Wow and thank you!

I launched this site in July 2021 with the intention to post about my Magic TCG adventures with my two sons. There was no in-store play in Canada at the time as we were still dealing with Covid but the boys and I continued to play at home. I have a memory like a sieve and this was my way to start (however late) to document our Magic journey, mostly so that I could at any time I wanted, scroll down memory lane. There was no intention for this site to be more than that. Yet, somehow, traffic slowly grew. And more recently, not so slowly!

Photo by Designecologist on Pexels.com

It suddenly jumped early this year with January seeing the highest traffic to date – A nearly 50% jump over the previous best month back in December 2022. I thought that it was a blip but traffic every month since then has either met or topped that 2022 peak. May in particular marked another major jump, exceeding January’s traffic by more than 50%. The growth has been such that 2025 traffic has already exceeded my former best ever entire year and we are not even half way through the year! Wow!

Much of the traffic driving this growth is coming from the Magic TCG: Set Names and Symbols page. I originally put it together to help me remember all the sets but it’s clear that others are finding it useful as well. I will continue to maintain it and backfill the older information to make it even more useful.

Another popular page has been the one about my building a mustelids deck. Who knew? The page bout all the sets makes sense but this one surprised me. I wrote it while Bloomburrow was still in the preview phase. I saw back then that many of these could go into a promising Izzet Prowess deck. I followed it up with one for an Izzet Otter Typal deck for Arena S01 but that one is not getting as much attention. To be fair, the deck needs more than otters!

It is still pretty cool to see that Izzet Prowess is currently one of the decks dominating Standard despite lack of focus on otters. Maybe an otter deck might work better in a different format. Maybe I should try to build a mustelid Brawl deck!

Not catching on with the world is my ongoing journey to create the ultimate Standard B01 Orzhov Cleric deck. Looks like I may be the only one trying to accomplish this feat! But the spotlight may be about to shine on this deck with Final Fantasy about to come out and featuring what might be the best Cleric card in a long time. Look for my usual post about the clerics in the upcoming set for more information – it’s coming soon.

All this to say hi to everyone dropping in and thank you for making this little site a stop on your Internet journey.

Family Magic lands on Bluesky

Just a short note to let anyone and everyone that you can now follow our family adventures in the land of Magic: The Gathering on Bluesky.

You can click on the small blue butterfly at the top of the right-side column at any time to see the feed and follow us there if it’s convenient for you.

And now back to our regular programming…

Welcome to FamilyMagic.ca

Welcome to our corner of the Magic The Gathering world! The three of us, dad and his two sons, hail from Canada and have been playing Magic since 2015 (starting with the Battle for Zendikar set).

It all started with a trip to the local shopping mall. Swinging by the toys section of the department store for what I thought would be a look at the latest Pokemon cards, 7-year old Noah instead zeroed in on some Zendikar vs. Eldrazi duel decks.

He had seen some older kids play the game at a summer camp and decided that this was what he wanted to buy. Not familiar with the game, I looked at the box. Age 13+, it read. I told him that it was a game for older kids but he looked at me and told me it was his money.

Suffice it to say that he bought his first Magic cards that day. Not long after getting home, he asked me to show him how to play. We used the instruction sheet and slowly began to figure things out. Christian, Noah’s older brother, was interested and hovered over us, watching us trying to figure out the rules.

It was not long before Christian wanted to buy his own cards and Noah decided he needed more. I bought a Battle for Zendikar gift box and it wasn’t long before all three of us discovered our local game store.