Magic The Gathering
 

I did a search the other day and found very few references to this card game in the Off-Topic Forum, and I guess drew the conclusion that it's not very popular with this crowd. But in case there are a few players here, I wanted to create a post to discuss stories & strategies.

Both of my sons play, and so I thought I would learn to play with them. I dabbled a little bit a couple of years ago in 10th Edition, but thought the new Magic 2010 Core Set would be a chance for me to jump back in. We also play the Online version, and so I decided to buy the cards for an online mill deck. Now this is the first time I've ever played a deck with a mill strategy. It's different, but I'm starting to enjoy it a bit more. I've also played in two online events: One was a Sealed Swiss Tournament starting with 128 players and finishing with a Top 8. I finished 3-4 in the 7 rounds. The other was a Booster Draft where I finished 1-2. My older son & I will hope to attend our local Friday Night Magic this week.

I find it can be quite overwhelming jumping into the middle of this. While I am now familiar with many of the M10 cards, most of my opponents are playing cards from the other blocks of Standard. It seems like until the other blocks all rotate out, I will be at a disadvantage. So in order to get up to speed, I will focus more on playing and less on the results.

Any other active players (either live or online) here?

I used to play with Saldana a long time ago, he had tons of cards.

We kind of lost interest when they started coming out with an insane number of different cards, just got to complex to really enjoy.

He has 1000's of cards. I played online for a while, but it got expensive pretty fast.

I know Abe Sarjent (sp) writes a weekly magic column.

That's a very good reason why it's both interesting and daunting. The number of card combinations is just incredible. The part that's appealing to me is that it seems for every strategy (re- Deck Type), there are deck types that can compete against it. It's not like there's a one strategy for all. So the problem solving is a good challenge.

Alas... that's the flip side. In order to really dive in, you are correct, you can burn through a fair amount of money quickly. So that's why I've decided to "buy" one deck online (total cost was around $30 bucks, which is less than a video game...).

I always loved Magic but like most people it's just too darned expensive to keep up with. Haven't played it in years because of that. I wish they would release a game like Microprose made back in the late 90s. I still get a hankering to play that every once in a while.

I enjoyed that one alot as well

I play, obviously. They reduced the # of cards they release annually, btw. BEcause of the complaint that its too many cards too quickly.

Magic is only expensive for tournaments. Casual, multiplayer Magic around the Kitchen Table? It an be quite cheap.

+1. I've only played once in real life, but I played that game quite a bit and had a good time.

I used to have alot of cards on the online version.

Anyone have a link where I can DL the game and access those cards?

There's a $10 Magic game available on Xbox Live, for any of y'all who have that casual itch. I've only played it a couple times, but it seems to play pretty well. The big 'problem' for most advanced players is that you can't create a custom deck...you win access to 8 pre-made decks, and each of those decks has 17 cards you can win/add, but that's the extent of the customization....perhaps to keep the balance in multiplayer games?

I played way, way back in the summers of 94, 95, and 96. That there is a 10th edition+ now boggles my mind.

Not sure if posting a link is kosher or not, so I'm sending you a pm.

Never played Magic or any CCG for that matter. It always seemed like one of those huge money sinks, and the people I knew who played frightened me. The Xbox version I've heard great things about, and I might end up picking that one up for 10 bucks and trying it out.

The old Micropose version I believe was a Sid Meier game. I always remember seeing it in magazines but never tried it out myself.

I'd like to try and find a CCG or Card Game that the Mrs. and I could play together, but not sure if the theme of Magic would interest her, anyone have any opinions on a good one for hooking someone?

I quit about 10 years ago, though I used to play pretty often in high school.

I miss playing CCGs, actually. Hard to pick a favorite. Game of Thrones CCG was a lot of fun, Spellfire was simple, but still fun. Blood Wars was oddly addicting, though I don't remember why. I just remember it was the game I loved most, even though only one other guy I knew played it.

Overpower wasn't bad, but I wasn't crazy about it like one of my buddies was. Harry Potter started off cool, then sucked. Pokemon was fun for a while, though it felt weird playing teenyboppers in tournaments. Highlander's cheap now and it's kinda fun, but not a wowser for me or anything. I played one of the LotR ones that was too tedious. Ani-mayhem (I think it was called), I spent way too much money on and never played, though I remember it being a blast when I tried it. Sim City you need lots of cards to have fun with. Young Jedi was actually pretty fun.

Uhh I'm sure there's others that I'm just not thinking of right now. Tried getting into Lot5R, but it just never grabbed me for some reason.

So I just unlocked my account online ( I had forgoten the info). I have about 3400 cards. My SN is Lathum there also if anyone wants to add me.

I have no idea how often I would play but a little nostalgia is taking over

Dominion is a pretty good standalone card game. For me, as a retired magic player, it does a good job of scratching the itch without actually being a CCG money sink.

http://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/36218

I'd recommend it for anyone who enjoys the deck building aspects of CCGs, but wants a standalone game that can be played quickly.

That looks perfect for what I need, and now that you mention I remember hearing about it from a couple people.

Definitely will nab that one, thanks for the recommendation.

Interesting that this comes up now. My nephew's interest piqued mine enough that I broke out my old collection of about 7000 cards from 94-early 96. I'm going through picking out the ones that are worth money and selling them. Unfortunately my best friend, who I "lent" my collection to in 96, figured I was never going to play again and got rid of all of my valuable cards. The ones worth $300 Plus. The Moxes, Time walks, ancestral recalls, and a black lotus of his. They weren't worth all that much then...but now it would be considerable. In any case I've gotten a good number of $15 -$40 cards, that I'm going to be selling online.

The research has started to get me hooked again. I've just installed Magic Workshop which will help me proxy new cards to play just for the experience with my nephews and maybe my own kids eventually.

I'll be checking out that Dominion link.

+1

I remember playing before they even numbered their editions.

Beware, it is a good game, but if you play it 10 times in a night, you will get sick of it. Playing one or two games at a time keeps it fresh.

Glen what are you using for pricing your cards and where are you going to list them?

For those of you who play regularly how do i know what sets i can use and which ones i cannot?

OMG!!! DOMINION!!! Sorry to thread-jack, but Dominion is an AMAZING game. Seriously. Go to coolstuffinc.com and order the game and the expansion. It's like a much much MUCH cheaper version of Magic. I've even gotten some of my less-nerdy friends into it (and there's no chance they'd ever play Magic).

Sorry if I sound like a 13-year old boy in this post, but seriously...everyone needs to buy Dominion :)

[/end threadjack]

I've really enjoyed drafting Magic recently. I found a local group that drafts on Monday nights and it's something I've been having a blast doing. I played in the mid-late 90's and have been playing this time for 8 months now. It's really tough to get back into it, but it's great. Sounds like the thing for the original poster may be a "cube." Go to the official MTG forums for more info on how to build it. You could just buy a box of M10, do some drafting, and build a decent starter cube out of it, for about $100. I seriously love drafting and it feels old-school in some ways (as in, the decks we used as kids weren't great but were definitely fun). The draft decks are like that. Imperfect in many ways but fun to play (and you can do many variations on the same theme).

Abe has a column on starcitygames.com. I actually have a paid membership there. There are many great columns over there & my favorite one is the drafting one by Olivier Ruel. The stuff he does is crazy and it's definitely helped my drafting. I missed my draft last week for the first time in months and I'm definitely going through withdrawals. Oh well, I get to draft more on Monday :)

Good luck with your game choices and seriously, everyone needs to BUY Dominion!!! That is all :p

I started playing Magic again a couple of months ago after the XBOX game came out.. they have a local gaming store that holds tournaments and booster drafts. I play online, too, my nickname is ShaneTheMaster if anyone wants to look me up.

I've seen Beta Black Lotuses go for $1000+. The highest I've seen in the last 90 days is $3449. Beta Moxes can be in the $500+ range also.

I wonder how much my Eureka would go for.

I do get the urge to play Shandalar from time to time, I should check out this XBOX live game and Dominion.

I've just gone out to a few places that sell cards, and found their "buy lists". Troll and toad, Star City games are a couple. There was a site, I didn't save the URL, with a magic deck database that had very helpful price lists. Those sources helped me identify which ones were valuable...then I went and saw what they were going for on Ebay. Once I figure out how to ship them, I'll decide on a card by card basis which vendor to use or to take my chances on EBay.

This is generally where you get the best store prices from:

http://www.findmagiccards.com/

You'll see Eureka at about the $30-35 for sales, and less than $10 for those buying. The problem for Eureka is that it is a very stable card for over a decade at about 30 bucks. People who bought it don;t want to sell for less, but everyone who wants one already has one, so it can sit in a case forever, even discounted. SCG had them at 20 bucks for six months without a single one getting sold, and they are the biggest store online.

So, for this card, the eBay price is probably best:

I searched ebay for completed auctions with Eureka, Legnds, and without Italian, because I am assuming yours is English.

15, 16, 30, 20, 15, 16.50, one that was at 20 for buy it now and did not sell, one at 30 and did not sell, another at 20 that did not sell.

It seems to hover at about 15-16 bucks with one outlier.

Thanks Abe - I didn't expect it would be that much, but ya never know.

I took my older son to the Scars of Mirrodin prerelease tourney this weekend. I'm not that thrilled with this set. But moreso, I am sick of the whole Planeswalkers thing. They are too overpowered, and surprise surprise, the guy who won pulled two of them in his sealed set of boosters.

Any chance WOTC will have an event where all Planeswalkers leave, are banished, etc?

I play and we have a good sized gaming group here in Buffalo. I swore for years I'd never waste my time and money on such things and then I sat down and watched my friends playing and got sucked in. I have metric ass-loads of cards now. more decks than I can keep in an easy to carry box and well..yeah.


if anyone is ever around Buffalo, drop me a note and we'll have a match or three.

send me the link to get my account back up too.

It was 14 months ago. I'll see if I can find it.

So what's the best way to play some Magic on a PC these days?

Magic Online... download the free client.. but then you have to pay for digital cards.

In case you're interested the chap who designed the game originally does some blooming fantastic computer card games these days.

(if anyones interested I'll try and locate the names of them, used to play them a LOT a few years ago ..)

Is there a way to play where you don't have to pay for the digital cards?

No.

Yes there is, Apprentice and the like, but again, you have nowhere near the amount of people playing that (and you have to put up with some very arcane things)

I haven't checked in a while, but I thought you could play with the current version of "Theme Decks" without having to buy them. I'll check when I get home tonight. That would at least allow you to play a few games to see if you like or not.

Note that on PC you can also play Duels of he Planeswalkers, and d/l it from Steam for pretty cheap. It's a pretty short game, but can serve in a pinch if you have a hankering for Magic


Magic: The Gathering - Duels of the Planeswalkers on Steam


It's also on XBOX Live I think

I'd be interested in the names of them if you have the time. Thanks.

He's done a whole series - you can find most of them through the page for one of them at 'Astral Masters':

Astral Masters - fantasy card game

(to be quite honest I didn't realise the chap who made them had been involved in creating the 'magic' card game until someone on a dev forum mentioned it .. makes perfect sense imho, the balance in the games he's created is fantastic imho as a game developer I'm thoroughly impressed not just by the balance of his games but by the AI for the computer players and its flexibility in approach - rocking stuff :D)

I've been messing around with the online game. anyone play?

I do/did. I was really into it for a while, but haven't played since December or so. I might start playing more, although I think I'm going to go down to the game shop and play in person once I feel better. I miss Magic.

well I am Lathum on there if anyone is interested.

Me three. I used to wreck face with my Serra Angels and Black Vises. Back before they limited you to 1 Vise per deck, that was the most overpowered card...loved it.

I used to play MTGO like crazy, but really haven't touched it in a couple of years at this point.

I play Magic Workstation, not MTGO. I'm too cheap, I guess. I love playing live though. Usually play drafts on Thursday nights at a local store.

Been messing around a bit lately. The biggest problem I have is no one plays "fun" decks. You can't even play a casual match without people having these insane decks with crazy mechanics that wreck you.

There is just no place for the casual player who doesn't have the time or inclination to put together a lethal deck.

Pretty much. It's all about creating that ultimate combo through grognarding the mechanics and unleashing a chain that means game over. It's one of the reasons why I quit playing after starting to get back into it last year. It just wasn't fun anymore because everyone kept building the same type of about three or four types of super-powered deck.

Didn't help that a lot of them tended to be asshats.