MTG Genesis

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“From small beginnings come great things.”

Happy Friday MTG peeps,

We're quite certain you do not require any reminding that it is Friday Night Magic tonight, so make sure you sleeve up your standard constructed deck and get to your local gaming store tonight.  We are off to OMG! Games here in Barrie, Ontario (near Georgian College) this evening.  We missed last week and have a sense of apprehension that the local meta-game has evolved from Aggro to slightly more Contorl - namely reanimation builds featuring Unburial Rites and Séance shenanigans.
Anywhoos - For today's article, we wanted to take our time machine way, way back to 1993 to the University of Pennsylvania where a grad student earning a Ph. D in combinatorial mathematics was burning the midnight oil during his free time developing the very first trading card game.  We are sure you have already guessed correctly that this person is none other than Richard Garfield.  with the help of then CEO of Wizards of the Coast games company Peter Adkison, Magic: the Gathering soon went to publication and release on 5 August, 1993.
A patent was granted to Wizards of the Coast in 1997 for "a novel method of game play and game components that in one embodiment are in the form of trading cards" that includes claims covering games whose rules include many of Magic's elements in combination, including concepts such as changing orientation of a game component to indicate use.  Here's some patent images . . .

Patent number: 5662332
Filing date: Oct 17, 1995
Issue date: Sep 2, 1997 

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