So, Magic the Gathering

Mistborn · Post by **Mistborn** » Tue Jan 22, 2013 10:29 pm

So what does the Den think about MTG. I've always been a fan of MTG especially the new Modern format. (I actually started playing with Mirroden
Block)

One thing I've thought about is how the game has evolved over time. It's not like they've straight power creeped it. It's more of a power shuffle. Some elements especially creatures have grown in power while others like mana acceleration or card drawing have been dialed back. Could this model possibly word for TTRPGs hand out power creep but for the splats/arcatypes that are weak while making sure not to buff the splats that are alredy the best. (Of course in TTRPGs stuff never rotates out so the stuff in you first book that turned out to be too good never goes away.)

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Tue Jan 22, 2013 10:33 pm

In general I approve. It's been a while since I really played due to, alternately, lack of time or money (or both at times), but good game.

However... Mirrodin was fucking terrible. Affinity for Artifacts, in a block shit full of artifacts, commonly on Artifacts, was so fucking broken that it dramatically shrunk the metagame. There were basically two kinds of decks were fielded in Mirrodin: 1) Affinity, and 2) Decks made by people who couldn't afford to build Affinity decks.

Whatever · Post by **Whatever** » Tue Jan 22, 2013 10:39 pm

Magic is an incredibly well designed game, because it's actually more of a game framework that they iteratively redesign over time. There's a lot of great design principles that it uses, most of which are completely inapplicable to RPGs.

The big lesson, of course, is that if your game has more players than everyone else, and you can keep those players, then you win. Because when people have to move, if their choice is "teach new people the game I like, or quit" many choose "quit". But when the choice is "keep playing the same game, with new people, or quit" most will keep on trucking. Nothing succeeds like success, and that is super hardcore true for games.

Mistborn · Post by **Mistborn** » Tue Jan 22, 2013 10:40 pm

Prak_Anima wrote:However... Mirrodin was fucking terrible. Affinity for Artifacts, in a block shit full of artifacts, commonly on Artifacts, was so fucking broken that it dramatically shrunk the metagame. There were basically two kinds of decks were fielded in Mirrodin: 1) Affinity, and 2) Decks made by people who couldn't afford to build Affinity decks.

Affinity was opressive as hell on the Metagame but I don't remember it being all that expensive to build. I don't think I payed more that $80 for my entire deck unlike now where you just arn't competing in standard without sleeving up $20-30 Mythics.

Shatner · Post by **Shatner** » Tue Jan 22, 2013 11:02 pm

There's a part of me that can't shake an inordinate fondness for MtG. It's probably nostalgia, but regardless of the reason, I've never been able to bring myself to sell off or donate my box full of cards, even though I haven't played with or even looked at them in years.

I stopped paying serious attention to MtG around the time of Kamigawa, which also coincides with when I started shaking my stick at the new sets of cards like an old man demanding attachable items, double-strike, etc. get the heck out of my game lawn. I haven't bothered much with deck-building or CCGs since, although Netrunner seems like a strong contender to reverse that trend; that game is pretty damn awesome and I quite prefer the "pay $15 for maximum copies of every card in the newest expansion" method that they use to MtG's "just keep playing the booster pack slot machine until you get what you need, mwahahahaha!".

Mechanically, I think MtG is really neat and it has the side benefit of generating a lot of really interesting fantasy settings, even if some of the mechanics introduced in those settings have been a bit much. Plus, it's one of those cultural touchstones; if a person in a nerdy conversation doesn't know MtG terminology, it can really slow things down as everyone else tries to unpack all the jargon they were using to describe the latest Fantasy Flight Games box they're drooling over.

name_here · Post by **name_here** » Tue Jan 22, 2013 11:14 pm

I like it, but it just took too much effort to keep up with. It's not even the cost that did it, it was the release frequency. I guess it wouldn't have been so bad if I played it more often, but I was never all that much for socializing, so I generally only played it at summer camp or whatever. So my decks would literally go obsolete before my tenth game with them.

Mistborn · Post by **Mistborn** » Tue Jan 22, 2013 11:20 pm

name_here wrote:I like it, but it just took too much effort to keep up with. It's not even the cost that did it, it was the release frequency. I guess it wouldn't have been so bad if I played it more often, but I was never all that much for socializing, so I generally only played it at summer camp or whatever. So my decks would literally go obsolete before my tenth game with them.

What I do now is play Modern games with magic online it's an eternal format so it never rotates and their are always players online. I actually recomend playing Affinity since it think that's the least expensive deck to build these days now that fetchlands have skyrocketed in price.

koz · Post by **koz** » Wed Jan 23, 2013 1:03 am

I liked MtG. Then along came MaRo with his pants-on-head retarded 'creatures have to be at the centre of every deck' philosophy. Then they shipped a bunch of former 4rry edition designers over to MtG as a last-chancer division. Then they made Innistrad, which was the last straw. Now, I basically take a glance at it occasionally - and I always get reminded of how much less interesting everything's become.

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Wed Jan 23, 2013 1:05 am

Lord Mistborn wrote:
Prak_Anima wrote:However... Mirrodin was fucking terrible. Affinity for Artifacts, in a block shit full of artifacts, commonly on Artifacts, was so fucking broken that it dramatically shrunk the metagame. There were basically two kinds of decks were fielded in Mirrodin: 1) Affinity, and 2) Decks made by people who couldn't afford to build Affinity decks.
Affinity was opressive as hell on the Metagame but I don't remember it being all that expensive to build. I don't think I payed more that $80 for my entire deck unlike now where you just arn't competing in standard without sleeving up $20-30 Mythics.

I'm sorry, I can think of better uses for $80 than a magic deck list I got off the internet. And I don't even know any whores. ...well, not any that are likely to do anything for $80.

Leress · Post by **Leress** » Wed Jan 23, 2013 1:13 am

I like the game, but I haven't played since after the Invasion block.

JigokuBosatsu · Post by **JigokuBosatsu** » Wed Jan 23, 2013 1:49 am

As I may have mentioned here before, I was apparently the 5th person in Portland to buy a deck, and played for a very short while in high school before trading my whole set of cards for a bowl of fried rice. I've always had a soft spot for the art and mythology of MtG in the years since.

fectin · Post by **fectin** » Wed Jan 23, 2013 3:44 am

I've liked Magic for years. I think the first thing I bought was a revised deck, for which I literally opened a piggy bank and scrounged pennies, so there's that.

I got a job because of L5R though (very indirectly, but also literally), and that's also what I have the giant tub full of, so it's hard to be too impressed with Magic. Also, L5R had an amazing metagame and a much better community.

OgreBattle · Post by **OgreBattle** » Wed Jan 23, 2013 3:59 am

It's the most REFINED Table Top Game on the planet

The amount of combined man hours put in is unparalleled.
The designers also write nice articles about their reasoning behind decisions.

And they are successful so it shows that their theory produces results.

koz · Post by **koz** » Wed Jan 23, 2013 4:47 am

OgreBattle wrote:It's the most REFINED Table Top Game on the planet

The amount of combined man hours put in is unparalleled.
The designers also write nice articles about their reasoning behind decisions.

And they are successful so it shows that their theory produces results.

Except half the time, their reasoning (especially nowadays) is horseshit, and the reason MtG is so popular is because its current crowd are basically the equivalent of 4rries. Given who they have working on the stuff, I'm hardly surprised, however.

In terms of 'refinement', they still let crap like Caw-Blade stand for far longer than it should have, and released a block recently that's so shitty, Kamigawa has competition. Which is saying something, as the only set worse than 'gawa was Homelands, and it was so legendarily shitty, it got moved out of its own block.

...You Lost Me · Post by **...You Lost Me** » Wed Jan 23, 2013 4:56 am

Yeah, Magic plays really well because there's a lot of stuff and cool pictures. Actual tournament play is bad... I think I stopped paying attention when I went to a tourney and 80% of the decks were B/U human. Reminds me of yugioh from ye olden days, except prettier and it has EDH.

Mistborn · Post by **Mistborn** » Wed Jan 23, 2013 11:47 am

...You Lost Me wrote:I think I stopped paying attention when I went to a tourney and 80% of the decks were B/U human.

Well there is basically no point at which standard has not been dominated by some anoying deck the card pool is so small that one deck or archatype often has disproportionately better cards.

Ancient History · Post by **Ancient History** » Wed Jan 23, 2013 12:03 pm

I was in it at revised in middle school (4th Ed.), and left when there was nobody left to fucking play (somewhere around the end of the Urza block but before Mirrodin? Gets a little hazy), then back in it for a brief stint with Kamigawa and Cold Snap when there were people to play at university, then out again.

I really enjoyed Magic. I had my little obsession with the Brothers War before MtG shat on it, and I liked Ice Age and Mirage because they offered something different, and I was never a truly competitive player on any possible fucking level, but that was fine. I could lose in good style. But I don't miss it.

(I also really liked the first couple Magic anthologies, back when the game universe was less set and they let anybody play around in their backyard. Still have 'em.)

But I prefer Netrunner. And L5R is shit ever since they stopped printing Hare Clan.

hogarth · Post by **hogarth** » Wed Jan 23, 2013 4:26 pm

Tinkering around with the cards is fun. Actually playing a bunch of games is less interesting to me.

Orion · Post by **Orion** » Wed Jan 23, 2013 6:32 pm

Prak_Anima wrote: I'm sorry, I can think of better uses for $80 than a magic deck list I got off the internet. And I don't even know any whores. ...well, not any that are likely to do anything for $80.

$80 is plenty if you shop around for a bargain.

JigokuBosatsu · Post by **JigokuBosatsu** » Wed Jan 23, 2013 6:48 pm

I wish the tools for dicking around with virtual decks were a little better.

koz · Post by **koz** » Wed Jan 23, 2013 6:56 pm

Lord Mistborn wrote:
...You Lost Me wrote:I think I stopped paying attention when I went to a tourney and 80% of the decks were B/U human.
Well there is basically no point at which standard has not been dominated by some anoying deck the card pool is so small that one deck or archatype often has disproportionately better cards.

Rav/Spiral.

K · Post by K » Wed Jan 23, 2013 6:59 pm

CCGs tend to be an excellent way to meet people and a terrible way to spend time.

That being said, Magic has the largest reserve of misspent and poorly-used fantasy art in the publishing business.

koz · Post by **koz** » Wed Jan 23, 2013 7:05 pm

K wrote:CCGs tend to be an excellent way to meet people and a terrible way to spend time.

That being said, Magic has the largest reserve of misspent and poorly-used fantasy art in the publishing business.

You must have a hella-better crowd over where you are! Most of the people who play CCGs of any stripe (MtG or otherwise) around here tend to be exactly the sort of people I avoid. This is not to say I've met nobody this way - one or two of my friends are people I met through MtG - but they constitute a very small minority.

JigokuBosatsu · Post by **JigokuBosatsu** » Wed Jan 23, 2013 7:06 pm

One first date I had with a girl back in the day was to grab her from her MtG tournament and go make out in the park.

Mistborn · Post by **Mistborn** » Wed Jan 23, 2013 7:09 pm

Mister_Sinister wrote:
Lord_Mistborn wrote:Well there is basically no point at which standard has not been dominated by some anoying deck the card pool is so small that one deck or archatype often has disproportionately better cards.
Rav/Spiral.

Ravinica block was cool but I ended up not being able to play with all those really cool decks due to $20 shocklands (fourtunaly Heartbeat combo a deck that played 0 shocklands existed). Ravinca block was still probly the golden era of standard and it looks like they're trying to make the magic happen again.

You seem to have somthing agains Innistrad block. They do sort of have to scale the power back every few blocks and unlike Kamigawa Innistrad isn't totally nerfed you can tell since it actually contributes a lot of things to the Eternal fromats.