This morning, as I was heading into the Boulder Garden cafeteria for breakfast, I was quite surprised to see my boyfriend there, sitting with his roommate. Usually, he is nocturnal, waking up as late as he can before classes, taking naps late in the afternoon, and staying up past midnight playing video games. Apparently, he had pulled an all-nighter last night, and wanted to reset his sleep schedule. After a bit of friendly banter, he told me that he, along with the rest of the Magic the Gathering club had decided to bestow upon me a nickname. Due to my incredible prowess and valor at the prerelease, I would henceforth be known as "Charlotte the Shredder". At the time, I eagerly accepted, playfully clawing my boyfriend's face as he didn't want me to shred him. I appreciate the name well enough; even though I understand why they chose the epithet, I kinda feel there were more phonically appealing options. I think I appreciate more what it signifies.

Around this time last year, I was a mildly shell-shocked freshman, trying my best to handle the stress and workload that college brings. I was involved with a handful of clubs related to my interests, the most relevant of these is the aforementioned Magic the Gathering club. I didn't know we even had a club like this at Loyola until the activities fair. Walking about the quad, marveling at all the tables, the large cardboard polyhedron cutout drew my attention. For those of you who are unaware of Magic the Gathering, it is one of the oldest and most popular trading card games, in which you pretend to be a wizard, summoning creatures and casting spells to take down your opponent for...well, mostly just victory. I was always mildly interested in the game; my dad had several thin, long boxes filled with cards, most older than I was(the game was created in 1994), which I regularly sifted through during my childhood sorting-machine phase. Having formally gotten into the game over the summer, I decided it was a perfectly fun way to blow off steam on Saturday nights.

That Saturday, I dressed up in my most casual nerd wear(an anime t-shirt and complementary matching shrug), did up my make-up, and headed halfway across campus to play some cards. I take my interests quite seriously. When I came into the space the club was held in, I was surrounded by approximately two-dozen other interested people. After the club presidents debriefed us on what the game is, we got to play with some pre-made decks. Teamed up with a bunch of total strangers, I played a round of Two-Headed Giant(a kind of tag-team mode where you share a life-point total with another player, and can look at each others' cards). The deck was nothing special, but I feel I executed the game plan well. However, the girl on the team I was playing against didn't do very well, and never really came back to club. I don't want to think this was my fault, but take it as a sign of things to come.

The next week was a deck-building week, where, given some direction from a local game store representative, we could build our own decks from the club's excess cards. In the game, there are 5 different colors of cards, each representing a different strategy or play-style. Having gotten a black-white multicolor(most decks contain two-or-so colors)uncommon card, I set out to build a deck centered around it. It was in my deck building pod where I first met my current boyfriend, hoping to build a red deck. I wouldn't say we hit it off right away, but we got along, running into each other in anime club and often eating dinner afterwards. Once we were done eating, we would play Magic against each other into the night.

Over time and the acquisition of cards through my dad's old office-league decks and riffling through the more dedicated players' chaff, my white-black deck developed into an Ally-creature synergy deck: whenever I played a card with the creature type "Ally", several effects would activate that would give me loads of life points, and drain away my opponents until they hit 0, resulting in my victory. My boyfriend had a hard time winning against this machine(well, when it got running), but he had a warrior's spirit and a good friend willing to give him her spare cards.

One day, sometime in November if I remember correctly, the club sponsored a sealed tournament: we would get 6 packs of cards(to keep!), and would build the best 40-card deck we could out of them. My boyfriend couldn't manage to come, as he was committed to a Super Smash Brothers tournament that day. I still went, and built a blue-black deck designed to remove the opponent's cards from the game. Some people from the local game store came out as well. One of my tournament rounds, I was up against one of these regulars. One of my games, I wasn't sure I could win with my high-cost spell that could remove one of his cards in play from the game. I managed to bring him to the point of concession, but all of his friends flipped out when they saw I had a game-winning spell in my hand-- and didn't use it. I think I won two out of my three games against him, and am not quite sure how I did in the tournament overall. I just remember spending a lot of time catching up on homework afterwards, and my boyfriend being driven to frustration over my new deck.

That winter, I got a whole box of cards for Christmas and went to the prerelease, a special kind of sealed tournament featuring a new set of cards at my neighborhood game store. I came back to campus with a binder of rare and shiny cards to trade, a new card box, and a whole new set of decks to play against my boyfriend. Since I had moved up to his floor, I split a pizza with him as we played several rounds against my various decks. We just relaxed, had fun...we officially got together a few weeks after Valentine's day. Eventually, my boyfriend built a crazy blue deck that shut down most of my other decks almost entirely. What can I say? He's really competitive.

Personally, I don't think I'm that good at Magic. I think of myself as a dedicated casual; I like putting together decks and playing for fun, but besides that I'm not in a rush to win or get the best cards. I've seen loads of decks, built by more competitive players like my boyfriend, that just ran over the two of us as we played Two-Headed Giant together. At the prerelease the club attended a couple of weeks ago, I only won half my rounds, and didn't even get any prize packs. I just enjoy playing the game, and if I win gloriously, that's just a bonus.

Last year, I wrote an article about how having a handful of girls from my honors class ask me to eat with them made me finally feel like I had friends. This year, I got my boyfriend a small box of Magic cards, delivered at a fancy lunch with his family(as well as one for myself),and will be one of the vice-presidents of Anime Club, under my boyfriend's presidency. We're even thinking about getting a Dungeons and Dragons party together. This is what having a social life really feels like. I am Charlotte the Shredder. Hear me roar.