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My Kid Lost a Game of 'Magic' to Its Creator But Scored a Piece of Its Art

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Re: My Kid Lost a Game of 'Magic' to Its Creator But Scored a Piece of Its Art

#91

Post by rantwasp »

gbrown wrote: post #90
alasdair_ wrote: post #74

Magic may be the best game ever devised. Unlike chess, it’s stochastic and unlike backgammon, it has hidden information and bluffing. But it’s more than that - the cards change the rules of the game itself. On top of those layers, the fact that each player builds their own deck makes the game asymmetric and ultimately the meta-game of building the deck to beat the Keynsian beauty contest of optimal deck selection bec…

I think it's fun, but I HATE that it has such a strong pay to win component. If a video game let players spend thousands of dollars on high power abilities to completely dominate the lower paid tier players, they'd be ridiculed in many circles. There are certainly ways to play around this, but it's definitely a thing.

there are many formats. in some the field is as level as possible, in some it takes years to understand all the mechanics and interactions.

the cost to enjoy it is minimal if you’re not playing competitively and even if you are paying attention to the meta matters more than investing thousands of dollars in the game

Re: My Kid Lost a Game of 'Magic' to Its Creator But Scored a Piece of Its Art

#92

Post by YeGoblynQueenne »

>> So, in Magic, the rare cards are often the more interesting cards, but the most powerful cards are meant to be common so that everybody can have a chance.

It's funny but just today I was playing a match in M:tG Arena and I noticed that I used a card's rarity to make a decision. The card was Worthy Knight, a 2/2 creature and I was trying to decide whether to attack into it with my own creature, a Pelt Collector (at the time also a 2/2, with a +1/+1 counter). Normally, in that situation, I wouldn't attack with Pelt Collector - I'd wait for it to grow a bit and then attack so it wouldn't just trade.

However, I wasn't sure what Worthy Knight was doing in the opponent's deck, but I noticed it was a rare (I didn't know the card, it's from the new set, Sword of Eldraine).

Now, normally that would make no difference, but there is no trading in M:tG Arena, as there is in the physical game, so rare cards are harder to come by in Arena than they are in the physical game. Given that Arena booster packs only have eight cards, when physical booster packs have 15 cards, a full set of four of any rare represents a more significant investment (of money, or time) on the part of its owner.

Based on this I figured that, if the opponent was running Worthy Knight (and likely a set of four given I'd seen it in the first turn), then it must be somehow important to their strategy. So I attacked with Pelt Collector and we traded (i.e. the two creatures killed each other in combat).

Re: My Kid Lost a Game of 'Magic' to Its Creator But Scored a Piece of Its Art

#93

Post by rantwasp »

YeGoblynQueenne wrote: post #87

>> “One of the underlying premises of the game,” he said, “is that there’s supposed to be a very simple set of rules and all the cards are exceptions. Every card allows you to break the rules at some point. That’s how I think of it.” That's Garfield of course and it's his game, but I think it's more accurate to describe the game as an abstract machine and the text on the cards (the "ability text") as its inputs that…

yeah. the guy who invented it does not know.

-5/-5 for you + you must suffle all of your library into your graveyard

Re: My Kid Lost a Game of 'Magic' to Its Creator But Scored a Piece of Its Art

#94

Post by rantwasp »

AcerbicZero wrote: post #82

I've seen MTG played, and I've had a few friends try to get me into it, but the idea of collecting a big shoe box full of cards never appealed. In a way I see it much like WH:40k, super interesting looking game, but with such a high barrier to entry as to make it functionally unattainable. Also unless I'm mistaken don't most MTG cards come in "packs" where you don't know what you're actually getting? I have zero inte…

just buy a duel deck and play that w/ a friend.

the barrier to entry is super low. i can teach you how to play in the time it takes to drink 2 coffees. it’s trivial. to actually see beyond immediate things? well... it’s gonna take a while

Re: My Kid Lost a Game of 'Magic' to Its Creator But Scored a Piece of Its Art

#95

Post by rantwasp »

seanwilson wrote: post #32

Is there a good link that concisely describes the rules of the game?

learning all the rules is insane and 95% of people playing it don’t know all the rules.

the good news is that you don’t need to learn all the rules. you learn the basic rules and after that you learn the rules surrounding abilities/effects/etc as they come up.

here:

https://magic.wizards.com/en/game-info/gameplay/rules-and-fo...

Re: My Kid Lost a Game of 'Magic' to Its Creator But Scored a Piece of Its Art

#96

Post by antoinealb »

gbrown wrote: post #90
alasdair_ wrote: post #74

Magic may be the best game ever devised. Unlike chess, it’s stochastic and unlike backgammon, it has hidden information and bluffing. But it’s more than that - the cards change the rules of the game itself. On top of those layers, the fact that each player builds their own deck makes the game asymmetric and ultimately the meta-game of building the deck to beat the Keynsian beauty contest of optimal deck selection bec…

I think it's fun, but I HATE that it has such a strong pay to win component. If a video game let players spend thousands of dollars on high power abilities to completely dominate the lower paid tier players, they'd be ridiculed in many circles. There are certainly ways to play around this, but it's definitely a thing.

There are a lot of different formats. In Limited for example, you buy the boosters you are going to play with when entering the event (you don't bring a constructed deck). This makes it very level and pretty cheap (pay to enter instead of pay to win). It is also quite competitive and is a format often played in championships.

Re: My Kid Lost a Game of 'Magic' to Its Creator But Scored a Piece of Its Art

#97

Post by alasdair_ »

gbrown wrote: post #90
alasdair_ wrote: post #74

Magic may be the best game ever devised. Unlike chess, it’s stochastic and unlike backgammon, it has hidden information and bluffing. But it’s more than that - the cards change the rules of the game itself. On top of those layers, the fact that each player builds their own deck makes the game asymmetric and ultimately the meta-game of building the deck to beat the Keynsian beauty contest of optimal deck selection bec…

I think it's fun, but I HATE that it has such a strong pay to win component. If a video game let players spend thousands of dollars on high power abilities to completely dominate the lower paid tier players, they'd be ridiculed in many circles. There are certainly ways to play around this, but it's definitely a thing.

>I think it's fun, but I HATE that it has such a strong pay to win component.

At most tournaments, all the players have essentially equal access to any cards they want to play with. Some formats are more expensive than others to enter of course, but that's about the same as any other sport - I don't race thoroughbred horses or drive Formula One motorcars either.

In terms of non-tournament (or tournament practice) there is nothing stopping people from taking a sharpie and writing "Black Lotus" on a one-cent card and playing as if it's the most expensive card in the game. People do this all the time.

Re: My Kid Lost a Game of 'Magic' to Its Creator But Scored a Piece of Its Art

#98

Post by Aeolun »

gbrown wrote: post #90
alasdair_ wrote: post #74

Magic may be the best game ever devised. Unlike chess, it’s stochastic and unlike backgammon, it has hidden information and bluffing. But it’s more than that - the cards change the rules of the game itself. On top of those layers, the fact that each player builds their own deck makes the game asymmetric and ultimately the meta-game of building the deck to beat the Keynsian beauty contest of optimal deck selection bec…

I think it's fun, but I HATE that it has such a strong pay to win component. If a video game let players spend thousands of dollars on high power abilities to completely dominate the lower paid tier players, they'd be ridiculed in many circles. There are certainly ways to play around this, but it's definitely a thing.

I thought it was interesting to see that at the start they explicitly tried to make the common cards just as powerful as the rare ones.

That’s definitely changed for the worse, as well as making individual cards more powerful.

I used to make fun of YuGiOh for being full of ‘this card wins you the game’ cards, but magic has very much transformed into exactly the same thing.

Re: My Kid Lost a Game of 'Magic' to Its Creator But Scored a Piece of Its Art

#99

Post by whereismylogin »

gbrown wrote: post #90
alasdair_ wrote: post #74

Magic may be the best game ever devised. Unlike chess, it’s stochastic and unlike backgammon, it has hidden information and bluffing. But it’s more than that - the cards change the rules of the game itself. On top of those layers, the fact that each player builds their own deck makes the game asymmetric and ultimately the meta-game of building the deck to beat the Keynsian beauty contest of optimal deck selection bec…

I think it's fun, but I HATE that it has such a strong pay to win component. If a video game let players spend thousands of dollars on high power abilities to completely dominate the lower paid tier players, they'd be ridiculed in many circles. There are certainly ways to play around this, but it's definitely a thing.

I built my stepson a deck for about 50 bucks, and he won more than one reasonably-sized (>15 players) tournaments, as a 13 year-old.

Yes, if you currently want to be relevant you probably need Oko and friends, but if you want to play cheap, you can.

And if you want to play commander for cheap, check out The Commander's Quarters on YouTube, all deck techs are 25 or 50.

Re: My Kid Lost a Game of 'Magic' to Its Creator But Scored a Piece of Its Art

#100

Post by alasdair_ »

Smithalicious wrote: post #80
alasdair_ wrote: post #74

Magic may be the best game ever devised. Unlike chess, it’s stochastic and unlike backgammon, it has hidden information and bluffing. But it’s more than that - the cards change the rules of the game itself. On top of those layers, the fact that each player builds their own deck makes the game asymmetric and ultimately the meta-game of building the deck to beat the Keynsian beauty contest of optimal deck selection bec…

Another great innovation it has over chess is making people pay hundreds if not thousands of dollars per year to the creator. I'm only being half sarcastic here; monetization seems like a difficult aspect of game design for an "analog" game like this.

>Another great innovation it has over chess is making people pay hundreds if not thousands of dollars per year to the creator. I'm only being half sarcastic here; monetization seems like a difficult aspect of game design for an "analog" game like this.

In the original rules of the game, players had to ante up a random card from their deck every game. There were other cards that added to this ante during the game itself, much like doubling in backgammon. The point was to make the person who went out and spent a lot of money on the deck likely to risk more "monetarily" than the player who only spent a few dollars.

I played this way for many years and I still think it's the best way to play the game, with the trading of cards to get back the ante card a key mechanism to improve one's deck.

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