Topic: The Magic: The Gathering Thread

Hi folks,

After downloading and enjoying Magic: The Gathering Duals of the Planeswalkers I think it's high time I got back into MtG. Thinking about starting to play online again.

This thread is mostly just to discuss the game - are there any other players out there on NL? People who used to play, but stopped? People that used to play, stopped, and came back (I belong to this one)?

I use to play this back in high school with some of my friends back when 4th edition came out lol. I still have about 1000 cards packed away in storage. I still get the urge to play once in awhile but I just dont want to go through the trouble of digging my cards out lol.

MtG is really fun to play, especially If you have tons of cards from different years. Its a joy to figure out deadly combinations, play some really cool or weird cards (I especially like weird cards, like this Polar Bear card I have or any of the cards from Unglued set) or just try random-stack-of-card matches like I've done with my friend.

I would love to continue playing it, but I found out its hard to get into "real" game. I checked out a local mini-tournament once and all I met was akward geeks (no offence to anyone who's really into Magic) and I found out that you'd have to buy lots of cards to stay in the "official games". I did tried playing against them, but they wiped floor with me with their well-build decks and strategigs that made my head spin.

I even tried just sitting on chair and watching two guys play and I had no idea what was going on. I knew the rules, but when they just stacked card after card it was like they've studied every card before-hand and knew what every single card does.

So, I like the game, and I like it very much, but playing with people who are really into it is time and money consuming.

Yeah, I know how you feel. A few years back the world championships were held in Sydney and.... wow were they good. Makes the Korean Starcraft players look like rank amateurs.

I played it back in high school also. Once I hit college I just couldn't justify the price in light of other expenses and just moved on. I still play it with old friends from time to time, but I usually don't whip out the old cards.

Hard to believe there have been around 50 expansions for the game. Where does the time go....

I played a bit waaaay back when in college i few years after it first came out. Me and a few friends would play a bit during summer afternoons while drinking gin & tonics. For some reason. =)

My interest was mostly casual, and once we started playing with some other random people and realized that it had quickly become a game of "whoever spends the most money and buys the most cards is generally going to win", that was pretty much it.

Fun game, but by the time it was really hitting its stride, it just wasn't for me. I've considered checking out the XBLA game one of these days though.

I love Magic the Gathering. I have physical cards though, which makes playing online a little tough. I do have some killer card combinations and I had a ton of fun playing epic 5-way 40-card one-colour deck battles with some of my friends back in uni.

This is unfortunately true. It also doesn't help that they release new sets multiple times a year and even the core sets are being changed annually now. Cards becoming extended/vintage are also a real nuisance, because I have a lot of Time Spiral/Planar Chaos/Future Sight cards which, if I was strictly following the tournament rules, I shouldn't be using anymore lol.

I also have no one to play with anymore, so I'm not keeping up with the new releases.

Now is a great time to start/restart playing though - M10 and M11 are intended to be introductory sets so you should check them out if you're interested.

This for me. I played back when type 1 first came out and me and my friends played this game way too much. Many excuses of why we lost too with statements like "Dude you are so lucky I was short on mana! etc" lol it almost sickening thinking about how much I spent on cards back in the day. I agree with you Fox. I just can't justify the price anymore. The last expansion I played with was Shifting Sands I believe it was? I had a card that was something to the effect of "You win if you have one of every color creature and one of every kind of land. So I built my first rainbow deck with the theme of being able to turn lands into different colored mana and creatures being able to change colors etc. Worked out fairly well. Will I get back into Magic? Probably not for a while.

@Vaynard & the shpydar:
If you guys do decide to try it again the XBLA/PSN game is a good place to start. $10 gets you a pretty decent selection of decks and nobody can overpower the competition by buying all the top notch cards. There are a few expansions available, but they aren't a necessity to compete.

Lol I just remember that alot of my cards they dont have around anymore due to game rule changes and PC changes. Like all my Unholy strength cards have the Pentacle in the background which in later editions had been removed due to the fact that it could be considered a religious icon.

Also a few of my cards cant remember which ones that would give bonuses like and +3 attack power or whatever it was called I dont remember right now to you creatured dont have the "till end of turn" printed on them like the newer ones do. I use to play those one against people who would than argue with me that it should only last till end of turn but I would tell them it doesnt say that on the card lol.

Do any of you guys remember or have any of those cards?

@Tasuki
I remember certain religious groups attacking them pretty hard which forced changes like the one you mentioned and getting rid of the word "demon" in cards. Luckily they loosened up on that a bit some years back as it had become a little ridiculous.

That's nothing compared to the hit Dungeons and Dragons took back in the day.

But thankfully no one important listens to the nutjobs any more.

I downloaded MtG: Online last night (for $10 it gives you the basics you need to play some games online.)

Holy heck that software needs a usability makeover. But otherwise, it's good. And proof that Magic is still very popular.

I don't play it myself, but there's a club for it at my school.

I used to play competitively like a year and a half ago on magic online. It was so expensive, I would spend like $300-400 on a deck and have to buy another a few months later when the meta would change.

your right waltzelf, the interface on modo sucks, but they are working on v3.5 which is much better. Modo is the best for drafting though

Thats one reason I never got into MTG tournaments I just didnt have the funds to keep up with the new cards.

I played Magic .5 times in high school. I was more into Pokemon and Star Wars, but I wanted to try it. I borrowed a friend's deck as he taught me. Several turns in I hadn't drawn the right mana to do anything worthwhile, and I quit never to look back.

...well, almost never. Eight or so years. About the same. Anyway, I recently got into this game called The Spoils that I absolutely love. If you're a Magic fan, you should look into it (here's an example card). I've shown it to eight or so others, all of whom played Magic back in the day, and they all say it's like Magic but better. I couldn't say.

Anyway, their talk made me want to look into Magic again. I played the Planeswalkers demo and was kind of interested but also kind of disappointed. I guess I expected too much from a demo, but there were only two uneditable decks, a terrible interface, and seemingly no way to shut off the annoying timer. It's hard to get a good feel for the game when you're subject to the game's bad decks — at least I assume they're bad. I was drawing all resources one game and unable to do anything about it.

Are there enough cards without expansions to make interesting decks? I would only be playing on my brother's 360 on weekends, and he doesn't have an Xbox Live subscription, so it'd be against AI. Doubt the decks would have to be particularly good, but I really like making decks, so room to try goofy ideas would be nice. Or if the expansions aren't cheap, I suppose I could consider them, too.

You don't make decks in Planeswalkers, you can add a limited number of cards to the decks, but the base 60 are set in stone.

That said. One in ten games, if that, run into that land problem. The decks overall are very well balanced and offer a lot of variety. I'm a fan of the game, and still play it regularly.

If you want to build decks you're better off with mtg: online. Very small investment, minimal computer requirements, and works really well and is very popular.

Ah, thanks for the info. I'll have to give it a pass then. Making the deck is half the experience for me. I'd look into MTGO but I'm on Google's Chrome OS book. Oh well.

You might want to look into Magic the Gathering Tactics when it's released on PS3. That seems to have all the deck building, on top of the tactics strategy element. Looks really good.

I hadn't heard about Magic the Gathering Tactics for PS3, I'll have to look it up. I downloaded the Planeswalkers demo and had some fun, although it'd be cool to build your own deck and be able to collect and maybe steal a card from someone you beat online or something. I grew up playing the game with the family and with family and friends is where it will stay. The competitive part of me would like to try a tournament but I don't want to have to worry about how many of my old cards are banned and all of that.