Magic the gathering, how did you get into it?

[King Toasty]

Alright, you're a lucky bastard. This is my 1000th post. I was saving it, but you get to have it. Congratulations.

Choose two colors that match your personality best. Here is a color wheel:

Start buying packs, preferably from M11 or the upcoming M12. Prerelease for M12 is this weekend, get to your local hobby shop.

Buy as many packs as you want, then buy a starter deck of the two chosen colors. Make a deck of roughly sixty cards, following this pattern:

Card
Card
Mana
Card
Card
Mana

Repeat until you have roughly 60. This won't win you tourneys, but it's a good start.

Play with friends over and over, refining your deck. Also, use cards you really really like.
Visit the magicthegathering website, the articles are great.

My biggest piece of advice is to keep playing, keep enjoying, keep having fun, and above all, get a 20-sided dice.

What about an artifact deck?

OT: I got into it in high school for a while, dropped it later though.

Artifact decks are LOADS of fun, but you'll still need to choose a color. White and blue work quite well together.

Yeah, nobody in my school plays, except for a nerdy few. Good times with them, though.

I'm using a White/Blue infect deck at the moment... and yes they do work well together. I got into Magic when I was like... nine or ten? well some guy gave me a few of his cards, I think one of each color except for white and instead two black cards. they were all creatures, but the only one I remember is Grotesque Hybrid, look it up its quite old, anyway I got the 7th edition set later on, and I've been collecting on and off. I had to scrap all of my old cards because they were just too old though, so I got a bunch of scars of mirrodin and some new phyrexia, and made myself a couple of average decks.

My bro got a 7th Edition wwaaaayyyyy back when, but a few years ago he gave me some of his cards. Thus started my crippling burn-card addiction.

 

[F-I-D-O]

The title says it all really. I'll start...
With the whole "playstation plus free for a month" deal, i found that you could magic the gathering duels of the planewalkers 2011 for free. The sucker that i am for free stuff i downloaded it...

Thus my love for magic the gathering started.
I loved it, and at the moment i'm trying to get my mates into it.
I just wondered what made some other people play it? Maybe you stopped? If you stopped then why?

(Also any tips to beat my mates would be greatly appreciated!)

Poison decks. If you can learn how to play them (in RL), use them. Winning by only doing 10 damage, along with permanently wounding opponents creatures, combined with proliferate can be devastating. Also, if you like doing monocolor decks, you could try mixing with blue decks to help control the field a little bit more. There's some event/Mirrodin/Phyrexia decks on amazon from $15-20 that use poison REALLY well. And with newer card sets, it's hard to be only a monocolor, and they're easy to learn two color decks. Or, just get a 2012 fat pack, and beat them with brand new cards.

He's my friend. Best booster EVER.

 

[Shakomaru]

The title says it all really. I'll start...
With the whole "playstation plus free for a month" deal, i found that you could magic the gathering duels of the planewalkers 2011 for free. The sucker that i am for free stuff i downloaded it...

Thus my love for magic the gathering started.
I loved it, and at the moment i'm trying to get my mates into it.
I just wondered what made some other people play it? Maybe you stopped? If you stopped then why?

(Also any tips to beat my mates would be greatly appreciated!)

Poison decks. If you can learn how to play them (in RL), use them. Winning by only doing 10 damage, along with permanently wounding opponents creatures, combined with proliferate can be devastating. Also, if you like doing monocolor decks, you could try mixing with blue decks to help control the field a little bit more. There's some event/Mirrodin/Phyrexia decks on amazon from $15-20 that use poison REALLY well. And with newer card sets, it's hard to be only a monocolor, and they're easy to learn two color decks. Or, just get a 2012 fat pack, and beat them with brand new cards.

He's my friend. Best booster EVER.

I got him in a booster too! Do you have a special strategy to summon him?

 

[SL33TBL1ND]

I tried a video-game once but it wasn't something I like.
When it comes to trading cards I'm not in elementry or secondary school anymore, so...yeah...

That's good, because MTG is for adults.

OT: Buy a starter deck, see if you can buy some Eldrazi booster packs, get someone to teach you how to play at your local geek hobby store.

 

[F-I-D-O]

snippity

I'm using a White/Blue infect deck at the moment... and yes they do work well together. I got into Magic when I was like... nine or ten? well some guy gave me a few of his cards, I think one of each color except for white and instead two black cards. they were all creatures, but the only one I remember is Grotesque Hybrid, look it up its quite old, anyway I got the 7th edition set later on, and I've been collecting on and off. I had to scrap all of my old cards because they were just too old though, so I got a bunch of scars of mirrodin and some new phyrexia, and made myself a couple of average decks.

My problem is I want to stick to my older cards. I can't justify buying brand new ones when I have all of these old cards. However, I did make a pretty formidable black/red by mixing in a Mirrodin booster with my older cards. That being said, I am buying some new decks (can't justify buying individual boosters, I'll buy a fatpack, but not a single), and that's been doing okay.
Yeah, it's a pain playing against new decks with Omega expansion cards.

 

[F-I-D-O]

The title says it all really. I'll start...
With the whole "playstation plus free for a month" deal, i found that you could magic the gathering duels of the planewalkers 2011 for free. The sucker that i am for free stuff i downloaded it...

Thus my love for magic the gathering started.
I loved it, and at the moment i'm trying to get my mates into it.
I just wondered what made some other people play it? Maybe you stopped? If you stopped then why?

(Also any tips to beat my mates would be greatly appreciated!)

Poison decks. If you can learn how to play them (in RL), use them. Winning by only doing 10 damage, along with permanently wounding opponents creatures, combined with proliferate can be devastating. Also, if you like doing monocolor decks, you could try mixing with blue decks to help control the field a little bit more. There's some event/Mirrodin/Phyrexia decks on amazon from $15-20 that use poison REALLY well. And with newer card sets, it's hard to be only a monocolor, and they're easy to learn two color decks. Or, just get a 2012 fat pack, and beat them with brand new cards.

He's my friend. Best booster EVER.

I got him in a booster too! Do you have a special strategy to summon him?

One word: Zombify.
Discard card from hand to kill an opponents creature. Bring him in dirt cheap.
Laugh as opponent runs.
I'll move him in between my poison and artifact decks (don't do tournaments, just like playing with friends), and he's pretty much a game ender.

 

[Shakomaru]

The title says it all really. I'll start...
With the whole "playstation plus free for a month" deal, i found that you could magic the gathering duels of the planewalkers 2011 for free. The sucker that i am for free stuff i downloaded it...

Thus my love for magic the gathering started.
I loved it, and at the moment i'm trying to get my mates into it.
I just wondered what made some other people play it? Maybe you stopped? If you stopped then why?

(Also any tips to beat my mates would be greatly appreciated!)

Poison decks. If you can learn how to play them (in RL), use them. Winning by only doing 10 damage, along with permanently wounding opponents creatures, combined with proliferate can be devastating. Also, if you like doing monocolor decks, you could try mixing with blue decks to help control the field a little bit more. There's some event/Mirrodin/Phyrexia decks on amazon from $15-20 that use poison REALLY well. And with newer card sets, it's hard to be only a monocolor, and they're easy to learn two color decks. Or, just get a 2012 fat pack, and beat them with brand new cards.

He's my friend. Best booster EVER.

I got him in a booster too! Do you have a special strategy to summon him?

One word: Zombify.
Discard card from hand to kill an opponents creature. Bring him in dirt cheap.
Laugh as opponent runs.
I'll move him in between my poison and artifact decks (don't do tournaments, just like playing with friends), and he's pretty much a game ender.

And by pretty much, you mean IS.

 

[F-I-D-O]

The title says it all really. I'll start...
With the whole "playstation plus free for a month" deal, i found that you could magic the gathering duels of the planewalkers 2011 for free. The sucker that i am for free stuff i downloaded it...

Thus my love for magic the gathering started.
I loved it, and at the moment i'm trying to get my mates into it.
I just wondered what made some other people play it? Maybe you stopped? If you stopped then why?

(Also any tips to beat my mates would be greatly appreciated!)

Poison decks. If you can learn how to play them (in RL), use them. Winning by only doing 10 damage, along with permanently wounding opponents creatures, combined with proliferate can be devastating. Also, if you like doing monocolor decks, you could try mixing with blue decks to help control the field a little bit more. There's some event/Mirrodin/Phyrexia decks on amazon from $15-20 that use poison REALLY well. And with newer card sets, it's hard to be only a monocolor, and they're easy to learn two color decks. Or, just get a 2012 fat pack, and beat them with brand new cards.

He's my friend. Best booster EVER.

I got him in a booster too! Do you have a special strategy to summon him?

One word: Zombify.
Discard card from hand to kill an opponents creature. Bring him in dirt cheap.
Laugh as opponent runs.
I'll move him in between my poison and artifact decks (don't do tournaments, just like playing with friends), and he's pretty much a game ender.

And by pretty much, you mean IS.

well, pacifism can be a *****.

Then I throw out this, put on skinwing, and exile the biggest guy on the opponents field (or blightsteel if pacified). That plus the phyrexian hydra above can be devastating to any opponent. But yeah, he hits the field, and it might as well be over.

 

[6_Qubed]

My first memory of Magic: The Gathering was reading about it in an old magazine called Disney Adventures, a magazine I would be greatly surprised to see still in print. I was... eight years old or so, because according to the article, the game hadn't been released yet. The only words that stick in my mind was the description of one of the cards, Shivan Dragon; "A powerful creature card."

I wouldn't actually have a proper introduction to the game for many years to come. I had just started high school, I was living with my dad at the time, and on one of his business trips he had found a fantastical-looking game thing and, remembering that I was kind of a nerd, bought the thing and brought it back with him. And to hear him tell it, he's regretted the decision ever since, because it has since dominated my life. Even in the brief episode where I left Magic to try out this Yu-Gi-Oh thing, I was still building decks with Magic logic behind them. My last Yu-Gi-Oh deck was, in fact, an older-carded combo deck built around small monsters, Amazon Archer and Last Will. (veteran YGO players will probably be wincing at the mention of those two cards.)

I started playing actual Expert level Magic (back when the term still existed) around Invasion block. As a result, I've always had a certain familiarity for multicolor cards, and sets that don't have them just feel weird for that reason. However, when I first saw Mirrodin (the first one), I knew I was destined to be a Johnny/Timmy until the day I died. This new block, Scars of Mirrodin, has been a return home for me, though a melancholy one. I'm actually considering getting the Phyrexian symbol as a tattoo, assuming I ever man up long enough to let someone jab me with needles.

 

[friboy2791]

I started playing during summer camp and then come fall at friends' houses. Back then I didn't actually own a deck so I mostly borrowed from my friends. The thing is they never let me use their good decks so in those days I would lose every match because I was either mana-screwed, color screwed, of flooded. Then for a few years I stopped playing magic because it was no longer cool to play. In 8th grade I picked up Harry Potter cards (which are also made by wizards and have a similar rule-set). During my Harry Potter days I made a friend who still played magic and managed to get me playing again. I still never won partly because I kept confusing the rules of magic with the rules of Harry Potter (and vice-versa) and partly because once again I didn't actually own a deck and had to keep borrowing my friend's crap deck. Eventually during the time spiral block i decided to buy the sliver themed starter. I modded it heavily with sliver cards given to me by a different friend who had stopped playing. My deck still wasn't very good but at least I was able to win a few games. I didn't fully get into it until about a month ago when I convinced my friend to buy me about $75 in cards and remake my sliver deck in exchange for a favor he owed me. Now I am actually winning games consistently and for the first time in my life consider myself to be a magic player.

 

[Shakomaru]

The title says it all really. I'll start...
With the whole "playstation plus free for a month" deal, i found that you could magic the gathering duels of the planewalkers 2011 for free. The sucker that i am for free stuff i downloaded it...

Thus my love for magic the gathering started.
I loved it, and at the moment i'm trying to get my mates into it.
I just wondered what made some other people play it? Maybe you stopped? If you stopped then why?

(Also any tips to beat my mates would be greatly appreciated!)

Poison decks. If you can learn how to play them (in RL), use them. Winning by only doing 10 damage, along with permanently wounding opponents creatures, combined with proliferate can be devastating. Also, if you like doing monocolor decks, you could try mixing with blue decks to help control the field a little bit more. There's some event/Mirrodin/Phyrexia decks on amazon from $15-20 that use poison REALLY well. And with newer card sets, it's hard to be only a monocolor, and they're easy to learn two color decks. Or, just get a 2012 fat pack, and beat them with brand new cards.

He's my friend. Best booster EVER.

I got him in a booster too! Do you have a special strategy to summon him?

One word: Zombify.
Discard card from hand to kill an opponents creature. Bring him in dirt cheap.
Laugh as opponent runs.
I'll move him in between my poison and artifact decks (don't do tournaments, just like playing with friends), and he's pretty much a game ender.

And by pretty much, you mean IS.

well, pacifism can be a *****.

Then I throw out this, put on skinwing, and exile the biggest guy on the opponents field (or blightsteel if pacified). That plus the phyrexian hydra above can be devastating to any opponent. But yeah, he hits the field, and it might as well be over.

I love Hydra, it's in my green/red infect deck along with this guy

 

[F-I-D-O]

One word: Zombify.
Discard card from hand to kill an opponents creature. Bring him in dirt cheap.
Laugh as opponent runs.
I'll move him in between my poison and artifact decks (don't do tournaments, just like playing with friends), and he's pretty much a game ender.

And by pretty much, you mean IS.

well, pacifism can be a *****.

Then I throw out this, put on skinwing, and exile the biggest guy on the opponents field (or blightsteel if pacified). That plus the phyrexian hydra above can be devastating to any opponent. But yeah, he hits the field, and it might as well be over.

I love Hydra, it's in my green/red infect deck along with this guy

That sound you heard was a light going on over my head
*goes to card wish list to update it, making evil genius laughs and drumming my fingers together
I'll be back.
For two-headed giant games, that could be AWESOME.

 

[twistedmic]

I got into it briefly a few years ago after a friend of mine suggested that I try it, I tried it and liked it. But I lost interest pretty soon after ( maybe five, six months later). Partly because I was starting to spend too much money on the cards, and the other reason was that most of the few people I played with kept cheating.

 

[FalloutJack]

It's not nearly as funny as the reason I got out of it.

You see, I have these cards, right? But I heard they kept changing the rules on me, and that made things irritating as is. Follow that up with seeing some really shitty cards that basically make no right sense or are just bullshit stuck in to troll people, and that just just taking the piss. Ah, but I threw my hands up once I'd heard there were televised tournaments. I say "Nevermind! I'll play something else, you crazies! Enough is enough!".

Magic is really for those who have the patience for it. I'll go into a gaming club and some guys will be setting up for their game of MTG. Hours pass, and it'll be time to go. THEY'RE STILL PLAYING! It's been four hours and nobody won yet! I use to do that, but it would be only a couple! Nutz...

 

[Cobalt180]

Oh man, I guess I was into magic long before I began to play it. I'd seen lots of people playing it, but I had no idea how to, and didn't express any interest at the time. It wasn't until a friend brought me to a Pokemon tournament where the staff hadn't cleaned up after a Magic core set pre-release party that I actually got my first card (and Island). I then bought my first starter box the summer of 2010 and got the Flyover starter deck. After getting that and the booster pack inside (that actually had 'Jace the Mind Sculptor' in it) I was hooked.

And I have never regretted it.

 

[Megacherv]

Been playing since February, LRR got me interested in it, now it's the game I play the most. I play Kuldotha Red mostly, I also play a Green-White Aura Gnarlid deck occasionally.

 

[ace_of_something]

I got into it because i worked at a comic book shop the latter half of my high school days. (and a different comic shop.)

I have successfully managed to be a magic mooch. I've been playing the game since like 1996 without ever having actually purchased any cards. My friends have always had so many that i could make my own decks out of their spares or use theres.

I pretty much can't win unless I put red or white into the deck in some way. Because I suck.

White is my fave.

 

[Saelune]

My parents played it, thought the cards looked cool. Years later, bought a booster pack with no idea how it worked, and eventually my dad showed me and my brother how to play. And here we are. Havent gotten new cards since a bit after Mirrodin was put out, but Duels of the Planeswalkers is making me want to, but I still have my awesome Green Deck still made up with my Avatar of Might and Phantom Nantuko and Rhox.