Poll: Magic: The Gathering

[CounterAttack]

Jace Sculptor is 60

I've only ever seen one Jace, the Mind Sculptor up close - in a display case, no touchy - and it was selling for NZ$145. Side Note: Given the current NZ$-US$ exchange rate, that's around US$110-115.

I have a lot of friends who feel Infect and Annihilator make the game stupid

Never really had to deal with Annihilator myself, though I will agree that Infect is overpowered.

 

[deathninja]

I used to be into the local FMN/DCI scene (it's how I met my partner)., but the constant card rotations and price hikes are taking the piss now, it's worse than Warhammer. Had to give it up.

 

[Agayek]

I like the game itself, but I could never get into it enough to really enjoy it. I hung out with a lot of players in high school and had a lot of fun, but I never really had that spark that let me learn every card in the game and min/max decks and whatnot. I just bought a bunch of boosters and went to town.

 

[Plinglebob]

I enjoy playing, but the only way I get to play in my area is through pre-releases or tournaments and sadly the people who attend take it all waaaaaaaay to seriously. As a Timmy/Johnny, I prefer to play decks for a laugh (my favourite deck could, with a perfect hand, have every sing land in the deck into play in turn 4) and prefer casual multiplayer to anything else (make friends by building a "Group Hug" deck), but there's no-where to do it. Also, not been a fan of this block. Loved Mirrodin and while I liked Scars, I don't like Infect or Phyrexia so haven't played in about 9 months.

Re: the cost. While trying to keep a competitive type 2 deck is expensive, I find the best way to play is pre-releases or sealed qualifiers. Everyone plays with 6 boosters so its 15% luck and 85% skill which I think is far better then the 15% skill, 85% bank balance that Constructed is.

 

[Laser Priest]

I tend to play it frequently.

And lucky me, I only have only leftover cards from all of my friends while they have tournament-winning decks. I'm the punching bag!

I've also developed a deck with nothing but defenders, counters, and unsummoning cards.

It's good to be an ass.

 

[Latinidiot]

It sounds like fn when I hear of it, but I don't want to invest that much money in a cardgame, and I don't know anyone that plays, so..

 

[babinro]

The game is amazingly fun and I've taught a bunch of people at my workplace how to play. Many people stay away from the game because of the 'nerdy' vibe...but nearly everyone who actually takes the time to learn really enjoys the experience.

The cost of the game is simply too much though. I encourage everyone I teach to not get into the hobby unless they are playing with someone else who is new to the game. To go from nothing to something competitive (be it in casual gaming or tournament) is far too expensive. New players can just each buy a different pre-con deck and slowly build from there if they choose to.

I've collected since Revised personally, so my brother and I have a long history with this hobby. I only wish we knew about it back in Alpha.

 

[commiedic]

It was fun for many years. Played it for a long time. So many rules and different types of cards made it almost impossible to know what you were going to be up against during tournaments. I then started getting bored of it. I stopped playing at Planeshift. It started to feel less fun to me after that point. My interests may have just grown out of it, but defiantly had some good times then.

As for making friends. I made some and made some enemys too. Some people thought that my decks were cheap. I don't know how they thought this... I used one of the most underpowered colors. Green! Some others copied my decks and I even had a couple stolen, but I have also made a couple of long time friends from it. lol

 

[Manji187]

Got into MTG last year October (around Scars of Mirrodin)...decided to "limit" myself to casual and EDH Commander.

B/G Nath of the Gilt-Leaf heavy discard (Sadistic Hypnotist, Grave Pact etc) FTW! Efficient...to the point of eliciting gang-ups.

MTG = very fun

 

[thylasos]

It was good fun for a while, but I just couldn't afford it.

 

[ShakyFiend]

Sank all my money from 9-14 yrs into Yu-Gi-Oh! and pokemon card games and haven't touched them since. As expensive-nerdy-collect games go I way prefer warhammer as the painting is awesome but I dont even have the money/time/friends for that any more

 

[MaxwellEdison]

I play it with the younger kids at camp since no one else will hang with them, it's actually a really fun time

 

[Togs]

It can be good fun but incredibly frustrating- the singles market is just plain nuts and this standard format thing really pisses me off- spend £100 on a deck only for it to become unplayable ouside casual matches with friends a year later.
Another thing that bugs me is FNM- ive gone to versions of it in 3 different cities and its always a bunch of normal guys out for a laugh and a small number of bad geek stereotypes lauding over everyone with their four Jaces and BO.

 

[Ghaleon640]

Nerds/geeks do as do they do. Sports fans do as they do.

Everyone needs a hobby. No reason to dismiss this as an option because it is 'nerdy'

I am a geek and I love the game. One day I will learn how to get my ninja deck to be useful even in a free-for-all match with 4 players.

 

[Ravenseeker]

I just started playing with a black and goblin deck I bought off of my friend and it's a lot of fun for me. I'm about to build my own deck once I get enough money and with enough card building sites and card shops around here it'll be easy.

 

[Ghaleon640]

A friend of mine got me into Magic a couple weeks back. he'd been bugging me about it for a while, but I had been resisting because I'm very much a collecting type of person and I just knew that if I started Magic, that's all I'd pretty much think about and sink far too much money into.....

turns out I was right, I've sunk about $100 into so far, and I'm planning to get one of the New Phyrexia fat packs (if there's any left) at the end of the week. But Magic is a fun game. I'm still very new at it so I know nothing of the lingo and still designing fairly simple decks (I like to revolve around a theme. Currently I have a green beast deck and a green wurm deck) and I tend to get totally roflstomped (you'd be surprised at how many times I end with a hand full of creatures and not enough land, or vice versa), but I have fun. I have made some personal rules, though. No bidding on eBay, in fact no buying rares and what have you at all. Totally luck of the draw for me, otherwise I'll be spending far, far too much money on this hobby.

I only hope that they release something to counter infect. So far I haven't heard of anything outside of a legendary creature of 2 that can actually remove infect tokens. Sucks when you get dealt 6 infect tokens in one turn.

Edit: Is there a site where all the various jingo that I see tossed around on the net is explained?

Edit edit: Writing about not having land reminded me of something. I was watching a game between my friend and my brother. My friend was running a black vampire deck at the time, but spent the game pulling mostly swamps. So he was taking hits, and unable to hit back.....until, with 13 swamps on the board, he pulled 2 corruptions in a row. Won the game in a single turn. If only I could be that lucky......

I have to say, there are a lot of cards online that aren't a horrible price. Tons of rares are only a dollar or so, and if you can get it free shipping, it isn't terrible. (Though the cards do add up fast...)

Better advice I have is this, check out a couple of comic/card shops, one place I have relativly near my house is great because they have boxes and boxes of old cards- you can pick up commons for 10 cents, uncommons for 25 cents, and rares are individually priced. Spend some time there and you can give yourself a lot of flexibility without relying on luck and keeping yourself on a nice budget.

Side Note: Green is awesome, but keep in mind the possibilities of combining it with other colors... a green black deck that specializes in big green creatures but has a couple of black spells used to bring them back from the grave is something I'm looking forward to trying.) And land can be just luck of the draw, but you can adjust your deck to try and avoid such problems. Try to shuffle properly, and experiment with having either more or less. Keeping a deck to about 60 cards rather than 200 helps a lot with the balancing issues as well. Sorry if all this sounds silly, but its the best I got. Good luck!