ping: Magic players

[QuikSand]

I have a vague recollection of starting a thread like this a couple of years ago, but couldn't find it in the archives...


Anyway, Mrs. Q and I had a recent occasion to sit down and play Magic cards recently, and it has re-sparked a little enthusiasm with me. At one point, I had a pretty solid collection of cards, played in a few tournaments with them, and was a pretty good player. Those days, alas, are long gone. But other than some of my "power" cards, I still have my collection.

So, I'm looking through the cards, and I see a number of my old favorite decks. I am not a tournament player, I have no real interest in getting all the way back up to speed with them (and learning thousands of new cards in the process)... but I wouldn't mind picking up a few useful cards here or there that might seed nicely into my existing decks.

So, for any of you folks who might still be playing Magic, and keep up with this sort of thing... any tips? Here are some of the decks that I still have standing -- are there any new cards from the last couple of years that would be good single additions to any of these decks?


Atog Cafe -- Red/Green, lots of artifacts - designed to get one or two small unblocked creatures for big unblocked attacks. (Last time I posted for help, someone pointed me toward the card Rancor, which I now include twice in this deck)

White Storm - White - the standard small creature quick-action deck with white creatures, lots of first strike, and four Crusades. The fallback as my best deck (it's just such a great concept), it is pretty efficient with creatures, plus I have Armaggedeon and Preacher as cards to break from trhe frequent logjams.

Hand Denial - Black - spells and creatures forcing opponent to discard -- great deck also, very frustrating to play against whan it works well.

Amish Deck - Blue/White - designed to shut down opponent with counter spells and creature killers, and win by forcing opponent out of cards -- no damage sources, but effective with Time Elemental, Stasis, and many creature killers.

Enchantress Deck - Green/??? - Built around powers of Verduran Enchantress, green enchantments (sometimes with black or another color included) onto small creatures -- draw extra cards and build toward one huge attack. (I loved playing this deck, which is now in disrepair)


Anyway... I guess if there have been rule changes that make some of my cards "banned" I'd be interested in that sort of thing, but I really am not too worried about following any particular convention. (At home or with friends, we generally follow the 4-card maximum and 1-card for restricted rules, but that's it)

Can anyone here offer some guidance on interesting cards worth adding... or perhaps a web site that might have some of the same? This really is a great game -- I don't regret faling out of the hobby (as keeping up with new set after new set was really taxing), but the general concept of collecting the cards, building decks and playing a game that really changes each time is so brilliant, I think they deserve their gazillions of dollars.

[Poli]

Ah, I miss this game. I haven't played seriously since I joined the Navy in 1997.

[Tekneek]

People still play this? I haven't played since I got back from Boston in 1994. It was a huge phenomenon there that summer.

[QuikSand]

Surprisingly (to me, at least), while the "fad" aspect of the game has certainly died off, it remaind pretty popular... and the market for the good cards remains pretty strong. Check otu ebay sometime... there are huge numbers of listings for Magic cards, a whole section unto themselves.

I think the power cards I sold off several years ago (I sold one complete deck for $1,100) have probably appreciated in value since then. I don't know what sort of competitions there are for wide-open deck building (when I left, they were calling it Type I) but people are obviously still interested in playing with their Black Lotus, set of moxes, and the other big power cards.

[QuikSand]

bump?

[Honolulu_Blue]

Sorry, Quik, can't help you on this one. I was all over the Magic craze back in the day when it started out. 1994-1995. We used to play it almost every day/night. I never invested all that much time into getting new cards. I made some initial investments (got some Legends and Dark cards when they first came out) and then traded with folks. Through those investments and trades I built one deck, a red/white deck. I don't think it had any particular theme other than what one would typically expect from red/white. I had about 120 or so cards for the deck that I would exchange in and out depending on my opponent. I basically just kept the cards I thought were cool. For example, I had the Desert Nomads. They have "desert walk." I don't think I ever once played anyone who had a desert card. Still, I loved the art, they were pretty cheap, so I kept them.

The last time I played had to have been almost 3-4 years ago. There were a ton of new cards, but I have no idea what they did anymore.

[Bee]

I can't help either, but my wife and I played a lot in the mid to late 90's. We still have most of the cards, so it sounds like I should probably dig them out and see if any are worth selling.

[Poli]

Originally Posted by QuikSand

bump?

I could possibly get you in touch with a guy who knows a guy who killed a guy that played.

Seriously, I think I have a friend that's still a "serious" gamer in Magic, I could ask him or pass contact info on to you if you'd like.

[sachmo71]

What killed collectable games for me was the "new set invalidates your old one" schtick. I was pretty big into Heroclix when they published a new set of "originals" that replaced the old ones. So my entire collection of heroclix was invalidated for tournament play in one genius marketing decision. Haven't bought a set since then.

[spleen1015]

Originally Posted by sachmo71

What killed collectable games for me was the "new set invalidates your old one" schtick. I was pretty big into Heroclix when they published a new set of "originals" that replaced the old ones. So my entire collection of heroclix was invalidated for tournament play in one genius marketing decision. Haven't bought a set since then.

This is what heppened to me as well, I believe it was when the 2nd edition came out or something like that. They changed a bunch of rules and made some of the old cards useless because no one was willing to play with them anymore.

[Draft Dodger]

I haven't played in a while, but still have all my cards.

I do know this: I would hate to play against QS. I was much more into making silly theme decks (like my "Dorothy" deck which all the creatures were Lions, Tigers, or Bears...oh my). Or I'd try to come up with some ridiculously outrageous combo that I'd never, ever, be able to pull off. Lots of fun to build...not so much fun to lose with.

my favorite (and most effective) deck was my black & white pestilence deck, which I named "Post Office".

[QuikSand]

Originally Posted by Draft Dodger

my favorite (and most effective) deck was my black & white pestilence deck, which I named "Post Office".

I remember playing a pretty effective Pestilence deck... built it on a "dare" of sorts, where my friend argued vehemently that the "-lace" cards had absolutely no value. So, I built a black and white deck with four Circle of Protection: Black cards and Pestilence, a nasty combination -- and sure enough, Deathlace was a pretty solid card in that deck, as it could render an opponent's creature pointless as an interrupt effect. Good stuff.

[Poli]

Browse Digger was my favorite, but not of my own creation. I modified it out of an article. Browse eliminated cards I didn't want, and the Soldevi Digger put cards in my graveyard at the bottom of my library.

I could churn whatever I wanted. Strip mines, lightning bolts, whatever my desire. I had to include blue, which I really didn't like, but still incredibly effective. I would remove every card I didn't want from the game with Browse, and pay 2 before my turn to put the top card in my graveyard on the bottom of my library. I'd purposely burn through my cards until I didn't have a library. Pay 2 before my turn, I now have a one card library.

My buddy I mentioned earlier would get incredibly frustrated when I played him with the Browse Digger deck. I simply needed 1 browse and 1 digger in the game, and it was hard to stop me from doing that.

The only issue with it was the browse took a while to get into play, with a relatively high casting cost.

[Daimyo]

When did you stop playing? I stopped around 2000 so I can't comment much since then. The enchantress deck really became a viable tournament deck in the Tempest/Urza's cycle... Tempest had a second enchtress who did exactly the same as the original one. Urza's cycle added a creature enchantment for each color that returned to your hand if the creature it was on went to the graveyard (Green's was +2/+0 and trample for G). I think Urza's cycle also had a creature (Rabid Wombat?) that got +1/+1 for each enchantment on it.

I believe Atog actually came back in one of the newer sets that was largely artifact based, but I don't know any details... I only heard about it through word of mouth.

Black had a great card in the Urza's cycle (Urza's cycle was pretty amazing overall) called Yawgmoth's Will. It was a sorcery with a 2B casting cost that let you play cards from your graveyard as if they were in your hand until the end of turn. It was banned in T2 and restricted in T1 pretty quick.... Corrupt was another stable as a finisher. for 5B, for each swamp you controlled it dealt one damage to target opponent and you regained one life (sort of like drain life). I fondly remember with my necropotence deck often closing games out with something like: attack with steel golem for 3, tap five swamps, dark ritual, dark ritual, yawgmoth's will, dark ritual, dark ritual, dark ritual, corrupt for 5, corrupt for 5.

[Daimyo]

DOLA, Urza's Cycle was a huge boon to blue... you might want to look for the following cards (CC from memoty so could be off). A single morphling added to your blue/white deck would be a nice alternate victory condition since he's nearly unkillable once he's in play.

Morphling, 3UU, 3/3
U: Flies
U: Gets +1/+0
U: Gets +0/+1
U: Can't be targeted

Palinchron, 5UU, 4/5, flying
When Palinchron comes into play untap up to 7 islands
2UU return Palinchron to owner's hand

Time Twister, 3UU
Untap up to five islands
(same effect as time walk)

Thieving Magpie, 2UU, flying, 1/3
When Thieving Magpie deals damage to an opponent, draw a card

[Daimyo]

DOLA, I have so many fond memories of Magic:TG. If I still had friends around to play with I'm sure I would still play. At its best that game was incredibly deep and well balanced.

[Fidatelo]

L5R was better than magic. Magic always seemed to lack flavour to me.

[McSweeny]

from a buddy of mine who plays:

what's the differnce between crack and magic? you can quit crack

[QuikSand]

Originally Posted by Daimyo

When did you stop playing? I stopped around 2000 so I can't comment much since then. The enchantress deck really became a viable tournament deck in the Tempest/Urza's cycle... Tempest had a second enchtress who did exactly the same as the original one. Urza's cycle added a creature enchantment for each color that returned to your hand if the creature it was on went to the graveyard (Green's was +2/+0 and trample for G). I think Urza's cycle also had a creature (Rabid Wombat?) that got +1/+1 for each enchantment on it.

I believe Atog actually came back in one of the newer sets that was largely artifact based, but I don't know any details... I only heard about it through word of mouth.

Black had a great card in the Urza's cycle (Urza's cycle was pretty amazing overall) called Yawgmoth's Will. It was a sorcery with a 2B casting cost that let you play cards from your graveyard as if they were in your hand until the end of turn. It was banned in T2 and restricted in T1 pretty quick.... Corrupt was another stable as a finisher. for 5B, for each swamp you controlled it dealt one damage to target opponent and you regained one life (sort of like drain life). I fondly remember with my necropotence deck often closing games out with something like: attack with steel golem for 3, tap five swamps, dark ritual, dark ritual, yawgmoth's will, dark ritual, dark ritual, dark ritual, corrupt for 5, corrupt for 5.

My head is now spinning.


I heard there were more enhcantress cards out there -- I have one from an errant pack I picked up not too long ago, she's a small creature that gains a oint for every enchantment placed on her, I think. I always used the Rabid Wombat in that deck, along with a few other good combo cards. May need to look a bit for green cards there.

The black cards you mention sound scary good. I could see my opponent reduced to tears over something like this. Alas, my most frequent opponent in Magic is also my bride... so I'll need to be careful there.

[Daimyo]

I think Necropotence black was probably the strongest arechetype (especially with blue splashed for ancestral, time walk, and time twister). Hymn to Torach (Fallen Empires, BB, discard random 2 cards) and Sinkhole (Beta, BB, destroy land) really hurt the opponent in the early game and as long as you could get Necropotence out with reasonable life left the card advantage from it was insane. I remember having several epic battles with my roommate at the time who mostly played a heavy control blue deck. Does he tap out to counter the Steel Golem (3/4 artifact, can't summon creatures while he's in play) and risk the Necropotence or let it come into play and hope for a Disenchant before the 3 damage/turn kills him....

That reminds me... another sick black card from the Tempest cycle... but I can't remember the name (I think Diabolic Edict). 1B, instant: target player sacrifices a creature of their choice that they control. I think its overall better than Terror because it can get black and artifact creatures as well as untargetables, but has the tradeoff of letting the opponent sacrifice a weak creature if they have more than one.

[sachmo71]

Originally Posted by Fidatelo

L5R was better than magic. Magic always seemed to lack flavour to me.

What's that?

[Honolulu_Blue]

Originally Posted by sachmo71

What's that?

Legend of the Five Rings?

Never played. Only seen it.

[Warhammer]

L5R = Legend of the 5 Rings

I always preferred METW (Middle Earth: The Wizards) as I felt like it was very strong thematically, and it kind of told a story as you played.

[Vince]

Man, I loved the game back in the day. My best deck was a White Deck with a bunch of Black Vises (before they were restricted), White Knights and Serra Angels. My favorite was my fungosaur deck. Green/Blue deck that never worked. One time, I got it to work -- Prodigal Sorceror and Fungosaur out before the opponent had much. Keep pinging the Fungosaur for one with the Sorceror to beef him up (IIRC, the fungosaur got +1/+1 if it was wounded but not killed, and started at 2/2).

I haven't played in forever, but I have all my cards still. I think the best card I ever pulled out of a pack was the Jester's Cap from the Ice Age set. Every once in a while, my brother and I will pull them down and play a match.

[sabotai]

Can't help, but this brings back memories of high school for me, a few of the only good ones I had of high school. I remember playing Magic against a few people I went to school with. I had this one card that would always destroy them when I got it (thus I had a very good winning record). We were definately novices at the game, but it was fun while it lasted.

[QuikSand]

Originally Posted by sabotai

I had this one card that would always destroy them when I got it (thus I had a very good winning record).

Ooh! It's like a puzzle!

I'l guess Channel.

[Fidatelo]

Originally Posted by sachmo71

What's that?

Legend of the Five Rings is a CCG set in a magic-filled feudal-Japan land called Rokugon. The land and it's inhabitants were given a large history and the premise of the game was that each set would move the story forward. Better yet, storyline tournaments would let the players decide the path of the story, by having major in-story battles' outcomes decided by the results of the tournament. The first ever storyline tournament had a legendary ending in which the two final players decided to make a deal between their clans, instead of fighting it out, causing the guy who wrote the storyline to rip up his prepared ending possibilities and ad-lib and ending on the spot in front of hundreds of people.

In practice the gameplay was actually quite good as well, and was aided by the great stories and personalities in the game. Unfortunately the rights to the game were in limbo for a time, moved between AEG and WotC, then back again, and in the process the game lost a lot of momentum. I can't really say how the game is now, but it's first 2-3 years were awesome, lots of good times.

[sabotai]

Originally Posted by QuikSand

Ooh! It's like a puzzle!

I'l guess Channel.

Haha. No, as far as great crads go, it was probably not one of the best ones. None of us had special decks or anything. The starter deck plus several boosters was that standard. Like I said, we were novices but had fun with it. I'll go see if I can find the card later, but it's probably nothing special.

[Honolulu_Blue]

Originally Posted by sabotai

Haha. No, as far as great crads go, it was probably not one of the best ones. None of us had special decks or anything. The starter deck plus several boosters was that standard. Like I said, we were novices but had fun with it. I'll go see if I can find the card later, but it's probably nothing special.

Onulet

[vex]

I didn't know many people actually played Magic. We always laughed and made fun of both of them that did.

[Honolulu_Blue]

Originally Posted by vexroid

I didn't know many people actually played Magic. We always laughed and made fun of both of them that did.

Really? It was wildly popular. Wildly. It basically built Wizards of the Coast.

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by vexroid

I didn't know many people actually played Magic. We always laughed and made fun of both of them that did.

i'll do you one further - Magic registered so hardcore on the geek scale my friends and i didn't even make fun of anyone who played it cuz we didn't know it existed. D&D was all we assumed nerds/geeks played.

but to be honest, this Magic thing doesn't seem so bad if it's more of a card game than a RPG. i don't know anything at all regardging this game but it obviously seems like it has some fun replayability. i'm intrigued only because i've run out of things i can do with my wife that doesn't involve fornicating or watching tv. she doesn't like video games. this seems like something a husband and wife could play together; we're certainly in the hunt for some hobbies we can do together, our only current hobby that doesn't involve tv is the one nite a week we'll read our books in bed.

but like vex, had i known of this geekery back then i too would have made fun of the participants.

[Yossarian]

It's one of the best designed games ever and you can see it's influence all over the place (Guild Wars - PC MMORPG has features they admit were inspired from magic). It's a heckuva game that I can no longer afford to play properly (I've played a bit with the 'free' online versions) because the business model is completely and utterly insane. (and phenomenally successful)

[sabotai]

Originally Posted by Honolulu_Blue

Onulet

That card was Polar Kraken.

[Ironhead]

I had a lot of fun playing Magic with some people at college back in 2000. I built a Desolation Angel deck (5/4 flyer that destroys all lands when it comes into play) that was successful in winning frequently and irritating everyone else.

The big thing that keeps me from playing Magic is that it is just too expensive. I had a lot of fun playing the beta of Magic: Online a few years back until they started charging for cards. But reading this thread is getting me interested again.

[MikeVic]

Originally Posted by sabotai

I had this one card that would always destroy them when I got it (thus I had a very good winning record).

Scaled Wurm? Icy Manipulator? Armageddon? Nevethral's (sp?) Disk?

edit: didn't see the answer :P

[QuikSand]

I loves me some Icy Manipulator.

[gottimd]

3 Steve Francis, PG Height/Weight: 6-3/200 Birthdate: 02/21/1977 Birthplace: Silver Spring, MD Team: Orlando Magic College: Maryland NBA Experience: 6

[Glengoyne]

I had a good friend who got me into Magic, pretty much back in the beginning. Don't have any of those cards anymore. My favorite deck was a white deck that relied heavilly on Icy Manipulators and land that doubled as creatures. It rarely worked, but when it did, it was incredibly frustrating to play against. Haven't played in years. I still have a couple of decks in my desk from their "Champions Series" They printed whole decks with different backs from the top four players in their Championhips tournament. Those were pretty fun to play.

[Airhog]

We never played magic much at the comic shop where I play most of my games. Our big game was spellcraft a D&D type game.

[JAG]

Never purchased any cards. Outside of one session I played with a family friend, my experience with MTG was limited to a computer game where you battled a series of 5 wizards (one for each color) in a land called Shandalar. I had a great time with that game, but never really got into buying cards or playing vs. other people.

[Fidatelo]

Originally Posted by Airhog

We never played magic much at the comic shop where I play most of my games. Our big game was spellcraft a D&D type game.

That game always intrigued me.

[QuikSand]

Originally Posted by Fidatelo

L5R was better than magic. Magic always seemed to lack flavour to me.

Originally Posted by Airhog

We never played magic much at the comic shop where I play most of my games. Our big game was spellcraft a D&D type game.

Ah yes... I remember the Betamax too.

[Wolfpack]

Ugh. I wasted a nice pile of money getting started into Magic when I was a sophomore in college. I could never really get the hang of strategy or anything and I just couldn't get into it like one of my friends did, even though I invested a decent amount. I still actually have all those cards in a shoebox in the sub-basement. I think I had Jester's Mask and Icy Manipulator, but those were about it for valuable cards. I've given some thought to putting them on eBay, but they are way back from the R5/Ice Age/Homelands days, so I don't think they'd fetch much anymore.

[saldana]

i still have my collection of about 2 to 3 thousand cards that i accumulated while working at Babbages' in college (so i got a discount). I used to love to play my Meekstone deck (no creatures with power greater than 2 can untap). I would wait til my opponent to bring in a creature, use a Twiddle to tap it, and then crush him with my Serra Angels. The Magic online game that came out a few years ago was excellent, but the same thing happened with that as happened with the real cards, they keep rolling out new decks and it is too expensive to keep up with. my card collection goes back as far as 3rd edition and the Dark boosters.

[cubboyroy1826]

I still play the online game as well as the card game. I really like the game and am amazed at some of the combos that people come up with. Ocaasionally my 13 year old and i will dig out the cards and play into the wee hours. Yes i do play Dungeons and Dragons as DM with him and his friends. Corrupting the youth of america. We actually have neighbor whos mom will not let him play because of the whole satan, devil, etc of D&D. Of course in talking with her she has never even played or witnessed a game being played but she knows what she is talking about (yeah right).

[kingnebwsu]

Old-school bump

Sooooooooo, I've been kind of bored with stuff lately. I'm discovering that I have a lot more free time. I've been looking for something to fill that free time. Ever since I read the preview for the XBox 360 Magic game, it has got me jones'ing for Magic again. Sooooooooooo I did some research online about local stores' magic events and whatnot. Then I went to a local store's booster draft event tonight (hangs head in shame). I don't want to get into the competitive deck-building aspect that gets crazy expensive just to keep up. But the draft format is very interesting to me. Basically, everyone takes turns picking cards from 3 different booster packs, and then you build a deck with the cards you have. You also buy a 4th pack if you play an 8-man draft for prizes. So tonight I did 2 booster drafts. First I did an 8-man and did just awful. Got kicked out in the first round. Second time I did a 4-man draft (which is two teams of 2) and actually drafted pretty well. Even the other guys were surprised at how well I drafted. I didn't play very well though and lost my first match 2-0. The second match I won 2-0! It was very big for me. I know I played like crap the whole time, as my deck was better than going 2-2. But the good news is that my teammate won both of his matches, so we won overall. That was pretty cool. In 4-man events, the winning team gets *all* of the cards. I'm not too crazy about that...but I was crazy about it when we won So he got some crazy-expensive super-rare card and I got to keep the other 11.9 packs worth of cards. Pretty sweet for me.

It's weird how much the game has changed in the 12 years since I played it. I still play it old-school sometimes, expecting to see the old cards I used to use. I know that cost me in my first game because I played too conservative. I'm not planning on investing a million dollars in Magic (though it's hard to keep it under control). The best way I can control my spending is to just do these draft events where the size of your collection is irrelevant. So tonight I ended up spending about $30 for 7 booster packs, some dice, and a cardboard box. For me, it was worth it for the 5+ hours of entertainment I got. Plus I got around 15 packs worth of cards, so that was cool too. So yeah, I'm hooked on Magic again. I swear I'm not going to go super-crazy or anything. But it was nice to do something different. A lot of my life is routine, which is something I like and am comfortable with. But tonight was cool because I got to do something I haven't got to do in a long time.

I really haven't played since the Revised/Dark/early 4th edition era. A lot of the new cards are weird and different. It's really weird when you have to read every card that's played. But honestly, I did a lot of online research before I went to the event so I wouldn't look like a total idiot (just a semi-idiot).

They also added a new gametype to Magic Online called Pauper. In this mode, you can only use common cards. A lot of the guys were talking about it and how cool it is. I think I may try that mode. I have some sets of commons Online and may buy more (the cheaper ones).

So that's my story of my Magic revival. Has anyone else here played lately? If you're looking to get back into it, I'd suggest either doing Pauper online or seeing if a local store does a draft booster event. Those are the cheapest ways to play.

[MikeVic]

Originally Posted by gottimd

[Warhammer]

They just had the Magic Worlds here last month. The local game store got some sweet backdrops from the event. I have to admit, I've always wondered if I would enjoy it, but have always been able to stay away. My parents taught me to just say no to drugs so I've steered clear.

[Izulde]

Magic is something I can't afford to get back into. Way too expensive, way too many cards and I'd have to basically learn from scratch with all the changes that have been made.