Magic: The Gathering (Spoiler-free)

@CDRW: I mean, how long have you been out? Having a pick up game with old cards has not been viable since Type 1/Type 2/Extended were phased out. If you want to get back in, do what I suggested above, and start drafting. A few drafts/sealed events will get you on your way towards Block and Standard, and from there you can start building towards Modern. With the price explosion for older cards, Legacy is almost exclusively for the rich and people with huge collections dating back to Urza block they never liquidated. Vintage without 10+ proxies remains the realm of of fantasy for most players; I would not worry about those two, since most LGS are unlikely to have enough of those players to host those format events.

In the last few years, the 'casual' side has mostly been represented by a targeted push with Commander, plus a smaller wedge of Planechase, Conspiracy, and Archenemy. Those formats are mostly geared towards players who already have significant collections, and looking to squeeze more play out of the MTG library of cards that would never make the competitive cut in regular format 60/4 builds.

Edited by ViperMagnum357 on Oct 26th 2018 at 12:44:30 PM

I've been out for quite a while. Most of my cards go from Urza to seventh edition, with some random stuff from earlier and later blocks. I stopped completely sometime during Mirrodin. So yeah, I have no idea what three quarters of what you said even means.

I didn't want to start flushing away money on new cards until I knew if my renewed interest is just a passing fancy though. I've already got plenty, and I just want to have some fun here and there.

Well first off, do not trade or sell anything until you price it online-seriously, the Legacy format completely destroyed the secondary market. Seriously-garbage quality Revised duals routinely go for 90-200$ each, and you can buy a used car with insurance for the price of building a competitive Legacy format deck. Start by going here [1] to read up on the currently supported formats, and here [2] for the banned/restricted lists.

I suggested Sealed and Draft because Limited formats level the playing field, once you familiarize yourself with the new sets. Quickest way to do that is to head over here to Gatherer [3] and look up the cards in a set your LGS is running events with. Limited allows you to build your collection in return for your entry fee, and play against people who have no reason to go soft on you-so no false impressions of the competitive scene.

You can also go on here [4] for the latest comprehensive rules: leaving the game circa Mirrodin, there are a few big changes; first off, damage resolves as soon as it is assigned, and no longer goes onto the stack. The Legendary rules are different-no special deck construction rules anymore, each player can have one of any Legendary permanent, and if you play another copy one gets blown up. A new card type in the form of Planeswalkers, which you can read about here [5]. Most the rest is just new mechanics/keywords, and new formats.

Edited by ViperMagnum357 on Oct 26th 2018 at 1:32:32 PM

Thank you!

I doubt there's any real money in my collection since I never ended up getting any of the really rare and gamebreaking cards, and my oldest cards are pretty heavily worn. But I'll still make sure to check if I do decide to trade or sell. A casual look through some card lists do show that I have a few cards in the $20 to $50 range though.

Thank you for all those resources too. I had a feeling that I would get hit with a lot of new mechanics and rule changes. They seemed to be introducing them left and right when I got out. I hope none of them are as confusing as Banding was. Never did wrap my head around it.

I'm not sure how I feel about there being planeswalker cards though. The player is supposed to be a planeswalker.

The idea of the Planeswalker cards is that they're coming to help you, rather than being summoned like creatures, right? Their resource is "loyalty," so when the card is destroyed, they've left you to your own devices. I think the idea was to make them feel like mini-players, but I'm not sure how it worked out.

You might consider a Sealed tournament, if you don't mind spending a little. In such a tournament, they give you six packs from a set to build your deck from, along with a supply of basic lands.

Edited by Durazno on Oct 27th 2018 at 2:06:11 PM

I will say that Jace, the Mind Sculptor definitely felt like an entire blue deck in a box, and I think I only actually played against it, like, once.

Planeswalker cards were introduced after 'The Mending', which in the fluff occurred during the Time Spiral block. Read about it here [1] and here [2]. Mechanically, the cards represent the player calling upon the aid of another Planeswalker for limited assistance in a fight: this is represented by 'Loyalty', indicating how far out their are willing to stick their neck for you. Most Planeswalker cards have abilities that increase loyalty or do not change it, indicating trivial support while they stock up goodwill for a time when they may call upon you; and abilities that reduce their loyalty, representing costly support that significantly impacts their resources and leaves them vulnerable to attack, lowering their loyalty to you. Each planeswalker can be attacked/targeted as if a separate player with their loyalty acting as a life total. When depleted or removed from the field, the allied Planeswalker buggers off and leaves you to your devices, until the next time you call them through that spell.

Basically Dominaria, the plane that forms the Nexus of the Multiverse, was being torn apart through various temporal rifts, and a number of Planeswalkers lost their sparks in an effort to seal them and prevent the Multiverse from unraveling. The end result saved the universe but drastically altered the spark: planeswalkers are now much less powerful, are no longer natural shapeshifters or naturally immortal. While still more powerful than most beings on most planes, planeswalkers are generally more careful, and more relatable to the people they interact with: on account of most of them no longer viewing the universe as an ant farm they can kick over whenever they feel like it. This also created some expected conflicts, with some planeswalkers of shorter lived (or even longer lived) species seeking to regain their power and immortality, to varying degrees of success.

As for comparing new mechanics to Banding: while some of the new mechanics are confusing in their own right, and there are a lot of them; none have descended to the memetic awfulness of Banding, with even the developers going out of their way to kick that mechanic while it is down during write ups.

Edited by ViperMagnum357 on Oct 27th 2018 at 2:21:43 PM

Also, unlike back in the days of Banding, when Magic design was very much a matter of creating some cards that read in a reasonably coherent fashion and printing them, the designers these days have a keen awareness of how complexity works and how to apply it carefully. This isn't to say that they never create something really complex (*cough*energy*cough), but it's not as common as it used to be.

@CDRW

I would recommend going to a pre-release if you want to dip your toe into non-casual Magic. It's the least competitive tournament, card will be new to all the players and it's sealed format so it'll be a relatively level playing field.

Hello. I was passing by this place, I've been lapsed for a couple of years. Namely I don't get as much free time as of late and I work during the days most games happen. However I want to give the game another pass. I saw an M19 box for a reasonable price the other day, but I heard some time ago that cards in some sets suffered from curling and warping, and that worries me. Does anybody know if this still happens and if yes what sets are the most affected?

@ whoever programmed the RNG for Magic Arena: Turn on your location, I just want to talk.

(I just drew three lands off a jumpstarted Risk Factor, and the next turn, in a situation where even a basic Opt would have allowed Adeliz the Cinder Wind to fly over my opponent's blockers and win me the game with three damage before a Carnage Tyrant could take off my last two health, I got an island, for four lands in a row. I am a trifle salty.)

Edited by CountDorku on Nov 12th 2018 at 6:19:41 AM

Interesting article up today: after much prodding by the fandom, [1] Maro has finally updated the 'Rabiah' scale for discussing the overall impact/reception of different planes, as a means of projecting which ones the storyline will return to in the future. Of note, the developers have not permanently closed the door on Kamigawa, though the likelihood of a return visit remains very low. Also did not know that Lorwyn and Shadowmoor were so poorly received overall: thought maybe that was just me.

Edited by ViperMagnum357 on Nov 12th 2018 at 12:10:00 PM

Sooo.... I have a couple of inquiries. I might harass a couple of guys from the college I moved to to play Commander, one of them has already started Standard.

1. What are the palytest results of the Guild kits in general? Which ones are better?

2. How good are they for Commander au naturel?

3. I'm entertaining the thought of getting Adaptive Enchantment at some point in the future. Which kit might be a purchase in that context? Selesnya?

I think Arena needs a new gamestyle, or a box you can tick or something, called "I'm Playing For Fun", which instantly rules out any potential opponent who's running a deck containing Teferi, Curious Obsession or Experimental Fervor.

Short of actually excluding a bespoke list of cards for it (which effectively bans them), the only way I can see for you not to come across them is if they had a Constructed game mode that didn't count for quests and wins.

It looks like whoever's running the Magic Tumblr page has heard of this site.

I bought a large number of cards, mostly to update myself and hopefully work on my Naya Stompy Dinos (this idea never stops being entertaining), but I think a greater force was telling me after I bought a lot of Guilds of Ravnica "just give Izzet Drake Burn a try!"

Because I pulled two Crackling Drakes, Niv Mizzet Parun, Expansion / Explosion, Goblin Electromancer and Ral Izzet Viceroy.

Being I'm not a tourney / standard person (I play with my friends), this lets me use charming cards like Shreds of Sanity, Charmbreaker Devils, Bedlam Revelers, Docent of Perfection and Flames of the Bloodhand, which is in very nice foil condition.

So, does anybody think that Innistrad, being chock full of Gothic tropes, actually manages to capture the spirit of Gothic stories with it's writing?

January 21, 2019 Banned and Restricted Announcement

Effective January 25, 2019;

• Modern
  • Krark-Clan Ironworks is banned.

See article for details.

Why do people hate that thing so much?

I don't play Modern, but from what I gather it's the kind of deck that's both very powerful and not particularly interesting to play against.

Edit: Also, it relies heavily on chains of niche rules interactions related to the timing of mana abilities.

Edited by CountDorku on Jan 23rd 2019 at 5:06:04 AM

So more or less "by sacrificing this at the exact moment before this goes to the graveyard after being sacrificed by invoking the power of rule 1ab2.4d..."

In case anyone is curious about how the deck worked, here's a video from last year about it. It even goes over the weird mana ability timing.

I've now made a card-for-card duplicate of my main Standard deck in Arena. Losses are usually due to me getting overwhelmed by multiple buffed-up creatures, but I'm finding that I in the matches I win in Arena, it's by my opponent conceding long before I'm able to deal an actual killing blow, which opponents in my in-person playgroup rarely do. I don't really have a large sample size for my in-person playgroup, though, since most of our games are Commander.

I'm also in the process of re-creating a more aggressive deck, my new Rakdos Standard deck, in Arena, but the paper version of that one is far from complete, let alone the Arena version. Still, it'll give me a custom-made deck for doing quests my main one can't do.

I've also been liking how Planeswalker cards have dialogue in Arena when they enter the battlefield or use their loyalty abilities. Dovin's enter-the-battlefield lines are charmingly hammy for a vedalken.

Minor errata: Ajani's Pridemate is no longer a "you may" card in its Oracle text; it always activates.

According to Maro, while they prefer not to do functional errata, Pridemate is just such a pain in the neck to run in Arena that they had to. If you gain 10 life from multiple sources, such as by attacking with several creatures with lifelink, you have to click the "yes" button ten times, and that's really time-consuming.

And naturally Maro is having to deal with the usual nonsense of people who misunderstood "we prefer not to" as "we will never", people afraid that Arena is going to take over all of Magic because it led to a minor wording tweak to a single uncommon, etc.