evening. After not finding anything interesting on TV I happened to remember that silly game that we had received weeks earlier. I asked my wife if she wanted to try it out as we had nothing better to do. She agreed so I found it and opened it up to read the instructions. I had never played a trading card game prior to this. I had heard of Magic but I thought a game with cards was a real silly idea, compared to the standard boardgames that I was used to. But as I read thorough the instructions it actually seemed kinda interesting, but I still figured that we would play one game and then put it away, probably to never touch it again.
So we divided the cards into the two 30 card decks per the instructions, I explained the rules and we began to play. The first game probably took no more then 10 minuets to play (3 prizes) And when we were done we both kind of looked at eachother from across the table. I asked my wife if she enjoyed the game, and she said "Yes!" I told her that I had enjoyed it to, way more then I had expected to. I asked if she wanted to play another and she hurriedly agreed. After one game it seemed we were both hooked for good. We must have played for about an hour that first night each winning a fair number of games.
Then after we were done I read though the entire rule book and realized that we were literally just playing with half a deck, and that a regular game was made up of 60 cards each. I asked her if she wanted to buy some cards so that we could each have our own decks, and she agreed. The next day we purchased our first booster packs of countless packs to come, and the rest about 10 years later is history.
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