Let's talk about MAGIC (the Gathering)

Gary Sax wrote:

the_jake_1973 wrote: I then left 40K as well. I would get back into Epic since so much can be printed now.

Don't want to fragment the conversation too much, but this never occured to me... can you 3d print the old tiny plastic epic stuff? It was by far my favorite GW game when I played in my teens, I played during the Space Marine days when you bought the boxes filled with all the card army hierarchies to make your armies. I loved trying to make armies with those ridiculously tiny army men. I used Squats, iirc, which in retrospect means that my collection I garage saled off years and years ago would be worth an absolute criminal fortune probably.

There is quite a bit available in the STL realm for Epic. I'll message you with some stuff I've found. I'd love to recreate my speeder bike heavy Eldar host.

I started playing M:tG when Visions came out, in '97. Magic was basically all I played until my daughter was born, in late '99. I liked T2 and block constructed the most, then booster draft, then sealed draft the least.

I played a lot of tournaments, with mixed success. I had a 5CW deck for T2 about the time Weatherlight came out that would bust up a lot of the T2 netdecks of its time. It relied on Shadow creatures, Sleight of Mind, a bajillion multicolor lands, and Empyrial Armor. Yeah, yeah, enchanting creatures is Bad, but a 5/5 Shadow creature would definitely put the other player on the clock. People would bitch at the end about how they lost to such a janky deck. I got to sleight Gloom to black a couple of times on people who never saw Sleight in the first games, and doing that would make my day.

The closest I ever got to getting a Pro Tour slot was playing a Tempest block constructed netdeck, Tradewind Awakening. My friends and I played the shit out of our decks until we knew how to play them. But I screwed up my decklist, and when they deck-checked me at 5-0, they found an error in the sideboard listing. That put me at 5-1 and no sideboard. No top-eight for me.

When my daughter was born, that was it for me. I found out that I didn't like sucking at the game, at the level I liked to play at, and I had to play a lot to stay good at it. But babies don't leave a lot of time to play, and that was that. I sold all my cards to my brother at a crazy cheap price because he wanted to sell them and I just wanted them out of the house. I haven't really played much since.

Jexik wrote: 2017. Opened a store with the largest brick and mortar board game chain in the US. Commander is now the de facto most popular format. I make some budget commander decks to interact with people, including an Ayli Eternal Pilgrim deck which was my baby- just a bunch of janky life gain and token generation that lays low and then eventually just starts exiling people's boards.

I sell a lot of my valuable cards in the shop, but it fails for a multitude of reasons. Glad I got out in 2018, before the CEO revealed quite how shitty of a person he is.

It goes without saying that if you wrote an article about your experience a la Barnes "THERE WILL BE GAMES" series it would generate a LOT of interest both here and elsewhere .

I don't remember specific decks that I played back in the day, but I nearly always played a 2-color deck of some combination of red, black, or blue. The last time I played in a tournament was a small one by some local players where you brought a deck but someone else played it, and you would share the vp from each game where that deck won. I brought a generic untuned starter (this was around '99 or so) that fared poorly, but got to play a very fast and flexible red/green deck. The last time I built a deck was just for fun, using a friend's commons and uncommons. It was a blue/green deck that put out big green creatures and made them into flying creatures.

I played mostly Black and Blue control decks. I did play some aggro (One of my most successful ventures into PTQing was an Extended SuiBlack deck; "Swamp, Dark Ritual, Priest of Gix, Priest of Gix, Black Knight, Carnophage. Go.") but control was usually my thing. I liked tribe decks, as well. I had a hilarious multicolor Sliver deck that was actually pretty competitive (I think I had all of two basic lands in it; everything else was City of Brass or some kind of dual land) and could routinely drop a flying, untargetable, regenerating 7/7 Queen on turn 5 or 6. But my all-time favorite card is Necropotence and close behind it is Stasis and Hymn to Tourach so, yeah... I LOVED Pox during Ice Age and then especially later in Weatherlight when Clark (Steel Golem) was available. Needless to say, I could be frustrating to play against, which is probably part of why my competitive edge in boardgaming has largely waned and I often play things for the experience, as opposed to winning them these days.

(Sorry that I'm kind of spamming the thread here. Haven't thought about this stuff for a long time.)

A few more thoughts. Tournament Magic, when it was good, was the most fun I ever had playing a game. However, it could be the opposite of fun. I played through Combo Winter , and didn't play combo decks. Your average tournament had more than its fair share of bad winners and sore losers, cheaters, and gamesmanship that I would consider beyond the pale. I'd play deck after deck that had nothing but Korean or Japanese cards in it, just to make your life a little harder.

I played a game in a PTQ once, and Randy Buehler (you see his name in the boardgaming/M:tG world) and his gang were in Columbus to get some of their friends qualified. Last PTQ east of the Mississippi, thought Columbus would be easy pickings, whatever. I forget what it was I was playing, and I got wrecked*. I stayed in the tournament even though I had lost pretty much every game; I wanted to see if I could figure out what was broken in my deck or how I played it. So I'm playing Randy Buehler's girlfriend, at literally the last table in the tournament. Way, way down in the losers bracket. At some point I took my hand off the table. and she said, "Please keep your hands on the table." I told her, "Are you serious? Take a look around us; we're in last place. If I'm cheating I totally suck at it." It was shit like that that made it a little easier to quit playing.

ETA: forgot the *. I forget the exact mechanism, but if you had fewer creatures than your opponent during your upkeep, you could get a creature in play for free. So I'd drag out some uncastable behemoth and make the opponent deal with it. It turned out the smarter way was to get a Triskelion and ping the opponent and their creatures to death with colorless damage.

Played maybe half-a-dozen games of Magic back in '95 in college with a friend of mine from high school that went to a different university (I visited a couple of times). He gave me a Magic deck for my birthday, which I still have (Black and White, I believe), and I maybe played with it once. Haven't played it since then, nor have I ever spent a single cent on the game. I've always found the idea of blind boosters as repugnant, and my opinion hasn't changed in 25 years. Ironically, I wonder if I ever did spend money on it and gotten that dopamine hit from opening boosters if my opinion would change. I also dislike deck construction in pretty much any game, so probably no hope for me.

So, Magic free for the last 25 years, I suppose.

Though perhaps Kickstarters are the ultimate blind boosters? You never know what you get till you open all the boxes...

Jackwraith wrote: I played mostly Black and Blue control decks. I did play some aggro (One of my most successful ventures into PTQing was an Extended SuiBlack deck; "Swamp, Dark Ritual, Priest of Gix, Priest of Gix, Black Knight, Carnophage. Go.") but control was usually my thing. I liked tribe decks, as well. I had a hilarious multicolor Sliver deck that was actually pretty competitive (I think I had all of two basic lands in it; everything else was City of Brass or some kind of dual land) and could routinely drop a flying, untargetable, regenerating 7/7 Queen on turn 5 or 6. But my all-time favorite card is Necropotence and close behind it is Stasis and Hymn to Tourach so, yeah... I LOVED Pox during Ice Age and then especially later in Weatherlight when Clark (Steel Golem) was available. Needless to say, I could be frustrating to play against, which is probably part of why my competitive edge in boardgaming has largely waned and I often play things for the experience, as opposed to winning them these days.

(Sorry that I'm kind of spamming the thread here. Haven't thought about this stuff for a long time.)

What was the saying? "Hymn, Hymn, I win"?

I really didn't play black decks much, nor combo decks. Although to be fair, Necro Donate puts a smile on my face. When combos were big I played mono-Red and tried to kill you with Ball Lightnings or the nearest equivalent upside your head. Not much for subtlety. If not that, control; I played a lot of Draw, Go when I just wanted to win games in T2. That would ruin a lot of the Bloom Drain decks that were going around back then.

RobertB wrote: A few more thoughts. Tournament Magic, when it was good, was the most fun I ever had playing a game. However, it could be the opposite of fun. I played through Combo Winter , and didn't play combo decks. Your average tournament had more than its fair share of bad winners and sore losers, cheaters, and gamesmanship that I would consider beyond the pale. I'd play deck after deck that had nothing but Korean or Japanese cards in it, just to make your life a little harder.

I played a game in a PTQ once, and Randy Buehler (you see his name in the boardgaming/M:tG world) and his gang were in Columbus to get some of their friends qualified. Last PTQ east of the Mississippi, thought Columbus would be easy pickings, whatever. I forget what it was I was playing, and I got wrecked*. I stayed in the tournament even though I had lost pretty much every game; I wanted to see if I could figure out what was broken in my deck or how I played it. So I'm playing Randy Buehler's girlfriend, at literally the last table in the tournament. Way, way down in the losers bracket. At some point I took my hand off the table. and she said, "Please keep your hands on the table." I told her, "Are you serious? Take a look around us; we're in last place. If I'm cheating I totally suck at it." It was shit like that that made it a little easier to quit playing.

Randy is one of the top Euro players at WBC and has won the overall WBC crown for most tournament points a couple times. A couple years ago he decided to confront James Pei , one of his main overall competitors, in FOR THE PEOPLE, in order to gain overall points at James' expense. This is a hard core card driven war game with a good and skilled tournament field, yet James has won the event in like 14 of the last 15 years. In the space of one year Randy taught himself FTP and made it to the finals but lost to James. Pretty impressive IMO.

Yeah, Buehler was one of the top players in the world in the late 90s and later joined MTG's design team because of it. IIRC, that championship Blue deck I have is his Draw-Go. Interesting to know that he's still competing in other games.

Msample wrote:

RobertB wrote: A few more thoughts. Tournament Magic, when it was good, was the most fun I ever had playing a game. However, it could be the opposite of fun. I played through Combo Winter , and didn't play combo decks. Your average tournament had more than its fair share of bad winners and sore losers, cheaters, and gamesmanship that I would consider beyond the pale. I'd play deck after deck that had nothing but Korean or Japanese cards in it, just to make your life a little harder.

I played a game in a PTQ once, and Randy Buehler (you see his name in the boardgaming/M:tG world) and his gang were in Columbus to get some of their friends qualified. Last PTQ east of the Mississippi, thought Columbus would be easy pickings, whatever. I forget what it was I was playing, and I got wrecked*. I stayed in the tournament even though I had lost pretty much every game; I wanted to see if I could figure out what was broken in my deck or how I played it. So I'm playing Randy Buehler's girlfriend, at literally the last table in the tournament. Way, way down in the losers bracket. At some point I took my hand off the table. and she said, "Please keep your hands on the table." I told her, "Are you serious? Take a look around us; we're in last place. If I'm cheating I totally suck at it." It was shit like that that made it a little easier to quit playing.

Randy is one of the top Euro players at WBC and has won the overall WBC crown for most tournament points a couple times. A couple years ago he decided to confront James Pei , one of his main overall competitors, in FOR THE PEOPLE, in order to gain overall points at James' expense. This is a hard core card driven war game with a good and skilled tournament field, yet James has won the event in like 14 of the last 15 years. In the space of one year Randy taught himself FTP and made it to the finals but lost to James. Pretty impressive IMO.

Maybe so. But to put it nicely, at the time I (barely) knew him I never felt compelled to be friendly with him or his friends from Pittsburgh.

I have very little experience with Magic tournaments, but even the casual play at the local gameshops was sometimes too tense and competitive to be fun. By contrast, Jyhad players tended to be a more relaxed and welcoming group. Super-competitive players tend to avoid multi-player games because their default chance of winning tend to be so much worse than 50%. And even a competent competitive Jyhad player must be diplomatic, or else the rest of the table might just turn against them. Until the two-player endgame, every Jyhad player has at least two dedicated opponents at the table. Unnecessarily picking up additional enemies in a given game is somewhat suicidal.

Commander/EDH is typically played with 3-4 players and is often a bit more relaxed. You might like it Shellhead.

The board states do get pretty complicated sometimes thougb.

Msample wrote:

Jexik wrote: 2017. Opened a store with the largest brick and mortar board game chain in the US. Commander is now the de facto most popular format. I make some budget commander decks to interact with people, including an Ayli Eternal Pilgrim deck which was my baby- just a bunch of janky life gain and token generation that lays low and then eventually just starts exiling people's boards.

I sell a lot of my valuable cards in the shop, but it fails for a multitude of reasons. Glad I got out in 2018, before the CEO revealed quite how shitty of a person he is.

It goes without saying that if you wrote an article about your experience a la Barnes "THERE WILL BE GAMES" series it would generate a LOT of interest both here and elsewhere .

I thought about it very strongly during the whole twitter frog-gate thing, but I was working 60 hour weeks and don’t wanna get sued for libel. Like if I don’t name names, people will say I lack authenticity. But if I did, I’d get his fanboys sent at me at the least, and possible legal actions… I don’t know.

I started casual with Mirage when I was in, like, fifth grade? Never played a FNM, never went to a tournament. I played with a couple neighbor kids and gave all of my cards to a younger neighbor kid around the time I got to high school (my friends and I were playing mostly D&D at that point.)

I dabbled with some of the Mirrodin-block theme decks that were out while I was in college (I remember thinking the Sunburst mechanic was neat), and played some Alara-block draft in grad school. I have just one deck lying around these days - a red Isochron Scepter deck with all spells and no creatures that I didn't feel like selling for some reason.

It's peak Ameritrash, but I'd never get it played at home these days and I have zero interest in the competitive scene. I thought it might be fun to play around with the new MtG/Forgotten Realms stuff just to see what Magic is up to these days, and I was really disappointed when I saw the card spoilers.

www.magicspoiler.com/mtg-set/adventures-...he-forgotten-realms/

Except for a few Forgotten Realms names, the set is SO GENERIC. No personality. (Granted, FR was the original Terrinoth, but still...) I read a press release not too long ago about how Wizards plans to keep merging Magic with other IPs and if this set is representative of that effort, it's not much to get excited about.