Why did you start playing Raw Deal?

[Antigoth]

Why did you start playing Raw Deal?

Voters are allowed to choose multiple options. So please select all that apply.

If a reason that you started playing Raw Deal is not listed above, please choose other, and post why.

[Scotty]

Went to local card store to buy Pokemon cards, saw some Raw Deal on the shelf. Sold. Mania era. Friend and I played at least 25 games the day we bought starters. Hooked since then.

[MediumSexy]

A M:tG player in my shop recommended that I carry the game, as it was a big success in the town an hour away. I got it in stock, about 2 weeks later he was in the shop and told me I should start carrying it. I let him know it was in stock, he convinced 5 of us to buy a deck, (my first deck was Edge.)

Learned to play, loved the mechanics, and quit playing magic (although I still judged/etc. since I owned the store) to focus on Raw Deal. Glad it worked out for me.

[njbrock22]

literally just walked into a local gaming store on our University's campus and spotted a card game to get into, happened to be Raw Deal and well... i got hooked, only was barely into card gaming at the time sadly outside of magic that i learned from a few friends, so you can just say i got into Raw Deal on a whim(similar to how i got into UFS also...).

N.J.

[CreedP]

I had bought a few different CCGs in the mid to late-90s, from Jyhad (Vampire CCG) to Marvel Overpower to some Ice Age-era Magic, but never really found people to play against, so I quit bothering with CCGs.  Then I saw Raw Deal for sale at Wal-Mart in clearance, the promotional box with Rock/Austin and booster packs.  I was a HUGE wrestling fan back then, both shows really, but hadn't seen Nitro for sale anywhere so I wasn't aware of it.  Bought the 1 box Rock/Austin box they had left and some packs, tested it out with some friends, went back and bought all the packs they had left, and the rest is history...

CREED

[Daeva]

I had seen Raw Deal advertised in some of the gaming mags (Inquest, Scrye, that sort of stuff) and I saw a couple of people playing at The Stadium, Bay City, MI (cheap pop!), which jogged my memory. I picked up some cards with a buddy just to have a fun game to play on the side because I was into Magic hardcore at the time. Fast-forward 10 years, and the situation is pretty much reversed!

[superradjoe]

My parents used to sometimes get me packs of trading cards just as a little gift every once in a while.  One day, my mom bought me a pack of Fully Loaded.  What a costly mistake that was...

[Rebort]

We picked it up because a lot of the guys that played Star Wars played it between rounds because of how short it was. A lot of us grew up on wrestling.

[TheGreatWhiteDope]

I was 13 in 2000 when the game came out. I was playing Pokemon with friends at a card shop I'd been going to for 2 years. I always loved wrestling. She ordered the premier starter set and a booster box on a whim. My friends and I bought a starter each (I got my favorite - Kane) and then we bought the entire booster box within days. We started a bs league within two weeks and made fake champions and things. Within the first few sets we had 6 people basically buy her out anytime anything came in stock.

I started because it was wrestling and it was a tcg. My friends wanted to play too. Within the next 2-3 years they'd all left and I was alone in playing it at the store until I got one other person involved. Us two held the game down for a few years until we found about 4 other players.

[JaysonPhenix]

Brianp put a gun to my head and forced me to play lol

[Daeva]

Brianp put a gun to my head and forced me to play

All told, I'd say that worked out better for you than most gun-to-head situations.

[dilbert505]

Queensryche found some during Premiere, showed it to me, and I was like "Yes, please." We split the decks he could find (I believe I got Kane and Jericho, and he got HHH and... Mankind, probably, but he'd remember), and started playing with not much more than a handful of boosters between us. Several thousand dollars later, here I am.

[CRASHER]

Brianp put a gun to my head and forced me to play lol

Same here with a promise I'd never see a game played in klingon as well :p

[rachelmon]

My story was little bit interesting.

I used to play pokemon cards when i was a little kid. Until one day, one of my friend told me that there are some interesting wrestling cards game. I reject him firstly, thinking pokemon is better (cos i am 12 yrs old during that period). And then the card shop start to carry Raw deal. My mind was like, 'Yucks, Wrestling!'. until the shop uncle approached me. He say, i have this 1 bucks game. Throw the dice and if you get triple 1 or triple 6, you get a Rawdeal booster pack. And then i went to try with the persuasion of my friend (who has no money at that time), i tried 5 times and i got myself a triple 1. I got from the uncle a surivior series 1 booster and i got myself a stone cold stunner. i promise myself that since my luck is so good with Rawdeal, then might as well just go for it.

Traded all my pokemon cards for a Dudley Boyz Full. TLC and Dudleyville was the expensive cards. Then so stupidly sold it for 20SGD and bought myself a Rock deck. Then i was so happy putting in my Stone cold stunner inside the deck till my friend told me i DQ-ed cos i.put stunner in a rock deck. That is how stupid i am when i started playing Rawdeal. But i love Raw deal and i cant live without it.

[JaysonPhenix]

Brianp put a gun to my head and forced me to play

All told, I'd say that worked out better for you than most gun-to-head situations.

In all seriousness we all met up at his then gf's house and he's like dude check it out and drops a Tazz ss1 starter on the table and pulls out Jericho, let's just say it didn't go very well then next day dragged me to local comic shop and I ended up buying like 5 ss1 starters and sheeeet load of boosters

[BigPimpin]

Yeah, converting my local friends was not a challenge; it was the right time and the right game.

Mike was just Tazz and Jericho.  Scott I had to drop a Booker T deck in his lap and it was over, with the implied promise of no Klingon.

[JaysonPhenix]

Shutting me out and not allowing a successful card played was not an easy conversion lol.

Seeing Stone Cold Steve Austin was what sold me lol

[CRASHER]

Ten years later and he still can't build a simple deck for noobs

(couldn't let this one go )

[piperspitt]

It was all about hanging out with Kurt Angle at the Olympics and seeing his starter deck.

[unknown_soldier78]

I just moved to england from the US and had about zero friends these people were really nice to me. I got a full Big show deck from a player for free and I bought a 1st edition heavyweight belt for 5 pounds and have been hooked ever since.

[JDub]

When I started high school some friends got me into Magic. I liked it but never got really into it. Then one day one of them said that there is a WWF CCG that they play at the game store. I bought some of the Nitro CCG and didn't like it so I was like no it's not WWF it's WCW. And he was like no I have a Chris Benoit deck. So after school that day we went to the game store and sure enough there was Raw Deal and I bought a Kurt Angle starter. It was right after Fully Loaded came out and it was hard to get booster boxes and every time they did some guy came in and bought it all. So for about a month or so all I did was buy 1-2 starters a week. I remember that I was so pumped when I actually got to buy a booster pack. I even remember that my first UR was Thug It Dead.

[rated SRH]

I had gotten tired of playing Yu-Go-oh. I was looking around my local comic store (Castle Comics) and saw The Game starter deck. I asked the owner if anyone played the Game. She said there were two guys that met Thursday. So I traded my entire Yu-Gi-Oh collection in for a ton of Raw Deal product. Then I talked a few guys into making the jump to Raw Deal. That's pretty much how it all started for me.

[Steve Resk]

The first starter I ever bought was HHH when premiere debuted. However it was misprinted and came with Jericho stuff. Ill never forget that I was so sad because it was the last hhh in stock. I went with Kane. Rawdeal was big in our store off that bat, we played for two weeks thinking if you had no cards in hand you lost. Mankind was good.

[superradjoe]

Lets be honest isn't that *basically* true?

[Rein]

I learned from a friend in high school.  We literally played on the bus riding to and from the career center in the afternoons.  I was given a choice of Tazz or Benoit and obviously went with the Canuck, and ended up something like 0 for 20 starting off that way.  Since my personality is actually quite like that of Seto Kaiba, I went balls to the wall and bought every booster I could find, which is also how I came across this site via the comic images link back in the day.  I ended up with boxes and boxes of cards and he still has his one deck and puts up a fight lol.  My only two small time tournament experiences were losing horribly to an Educated Feet APA deck, and I played once in Forest City NC with a few guys in a starter deck type situation where I had Mickie James