Anyone here play Magic: The Gathering?

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BryanM
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Re: Anyone here play Magic: The Gathering?

Post by BryanM »

Davey wrote:Like any price bubble, knowing exactly when to get out is tricky. I would have thought it was wise to dump Goyfs and Bobs prior to Modern Masters
I thought that would have been the worst time to dump them.

A MM booster was going for $7. Tarmo occupied 1 out of 121 rare slots. Ergo, each one generated by Modern Masters cost $847 - hardly going to put a dent in its price. Which is the card that the bulk of the money put into boosters will go into. It's like healthcare. You need the goyf. You need it more than oxygen or food to feed your children. The only way to lower its price is depleted demand or by literally putting it in a mythic slot in some product on an annual basis. It's very much a weathervane of player numbers: if it ever gets sub-$100, either something strictly better got printed or the size of the playerbase is sunsetting.

It's really hard to explain to normal people that there's $800 pieces of cardboard out there, and you're expected in theory to rub them together in an abrasive shuffling-like manner, and that this is all very crazy and we all should be very afraid. We can all admit this is crazy right? Like somewhere in the neighborhood of that guy in Japan who wanted to saw off a singer's hand so he could shake it every day???
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Davey
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Re: Anyone here play Magic: The Gathering?

Post by Davey »

BryanM wrote:I thought that would have been the worst time to dump them.
My thought process at the time was that their price was pretty stable before that, so putting more in circulation, even a small amount, would either reduce the price or have no impact. I didn't foresee the increase in demand.
BryanM wrote:We can all admit this is crazy right?
Batshit insane, no doubt.
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KindGrind
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Re: Anyone here play Magic: The Gathering?

Post by KindGrind »

I play the game every week with friends, mostly Vintage and Legacy. We used to play Commander for a year or so, but our decks became over-optimized and it kind of stopped being fun. If I want to play with all the broken cards, why don't I straight up play Vintage? When I realized that the cards I had acquired for Commander, a "casual" format, had jumped in price like crazy, I started trading them back to my local game shop and picking up power 9 pieces, because why not? It took me a month to assemble pretty much all the cards for every Vintage deck in the gauntlet minus the Lotus, and it came with surprisingly little sacrifice to my Legacy card pool. Pretty much all Modern/Commander cards. It helped that I had always liked old cards, and owned pretty much a few complete sets of Legends. The prices on Chains of Mephistopheles, Tabernacle, The Abyss, Moat, Eureka, and even extremely narrow cards like Invoke Prejudice are downright outrageous these days. I couldn't justify holding on to these things, considering the use I was making of them and the price I had paid. This happened in May 2014.

When the Zen fetchlands hit 80-100$, and dealers were giving 50-60$ per, I unloaded a few. A set of Tarns for a Library of Alexandria? I'll fetch that Volcanic with a Delta, thanks. A set of Arid Mesas for a Time Vault? Don't mind if I do. I had the feeling that these trades (to stores, even!) were possible for a very short time frame, and seized the day. The people I play with didn't get it. In the meantime, I could continue to play weekly with the same decks, and it didn't change anything.

I'm not sure about Legacy anymore. It's my favourite format, but the barrier of entry is terrible. There used to be big Legacy tournaments here (30+ players, twice a month), but many players sold their collections when the blue duals hit 200$. Now it's Modern all the way. The reserve list is responble for mainting the prices artifically high and to avoid instant fire sales. I think there's no rush to sell your Legacy staples, especially as long as SCG keeps organizing a tournament almost every week. I did sell 3 duals within the last few months because I could get a good price for them and needed the $ for something else, and I think I'll be able to make do with the other 37. (I have trouble not feeling ashamed when saying something like that...)

The store I go to didn't want to buy my Stomping Grounds recently, so I gave them to a random player who was looking for some but couldn't afford them. I would have had 20$ for the lot at the store, but helping out that guy play the game he loves made my week. It's all in the little things.
Muchos años después, frente al pelotón de fusilamiento...
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Davey
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Re: Anyone here play Magic: The Gathering?

Post by Davey »

Yeah, I never really liked EDH. It's meant to be played in a group, and I hate multiplayer Magic. The games take forever and I hate the politics. If I want to play something casual I'd rather just play a board game. Duel Commander has a small following at the shop I play at, and while that appeals to me a lot more than regular EDH, I don't feel like building a deck with expensive cards for such a fringe format.

I wish I could play Vintage. There used to be a shop in the area that ran proxy tournaments, but it closed a few years ago, before I started playing again. I only know of one guy in the area that even has a real deck. Sometimes I'll play some proxy games with friends between rounds of tournaments, but that's all we have around here.

The main thing holding me back from selling my Legacy stuff is the fact that I don't need the money. Even so, money in the bank seems better than cards I rarely use, but if I ever changed my mind I'd surely lose a lot of money in the process. If SCG had Modern and Legacy on different days I'd be much more inclined to hang onto my Legacy stuff, although I understand that they both have to be on Sunday for logistical reasons.
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Re: Anyone here play Magic: The Gathering?

Post by MR_Soren »

Underground Sea is $300 now? Wow. I still have my set of 40 dual lands. I picked them up back when they were $5-$10 each. Always on the fence about selling them. Seems like I can trade them in for a car if I wait a bit longer.
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BryanM
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Re: Anyone here play Magic: The Gathering?

Post by BryanM »

If they're Alpha or Beta editions, you can pick up that new car today.
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Re: Anyone here play Magic: The Gathering?

Post by BryanM »

Still excited for the forthcoming two block paradigm. To be honest, I don't think even one expansion really even works out that well. Such as how the Goldfish Killer evaluates Lorwyn+Morningtide draft as "about 2/3rds as good as Lorwyn".

Really just posting to mention idle speculation on how, just like Khans of Tarkir has no dragons, Dragons of Tarkir will have no humans in it. It'll be dragons 24/7 baby. A dragon every card! Dragons! ... Just lean back and enjoy the dragons.

It's too bad they'll never repeat that feature after how poorly it went over with Lorwyn : (
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guigui
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Re: Anyone here play Magic: The Gathering?

Post by guigui »

BryanM wrote: Really just posting to mention idle speculation on how, just like Khans of Tarkir has no dragons, Dragons of Tarkir will have no humans in it. It'll be dragons 24/7 baby. A dragon every card! Dragons! ... Just lean back and enjoy the dragons.
This reminds me of that Legion preview back in the days. We were very excited about that new morph system : hide a creature face-down and return it for a special effect ? yay !

That was until the organizer announced that he had no Onslaugh packs to play, so we had to play full Legion for the whole day...
Please remember that Legion expansion ONLY contains creatures with morph, no spell, no enchantements, no nada. So that was just lean back for the first three turns and then enjoy the morph surprises, not so yay :?
Bravo jolie Ln, tu as trouvé : l'armée de l'air c'est là où on peut te tenir par la main.
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Davey
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Re: Anyone here play Magic: The Gathering?

Post by Davey »

For those of you that don't keep up with this sort of thing, there is an open source Magic program called Xmage that lets you play online for free. It's similar to Cockatrice and programs of that sort, except it has rules enforcement built into the game, which is really nice (and kind of impressive for a free program when you think about it).

As one would expect, it has its fair share of bugs. Here's what I've encountered so far:
- In Legacy, whenever I fetch I always just fail to find. The window showing my library never shows up. Oddly I've never had this problem in Modern or cube... very strange. So basically I don't play Legacy, which sucks.
- Creatures that have triggers when they leave the battlefield (Tidehollow Sculler, Angel of Serenity, etc.) don't trigger when they leave. In cube, sometimes I hate draft those cards so nobody else gets me with them, haha.
- Occasional connection problems, but pretty rare in my experience.

So if you're willing to put up with something really rough around the edges to avoid paying WotC billions of dollars for the privilege of playing with their awful software, it's definitely worth a download at least.
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KindGrind
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Re: Anyone here play Magic: The Gathering?

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MR_Soren wrote:Underground Sea is $300 now? Wow. I still have my set of 40 dual lands. I picked them up back when they were $5-$10 each. Always on the fence about selling them. Seems like I can trade them in for a car if I wait a bit longer.
I unloaded 10 duals total and kept 30. I buylisted them to a store in Montreal, and got an obscene amount for them. No local shops would give me close to what the big shop offered, so I sent them away. Ever since acquiring Power, I've kind of lost interest a bit, and reverted back to retro gaming. We still play once a week, but it's more like half gaming half MTG, since one of my fellow MTGers also decided to go back to gaming a bit.

Thanks for the software - I'll look into it.

The new sets don't do too much for them to be honest. I picked up a set of Monastery Mentors for a Vintage deck (which I played a few days ago), and it was a blast. Playing with such raw power I felt like being a little boy again. Good times!
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MR_Soren
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Re: Anyone here play Magic: The Gathering?

Post by MR_Soren »

Davey, thanks for posting the Xmage link. I'll give it a try when I have some time. It sounds promising.

I'm backing away from constructed Magic lately. Can't keep throwing a couple hundred at cards every three months. Traded in some old junk to Channel Fireball and got over $500. I guess I'll really rake in the money if I ever sell some good cards.

I think Dragons of Tarkir looks like a fun set to play with with a lot of interesting possible card interactions, but the brutal efficiency of the decks and cards in Standard means there's no time or place for interesting interactions. I think I'll have more fun and get more bang for my buck by sticking to limited.
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BryanM
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Re: Anyone here play Magic: The Gathering?

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Davey wrote:For those of you that don't keep up with this sort of thing, there is an open source Magic program called Xmage that lets you play online for free.
It used to just be called MAGE but I told them five years ago that it was impossible to google their software and needed to change its name to something more distinct.

But srs, give HEX a try sometime down the line guys. It's MTG on battery acid: Champion powers, socketing cards with gems, infinity-sided cards (currently the transformation cards in the game only have three stages, but its completely arbitrary), a sense of humor and whimsy MTG long since dumped over the side of the boat, threshold (you only have to meet a certain threshold of a color to turn on or play an effect, you don't have to dick around with turning lands sideways. If you have 1 green threshold, you can play as many elves as you want)..... and more than that, a planned over-ambitious future.

With stuff like leveling up champions in a PvE mode, unlocking full art and foil versions of a card by using it... basically MTG: The cardgame mmo. Already there's PvE equipment that you put on your champion that modifies what cards do. Such as the Owlmaster's Gloves that makes your wizard librarian dude come into play with double the owls.

... though it's still a bit sparse, and the free to play mode is grindy as hell since it hasn't been implemented yet, just a place holder arena mode. No common rarity PvE cards = hella grind. Betas gonna beta.
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Davey
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Re: Anyone here play Magic: The Gathering?

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MR_Soren wrote:I'm backing away from constructed Magic lately. Can't keep throwing a couple hundred at cards every three months.
Nowadays we have two local shops that run weekly Modern tournaments, so I generally get to play that once or twice a week, which is really nice. More chances to fulfill my need to play tier 3 netdecks (current flavor of the month: a slightly modified version of Gerard Fabiano's Sultai deck)! I was already pretty heavily invested in Modern and have been able to trade for some new cards I needed or buy them with store credit, so financially it's been really easy on the wallet. I can't see myself ever getting back into Standard though, unless there was a deck I really liked that mostly used Modern/Legacy playable cards I would want to pick up anyway. That makes trading harder though since I pick up Standard staples from drafts and have to find people that have stuff I actually want and are willing to trade Modern/Legacy stuff for it. Luckily a lot of the good cards in Khans are playable across formats, making that a little easier.
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Iron Peach
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Re: Anyone here play Magic: The Gathering?

Post by Iron Peach »

Alright I'm back on the Magic crack. It's been six years since I sold everything, and now the relapse! Been buying cards all month; it's surprising how many great cards have been made since then and got for cheap too. Definitely going vintage and/or legacy rainbow highlander for one deck which is my favorite format. If anyone in Phoenix wants to play, I'll be at some local stores for FNM.
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BryanM
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Re: Anyone here play Magic: The Gathering?

Post by BryanM »

The digital side of Wizards always astonishes me with its incredible commitment to poopiness.

Hearthstone exists and made money, so the guys in suits demanded that they should have a free to play version of Magic Online, with seizure inducing animations and snappy dialogue. They present to us: MTG Arena.

Does that mean its replacing Magic Online? No. They're gonna have two versions of the same game just cannibalizing each other and splitting their player base. But fortunately they're killing Magic Duels, so all their customers and development infrastructure that was invested into that game is being flushed down the toilet because of responsible, intelligent business decisions.

Why don't they get it? What's so hard? Have one freaking client for Magic the Gathering, and make it not poop. If you want a simple, snappy flashy game, don't try to hammer Magic into something it isn't: Make a new game.

This is what happens when business majors with no understanding of their product call the shots. Nerds should seize the means of digital card game production.

... like they did with HEX: Shards of Fate.
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Davey
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Re: Anyone here play Magic: The Gathering?

Post by Davey »

At this point I'd be way more surprised if WotC ever did anything smart in the digital realm. Duels of the Planeswalkers was a good idea to hook people in, but that's about it.

Not Magic exactly, but if you want a digital fix for free, Eternal is pretty good. It's like they took Hearthstone and made it more Magic-y. Admittedly I haven't played it in months, but it held my interest for a while.

Oh, and my tier 3 buffoonery earned me a shout-out a while back: https://www.mtggoldfish.com/articles/in ... ade-legacy

Andrea Mengucci also did a video on it on Channel Fireball like a week later, but I wasn't mentioned by name.
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BryanM
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Re: Anyone here play Magic: The Gathering?

Post by BryanM »

So MTG is nothing but crossovers from here on out. Some of the impotent nerd rage is great:

"Why good sir! I think I shall stop buying product, and play with proxies only from now on!"

Hilarious. Even if they keep to their promise (they won't), they're still rewarding Hasbro by supporting their game's near-monopoly. They're going to print My Little Pony sets, they're going to make a shitload of money, what's Timmy going to do? Learn how to play a new game? Convince all his friends to switch? After everything they've invested into this? Of course not, Hasbro has Timmy by the balls and they know it.

Reminds me of the Left Four Dead 2 boycotters who bought the game day one. And then I got it for free a year later when they were just giving it away.

I only played it for like 2 hours.
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Re: Anyone here play Magic: The Gathering?

Post by chempop »

I used to play Black/Blue with 4 Juzams, mana drains, and control magic back before Ice Age launched.
Then traded the Djinns to complete my power 9 and often rocked a Weissman control deck and modified Kim bloodmoon deck in tourneys. Did quite well, won a handful of games against a few pro tour champs here and there. Got to a semi finals in a PTQ once. My bread and butter in type 2 was Vice Age (howling mines, stormbind, lumberjacks, green efreet djinns -- and of course the dreaded mono black necropotence deck.

Most of my high dollar cards are long gone, but I still bust out my cards every year or so when a certain friend comes and visits me. There are a short moment I thought I could get back into it, but so many cards were OP and legacy was filled with these 1/1 weenies with broken abilities or combo decks that were winning games on turn 3.

...really good times, back when Pizza was $1 a slice and the comic store had StreetFighter Alpha 2, Samurai Shodown, and my Mom would have an absolute meltdown when I got home after 9pm and forgot to call :lol:
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BryanM
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Re: Anyone here play Magic: The Gathering?

Post by BryanM »

The power level differential and vertical difficulty curve is something I don't like about competitive PvP constructible deck games, either. I had a little fun with the Pokemon TCG Online preconstructed format (tho those decks really ain't balanced), but had no interest moving into the "real" game since I knew there'd be people thousands of times more into it than me, and I'd have to spend so much time to min/max just to be competitive. Games in Duelyst eventually reduced themselves into the same few games over and over once the playerbase got the staple cards. (Like they say about MMO's: games are more fun when everyone's a newb.)

There are ways to get around this. MTG had Jumpstart which was a format where you'd pick two preconstructed decks and use them together, it was super fast, fair, and fun. Using modules like this is probably the best way to play a card game for most people. And once again, Penny Dreadful is the absolute best format for those who like to make their own decks.

Of course, that's antithetical to the game's gacha loot box and peer pressure "aren't you gonna keep doing cardboard meth, bro" mechanic. So many trees had to die and so much gas was burned for them to go directly into a trashbin, for profit ;_;
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Re: Anyone here play Magic: The Gathering?

Post by cave hermit »

I got into magic the gathering in college, but I barely understood the game and tried to make some janky deck based off of some eldritch moon starter deck I bought because it looked cool despite it rotating out of standard soon. I was soundly trounced by Kaladesh era meta decks with 4x smugglers copters.

I dropped it pretty quickly.

A year and a half ago I decided to try it out again, started going to a local game store Friday nights, I still got trounced, but I looked forward to Friday night for it.

Then the pandemic hit.

In this interim, I sold off most of my key standard cards (they were banned anyway) and used the proceeds to fund most of a $150 uro commander deck. So yeah, gonna try out commander if this pandemic ever ends.
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Re: Anyone here play Magic: The Gathering?

Post by Frenetic »

MTG Arena's been pretty fun to play. I don't know if it's gonna last, but the free cards and booster packs engines have been OK.
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Re: Anyone here play Magic: The Gathering?

Post by Davey »

Ha, funny looking back on this thread.

I was "thinking about" cashing out of Legacy 6 years ago. Being the lazy piece of shit I am, that never happened, even though I haven't played Magic in a few years now, or even really felt the itch to.

And because there is no justice in this world, my laziness has gone unpunished. Quite the opposite, actually. "OMG Underground Seas are over $300! Insane!" I mean, yeah, that is insane, but for those of you that haven't looked at this shit in a while, it's just... wow. I could literally pay off my mortgage now. To be fair, that has a lot more to do with being 11 years into a 15 year mortgage and living in a tier 3 rust belt town, but still. Fuck.

I will say, I didn't see Arena coming. Sadly (or not), it came out after I stopped playing Magic, so I have no first hand experience with it, but it seems less bad than MTGO at least.
cave hermit wrote:I sold off most of my key standard cards (they were banned anyway)
From the outside, this seems like a weird new normal. Standard bannings used to be really rare, like once every few years rare, but now they happen frequently. Not necessarily a bad thing if the alternative is having a stale or broken metagame for several months, but if I was a Standard player it'd make me really uneasy about investing in the format.
BryanM wrote:There are ways to get around this.
Keyforge took a novel approach to this, although it then creates a new class of problems, so I don't know if I'd call it an improvement.

Every pack (MSRP $10 or so) is a complete deck: a randomly generated precon that is completely unique. But the catch is you can't change the deck; you have to play it as is, so there's no secondary singles market. Power level varies quite a bit, but there's some secret sauce in the algorithm that provides some guardrails to ensure every deck falls somewhere between "barely playable" and "JFC this seems unbeatable."

Mechanically, I really like the game, even though it does lose the whole deck building aspect. Economically, the problem is that you wind up with a lot of useless, mediocre decks. And since you can't deconstruct them, it's not even like you can hope to salvage a good card out of them. It creates a weird problem for prize support too, since packs don't work as well (more expensive, likely less useful). Locally it's been mostly stuff like playmats or other trinkets for FNM equivalent events. And I say that as somebody that usually hated winning Magic packs instead of store credit, since packs are basically scratch-off lottery tickets as far as I'm concerned.
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Re: Anyone here play Magic: The Gathering?

Post by Strider77 »

Magic the Blathering
Damn Tim, you know there are quite a few Americans out there who still lives in tents due to this shitty economy, and you're dropping loads on a single game which only last 20 min. Do you think it's fair? How much did you spend this time?
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BryanM
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Re: Anyone here play Magic: The Gathering?

Post by BryanM »

Good news everyone! Wizards of the Coast has a product to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the game!

I recommend you read the announcement in its entirety, and don't spoil yourself by reading spoilers you spoiler hound you!
Spoiler
A proxy reprinting of the first set. Really nice little product; collect'em, play with'em, whatever. A warm little nostalgia-fest anybody can enjoy.

.....

$250 per booster pack. Limited supply only.

... lol. lol. El oh pee eel.

At this point I strongly don't recommend pirating MTG cards. Because then you're just contributing to the problem: monopolizing MTG even more than it already is. There are other card games that exist and could actually use some more players: YuGiOh, Vanguard, Pokemon, Wixoss, Weiss-Schwarz, Flesh and Blood or whatever. Not Duel Masters, that's a Wizards product and doesn't make a jillion dollars a second here so it's not for gaijin.

(MTG really does belong in the apocalypse subforum. A speculation instrument first, a game a distant third.)

(This is being compared to what Pokemon did last year, which gave far far more for fifty dollars. And you can actually play with these cards in official events.)

Reading comments online on this is a bit entertaining. Physical Magic is already the kind of thing that trends toward affluent people, and even they have some opinions on this matter.
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Re: Anyone here play Magic: The Gathering?

Post by BIL »

Hey why are all these fat sweaty asscrack dudes on Onlyfans all of a sudden - oh. OHHH.
Spoiler
They want ALLA DEM SPENSIVE CARDZ ;3

Beats hookin' on the street, that's what I always say! :O

JFC BRYAN LOOK AT THIS BIG FUCKEN HEIFER :shock:

Image

I hope everyone gets the obscenely-priced nerd shit they want, that's man's universal pain bro ;-;7
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Re: Anyone here play Magic: The Gathering?

Post by Air Master Burst »

I'll forgive WOTC for everything if they just give me a 3rd edition of Netrunner.

OK, maybe not D&D 3.5, but everything ELSE!
King's Field IV is the best Souls game.
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BryanM
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Re: Anyone here play Magic: The Gathering?

Post by BryanM »

Air Master Burst wrote:Netrunner.
Woah, that takes me back. Waaay back. When they tried to make a bunch of other card games, but every dollar spent there was a dollar not spent on Magic and Magic made bigger numbers so. Those early days are so weird compared to what they are now, like saying "did you know Wizards made other games" sounds like it came out of The Onion.

Like so many things, if we want more of something we've gotta do it ourselves.

There seems to have been some speculation Wizzers was gonna do some video game since that Cyberpunk 2020 game or whatever was somewhat big. Eh who knows, but physical cards seem super unrealistic. Every one of those printed is a $25 generic Swamp card they could be selling instead, after all.
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Steamflogger Boss
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Re: Anyone here play Magic: The Gathering?

Post by Steamflogger Boss »

This idiocy was so big it even made it's way to this dead thread here. It's really silly, and I hope it fails but it will probably sell out.
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Re: Anyone here play Magic: The Gathering?

Post by BryanM »

Read this guy's article from 2001 today. Details the transition of the company from a sex cult to a corporate hellhole from the perspective of a wagie.

I like the part where he disses the Pokemon franchise; it's such a typical "If it's good, it's god. If it's bad, it's the devil" kinda take. His entire company ran on milking lonely nerds by making certain bits of rectangular cardboard much more rare than others. The art of angels in MTG is the most generic thing ever, just some sword harpies holding swords. You don't get to call other money extraction schemes evil or other aesthetics "uncreative", man.

Infinite multiverse where anything can happen: All goblins are exactly the same. Someone might have an aneurysm if you gave the elves horns or hooves.
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guigui
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Re: Anyone here play Magic: The Gathering?

Post by guigui »

Much WotC hate here.

Though let's face it : over its financial aspect $$$, and all the shenan$$$igans of its fi$$$nancial aspect, and the fact that p$$$eople want to ea$$$rn mo$$$ney, $$$$of$, $i$$, $$f$$c$$k, Magic the Gathering is (was ?) a good game.

I played it on a competition level for about 10 years and it brought me many things I like in gaming : need to think about strategy, need to adapt to your opponent strategy, need to focus to achieve something, some kind of RNG ness to spice things up (ofc RNG can screw one or two games in your tournament, but in the end I think the best player wins), ability to collect stuff and show off, play with real people or hide behind your screen, and many more.

I stopped playing the game in about 2005, so here comes the question : is the game still good post 2020 ?
Bravo jolie Ln, tu as trouvé : l'armée de l'air c'est là où on peut te tenir par la main.
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