Poll: Magic: The Gathering

[MisterGobbles]

I FUCKING LOVE IT. I'm having lots of fun with the new set (two words: Rage Extractor), and I'm planning to go to my first draft tournament in a couple weeks. In fact, I had a couple people over to play just this weekend. I love how complex the card interactions are, especially in the formats more lenient in the cards they allow such as Legacy and Vintage.

I love boasting about this so sorry in advance.

My girlfriend and I went to the launch last weekend and each bought a fat pack (9 boosters), she got Karn and I got an Obliterator. When she showed the store owner her card his eyes practically popped out of their sockets!

The only time I ever pulled a mythic, I pulled Emrakul from the Rise of the Elderazi set. I just about crapped my pants when I saw it. The tragic thing is it's banned in Commander and I haven't even gotten a chance to play it in any match yet. I've tried to cheat it out with Knowledge Pool but so far that hasn't worked out yet. It's not easy to play something that costs 15 mana...

 

[aba1]

I thought it was great back in like 1997-98 or so back before the rules became pointlessly complex. It wasnt hard to follow, but the more complex rulesets made it much harder to quickly teach people how to play, and thus limiting pickup games to people who take it entirely too seriously.

I do look back fondly on those times.

Also abstaining on poll as the options are both limited, and not really fitting.

they simplified it to attracted new players during m10

 

[MrDumpkins]

Noobification? It made the game more complex by getting rid of damage on the stack...

People need to learn about choices

Yes. Noobification.

http://www.wizards.com/magic/magazine/article.aspx?x=mtg/daily/feature/42a

Rather than to teach people the rules of the game, they changed the rules to reflect what the noobs, sorry "casual gamers", thought they should be.

Ok, so here are the changes they made.

1. Simultaneous Muligans - This wasn't really a noobification, as it was more of a time constraint thing in tournaments, instead of having to wait for people to shuffle their mulligans and stuff, and then have to wait a again while the other shuffles, you do it at the same time to save some sometimes much needed time.

2. Battlefield/Exile/cast/beginning of endstep - They did this because it was more of a flavor move, it didn't actually change the rules of the game.

3. Mana pools and Mana burn - You could call this noobification, but another benefit to this change is that they can now print "life matters at life x" cards and such because you can't really manipulate your life total easily anymore, but it was mostly so that new players didn't have to worry about a rule that comes up every once in a blue moon, and even less often when it's game changing, it totally made mana drain better. The whole part with the phase changes is something they definitely noobified I'll give you that, there was no reason to really change it.

4. Token ownership - This just made sense, it only really affected warp world effects and such, and this never came up anywhere, tell me that this rule has screwed you before?

5. Combat Damage doesn't use the stack - They did this because it is unintuitive, and makes sense for new players. And it made the game more skill intensive than before for sure.

6/7. Deathtouch and lifelink - they did this for some odd reason, it just made some things that should have been static static abilities finally. I mean, even I had a hard time wondering why my guy needed a double regen shield against a deathtoucher, or why two battlegrace angels gave double life to the creature I attacked with.

So while I think that there was a little noobification in there, the biggest change (damage on the stack) actually made the game more skillful than before, by adding choices.

 

[aba1]

I am ridiculously addicted to magic I surf forums and my friends get annoyed at me cause its all i talk about.

on a side note its a game thats only as expensive as you make it really you can go as cheap as 3 dollars to as expensive as thousands really up to how much you want to invest

 

[esliang]

I only hope that they release something to counter infect. So far I haven't heard of anything outside of a legendary creature of 2 that can actually remove infect tokens. Sucks when you get dealt 6 infect tokens in one turn.

Edit: Is there a site where all the various jingo that I see tossed around on the net is explained?

Edit edit: Writing about not having land reminded me of something. I was watching a game between my friend and my brother. My friend was running a black vampire deck at the time, but spent the game pulling mostly swamps. So he was taking hits, and unable to hit back.....until, with 13 swamps on the board, he pulled 2 corruptions in a row. Won the game in a single turn. If only I could be that lucky......

a) They're probably never going to counter infect. It's like shadow, snow, etc...it'll be popular for a while, maybe viable for a lot longer in legacy, but standard phases things out relatively quickly.

b) http://wiki.mtgsalvation.com/article/Main_Page. If you're going to get into magic, this is a great site to look up terms, rules, basic deck archtypes, etc. After you know the game, check out places like starcitygames.com and channel fireball for great articles.

c) I literally have decks, plural, built around cards like corruption. This might be controversial, but it's kind of a SUPER basic combo deck. Build it right and it doesn't matter how much you're getting beat, the combo deck will eventually pull through.

 

[viranimus]

I thought it was great back in like 1997-98 or so back before the rules became pointlessly complex. It wasnt hard to follow, but the more complex rulesets made it much harder to quickly teach people how to play, and thus limiting pickup games to people who take it entirely too seriously.

I do look back fondly on those times.

Also abstaining on poll as the options are both limited, and not really fitting.

they simplified it to attracted new players during m10

Might well be the case, but thats been my problem with all collectible trading card games, invariably they have to keep making cards, and the more cards they make the more confused the rules will inevitably get.

I basically enjoyed it when you could teach damn near anyone, with one illustration hand because it meant if you had enough cards, anyone could play. Even if they resimplified the rules, eventually it will be made complex again.

Meh, screw it... I think I just want to play some poker.

 

[Glademaster_v1legacy]

For me table top games like this Yu-gi-oh and Warhammer especially the latter has become way to expensive. It is still cool and I do plan to buy the digital version on steam as that is how I play these games.

 

[Samwise137]

I collect. I play casually but never in tournaments. I have a DCI membership but only for prereleases and drafts. Anything that will get me a bunch of new cards at a time. My students have also adopted a "play for teh_lolz" style of casual gaming at our own "Friday After-School Magic" and it's great fun. I get frustrated at official events, though, because so many people take the game WAY to seriously. It's a GAME people. For crying out loud, is it really worth it to spend 100 dollars on a piece of cardboard? Sorry. Just my opinion.

 

[Sarynroth]

I really enjoyed playing magic in sixth form with my friends but now I'm at uni its not really socially acceptable to play and I also don't know anyone else who plays here at uni. Also its quite an expensive hobby to have for a student although I have a few hundred pounds worth of cards up here with me so I should probably get of my arse and find some people to play with. Although once I go back home I can meet up with my old friends and have a few games of EDH or Cube drafting but as they all take it more seriously (going to tournaments and the like) they all have significant better or more interesting cards than me.

 

[InfiniteSingularity]

Ah, I remember the old days of playing this game...it was amazing, it seems to be losing it's appeal for me with the new versions; however, I have a fairly substantial collection which I have accumulated over the years. Great game

 

[rex922]

-snippy-

Don't know what to do about shuffling, though. I do that thing where you deal the deck out into piles of an odd number (5 or 7) a couple times before play, but sometimes I still get a really crappy draw. maybe I should mulligan more often, that might help shuffle up the deck a bit more.

You need to balance your lands out properly and do a mana weave once then pile shuffle. this way the deck balances out quite well in terms of usable cards.

I collect. I play casually but never in tournaments. I have a DCI membership but only for prereleases and drafts. Anything that will get me a bunch of new cards at a time. My students have also adopted a "play for teh_lolz" style of casual gaming at our own "Friday After-School Magic" and it's great fun. I get frustrated at official events, though, because so many people take the game WAY to seriously. It's a GAME people. For crying out loud, is it really worth it to spend 100 dollars on a piece of cardboard? Sorry. Just my opinion.

Yea, sometimes I find some people take this game waaaay to seriously and although tournaments of FNMs have some cool prizes its often not worth it because you aren't having any fun

I think magic is a great game and can get a little expensive in constructed formats.
Often i find that if I don't want to play constructed or lack decent cards to make a new deck I just draft where you already get a decent amount of cards and it can get very exciting because each draft is a new deck and a new experience.

 

[MrDumpkins]

I really enjoyed playing magic in sixth form with my friends but now I'm at uni its not really socially acceptable to play and I also don't know anyone else who plays here at uni. Also its quite an expensive hobby to have for a student although I have a few hundred pounds worth of cards up here with me so I should probably get of my arse and find some people to play with. Although once I go back home I can meet up with my old friends and have a few games of EDH or Cube drafting but as they all take it more seriously (going to tournaments and the like) they all have significant better or more interesting cards than me.

But that's the beauty of cube drafting, you don't have to care about cards if you're using someone else's cube!