shintakie10 said:
Im curious about this. As a person who mainly plays Hearthstone and their only other card game experience being Yugioh back around the time of synchro summons started (card games on motorcycles!), how accessible is MtG?
It depends exactly what you mean by "accessible". In terms of learning the rules and basic gameplay, it's really not complicated at all. But the trouble is that it was designed to be played by real people face to face, not as a computer game, and it doesn't translate at all well between the two mediums. Some of the things people complain about Hearthstone missing aren't there for exactly that reason. For example, in Magic, you can play some cards during your opponents turn. In the tabletop game, that's great because your opponent doesn't know about it in advance and you can just jump in at any time and do it. On a computer, it means every single action by either player is followed by a long pause to give someone the opportunity to do something. Similarly, in Hearthstone you just have your turn, and can take any actions at any time during it. In Magic, you're split into various phases, with the main ones being a play phase, then attack, then another play phase. Again, it works in tabletop, but fills the computer version with yet more lengthy pauses where you don't want to do anything but have to wait for both players to have the opportunity to think about it and maybe play something.
So a Hearthstone turn might go:
Play spell;
Attack with creature;
Play another creature.
A similar turn in Magic would be:
Play spell;
Wait for opponent to respond;
If they do, wait for your response;
Potentially endless loop of waiting and responses until someone runs out of cards;
Wait for you to do something else or end phase;
Wait for opponent to respond;
Declare attack;
Wait for opponent to play in response;
Same loop of potential responses again;
Wait for opponent to declare blocking;
Wait for you to play things in response;
Loop again;
Resolve combat;
Wait for players to respond to results of combat;
Loop
Play another creature;
Wait for opponent to respond;
Loop;
Wait for you to do something else or end phase;
Wait for opponent to respond.
Importantly, none of the pauses can actually be skipped, since at every point there are two players who could potentially do something. Even if you just want to end the phase because you're not going to do anything, you still need to leave your opponent time to respond to you wanting to end the phase (playing a spell at the last moment before the combat phase starts, for example). In tabletop, it's not a problem because you're face-to-face and can just interrupt if you want to play something, and does allow a bit more complexity and often entertaining clusterfucks as counters pile up on each other. But on a computer it means every turn takes far too long even if no-one wants to do anything, and even when action is happening it's constantly broken up by lengthy pauses just in case someone might want to do something.
So how accessible is it? As I say, in terms of actual gameplay it's not particularly hard to pick up and does allow for a bit more complexity and interactivity than a game like Hearthstone in which you're completely passive for half the time. But if you're playing only on a computer and are coming to it from a game designed and streamlined for that style, you're likely to find it incredibly frustrating and boring.