Generally I play console games and very rarely find a real world activity interesting, however I do understand that playing cards and tabletop games can also be enjoyable. The problem with this is that you need an opponent or a team for most things and I’ve always preferred to go solo. Today I decided to dig out some of my old Yu-Gi-Oh cards and just look through them for old times sake which made me feel like writing about and possibly getting into cards again.

Starting with my own experience, Yu-Gi-Oh was a big part of my childhood. The duel monsters played by Yugi Muto in the TV series developed some rules which Yugi ignored most of (for the early series at least). I collected the cards in real life and was so excited every time I opened a new pack. There were real cards and fakes but as a child I just wanted to play the game that my young childhood was centred around, kids at school liked it too so I got the chance to play every now and then. My Yu-Gi-Oh collection was stolen once when I took it to school, I trusted a teacher to keep it safe and never saw it again, this was when I stopped collecting cards. I didn’t watch the TV series once it changed protagonists in the GX series but my love of the card game never died. I have bought the console games of it when I could and like to go back to them now and then.

Later in life – while still at school – Pokemon cards became the thing to collect. I bought a few packs but never really understood how the game was played as the TV show was all about animal fighting. I liked the DS games but the cards just weren’t for me and I gave them to my cousin one day. On the Xbox 360 I discovered a game called Magic The Gathering which was weird compared to Yu-Gi-Oh with mana being required to complete any actions, I started to enjoy it and stuck with it for a while but never bought any of the real cards.

Fast forward to present day and I tried Gwent on The Witcher, I tried Caravan on Fallout New Vegas and I’ve found a weird deck building centred card game free on the Xbox store, I also own a few Yu-Gi-Oh cards still but physical cards aren’t a part of my life really. I’m changing that. I’m looking at properly getting into Magic and I’ve ordered a box of Yu-Gi-Oh cards, even if I just look at them they’ll take me back to better times.

I’ve obviously played classic card games like Go Fish, Stop The Bus, Snap and Solitaire but I usually lose interest in those sort of games too quickly, preferring a theme with more customisation. Lets just hope I find an interest in something new.