When did you start playing, what is your favorite set(s) and has your view of MTG changed since?
General forum
Posted on March 13, 2022, 11:36 p.m. by TypicalTimmy
Originally I was introduced to MTG in 2005, and didn't like it. I began playing around 2010-2011 again with a girlfriend and her friend, and again didn't care much for it.
It wasn't until Magic: Origins that it became a regular staple in my life.
Of all the sets I've bought into, Tarkir is by far my favorite and I hope to return one day.
However as time as gone forward, the game has become stale to me. Not stale for being uninteresting; quite the opposite. Now, each set breathes new mechanics and lore and world building, but we never (or rather, seldom) take the time to properly explore any of it. It all feels like the investment had been lost. Now, it's like the new "flavor of the week."
Oh, nice. A new mechanic that'll have 17 cards to its name with just 3 - 9 that are viable and zero support, ever. Fun. Guess I'll wait four months for the next set of mechanics that I can't build around, ever.
:/
But I recognize I have a depressive view on things, so I'd like to try and view this through a different lens. So I am genuinely interested in all of your takes and opinions on the matter, and if you feel MTG has become better or worse since you first started.
When did you start playing?: 1993.
What is your favorite set(s)?: The Dark, Ravnica: City of Guilds.
Has your view of MTG changed since?: Yes.
I dove into MTG when it came out and even competed at many events for quite a few years. But one day, I realized the excitement about competing and winning was not what I wanted. What I wanted was just hanging out with friends and having insane or surprising stuff happen at the table while playing magic. Now I am more into thematic decks, the lore and stories and good time memories.
But I do miss the ante rule! There is just that added excitement of risking one of your favorite cards while playing the most unpredictable format possible. Casual 4 or more player kitchen table magic.
March 14, 2022 1:07 a.m.
FormOverFunction says... #4
I started in 95/96 and the game seemed extremely mysterious. It sort of turned places like comic shops (and other semi-secret nerd-sanctums) into an additional speakeasy, where you could say a few words and then get access to something not everyone knew about. That was amazing, but I’m not going to get upset about it not happening anymore. So many more people have the opportunity to enjoy something that I also enjoy, and that outweighs most if not all of my complaints. People don’t have to accidentally stumble on an old copy of dragon magazine at a garage sale to find out that D&D exists. It’s all right there. I completely understand (and mostly agree with ) your flavor of the week comment. It’s a shame when a set hits on something like extort and then you just sort of watch the mechanic sail over the horizon. Sticking to the theme end of things has helped me enormously in staying involved. Without that I would not have come back. It’s hard for me to pick a single set that I like most, but the dark, fallen empires, and mirage had a lot of really neat stuff that I still love seeing show up in commander decks.
March 14, 2022 1:12 a.m.
"It sort of turned places like comic shops (and other semi-secret nerd-sanctums) into an additional speakeasy, where you could say a few words and then get access to something not everyone knew about." FormOverFunction.
Man, I forgot about what it used to be like. Brings back, strange now, old memories.
March 14, 2022 1:24 a.m.
TypicalTimmy says... #6
I remember as a kid in the 90s, my brother and I would save up our allowance each week and every weekend we would go to our local downtown area and splurge. The 90s were so cheap and so freely unenforced that two children could walk completely unattended through a sprawling downtown city area without even being given a single first look. We would go to Blockbuster and rent videogames and movies, go to Starbucks and Caribou for coffee, hang out in candy shops and bike stores, throw coins in the fountains, play on the railroad tracks and smash pennies and nickels as trains drove past them and so much more.
Times were so much simpler, back then. We didn't even have cellphones or pagers or nothing. We kept some quarters and our home phone number written down on paper in our velcro wallets My brother had a Batman velcro wallet and I think mine was Ninja Turtle or Spiderman or something; All I remember was it was a dark Navy blue.
We had a local game shop - not quite a fully fledged out LGS that you all might be familiar with. This was a cozy little shack nestled between two large stores, almost bricked between them in an alleyway. The store had a single glass counter immediately to the left of the entrance, comic racks lining the immediate right, and shelves of toys and comics and movies toward the back. The whole store was probably only 12' wide and maybe 35' deep.
Here, my brother and I would pick up and buy Pokemon packs. I bought so many Fossil packs that I eventually collected the entire set of them. My brother wasn't so much into Pokemon as he was the Dragon-Ball Z TCG. I could never figure it out and would lose every single game, though I suspect he was cheating as he exclusively played with Goku and Vegeta, who were the strongest cards he owned. So, each game was always stacked against me.
Eventually I would ask the store owner about Magic: The Gathering. He would tell me this was more of an "adult" themed game and that I probably wouldn't like them. He compared it to D&D, whom my father was abhorrent against. Being the "Christian" that he was, he felt D&D was Demonic worshipping. Pokemon was fine, because they were just animals and what child doesn't like to play with pets. But summoning Goblins and Dragons and Zombies was a line he wouldn't cross. So, we never got into it - unfortunately.
In high school, I think it was actually 2006 because I was a Junior in Driver's Ed. The guy behind me was shuffling some decks around and we had some downtime in the class for the day so I asked him what that was. He told me about MTG and explained it as best as he could to a new player. He gave me the choice between a Golgari deck and some other deck. He explained that the green and black deck was all about having creatures die and getting some type of benefit from it, and the other deck was all about stopping the other player from casting their spells, and hurting their creatures before they could attack. I picked the Golgari deck, and the very first game we played, I won. Told him the game was kind of boring and never picked it up again for years.
Then I met my GF after college and her best friend re-introduced me to it. He had a Slivers deck and I had some other thing. I lost horribly and decided it was still a stupid game.
Several more years later, I'd see coworkers playing the game at the back of their machines at my job. As a packer at that time, it really pissed me off that our machine operators were playing a child's card game instead of watching their machines. Eventually I got promoted several times until I was the one training new employees on how to operate the machines. One new employee happened to play MTG, so I asked him about it.
We went to Walmart after work, bought a bunch of starter decks and booster packs and sat down at like an iHop or Steak & Shake and basically spent like three and a half hours playing. That's when I sort of got "hooked" and have been involved ever since.
I always loved casting huge, enormous spells and hated holding up resources waiting to "react". I wanted to constantly go all-in. Then I picked up one of the Tarkir starter decks and found Savage Ventmaw and lost my freaking mind.
And the rest, as they say, is history.
March 14, 2022 1:41 a.m.
TypicalTimmy says... #7
Man I am having some very serious Mandela effect here... apparently the Dragon-Ball TCG didn't come out until 2008. But here's the thing.
I graduated high school in 2007.
And I distinctly remember my brother and I playing in middle school, which would have been like 2001 - 2003.
I just asked my brother on Facebook and he recalls this too. In fact, we didn't move out to our current area until the end of the 8th grade in 2003, and we would play in our old home. So we are looking between 2001 - 2002.
But the game wasn't released until 2008. What the actual fuck...
March 14, 2022 1:48 a.m.
wallisface says... #8
When did you start playing?: I think around 2010-2011. However at that stage it was very kitchen-table/casual. I didn't get properly invested into the hobby until around 2015.
What is your favorite set(s)?: I really liked Battle for Zendikar, and enjoyed both the Kaladesh sets, though I wouldn't really say i've had a favorite set, more just favourite mechanics and themes (Modular, -1/-1 counters, etc). I can say easily, that Neon Dynasty has been the only set that has really, really impressed me as far as draft-playing fun... so I think at this point that will be my favorite.
Has your view of MTG changed since?: A little, as I suspect everyone's has... but not really. I think i've always just enjoyed the game for what it is, and not really gotten too caught up in the politics of the whole thing, and that has helped keen me relatively sane. Some of this is probably also down to me just playing modern (it helps me escape the garbage-fire of Arena, or the various dubious out-of-game IP edh has to deal with)
March 14, 2022 1:58 a.m.
@TypicalTimmy: Maybe it was pokemon you were playing? That one came out a couple years after mtg.
March 14, 2022 2:02 a.m.
TypicalTimmy says... #10
MagicMarc, we played Pokemon, yes, but we also played Dragon Ball.
The game came with a "power slider", to match the idea of the "power level". Your character would scale in power as the game progressed, and you'd unlock new abilities to use such as the kamehameha blast and Krillin's Destructo Disk.
You know what I bet it was? I bet it was some knock-off game. Someone stealing the IP and printing it without the license. You know, like a start-up so it wasn't "officially" from Bandai or whomever ran that game.
March 14, 2022 2:08 a.m.
When did you start playing? I started in 1994, not long after Revised (3rd edition) was released. I was 13 years old. Actually, it must have been the middle of August that year, because school had just started. My brother, who was 4 years older than me, met a kid that year who played, and then they both taught me how to play as well.
I loved it from the start. I had already loved playing board games and card games and chess and that sort of thing. So I jumped elbows deep into it, full steam ahead. I bought a ton of Fallen Empires, hahaha... they were the cheapest packs, and all I really cared about was owning a lot of cards.
What is your favorite set(s)? Probably Torment. I really liked the way that the whole set revolved around Black. I really appreciated the flavor of that. I really wish they would have ever done that again with other colors. I actually really liked the whole Odyssey block. It was fun to draft, and the cards were very powerful at the time. Some of them are even still today incredibly powerful.
I'm not sure that Torment is definitely my absolute favorite, though. There have been a lot of sets through the years that, in their own time, were exciting. I really can't pick just one, because even if I can look back now and try to judge all of the sets I've seen as far as which ones were the best, it wouldn't change the excitement I had when each of those sets were released.
The entire Urza block was jaw-dropping. It followed a slew of ho-hum sets that hadn't really added very much that made existing decks better. The Urza block made you want to build block decks. Plus, it was the first to bring us squirrels :3
I already mentioned the Odyssey block, but before that was the Masques block (Mercadian Masques, Nemesis and Prophesy), which wasn't as good as either of the other two I've mentioned, but certainly had its moments. It intrigued me at least enough to buy a lot of packs.
Mirrodin was the next set that got me really excited about the game. It would definitely be on my list of favorite sets. Can't say it's one of my favorite blocks, though. Darksteel was pretty cool, but Fifth Dawn was garbage. An absolute let-down.
That block was followed by Kamigawa, which I also loved for the flavor. However, none of the block themes ended up powerful enough to compete with what had already been printed before it, so I lost interest in it quickly (although, I do still ever so love Betrayers of Kamigawa for bringing us the Ninjutsu mechanic, and I try to put Ink-Eyes, Servant of Oni into every deck I can fit it into).
I did really enjoy the first Ravnica block, and I definitely improved my collection by acquiring cards from it. But to be perfectly honest, it's not on the list of favorites. Actually, the next set that got me really full-throttle back into the game after that wasn't until War of the Spark. I love everything about that set. I bought a ton of Guilds of Ravnica and Ravnica Alliance only just because I loved War of the Spark so much. So that's for certain on the list of favorite sets.
Ikoria was the next one, and the first ever that I only just admired from afar. I was in serious financial, emotional and physical hardship when that set came out. So I read the entire set list over and over again, designed decks from it here on this site, drooled over the Mutate mechanic and the Godzilla tie-in, but never bought any of it until two months ago. Until then, and especially at the time it was released, it was like my secret crush.
The next set that made me very happy was Modern Horizons II. I couldn't resist but to splurge on that one. It was amazing, in a million different ways. Also, MOAR SQUIRRBLES!!!
Now, I'm excited all over again for Kamigawa, Neon Dynasty. The vehicles are awesome. The capability to have Ninja Leviathans is awesome. Vehicles are now awesome. It's my favorite set all over again. I only just wish that it was a block and not a stand-alone set. Which brings me to the next question...
How has your view of MTG changed since? That answer is incredibly complicated, and this comment is already way too long. My view of the game has changed a million times since I've started playing. I mean, I remember going from having true duals that I pulled from packs, to seeing the likes of Ice Age and Homelands, which made me feel like WotC was never going to make good cards ever again. Then Modern (which at the time was called "Type 2") became a thing, and I felt like it was a way to get everyone to buy the new garbage they were printing instead of making better cards, and I was pissed. Urza's Saga changed my mind on that one. I could mention many other times my view of the game has changed since then - both favorably and otherwise - but I won't.
My view of the game now is like you said at the beginning. There aren't any complete stories (unless, of course, those stories are set on Ravnica). Like, they give us Ikoria, but then no more Mutate. Or they bring us back to Kamigawa, and in an amazing way, but just for one set. Now, the Modern Horizons sets have brought back flashes of things like Cascade and Ninjutsu and Squirrels and so forth, but just in snippets at a time, kind of spread out. Like you said, here's a mechanic: have fun with it, because you may only see a handful of it again, years apart from each other.
Then again, they've been doing that for a very long time. I mean, where's Threshold? Where's Echo? How long did it take for us to get more Modular? Are we ever going to get more Zubras? This isn't a brand new thing.
As far as the community goes, I wouldn't really know. I've only ever really played casually, with friends, or for a period of a handful of years at one particular LGS in my 20's. I have attended prerelease drafts here and there, and a few tournaments in the 90's, but that wasn't my usual gig. Now that I can attend an LGS again, covid happened, and I'm always working on the one day of the week that people get together to play.
Well alright, if you actually read through that entire novel I just wrote, I thank you. Cheers!
March 14, 2022 4:03 a.m.
I started playing around the end of the oddyssey block, just before the 8th core set and the Kamigawa block started. It was summer holidays and my mom told me about a coworker of her´s, that he plays this "strange card game that looked like as if it´s a children thing...." and if I would know anything about it. I told her that I didn´t and after a day or two she told me that the coworker apparently has a play-group every tuesdays and the guy asked her, if I would be interested in checking it out. So I did. Aaaaaand I fell in love with it. The people there were all so nice and quite different from casual players up to serious tournament-level people. It was a group of about 20 people that got together every time.
For the favourite set, that´s quite hard to narrow down to one set since I like some for different reasons but I try to keep it systematic. Favourite set gameplaywise: Ravnica City of Guilds. I love the set and it was Ravnica that taught me how multicolored decks are build. Before that my multicolor decks were kind of all over the place and never balanced (or good) at all but that was the time I got the hang of it. Favourite set storywise: Clans of Tarkir. I just love the lore behind it and I eventually got a Temur-Tattoo on my right leg (yeay). Favourite set in atmosphere: Kaldheim, since I´m kind of a sucker for all norse related stuff.
Has my view on MTG changed over the years? Absolutely! I started out casually in a upper medium-sized playgroup (as stated above). Then I even played in some local tournaments and for some time I have been rather competitive but after a while I noticed how toxic that scene is (at least in my area, don´t know if it like this in general) and how it affected me and how I treat other people while playing. So I went back, even stronger focussing on being janky and casual. For me it is kinda sad that we don´t get three-set-blocks anymore to fully dive into the lore and mechanics but the current sets let us explore lots of different places, characters and playstyles so I don´t mind that much. I feel like Wizards has a quite strict focus on multicolor decks now and what they are "supposed" to do (spellslinging for red/blue, tokens for green/white, graveyard stuff for black/green and so on) without really expanding playstyle possibilities. It all became kinda same-y just with different settings which is a bummer.
March 14, 2022 6:52 a.m.
I feel like the newbie newcomer here, hAH-
I think I started playing during Ravnica Allegiance, in like, 2019. Dad played the game when it first came out, talking about "Nickle-and-Dimers" and "Rat decks and "Nope" decks.
The first deck I ever played was the green 2019 welcome deck. I was absolutely thrashed by my dad and started trying to get better and better. I built my first deck, built around High Alert and Azorius Knight-Arbiter, and it did pretty well. I then made a gruul deck, followed by a simic deck. I wanted to build around all the guilds and did eventually succeed, though only three of the ten are still together, although heavily edited. I got into commander after receiving the Lathril, Blade of the Elves precon, and started watching channels like Commander's Quarters and Command Zone. Now I live and breathe commander. I, unfortunately, don't have a job, but I was able to construct a Lathiel, the Bounteous Dawn commander, and a Radha, Heart of Keld commander. I have several cards I want to build into commander decks, but just don't have the resources for. My view of the game has changed drastically. I originally thought it lame, like pokemon or Yugioh, but I see the complexities of it now and have seen extraordinary plays that have inspired me and changed my view of things.
I'm only 16 though, so my addiction to magic will either grow or falter, depending.
March 14, 2022 4:24 p.m.
Oh, and my favorite set is commander legends and the modern horizons stuff if that counts. Call me basic.
March 14, 2022 4:25 p.m.
I started playing with the first Portal, kinda. That was the first set I got cards from. I spent the next few years off and on, getting bits and pieces of collections from people who were leaving the game or offloading bulk commons and uncommons. (I managed to get both Pardic Firecat and Diligent Farmhand and had no idea what Burst meant. I thought it was some action, like untapping, that the rules later dropped.) I started digging in a little deeper in Time Spiral block, then really jumped in with Alara. Since then, I've been either in deep or sitting out.
Favorite block is Alara. It was the one that I really got in with (if you missed that two sentences ago). I usually prefer multicolor builds to monocolor builds, and I wasn't in for most of Apocalypse and Ravnica. It has a unique and deep setting insert Return to Alara screed here. And the cards are just cool: Maelstrom Archangel, Godsire (Secretly pandering to the OP? Never!), Progenitus, Wall of Denial, Conflux, Sphinx of the Steel Wind, Lich Lord of Unx... Add in stuff like Ad Nauseam, the Cascade mechanic, and Noble Hierarch, and the introductions of Nicol Bolas, Planeswalker, Sarkhan Vol, Tezzeret the Seeker, and Elspeth, Knight-Errant, and it had something for everyone. Planeswalkers were still brand new, and colored artifacts were a shocking and semi-controversial twist.
I don't like the one-set model. I understand that the three-set model and even two-set model had general dropoff after the first set, but the current model is too much, too fast. The mechanics are underdeveloped and unsupported. (In agreement with "it's always been that way" doesn't make it a good thing. I'm still waiting for Provoke to come back.) The planes are either shallow, limited in scope, or "open for exploration when we return" which may or may not happen.
The biggest and most disappointing change for me, though, is the official website. It used to have multiple articles a week: Making Magic, Savor the Flavor, From the Lab, Building on a Budget, Arcana, Card of the Day, theme weeks, it was all fun. Now, it's a couple of third-party articles, occasional short stories for the lore, and a bunch of promotion and self-advertising.
With my "it was better in my day" out of the way, I think the fundamentals of the game are in good shape. Aside from some cosmetic differences and minor rules updates, it's still the same game I was playing fifteen years ago, and there's a lot to be said for that. Sure, there's been some power and complexity creep, but aside from a couple of high-profile missteps that aren't totally without precedent (Urza block -> Mirrodin Affinity -> Zendikar Caw-Blade -> Throne of Eldraine/Ikoria), it's been well controlled compared to other popular TCGs. A deck from five, ten, twenty years ago can still find a home at least at the casual tables.
March 14, 2022 6:03 p.m.
MagicMarc If you still have any old ante cards, can you make an ante cube? It won't have the same thrill and despair of permanently winning or losing cards, but I've seen some ante cube ideas where the winner of the night was the one with the most new cards.
March 14, 2022 6:11 p.m.
I started 15 years ago (13 at the time) when Baneslayer Angel was the most OP card. Was HORRIBLE. Didn't know what ramp or removal was. Just put a bunch of fun cards together and lost all the time. Once I got my first playset of terminates, I started to lose less quickly. My only wins were from luck, people killing each other, and from opponent's mistakes. Started to play again 5 years ago or so. Stopped in March 2020 but hope to pick it up again by 2023 as I focus on other priorities. I love this site as I can playtest my old decks to death, help players with their decks and encourage the magical thinking process.
MTG has gotten better, yes. But not to my liking. Too many mechanics, too much complications in a game that's already complicated enough. Basics are difficult for me, so anything past that screams TIMMY SMASH.
March 14, 2022 7:22 p.m.
jethstriker says... #20
I first saw MtG around '96 played by my classmates during breaks and immediately got interested about it. It wasn't until a year later in mid '97 that I bought my first set of cards and started learning. I played with my classmates casually with "cards that we have". That was the case for me until I graduated college and got a job in 2010's that I finally got the ability to purchase cards to build legitimate decks for real formats.
I have no particular favorite set, but the sets in my early years of playing (Mirage, Tempest, and Urza) are memorable for me.
My opinion in Magic? Definitely changed. Back in the day MtG is rare in our country and you have put in the effort if you want to learn and play. Nowadays, with the help of internet and its counterpart video games, it's so much easier to get into MtG just like any other entertainment media. This gave me the image that MtG is dark and mysterious in the early years compared to today's common and plain. Another thing is how they design sets mechanically and thematically. Recent sets left a bad impression on me due to being lame (Ikoria's Mutate mechanic), boring (Ixalan's Pirates and Dinosaurs), or recognizable rip offs (Strixhaven being WotC's Harry Potter). Sure early MtG sets also based their themes on an existing culture or known media but they make it distinctively.
March 14, 2022 7:51 p.m.
jethstriker "Dark and mysterious in the early years."
I just actually laughed out loud! XD
Yeah, if you wanted to keep up with set releases, pricing and whatnot, you had to read Scrye or Duelist. Like, actual hard-copy magazines, for the kids out there who don't remember such a thing.
The struggle was real :P
March 14, 2022 9:46 p.m.
FormOverFunction says... #22
TFW a card hits the table that no one has ever seen before, and it’s from a set that came out two years ago. LOL Completely different time.
March 16, 2022 12:56 a.m.
JANKYARD_DOG says... #23
I came into MTG via my unofficial Uncle. He was pretty much my intro to all things nerd, PC rpgs, MTG, Anime, models (Vehicle and DnD figures), Rpg's of various titles... I didn't start right away but I seen it played and wasn't too sure, so I remained a spectator for a spell.
Somewhere in the Mirage block, I entered a new store in town called 'The Juniper Berry'. It was mostly trinkets, incense, gems, statues, etc. On a shelf I happened to spot some Magic: The Gathering cards, and purchased my first starter deck. Now, for those of you who are not so young anymore, this wasn't some pre-constructed introduction. It was a 60 card 5 color mix of cards, no dual lands to speak of. Needless to say, it wasn't winning any games. I'd play with some of his decks to mix it up, but my paper route wasn't funding too many more new cards. Managed one day to buy a pack that was sitting all by it's lonesome... chronicles I think? That's when things changed.
I opened a misprint in that pack, while at my uncles and his play group was there. It was a Djinn, it was colored black, with green mana pips. After announcing this oddity one of the guys pretty much lost his mind. He told me to wait, ran out the door and upon returning dropped a double row box of cards on me. This cascaded, everyone else was like 'I got some you can have!". I didn't know about rarity's at this point but the brewing quickly ensued and became one of my favorite part of the game. After many years of up to 12 player free for all's Mercadian Masques was the end for the playgroup... for MTG anyway.
Another TCG was out around then too called 'Legend of the 5 Rings'. Had to sell out of MTG to buy into it... Biggest Regret EVER. Seeing the prices now of some of the cards I had... could of been a down payment on a nice house now. Unfortunately, that too died out. Found some people into Yu Gi Oh and played that for a time, not buying into it this time just borrowing and acquiring hand me downs basically. After I moved out of town, then ended TCG's for a long while for me.
I got back into MTG at the end of Theros block and drafted a ton of Khans, got into standard with Heroic/Prowess being my flavor of choice. Just after Origins I was introduced to Commander and haven't gone back. Unfortunately, in the present given the recent pandemic, the rise of Arena, and the discovery/creation of various other online ways to play MTG has seemed to have died in my area. In person play anyway. I'm hoping after restrictions are lifted this changes but I'm having doubts. Doesn't stop me from brewing though. Trying to work up the courage to put out an Ad for a regular play group... but alas, I am not the best at these sort of things... Anyway, that's my MTG story thus far.
As for the state of the game, I am not really sure. MTG is an international thing so my area alone can't speak towards the whole... Could be it's just moving all online... which would suck. I think the social aspect of the game is a big part of it and alot of the online play doesn't offer that.
March 16, 2022 2:26 a.m.
Started in 2002 during the Odyssey block. Began with a few friends lending me decks to play. Got a few boosters but couldn't make anything to compete until I got one of the precons. "Painflow" was my first and Thriss, Nantuko Primus introduced me to my love of big green stompy things. My first self made deck was spirits and anthems eg Phantom Nishoba + Mirari's Wake.
Bought and played casually fairly often up to Kamigawa.
End of '05 had some new owners take over one of my LGS. Got them to start hosting FNM and PTQ tourneys. Stuck around for the FNM but wasn't a fan of the PTQ crowd. They sold up around 2010-11 and I didn't get along with the new owner(neither did 90% of the other customers) and ended up saving a couple of decks to play and sold off most of my collection.
Started playing again last year when my house mate began catching up with some of our old magic buddies. Been grabbing singles and making decks but not going as nuts as I had previously.
Still miss when the Fat Packs came with the book for the set they were attached to and probably have the novels floating around in a storage box somewhere...
Still think the Odyssey block as a whole is still my fav and still use cards from them in some of my current decks(shoutout to my barbarian buddy Kamahl, Pit Fighter, the Lightning Bolt on legs).
Still miss some of the janky oddball decks we used to play back in the day when we couldn't find a playset of the cards we wanted so some other synergistic interactions went in and you'd occasionaly come accross a combo that you were not even looking for(looking at you Goblin Sharpshooter and my druid buddy Kamahl, Fist of Krosa).
Not so much a fan of power creep in the game. I like to play and see some of the interesting ideas my friends come up with, just a little disapointed when it's like a turn 3 I win... I've made decks that can compete with the speed but don't overly enjoy playing them.
If one of our players could be bothered making some EDH decks we'd play more of that as most of us enjoy the swings and round-abouts of that style of play rather than the speed of constructed 60's.
I've tried Arena and it's a good way to play when everyone else is busy but the social side of things is why I came back to playing again. Still play other games(board/rpg) with other members of my group so if Magic starts to feel stale again I've still got other reasons to go see people.
March 17, 2022 3:50 a.m.
TypicalTimmy says... #25
My very first deck was a 5-color, 84 card monstrosity with like 27 lands, mostly dual Scry lands from Theros hahaha
I still recall my first slew of mythics was Keranos, God of Storms, Iroas, God of Victory and Aurelia, the Warleader.
I took this pile of unsleeved headaches to my buddy's house and he cracked out this Rakdos kill-on-sight deck where nothing you played lasted more than the phase it entered in.
I got so pissed off that I almost quit a third time, lol. So he taught me about mana curve, pips, ramp, etc.
I discovered Satyr Hedonist and Generator Servant as well as Elvish Mystic. I discovered Planeswalkers after I pulled a Chandra Nalaar and went to my LGS and found Xenagos, the Reveler.
See the Unwritten and Howl of the Horde became staples in my deck and I would ramp into big cheats and drop the biggest of bois and give them haste and kill the table in one shot.
I quickly fell in love with Dragons because they were big dumb unlockable bodies.
Then, like I said, I pulled a Savage Ventmaw from one of the starter decks and my mind exploded.
Ever since, whenever I can play big dumb monsters, I do. For example, Ghired, Conclave Exile is largely considered hot garbage. And yet, he's one of my favorites.
- Doesn't matter had tokens :3
March 17, 2022 4:53 a.m.
TypicalTimmy Good God(s), this is the first time I'm seeing Ghired, Conclave Exile!
Great. Now I gotta convert my Kamahl's Token Legion deck into Naya. Thanks :P
March 17, 2022 1:43 p.m.
My first deck was a blue/white weenie deck, with Flying Men, Savannah Lions and Counterspells. I quickly started running mono-white weenie, which is why to this day I get offended when people badmouth white. That first white weenie is actually still together 30 years later, it just gets updated every few years or so. And it still wins more often than not. Armageddon + Howling Mine + a crap load of creatures that only cost one mana = a lot more powerful than people want to give it credit for. More than half of the cards in that deck were pulled from packs of Revised (3rd Edition) that I bought back then; including the cards I listed above, as well as Swords to Plowshares.
I'm with Fuzzy003 on the power creep thing. However, just like I said in a previous comment about another topic, it's really always been that way. Back in the day, if you weren't playing black/blue draw/control or Suicide black, you weren't going to win any tournaments. The only real combo was Channel + Fireball , but a good lockdown control deck was nearly impossible to beat (besides the fact that Channel was one of the first non-ante cards ever banned, because it was too easy to win with it).
I did once own a turn 2 Guilty Conscience + Stuffy Doll deck. It won every game I played. As such, it was pretty boring. I never competed with it, because it was Vintage legal, and I didn't have Power 9 cards with which to make it a turn 1 deck. So I ended up selling it (which I've regretted ever since, because this was before Commander drove up the prices of the four Plateau in there from $75/each to well over $300/each, and the Wheel of Fortune in there that I had pulled from a pack jumped from $40 at the time to I-don't-wanna-know how much it is now).
The best I ever did at a competition was getting 3rd place out of 50 people back in ('95/'96?) with a budget Goblin tribal deck, that ran such beauties as Goblin Balloon Brigade and Keldon Warlord, hahaha. Of course, my Wheel of Fortune and Sol Ring were in that deck, as well as the Howling Mines, but remember, that's when WoF listed at a whopping $10. I believe that I even had a couple Juggernaut in there. And I beat some very competitive decks with all that jank. It was awesome.
I decided to post this story partly because the last couple of y'all made me nostalgic for the old days. Also, though, to say that:
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a) it's kinda annoying to me, having been playing as long as I have, that everyone plays Commander now. I miss the old 60 card constructed formats. I have a lot of fond memories playing 8-player games in what was basically Legacy format (though you can call it "casual" or "kitchen table" if you like). Not to mention how much Commander format has inflated prices of individual cards.
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b) I personally find infinite combos to be a nuisance, and wish that more people shied away from them in casual play. Honestly, it's more about variety and creativity than anything else. I'm tired of looking at the 31 flavors of Thassa's Oracle decks, for example. Like, someone will be like "Hey, check out my new (insert legendary creature here) deck." And I say "oh, I love that guy! What's the theme?" And they reply with something like "It's (insert creature type) tribal, with synergies built around (insert mechanic)... and it wins by going infinite with XYZ and casting Thassa's Oracle." And then, when I say "Oh, so it's a Thassa's Oracle deck," they get butthurt, because they think they're being creative in their construction of a deck that wins using exactly the same card as a million other people's decks. "But, but, MY Thassa's Oracle deck is different!"
I don't mean to be a downer or an old fogey, I just appreciate a bit more creativity than that. Always have. And since there's a finite number of ways to go infinite in any given color combination, and a finite number of wincons that flow from those infinite combos, decks that do so all look the same to me. Just a bunch of fetch, removal and draw surrounding a combo. 50% of the deck is setting up and executing the combo, and the other 50% is protection/denial/removal. So what percentage is leftover for theme?
Anyway, that's this old man's grumpy gripe about the state of the game these days. The old budget Goblin deck wouldn't stand a chance anymore. Although, I would put my White Weenie against any 60-card casual deck you'd want to try to throw at it ;)
But I don't want that rant about Commander or infinite combos to be the final takeaway from my post here. Fact is, I've ultimately enjoyed the journey. The ups and downs are as much a part of that journey as they are with anything else in life. Here I am, still playing a game that I learned before I had pubes. And still enjoying it. And I taught my kids to play it, and they love it too (though, maybe I should have gotten them into drugs instead, because it would probably be a cheaper hobby, hahaha). And I've been around the block long enough to know that nothing lasts forever, so I hope to keep on enjoying it until kids don't like it anymore and it ends up fading away.
Like I said in a previous comment, I was really excited about Neon Dynasty. I haven't seen anything from New Capenna yet that has me as excited, but time will tell. And The Brothers' War has me stoked. In other words, to hell with my complaints about the state of the game these days. Let's throw some damn cards! Turn 'em sideways! Play on!
March 17, 2022 10:17 p.m.
TypicalTimmy says... #30
I enjoy the comparison that Magic is a combination of chess and poker. It's similar to chess in that each piece serves a purpose and you need to foresee potential threats several turns in advance. For example, the best time to drop a Genesis Wave is after the black player has cast their Toxic Deluge, not before. If you know what your threats are, you can play around them.
However it is also like poker; You need to know when to call, bluff, fold and raise the stakes. Do you need that Avacyn, Angel of Hope to win the game? Probably not. But is the blue player who's been itching to counter something going to leap at the chance to keep Avacyn off the table? Likely, yes.
Question: Who here plays chess? I was in chess club for years from middle school into high school. Which is the strongest piece of the game?
If you said the Queen, you don't know how to play chess. The correct answer is the King. Without it, you lose.
People become so wrapped up in the whole I NEED TO WIN AT ALL COSTS SO I NEED TO DO XYZ SO TO DO XYZ I NEED ABCDEFG AND 1234567 but... Then you take away the chess, and the poker.
Now it's an unfeeling algorithm.
It'll eventually get to the point of raw statistics.
- "You've got Teferi Azorius control? Nice. I'm running Jeskai Burn. Since your Teferi won't last on the table, I've won. Gg."
That's not for me. I'm sorry, but I'm here to play a GAME, not be told I've already lost the moment you unpack your deck.
March 17, 2022 11:34 p.m. Edited.
So, kind of a weird one, but I actually had started playing a card game called Spellfire in the 90s with my brothers, and it was in some ways a gateway to Magic and in some ways the game I wish got bigger. It was made by the TSR people and the original sets had the always spectacular DnD art on the cards. Really, at the time when Magic was still early, I always thought the Spellfire cards looked much cooler. But the game at it's core was very different and had some pros and cons.
It was entirely a defensive game. I guess it would be kind of like if Magic started you at 0 life points, you gained 5 per turn, and you win at 20, but your opponent can attack you down. I mean, it was different, but that's kinda how it played. So, we always found one on one games to be okay, but when you got a bunch of people together and alliances were formed, threats were attacked, and it all snowballed until the whole group just couldn't stop one player, it was so fun. Like commander but even better.
But, later sets really lost their appeal and Magic took off, and it all worked out okay. Magic is really fun too, and a much better format for head to head games, for sure. I just wish there would have been room for both. Plus, and this is mere speculation here, but after Spellfire died out, there were some surprisingly similar Magic cards printed sometimes. Even EDH's large deck and singleton design, that's from Spellfire.
It's all fun though, and good memories. We grew up in the snowy places, so getting together and playing games was always the best part of winter, no matter what game it was.
Grubbernaut says... #2
The community as a whole is definitely worse. As with all things, as it becomes more popular, people who want to make it into something else join in and eventually outnumber those who created the hobby. In 2008, I could expect to probably get along with 9 in 10 players. Not so much, anymore.
As for the game, mechanically, it's fine. Some blunders, some really cool ideas, I'm not broken up about it nor super enthralled.
I'll never go back to casual after starting cEDH, and likely won't bother with other constructed formats.
As for my favorite set? Definitely New Phyrexia.
March 14, 2022 12:21 a.m.