Around a third of their life is spent on the road in fact, between the crucial tournaments needed to be in world championship contention and other invitationals. In a typical year, Burchett would travel a dozen or more times around the world to attend Magic: The Gatheringevents. “It’s taken a lot of time to adjust to that, and to refocus myself again.” “I felt a lot of pressure at first as I really didn’t want to let down the fans I gained from that victory,” they tell us. Finding and competing against the best players in the world is an enjoyable challenge, says Burchett, but the added spotlight wasn’t easy to get used to. In that time, it wasn’t just the best of the best they were up against, but revolving systems, too, as Magic restructured its competitive layout from the Pro Tour to the Mythic Championship, from which it’s changed again to this year’s Players Tour. Making their Pro Tour debut in 2015, Burchett had previously achieved first place in the UK Nationals in both 20 before making the jump to global gold. Meet Autumn Burchett | Magic: The GatheringĪutumn Burchett is a professional Magic: The Gathering player who, in February 2019, became the inaugural Mythic Champion. We caught up with Autumn Burchett, a Magic: The Gathering pro, and Azul Garcia Griego, a Pokémon TCG expert, to discuss their careers in card gaming, why they love these communities so much, and what decks and cards you should be looking for if you want to be among the elite. Indeed, Magic: The Gathering Arena and Pokémon Trading Card Game Online provide a fully digital replication of the intense tit-for-tat the TCGs are known for, allowing you to build and test combinations wherever you can find good WiFi. Giving either of these games a go has never been easier, between the wide circulation of the packs themselves, and the digital versions one can play for free.

Pokémon needs no introduction, and just as the video games have gone from strength to strength since the days of Red and Blue, so too has the spinoff card game. One of the pillars of table-top gaming, Magic is a multi-colored blowout of intrepid sorcery and ferocious monsters, all wrapped up in nearly three decades of fantasy lore.

Of the many available, Magic: The Gathering and Pokémon Trading Card Game are easily among the best for beginners. Anywhere, any time, as long as you each have decks and somewhere flat to lay them down, you can play. When it comes to versatile gaming, nothing quite compares to a good trading card game.

This story appears in the Den of Geek x eBay special edition trading card magazine.

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