Magic: The Gathering C/D

played a bit last night. thinking about getting back in semi-seriously.

I was realllllly into Magic from like, 4th grade to 7th grade - like a 24/7 obsession. I was pretty good and read the magazines and websites on a daily basis - if I had more than $5 a week to spend on the game, I woulda been winning local tournaments left and right. Then one day I just completely lost interest. Thank god it was long before I had the potential to spend real money on the game. The funniest thing is that I looked up to all these local 20 year old guys who had the $$$$ for near-perfect decks. And in retrospect it's like, lol, I was looking up to some of the geekiest people ever.

Despite not really thinking about MtG for 10 years, I am bothered by how much info about the game is permanently lodged in my brain.

I remember one point in time where I had this badass green deck made up of relatively cheap and common cards that allowed me to play a dozen creatures in 3 turns and actually compete w/ legit players. It was risky though, cause it was an all or nothing type deal, and I pretty much knew if I was gonna win or not as we drew our hands.

Also there was this one time where I was about to win the local tournament (by tournament I mean like 12 players) and some guy who was watching was like "hey that card you're using, I think it's banned" and he showed me the magazine (The Duelist? I think) and it seemed like he was right, and so he went to the guy who owned the comic book store and that guy decided to just give me 2nd place even though I was winning.

LATER I went home and realized that the card was only banned for like Type 1.1 tournaments or some shit and we weren't playing that. That was the closest I ever got to winning a tournament. But I mean, I was a poor ass 11yo and these dudes were in their 20s - it was pretty hard to compete. The guy who tattled on me did a lot of hard drugs and when you're suburban 11yo it's pretty weird to hear someone talk about their hard drug use.

i have vague memories of playing friendly games in the local card/comic shop's upstairs magic the gathering room (before it burned down) as like a 12 year old. dudes were basically nice but now that i'm a 20-something dude myself i'm not exactly going to be down w/playing against kids at some store. i will play magic the gathering the way i would do anything else--with my friends and over beers.

Okayyy I just spent 10 minutes trying to figure/remember what card it was, and it was this one:

http://wowbox.tw/mtg/images/largejpg/03XXX/03238.JPG

xp was gonna caution u if u somehow meant really serious, the gameplay itself on a advanced/tourney level seems crazily intricate and difficult now just from reading a few articles but yea if thats ur def of semi-serious then more power 2 u itll be rad~

oh, adding to my geek cred - I also remember buying and reading about a dozen of the MtG fantasy-world novels

oh yeah, i have had brief encounters with the magic aspie/dork tournament scene and it's def not for me. i just mean paying attention to cards, buying new cards, reading about stuff. it's a step above what i do now which is play with the same 5-6 decks i've had for five years or possibly longer.

i have a bunch of cards signed by the artists that i got when i was 13. wonder if they're worth anything these days.

I seem to remember that cards being signed by artists actually didn't make them particularly valuable.

also, imo totally the golden era of the game: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revised_Edition_(Magic:_The_Gathering)

they are doing some crazy mtg 2010 shit look @ this:

http://www.gatheringmagic.com/images/Cards/GoldenLotus2010.jpg

SHROUD??

btw i have four decks ready to play at bell_labs' house--
white/green
green/red
blue/black
green/black

obv i like green. (slow burner.gif)

the green/black is sort of an aborted necropotence/enchantress deck that i hustled together quickly, and we almost never use that one cuz it's an unlikely winner. when it works it works well, but that is not often :(

One card-printing error of note appeared on the card Serendib Efreet. This blue creature card was misprinted with a green border and a picture of another card, Ifh-Bíff Efreet. The name, mana cost and rules text were of Serendib Efreet, however. The Revised version is now the most common due to the limited print run of the original, intended versions.

Love this card, pack four of 'em in the blue/black deck.

i think shroud means it cant be the target of spells or effects

also, that is just some online series or something, not a real card. my bad

too many new terms & mechanics with each expansion = one of the reasons i stopped playing. the other main reason was... high school.

i kind of want 2 get into this but it seems deeply complicated in an unfun way?

yeah it seems it but if you have any affinity/familiarity with games in general i could teach you to play in about an hour.

yeah it's not a hard game to grasp, especially if yer just fuckin with the basic sets and not making any attempt to "stay current" or anything. i haven't bought magic cards in... a long time. not long enough that i'd be comfortable saying exactly, but a long time. years.

yah i mean ill fuck w/ catan and zombies and bang and fukken dragonball rpg so i figure i can "get it" but everytime my friends start to explain it the whole thing seems really overly rule-y and limited. sad realness: i kind of just want 2 play because i like the pictures on the cards

been readin abt new sets and tournament decks this morning. don't even know where there's a decent game store anymore.

Funny that this got revived because they just announced a set of new rules two days ago to simplify and streamline the game, and make it easier to learn. (Naturally, the hardcore players are up in arms.) Or did you revive because you heard about the new rules, destroyer?

It is a pretty complicated game, but a lot of rules just cover unusual circumstances that rarely come up. The nice thing is most new cards are self-explanatory or intuitive after you've got the basic rules down.

i revived cause i had gotten together with some friends to play, a couple of us had mostly old cards and a couple had mostly new cards (so every game involved a shitload of reading). i read about the rule changes after that. not sure i'm down w/the new combat rules.

picked up 15 alara block boosters on saturday and am opening them now. this set is hilarious, it basically is forcing the issue and making ppl play 3-5 color decks. prob will be fun to put a deck together.

http://rlv.zcache.com/top_hat_bunny_card-p137108767801135068tdtq_400.jpg

^^^ pull that card out of your hat next time cad

As an old school dungeon master, it's impossible for me to see Magic as anything but the game that destroyed the attention span of millions of potential RPGers.

And then they WOTC bought TSR, just to add insult to injury.

Total DUD I say!

xp i would definitely throw down w/a hatbunny card.

this fan-created variant brought me back to the game after 13(!) years.

it's really fun and totally casual. you have a general that must be a legendary creature. all your cards must be one of your generals colors. you start with 40 life. you can use cards from every format. there is a ban list but it's just for the most broken unfun unfair cards.

the format is now officially supported with pre-constructed decks.

the one we used to do was called 250, basically you built a 250 card deck w/ at least 20 of each color, plus you played for ante (had to be a rare though), and could play Contract from Below which made it really fun - was such a great casual format and bascially all that was played at the store I went to for years - then the rules "committee" massively fucked it up, restricting Contract, then banning it, then not restricting or banning cards that were killing the format (mostly b/c most of them didn't even play anymore), then completely changing the rules, and now nobody plays it - meanwhile Commander got a ton of support officially, kinda makes me wonder how big 250 could have been at it been managed even remotely properly

ok http://www.wunderland.com/WTS/Andy/ProjectEBAY/MagicCards.html these prices are so retarded omg

― El Tomboto, Tuesday, October 23, 2007 4:06 PM (4 years ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink
people should all be blown up

― El Tomboto, Tuesday, October 23, 2007 4:06 PM (4 years ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

should see how high they are now! (would guess all of them have doubled in price since)

lol you play magic as well as poker - ?

are people who pay that sort of money for magic cards people who are playing at a high enough level to be making bank off of it, or at least people who are close enough to delude themselves of same? or are they like IT professionals who don't know how to spend money

its some from both columns, I guess the one defensible thing about it is that they are almost like stock, and I don't think the prices have ever dropped - as time goes on they only get more rare, the only way they'll take a big fall is if the game dies out, which IMO is really not happening anytime soon. my one big purchase was about 6 years ago, I bought a dude's collection for $1400 with the intention of selling most of it over time, and honestly wish I hadn't dealt any of it, as the entire thing would be worth $6000+ today. here's a card that was worth about $15 at the time, check this out now:

http://sales.starcitygames.com//search.php?substring=underground+sea&Go.x=15&Go.y=9

btw I don't think many people are making much money off of playing the game (maybe like 1% of the players), but if you can predict the market for buying/selling certain cards you can definitely do well

should i play the dark ascension prerelease tournament it means getting up at 8am on a saturday

sealed? does the set look cool?

lamp, do it for those of us who want to live vicariously through you and provide a full report

yeah its a sealed, $25 bucks gets you um some # of boosters (i think 9?) and a promo card.

i totaled up what it would cost me to complete my innistrad set on starcitygames and its like $90 + shipping/taxes. i hate myself sometimes

haha don't do #2 you will find a complete set to be a white elephant. #1 sounds like a decent use of $25.

only pay for cards that you will almost definitely play with + directly enjoy

well i dont have $90 to my name atm so theres no risk i was just curious. amusingly enough ive pulled two of the really expensive innistrad cards (snapcaster and one of the planeswalkers) from boosters so its mostly just cheap cards left

although i know for a fact you two are both way underestimating the pleasure i would get from having a complete card set

its mostly lol cuz you can buy a complete set of innistrad on ebay for like $110 bux atm

yeah I think I have a hard time seeing things from a collector's pov but I'm like aspie on the other side of the spectrum. 'what is this object's functional value for me'

anyway I will play anyone itt cockatrice tonight

man i just started buying cards again. haven't played since ice age. shit is great.

i haven't played a physical match against a real opponent yet, just trying stuff out on cockatrice. i've won a couple games using decks assembled from cards i actually own. thinking about going out to the burbs for friday night magic tomorrow but worry about embarrassing myself horribly.

cockatrice is super fun but dudes keep busting out these like $$$ standard decks and annihilating me, would like to play against decks comparable to those found at a south louisiana gaming store.

yeah when i played iatee last he used a constructed deck that just destroyed me like i could not win

look i like the forbidden alchemy into unburial rites into sun titan into grave titan via 8 million rare dual lands as much as the next guy but at some point it turns into an unwinnable arms race

aw man I like the beauty of the unwinnable arms races, it becomes all about statistics and tailoring the perfect deck

I mean I like the idea of it, I was very much against it when I was a kid and could afford exactly 3 of the cards needed to make said perfect deck

totally. coming back to magic after 15 years, with the internet-enabled secondary market and a grownup's disposable income--these serious decks are somewhat attainable at this point but my mindset is still firmly in buying boosters, opening them up and making do with what i get.

of course i am learning, to which my recent ebay sprees can attest.

haha I still don't have a grownup's disposable income I just play online