【Double Cross (1996)】

This post is Double Cross (1996)part of Mashable's You're Old Week. Break through the haze of nostalgia with us and see what holds up, what disappoints, and what got better with time.

I was wandering through the woods. A cape draped around me, and suddenly, out of the darkness, a monster appeared, breathing flame, coming straight for me.

But I wasn't afraid. It was then that I signaled for the rest of my elven brethren to gather around and fight. We bested the fire beast. We cheered.

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Well, I cheered, and then I came back to reality.

I was about 12 years old and I had just won my first game of Magic: The Gatheringagainst one of the best players at my summer camp.

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For a nerdy kid like myself, playing Magicwas a way to calm my mind. Getting lost in the world of Dominaria spoke to me in a lot of ways. The game effectively puts you in the position to cast spells against an opponent as a planeswalker -- Magic's version of a high-powered wizard.

You can cast creatures that do your bidding and various spells to try to screw up your enemy's gameplay. You draw your power -- or "mana" -- from land cards, and decks can take on different personalities depending on the kind of mana they use.

I loved to play with forest-heavy green decks that ramped up to being able to cast huge creatures.

I felt like a real wizard commanding actual, otherworldly beings rendered in eye-popping detail on those little cardboard slabs.

Time passed. Eventually, like so many things that felt important in childhood, I left Magicbehind. My cards were left forgotten in the back of a closet.

But the game came roaring back into my life again about 15 years later.

Original image has been replaced. Credit: Mashable

A friend lent my husband and me some of her Magiccards during an exceedingly cold winter in Boston. We didn't have much else to do after being snowed in for what felt like months, so we played game after game against each other, figuring out the rules and honing our gameplay.

The game immediately felt familiar. I remembered the broad strokes of how to play, and I quickly realized that I still have an affinity for playing with my huge, green creatures.

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I felt like a wizard again.

But at the same time, something was different. This wasn't the Magicof my childhood.

Once we bought cards of our own, I noticed that the modern sets of cards included people of color, more women, folks of all shapes, mothers, and a huge diversity of other fantasy characters. In short, today's cards reflect the players who wield them.

"Seeing a warped world is harmful for everyone"

Instead of just keeping the same characters and storylines, Magichas changed it up, bringing in new stories and characters, all with an eye to diversity and the chance to draw in new players.

Magicseems to be a rare example of something I loved as a kid becoming less problematic over time.

This shift toward diversity appears to be a conscious effort on the part of Wizards of the Coast, the Hasbro-owned company that produces Magic.

The minds behind the game are now using diversity as a major strategy, even going so far as to reprint cards to reflect all of the people that play the game today, even if many of them are white men.

"Seeing a warped world is harmful for everyone, men included, because it leads to a warped world view. Seeing less women or minorities in entertainment sends a message that they are less important in the real world, that they play less of a role," Mark Rosewater, Magic's head designer, wrote on Tumblr in February.

"Having a majority of male players makes it even more important that we strive to make the game reflect the real world, because perceptions shape reality."

This shift has, in part, been responsible for keeping me more invested in the Magicuniverse than I ever was as a kid.

Original image has been replaced. Credit: Mashable

Perhaps the best example of Magic's move away from straight nostalgia and toward the future is the game's most recent set of cards.

The game has now returned to Dominaria, a universe that hasn't been visited in the game in about 10 years. This was the fantasy world of my childhood, with Magic's early sets taking place on the world filled with wizards, vampires, elves, and monsters.

But today, the tapestry of that world is far more intricate than it was when I was a kid.

Instead of the mostly male and white-coded humanoids I remember playing with as a kid, the return to Dominaria has brought us to a fantasy world of limitless, inclusive possibility.

My favorite card in this set is Marwyn the Nurturer, a warrior elf holding a bow and arrow and a baby, which amounts to one of the most badass visions of woman and child that I've ever seen. The card Lyra Dawnbringer, who literally looks like an angel modeled on Beyoncé, makes me realize just how far Magichas come.

Other cards from previous sets include the aetherborn, a race of humanoid creatures who don't have gender.

The fantasy worlds in Magic have started to reflect our world in the best way.

And it will keep me coming back for more for years to come.

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