Poll: Magic: The Gathering

[klaynexas3]

i enjoy watching people get pissed at my phryxian rebirth and my indestructible carnifex demon. a flying 6/6 indestructible next to a 13/13. add that with my ajani and sorin, people just give up at that point lol

 

[Fursnake]

Played the physicl card game back in the day when it first hit the scene. Got my younger brother into it also and it was out thing. My bro actually got better at it then me. He would win the local tourneys sometimes even going up against the older guys who would spend thousands of dollars on the cards. I remember we once took a fond roadtrip down to Indiana from ole Michigan with some other Magic playing friends to buy cheap cigarettes and cheap boxes of Magic cards.

I fell out of the game many many years ago. Recently my bro and I got ack into Magic via Magic the Gathering Online, which is the official online version of the physical card game. All the other Magic games feel like poor attempts at mockups of the Magic, whereas MTGO is the real deal. And playing it makes me feel really old hehe, because there is so much that has changed and so many new elements to the game.

Now I can play it with out having all those cards all over tha place hehe.

Right now my favorite deck to play is the one where I almost kill myself to win...love it hehe.

 

[ace_of_something]

I've played it on and off for like 15 years. I've never bought a card myself. I always mooch a friend's deck because they always have like 30 complete decks.

Red/Black decks go!

 

[spartan231490]

It's a lot of fun, but I personally prefer yu-gi-oh. Magic cycles the cards they allow in standard tourneys by how old they are so yu-gi-oh is cheaper, and If you do it right it can be just as strategic, if not more so. My opinion is that you need more strategy to play magic than you need to play yu-gi-oh, but yu-gi-oh has more potential for strategy if you look for it. I dont' collect either of them anymore cuz they're too expensive, but I still have fun playing yu-gi-oh when i get the chance.

 

[Cowabungaa]

I got a nice amount of cards for free once after a casual tournament, and I construct a deck out of it every now and then. I can barely find anyone to play with though, which is a shame because it's pretty fun.

But you won't be seeing me really getting into the game, especially tournaments and all. The costs for a tournament-viable deck...*shudder*

 

[Johnnyallstar]

Until M10 happened.

Pardon my ignorance, but as someone who's only been playing for around five months, what exactly did M10 change that was so bad?

For me, it took a lot of the flavor away. I know many people whine about Mogg Fanatic being redefined, but let's be honest, it was a beloved broken card. Balance is broken now.

I remember when 1G meant a 2/2 vanilla bears. Now GG means a 3/2 Trample, no drawbacks. Jackal Pup was considered to be severely overpowered, but now it would be considered a moderately strong, but not broken card. But back in that day UU meant Counterspell, which was thought to be overpowered, so they scaled it back to 1UU as Cancel. Creatures ramped up, and spells didn't maintain the same growth.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that the way the game has been shaped in the last few years, especially with M10 is that it is dominated by creatures, and guys like me who loved spell decks that only had creatures for blocking, or crazy abilities, and winning somehow other than "Swing for massive damage" aren't getting any love.

Which is funny, because old school spells tend to still trump newer school creatures.

People whine when I start throwing around splinters and exiles, then last word their counters.

You know what's funny? I wasn't thinking Last Word as being old. I'm Force of Will oldschool. I remember playing for ante oldschool. You may be a grizzled vet, but I'm the blind, toothless guy with a cane who still calls you sonny.

 

[esliang]

I saw a thread about Yu-Gi-Oh!, and now I gotta ask: what's everyone's opinion of Magic?
I'm not ashamed to say I play it, and neither are my friends. We're all in college and think it's quite the game. I personally think it has a very deep strategic potential, and I really like that. And since I've discovered proxies, it isn't even that expensive of a hobby anymore.
When I tell people I play MTG, I get one of three responses: what's that, you're a geek, or so do I! So, I thought it was about time to see what the wonderful people of the Escapist have to say about it. Poll time!

I'm a big fan of kitchen table play. Magic is a solid part of my saturday nights.

Also. How many proxies are you running? No one wants to play against a hobo deck.

Depends. My playsets of Jace and Tezzeret AoB are all proxies, and obviously my P9 are too. Otherwise I play mostly with what I have. What tends to happen is, if I pull a card a really like and would like one or two more of, I just proxy it. Maybe 25% of my deck right now is that way.

Honestly, though, really well made full-art proxies add some flavor to the game, in my opinion.

 

[Leemaster777]

I played it for awhile. It's cool, I guess, but I quit for two reasons:

1. Too damn expensive. When you've got to spend $20 on a SINGLE card that you need FOUR of to complete your deck, you're spending too much on this hobby.

2. All my old Magic friends are dicks. I had this group of guys that I played Magic with, but one day, they were CONVINCED I stole someone's extra cards. I thought they were kidding for a few weeks, until one of them told me with a straight face that they were serious, and that they didn't trust me. Fuck that.

That being said, I do have a few... mementos left over from my Magic days, namely a complete set of Unhinged cards (including Super Secret Tech), and my old Kaldra deck. Because dammit, I love Kaldra. So god damn satisfying to summon him, and watch people say "aw shit" in response:

 

[penguindude42]

NNNEEEEEEEEEERRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDSSSSSSSSSSSSS!!!

All of you, nerds! Nerds, nerds, nerds!

-tom

 

[MisterGobbles]

I FUCKING LOVE IT. I'm having lots of fun with the new set (two words: Rage Extractor), and I'm planning to go to my first draft tournament in a couple weeks. In fact, I had a couple people over to play just this weekend. I love how complex the card interactions are, especially in the formats more lenient in the cards they allow such as Legacy and Vintage.

I love boasting about this so sorry in advance.

My girlfriend and I went to the launch last weekend and each bought a fat pack (9 boosters), she got Karn and I got an Obliterator. When she showed the store owner her card his eyes practically popped out of their sockets!

The only time I ever pulled a mythic, I pulled Emrakul from the Rise of the Elderazi set. I just about crapped my pants when I saw it. The tragic thing is it's banned in Commander and I haven't even gotten a chance to play it in any match yet. I've tried to cheat it out with Knowledge Pool but so far that hasn't worked out yet. It's not easy to play something that costs 15 mana...

 

[aba1]

I thought it was great back in like 1997-98 or so back before the rules became pointlessly complex. It wasnt hard to follow, but the more complex rulesets made it much harder to quickly teach people how to play, and thus limiting pickup games to people who take it entirely too seriously.

I do look back fondly on those times.

Also abstaining on poll as the options are both limited, and not really fitting.

they simplified it to attracted new players during m10

 

[MrDumpkins]

Noobification? It made the game more complex by getting rid of damage on the stack...

People need to learn about choices

Yes. Noobification.

http://www.wizards.com/magic/magazine/article.aspx?x=mtg/daily/feature/42a

Rather than to teach people the rules of the game, they changed the rules to reflect what the noobs, sorry "casual gamers", thought they should be.

Ok, so here are the changes they made.

1. Simultaneous Muligans - This wasn't really a noobification, as it was more of a time constraint thing in tournaments, instead of having to wait for people to shuffle their mulligans and stuff, and then have to wait a again while the other shuffles, you do it at the same time to save some sometimes much needed time.

2. Battlefield/Exile/cast/beginning of endstep - They did this because it was more of a flavor move, it didn't actually change the rules of the game.

3. Mana pools and Mana burn - You could call this noobification, but another benefit to this change is that they can now print "life matters at life x" cards and such because you can't really manipulate your life total easily anymore, but it was mostly so that new players didn't have to worry about a rule that comes up every once in a blue moon, and even less often when it's game changing, it totally made mana drain better. The whole part with the phase changes is something they definitely noobified I'll give you that, there was no reason to really change it.

4. Token ownership - This just made sense, it only really affected warp world effects and such, and this never came up anywhere, tell me that this rule has screwed you before?

5. Combat Damage doesn't use the stack - They did this because it is unintuitive, and makes sense for new players. And it made the game more skill intensive than before for sure.

6/7. Deathtouch and lifelink - they did this for some odd reason, it just made some things that should have been static static abilities finally. I mean, even I had a hard time wondering why my guy needed a double regen shield against a deathtoucher, or why two battlegrace angels gave double life to the creature I attacked with.

So while I think that there was a little noobification in there, the biggest change (damage on the stack) actually made the game more skillful than before, by adding choices.

 

[aba1]

I am ridiculously addicted to magic I surf forums and my friends get annoyed at me cause its all i talk about.

on a side note its a game thats only as expensive as you make it really you can go as cheap as 3 dollars to as expensive as thousands really up to how much you want to invest

 

[esliang]

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......

a) They're probably never going to counter infect. It's like shadow, snow, etc...it'll be popular for a while, maybe viable for a lot longer in legacy, but standard phases things out relatively quickly.

b) http://wiki.mtgsalvation.com/article/Main_Page. If you're going to get into magic, this is a great site to look up terms, rules, basic deck archtypes, etc. After you know the game, check out places like starcitygames.com and channel fireball for great articles.

c) I literally have decks, plural, built around cards like corruption. This might be controversial, but it's kind of a SUPER basic combo deck. Build it right and it doesn't matter how much you're getting beat, the combo deck will eventually pull through.

 

[viranimus]

I thought it was great back in like 1997-98 or so back before the rules became pointlessly complex. It wasnt hard to follow, but the more complex rulesets made it much harder to quickly teach people how to play, and thus limiting pickup games to people who take it entirely too seriously.

I do look back fondly on those times.

Also abstaining on poll as the options are both limited, and not really fitting.

they simplified it to attracted new players during m10

Might well be the case, but thats been my problem with all collectible trading card games, invariably they have to keep making cards, and the more cards they make the more confused the rules will inevitably get.

I basically enjoyed it when you could teach damn near anyone, with one illustration hand because it meant if you had enough cards, anyone could play. Even if they resimplified the rules, eventually it will be made complex again.

Meh, screw it... I think I just want to play some poker.

 

[Glademaster_v1legacy]

For me table top games like this Yu-gi-oh and Warhammer especially the latter has become way to expensive. It is still cool and I do plan to buy the digital version on steam as that is how I play these games.

 

[Samwise137]

I collect. I play casually but never in tournaments. I have a DCI membership but only for prereleases and drafts. Anything that will get me a bunch of new cards at a time. My students have also adopted a "play for teh_lolz" style of casual gaming at our own "Friday After-School Magic" and it's great fun. I get frustrated at official events, though, because so many people take the game WAY to seriously. It's a GAME people. For crying out loud, is it really worth it to spend 100 dollars on a piece of cardboard? Sorry. Just my opinion.