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22 years in, Magic: The Gathering is the brainiest it’s ever been (2015)

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Re: 22 years in, Magic: The Gathering is the brainiest it’s ever been (2015)

#11

Post by adamnemecek »

prophesi wrote: post #10
adamnemecek wrote: post #2

Magic is probably my fav board game, too bad that you have to put in so much time and money to have fun and the value of cards deprecates so quickly. I tried Hearthstone to scratch that itch but that game is just gutted MtG.

You could get started with the Pauper format, where you can only use commons. That's actually the only format I play in tournaments. With friends, it's Commander + Modern, since none of us have crazy expensive decks.

The thing though is that you aren't going to have all that much fun when your deck is full of cards like 3/3 for 3 mana.

Re: 22 years in, Magic: The Gathering is the brainiest it’s ever been (2015)

#12

Post by nickik »

dbg31415 wrote: post #4
adamnemecek wrote: post #2

Magic is probably my fav board game, too bad that you have to put in so much time and money to have fun and the value of cards deprecates so quickly. I tried Hearthstone to scratch that itch but that game is just gutted MtG.

What's a reasonable price to spend? You would probably spend you $15 to go see a two hour movie... I bet you can get away with spending under $7.50 per hour on M:tG. But it is a very expensive game if you buy all the cards and only play it once. I still have cards from the 90s, I don't think I've bought anything in 20 years. Still fun game to play on board game night with friends.

Easy. You can spend 50-100$ on a more or less competitive Modern or Standard Deck and have fun with it for years.

Re: 22 years in, Magic: The Gathering is the brainiest it’s ever been (2015)

#13

Post by Retra »

moultano wrote: post #3

Does anyone else feel revulsion at the notion of a "mythic rare?" Magic feels like a cross between a brilliant game and a video poker machine.

The "you put money in, entertainment comes out" model is pretty broadly applicable, so I'm not sure what the hangup over video poker should be. More to the point, there is far more value for players in things other than getting mythic rares, so I'm not even sure the comparison is appropriate. It is far from the main focus of the game.

Re: 22 years in, Magic: The Gathering is the brainiest it’s ever been (2015)

#14

Post by Kexoth »

dbg31415 wrote: post #4
adamnemecek wrote: post #2

Magic is probably my fav board game, too bad that you have to put in so much time and money to have fun and the value of cards deprecates so quickly. I tried Hearthstone to scratch that itch but that game is just gutted MtG.

What's a reasonable price to spend? You would probably spend you $15 to go see a two hour movie... I bet you can get away with spending under $7.50 per hour on M:tG. But it is a very expensive game if you buy all the cards and only play it once. I still have cards from the 90s, I don't think I've bought anything in 20 years. Still fun game to play on board game night with friends.

MtG is my favorite game too, but honestly to be competitive with your decks, on a yearly basis you need to spend a lot more money than watching all the blockbusters for that year twice :)

Re: 22 years in, Magic: The Gathering is the brainiest it’s ever been (2015)

#15

Post by GarrisonPrime »

"The brainiest it's ever been" makes it sound like it's ramping up the intellect. I guess they're saying that because of the end of the "dumbed-down" core sets, but I doubt it's the case for the game as a whole.

I tried getting back into Magic after an 8-year hiatus, and so many of the rules had been changed and simplified that many of the subtleties I enjoyed from before were no longer options. Felt like I was paying hundreds of dollars to turn a dial on a deterministic mechanism...

I kept thinking "well, this is just because I've been out of the loop; with time, I'm sure I'll discover new nuances". But after chatting with power players and reading through forums for a few months, I never saw any evidence of that.

Still a great game. But a very different game from the one I fell in love with in 1997, and also a different game from when I last was really into it in 2007.

Re: 22 years in, Magic: The Gathering is the brainiest it’s ever been (2015)

#16

Post by ebbv »

I played MtG seriously in the late 90s and early 2000s and the idea that it's more sophisticated than it's ever been just isn't true. I have gone back and checked it out every few years since I stopped playing seriously and the game is a lot more focused on the board than it was back then. The right play is usually a lot more obvious and deck construction is also a lot simpler because the sets are designed with synergies and deliberate "hot" cards in mind.

I'm glad people still enjoy it, but for me at least it was deliberately dumbed down after the Urza's block and has stayed at that level since then.

Re: 22 years in, Magic: The Gathering is the brainiest it’s ever been (2015)

#17

Post by nickik »

adamnemecek wrote: post #11
prophesi wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You could get started with the Pauper format, where you can only use commons. That's actually the only format I play in tournaments. With friends, it's Commander + Modern, since none of us have crazy expensive decks.

The thing though is that you aren't going to have all that much fun when your deck is full of cards like 3/3 for 3 mana.

I bought a green aggro stompy deck for 30$ in modern. I want win any world championchips but its pretty far away from 3/3 for 3 mana creature.

Its fun crushing decks that have cards that are worth 4x my hole deck.

You can have fun with magic without spending that much money.

Re: 22 years in, Magic: The Gathering is the brainiest it’s ever been (2015)

#18

Post by hyperhopper »

moultano wrote: post #3

Does anyone else feel revulsion at the notion of a "mythic rare?" Magic feels like a cross between a brilliant game and a video poker machine.

It was pawned off on the community extremely well, most people were actually "glad" about it being introduced, and its purpose was hidden at the start.

Originally, they were meant for cards that were too strange to come up often in limited play, so this slot was just to get the weird effects to show up less in drafts. However, over time, it turned into every single card that would be a great high priced single turns into a mythic rare. I stand by my statement that this rarity was the biggest scam in the history of MTG, and most players ate MaRo's blog post introducing them right up.

Re: 22 years in, Magic: The Gathering is the brainiest it’s ever been (2015)

#19

Post by thiagoharry »

adamnemecek wrote: post #2

Magic is probably my fav board game, too bad that you have to put in so much time and money to have fun and the value of cards deprecates so quickly. I tried Hearthstone to scratch that itch but that game is just gutted MtG.

You can print any card and paste on top of cheap cards, just to play with friends. Its nice to do this with the duel decks for casual fun. If you do this just to play with friends, DMCA never would discover. But of course you can't play tournaments doing this.

Re: 22 years in, Magic: The Gathering is the brainiest it’s ever been (2015)

#20

Post by nickpsecurity »

adamnemecek wrote: post #2

Magic is probably my fav board game, too bad that you have to put in so much time and money to have fun and the value of cards deprecates so quickly. I tried Hearthstone to scratch that itch but that game is just gutted MtG.

" too bad that you have to put in so much time and money to have fun and the value of cards deprecates so quickly."

That's exactly why I stopped playing it. It seemed almost rigged against poor people when I was in school. The guys with more money always had better stuff where we had to use cheap tactics to win. :)

My recommendation was doing it on computer with people choosing whatever cards they wanted. Eliminates that problem. Not as fun as holding the cards or being in person, though. Smartphones today give us another option where we could play it in person using our smartphones with two views: our cards and the board. Maybe even an extension where someone's tablet or monitor subscribes to the board people are playing on to have a constant, large display. What you think?

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