Bass & Cap's Amazing MTG thread.

[Bass]

Well the purple rarity was only for Time Spiral to denote the hidden reprint set. Now Mythic Rares have been in effect for a while. I'm still not a big fan of them.

Planeswalkers... I'm still not sure R&D has a handle on them. Now they're deffinatly getting better. We just need more Tezzerets and Koths and less Jace The Mindsculpers.

Rarity doesn't particularly interest me, but even my casual glances at price lists can easily tell that mythic rares have dropped the price of rares considerably. Mythic rares are expensive, but they're as expensive as the most powerful rares of previous sets. Everything else got devalued like dual lands.

As for planeswalkers — I think planeswalkers are perhaps the greatest addition to MTG since Alpha, and indeed, one of the best pieces of game design I've seen. They're astounding. Complaining about their relative power level is like saying that the card frame is ugly. They're fantastic. I'm only annoyed that they're so expensive, because I would love to get one copy of each to make a cube.

I've watched this game from afar. Never got into it, although I did get a starterdeck of every color at some point (they were free).
I really admire the idea and the company though. They've created a game that you need to keep pumping money into if you want to keep competing.
'Have a great deck? Nope, not anymore; a new set of cards came out, your deck is hopelessly outdated.' And fans happily buy new cards. And all WotC has to do
is print some new cards for a fraction of the money the fans are paying for it.

You see it a lot in MMO games too. You've already payed for the original game (starterdeck), but if you want to keep up with other players you need to spend money
to get the update (boosters). Someone is getting incredibly rich off this and I tip my hat to that person.

That's not only cynical, but a common misconception of how Magic works.

The only reason you 'need' to buy the new sets is to remain competitive in standard. The standard format is a tournament format which is always the current two years worth of sets. New sets push out old ones. It's their major tournament format and indeed, it is true that to remain competitive one must continue to purchase new cards.

However, Magic has a number of different formats where this is not true. Legacy, Vintage, and Modern, are all 'eternal' formats. This means that the never lose cards, new cards are only ever added. As such, to play in those formats, new sets rarely make a splash because they have to compete with so many cards of yore, some of which are phenomenally powerful by today's standards. Indeed, if you are someone who only plays in those formats, the recent sets may have only a couple of cards that even interest you, let alone are 'must buys'. Now, the barrier to entry in those formats is extremely expensive because several of the required cards are out-of-print, but here's the thing: If you pay $200 for an Underground River card, Wizards of the Coast don't see a single dime from it. They make no money of the truly expensive cards and the secondary market. In fact, Wizards recently invented the Modern format because they can reprint any cards in it in order to drive down their prices.

And this is just if you play in sanctioned tournaments. There is a casual format, Commander, which isn't sanctioned by Wizards, and uses every card from every set and is focused on multiplayer, which Magic sets are not focused on, so the number of Commander cards per year is tiny. And Wizards has started catering to that market with special Commander cards. But, remember, this is a casual format with no tournaments. You don't need to buy them to play and remain competitive.

Wizards wants and needs to make money of Magic, but unlike a lot of companies out there, it's much better to make a product people want to buy, rather than a product people feel they have to buy, and that's why it's sales go through the roof. The reason people are buying their new set is not because they "need" to, but because they really, really, want to play it because it is awesome.

 

[Ultimate Houde]

I've never played with Planeswalkers, like I said haven't played Magic in years, I've only read about them.

I just notice they brought Phyerxia back. Why?

 

[Bass]

Because Phyrexia is their big bad. They're really pushing their intellectual property, and it's about time. It's bizarre Magic didn't really have cards that represented things like Urza or Mishra until recently, and Phyrexia as a faction or race, rather than just some cards that say "Phyrexian" on them, is long overdue.

 

[Ultimate Houde]

Because Phyrexia is their big bad. They're really pushing their intellectual property, and it's about time. It's bizarre Magic didn't really have cards that represented things like Urza or Mishra until recently, and Phyrexia as a faction or race, rather than just some cards that say "Phyrexian" on them, is long overdue.

Back when I played Magic in high school, every set had Phyrexia on it, in it, inside of it.

 

[Bass]

Yep, it did. I was playing at that time too.

And I didn't even 'get' they were a race or an invading army. I thought they were a country like "Icatia" or "Benalia" or "Llanowar".

When they brought them back in Scars of Mirrodin, it was specifically to give them an indentity in the game that they had never possessed before. And they did it marvellously; both as a 'faction' through a watermark on the cards that represented not just creatures, but enchantments, artifacts, and spells, but also by giving them new mechanics, particularly poison, which was all about winning the game via an alternate win condition. I grew up with Phyrexia, and I never even knew what they were, let alone what their method of invasion was.

One of the jokes in Magic is that people didn't realise that there was an invasion in the set called "Invasion".

It is palpably different now.

 

[Captain Canuck]

I'm so far in over my head with the discussions on this thread. I started playing magic 3 months ago.

 

[Bass]

Meh. Pretty much everything I said can be found in any article on the Wizards' site.

As for starting 3 months ago: hand on heart, Magic is the best it has ever been, not close. Innistrad is already considered to be one of, if not the best set of all-time. Casual players have annual products dedicated to them, and the new core set has invigorated the game for old and new players alike. And the complexity of the game is considerably lower than it has ever been.

 

[Captain Canuck]

Yeah, to be honest, I've done enough reading on the history that all that stuff you said about the Phyrexians was pretty familiar, and I pretty much understand the different formats of play. But there's just so much info (that at the end of the day really doesn't matter) that it gets a little overwhelming at times.

And yeah, I really like the game a lot. I was pretty much hooked after the first time I played. My first month was pretty expensive. I haven't gotten into Innistrad though. I'm not big into the Horror theme.

In other news recently constructed a couple of blue decks. The way blue Magic works is less straightforward than the other colours and it took me a while to wrap my mind around it, but now that I've sort of got the hang of it, I really like it a lot. I think the coolest part of this game is that it's so multifaceted. There's always new mechanics to learn and different cards and themes to play with. Another card game I enjoy for similar reasons is Dominion. It also has the potential to almost never be the same game twice, except not nearly to the same extent as Magic.

 

[Ultimate Houde]

I get what your saying. I was always the one buying the books along with the cards, and some of those books are great. Guess that's why I knew Phyrexia was a race and they used a variation of poison in the books.

I remember the one card in Arabian knights with poison, some scorpion I think....I remember owning it....damn I'm old.

I kinda want to read the stories about the current set.

I wish I still had friends that played Magic, but alas I do not.

 

[Bass]

Yeah, to be honest, I've done enough reading on the history that all that stuff you said about the Phyrexians was pretty familiar, and I pretty much understand the different formats of play. But there's just so much info (that at the end of the day really doesn't matter) that it gets a little overwhelming at times.

And yeah, I really like the game a lot. I was pretty much hooked after the first time I played. My first month was pretty expensive. I haven't gotten into Innistrad though. I'm not big into the Horror theme.

In other news recently constructed a couple of blue decks. The way blue Magic works is less straightforward than the other colours and it took me a while to wrap my mind around it, but now that I've sort of got the hang of it, I really like it a lot. I think the coolest part of this game is that it's so multifaceted. There's always new mechanics to learn and different cards and themes to play with. Another card game I enjoy for similar reasons is Dominion. It also has the potential to almost never be the same game twice, except not nearly to the same extent as Magic.

I just played Dominion tonight. We played three games. I won the last point by a clear 13 points at a total of 73. I was using my Bishop to trash Provinces!

As much as I love Dominion, I hate the card engine/cantrip combo thing. I think the game has too little interaction among players. But it's okay because it's so quick, simple, and variable. Magic's major problem, and R&D are very aware of this going so far as to say that they believe if anything kills the game it will be this, is that Magic is far, far too complex. It's one of the reasons I play almost exclusively with commons. While crazy wacky rares are fun, they're only fun if they're rare.

So Magic is a little too complex and fiddly (in that you have to build decks) while Dominion is a little too uninteractive. But they're both terrific fun.

My favourite Magic colours are Red and Black. Though I'm really starting to love Green. But I tell you, back in the 90s, I played so many CCGs, I cannot bring myself to build decks any more. Ever. I draft Magic or I play with preconstructed decks, and I love drafting. I haven't built a deck in years. One of the reasons I don't play the other CCGs I have is because you can't draft them. Magic sets are so effectively designed for numerous formats that you can just shuffle up a deck at random and actually play.

The closest I'd get to deckbuilding is building a cube to draft, which I'd like to do. But it would be way too expensive as I'd fill it with lots of fun cards, and unfortunately, that means all the planeswalkers. And I'd be lucky if I could find any for £5.

I get what your saying. I was always the one buying the books along with the cards, and some of those books are great. Guess that's why I knew Phyrexia was a race and they used a variation of poison in the books.

I remember the one card in Arabian knights with poison, some scorpion I think....I remember owning it....damn I'm old.

I kinda want to read the stories about the current set.

I stopped playing Magic around '98 or so, and I started reading the website every week, but didn't buy any cards until 2011. The website is fun even if you don't play.

 

[Captain Canuck]

Dear Bass,
Please define the following terms for me:

card engine/cantrip combo thing

CCGs

building a cube

Sincerely,
Cap

 

[Bass]

Dear Bass,
Please define the following terms for me:
Sincerely,
Cap

:lol: :lol: Sorry.

Cantrip is an old term from the tabletop DUNGEONS & DRAGONS roleplaying game. It was a spell that had no specific ability, but allowed you to do tiny little things like have something fall over or create wisps of ether, or something. This terminology was then applied to cards in MAGIC that have "Draw a card" added onto their effects, such as, "Destroy target creature. Draw a card." Cantrips are beloved in Magic because they draw more cards and are fun, but are also a little problem in that weaker players don't get why they work so well and expert players use cantrips in a cumulative fashion to gain incremental, imperceptible advantages over their opponent that result in them gaining huge wins. In regards to DOMINION, the "cantrip" or "card engine" is when you buy cards like Laboratory or Village, cards that generate at least +1 Card. +1 Action. These cards continually replenish themselves so you just play them, draw another one, play that, and on and on so you play your entire deck every turn, your turn takes three times as long as anyone else, and you end up doing a lot more than other people who just go, "Six money. Gold." I've played these decks a lot, and they drive me crazy because it's just "play my deck, take forever, have the same turn every turn, bore everyone else, buy something". That said, I don't mind such decks if they're really small because then they take little time to play. Last night, the deck I won with was only 10-15 cards at any one time, and so playing the entire deck wasn't really a big deal.

CCG means "Collectible Card Game" or "Customizable Card Game". It is essentially synonymous with "TCG" ("Trading Card Game"). There are a number because some companies tried to patent the phrase, which is a crazy as trying to patent "Board Game". But it means games like Magic.

Building a cube is a specific type of drafting. The way it works is you build a 'cube' of around 700 cards of your choice and then you draft them with your friends. Invented by one of Magic's developers, Tom LaPille, before he worked for Wizards, the original idea was that it contained the most powerful cards of all time, so the idea was that the 15th card in a pack, the one you're 'stuck' with, would elicit cries of, "HOW CAN THIS BE LAST PICK?" because it would've been so disgustingly overpowered. This is still the major point of cube draft, but there are a number of different cubes out there such as cubes with nothing but commons, or 'reject rares', i.e. nothing but really bad rares. I would love to build a 'fun' cube that is just lots of simple, fun cards, and planeswalkers would fit that bill. You can find out more http://www.cubedrafting.com/]here. I should say, the reason I don't deckbuild is not because "I think it's for losers" or anything, which is may how I came across. I love deckbuilding... too much. I am ludicrously pedantic, spend forever building a deck, then I play it once or twice, get bored, and start again. The reason I don't deckbuild is because it takes me forever and I only play it twice. So it's more "My name is Bass, and I'm a deck-building addict" which is why I don't deck-build, rather than because deck-building is 'beneath' me or something.

 

[Captain Canuck]

I see, thanks.

I love deckbuilding... too much. I am ludicrously pedantic, spend forever building a deck, then I play it once or twice, get bored, and start again. The reason I don't deckbuild is because it takes me forever and I only play it twice.

It can also get expensive...

 

[Bass]

Yes. Yes it can. But I don't even deckbuild from just what I have. I have plenty of cards from which to build decks. I still won't let myself off the wagon.

 

[Captain Canuck]

Fair enough. My friends that play all play with constructed decks. When I first started I couldn't compete at all when they pulled out their angel deck or zombie deck. But I'm one of the few of my friends that has a steady job/income, so I now have one of the top (if not the top) deck in my elf deck.

The only guy who can probably consistently beat me is sort of a friend of a friend. But he inherited like 72,000 dollars when his grandma died and he immediately made a ridiculous vampire/sac deck. I think my elf deck is faster and gives more life, but his vampires have flying and lots of cards that force you to sacrifice creatures.

 

[Friday]

You'll have that.

I haven't gotten into Innistrad though. I'm not big into the Horror theme.

I love, love, LOVE the horror theme. Although that shouldn't be a surprise to anyone here. The zombies in the next set look amazing too. My Grimgrin Commander/EDH deck is going to get so much better...

In other news recently constructed a couple of blue decks. The way blue Magic works is less straightforward than the other colours and it took me a while to wrap my mind around it, but now that I've sort of got the hang of it, I really like it a lot. I think the coolest part of this game is that it's so multifaceted. There's always new mechanics to learn and different cards and themes to play with. Another card game I enjoy for similar reasons is Dominion. It also has the potential to almost never be the same game twice, except not nearly to the same extent as Magic.

Dominion, thats one of the "Deckbuilding games", isn't it? Is it the one Kibler worked on? *checks* No, that was Ascension. I'd still like to give one of those a try.

I get what your saying. I was always the one buying the books along with the cards, and some of those books are great. Guess that's why I knew Phyrexia was a race and they used a variation of poison in the books.

The Brothers War and The Tran were great. I can't say I liked any of the others I've read.

I just played Dominion tonight. We played three games. I won the last point by a clear 13 points at a total of 73. I was using my Bishop to trash Provinces!

As much as I love Dominion, I hate the card engine/cantrip combo thing. I think the game has too little interaction among players. But it's okay because it's so quick, simple, and variable. Magic's major problem, and R&D are very aware of this going so far as to say that they believe if anything kills the game it will be this, is that Magic is far, far too complex. It's one of the reasons I play almost exclusively with commons. While crazy wacky rares are fun, they're only fun if they're rare.

So Magic is a little too complex and fiddly (in that you have to build decks) while Dominion is a little too uninteractive. But they're both terrific fun.

My favourite Magic colours are Red and Black. Though I'm really starting to love Green. But I tell you, back in the 90s, I played so many CCGs, I cannot bring myself to build decks any more. Ever. I draft Magic or I play with preconstructed decks, and I love drafting. I haven't built a deck in years. One of the reasons I don't play the other CCGs I have is because you can't draft them. Magic sets are so effectively designed for numerous formats that you can just shuffle up a deck at random and actually play.

The closest I'd get to deckbuilding is building a cube to draft, which I'd like to do. But it would be way too expensive as I'd fill it with lots of fun cards, and unfortunately, that means all the planeswalkers. And I'd be lucky if I could find any for £5.



I stopped playing Magic around '98 or so, and I started reading the website every week, but didn't buy any cards until 2011. The website is fun even if you don't play.

I started about 97 my self, but i Missed Urza Block - Invasion Block, coming back around Odyssey. I never really drafted until Onslaught. With drafting I tend to drift in and out by set/block. Like I really wasn't into limited for the new Mirrodin block, but I love Innistrad, I enjoyed Zendikar. I hated drafting Shadowmoore/Eventide. I loved Triple Lorwyn.

I've never been that much of a Limited player overall. Its deffinatly not my strong game. I've only managed one PTQ Top 8 in limited and my pool was extra stupid.

Fair enough. My friends that play all play with constructed decks. When I first started I couldn't compete at all when they pulled out their angel deck or zombie deck. But I'm one of the few of my friends that has a steady job/income, so I now have one of the top (if not the top) deck in my elf deck.

The only guy who can probably consistently beat me is sort of a friend of a friend. But he inherited like 72,000 dollars when his grandma died and he immediately made a ridiculous vampire/sac deck. I think my elf deck is faster and gives more life, but his vampires have flying and lots of cards that force you to sacrifice creatures.

Whats in it? I'm sure we can give you some suggestions on how to counteract it.

 

[Bass]

Fair enough. My friends that play all play with constructed decks. When I first started I couldn't compete at all when they pulled out their angel deck or zombie deck. But I'm one of the few of my friends that has a steady job/income, so I now have one of the top (if not the top) deck in my elf deck.

The only guy who can probably consistently beat me is sort of a friend of a friend. But he inherited like 72,000 dollars when his grandma died and he immediately made a ridiculous vampire/sac deck. I think my elf deck is faster and gives more life, but his vampires have flying and lots of cards that force you to sacrifice creatures.

Constructed is tons of fun. I just can't let myself do it.

Also, I'm sure you could probably beat his deck with some commons and uncommons. Wizards are pretty good at making certain every rarity has tier-1 powerful cards in it.

Dominion, thats one of the "Deckbuilding games", isn't it? Is it the one Kibler worked on? *checks* No, that was Ascension. I'd still like to give one of those a try.

Apparently Dominion is the original and the best. I like the look of 7 Wonders, and my friends who've played Ascension have said it's fun.

The Brothers War and The Tran were great. I can't say I liked any of the others I've read.

Yeah. It was weird though, when Magic had all those transvestites running around.

 

[Friday]

Yeah. It was weird though, when Magic had all those transvestites running around.

Well they had a good storyline reason and the Mechanic was solid. I was cool with it.

 

[robje]

That's not only cynical, but a common misconception of how Magic works.

The only reason you 'need' to buy the new sets is to remain competitive in standard. The standard format is a tournament format which is always the current two years worth of sets. New sets push out old ones. It's their major tournament format and indeed, it is true that to remain competitive one must continue to purchase new cards.

However, Magic has a number of different formats where this is not true. Legacy, Vintage, and Modern, are all 'eternal' formats. This means that the never lose cards, new cards are only ever added. As such, to play in those formats, new sets rarely make a splash because they have to compete with so many cards of yore, some of which are phenomenally powerful by today's standards. Indeed, if you are someone who only plays in those formats, the recent sets may have only a couple of cards that even interest you, let alone are 'must buys'. Now, the barrier to entry in those formats is extremely expensive because several of the required cards are out-of-print, but here's the thing: If you pay $200 for an Underground River card, Wizards of the Coast don't see a single dime from it. They make no money of the truly expensive cards and the secondary market. In fact, Wizards recently invented the Modern format because they can reprint any cards in it in order to drive down their prices.

And this is just if you play in sanctioned tournaments. There is a casual format, Commander, which isn't sanctioned by Wizards, and uses every card from every set and is focused on multiplayer, which Magic sets are not focused on, so the number of Commander cards per year is tiny. And Wizards has started catering to that market with special Commander cards. But, remember, this is a casual format with no tournaments. You don't need to buy them to play and remain competitive.

Wizards wants and needs to make money of Magic, but unlike a lot of companies out there, it's much better to make a product people want to buy, rather than a product people feel they have to buy, and that's why it's sales go through the roof. The reason people are buying their new set is not because they "need" to, but because they really, really, want to play it because it is awesome.

I wasn't being cynical, I am actually really impressed with MTG format (I am aware WotC don't see a dime in the secondary market, btw). I play a lot of boardgames. When I buy a new game all the content is contained in the box. The boardgame is complete and I don't need anything else to play it. It will sit on my shelf for years and while the way I play the game might change the content will stay the same. However, if I buy a MTG starterdeck I essentialy buy the first pieces of a game that I will have to supliment with other cards that I will have to spend money on. I am aware that you could play the game with a starterdeck, but I have yet to meet anyone that does. If you buy a starterdeck you buy a very, very tiny fraction of the content of MTG. So you will buy new cards, you'll play the deck you've build against other people (either competetively or casual) until you get bored with it, or feel like you can improve on it and you will start over again. You'll buy new cards for a game you already own and have spent money on. Meanwhile my boardgame is still on it's shelve, all of it's content available to me forever and I will never have the need to spend money on it again. So WotC is generating income by releasing new parts of the same game, where the company that made my boardgame needs to invent a new game if they want me to spend money again.

In recent years some boardgamecompanies have been trying to adopt this format too. There is a bad trend of releasing 'expansions' for popular games, more often than not ruining the appeal or dynamic of the original game. Carcassonne and Settlers of Catan spring to mind as prime examples. Videogames have been successfull in this as well. First you pay money for the original game, and then in order to get better gear or new areas you have to pay for DLC. You don't have to, but the game (like MTG) will be more fun if you do. I think it's impressive buisnessformat.

 

[Bass]

I wasn't being cynical, I am actually really impressed with MTG format (I am aware WotC don't see a dime in the secondary market, btw). I play a lot of boardgames. When I buy a new game all the content is contained in the box. The boardgame is complete and I don't need anything else to play it. It will sit on my shelf for years and while the way I play the game might change the content will stay the same. However, if I buy a MTG starterdeck I essentialy buy the first pieces of a game that I will have to supliment with other cards that I will have to spend money on. I am aware that you could play the game with a starterdeck, but I have yet to meet anyone that does. If you buy a starterdeck you buy a very, very tiny fraction of the content of MTG. So you will buy new cards, you'll play the deck you've build against other people (either competetively or casual) until you get bored with it, or feel like you can improve on it and you will start over again. You'll buy new cards for a game you already own and have spent money on. Meanwhile my boardgame is still on it's shelve, all of it's content available to me forever and I will never have the need to spend money on it again. So WotC is generating income by releasing new parts of the same game, where the company that made my boardgame needs to invent a new game if they want me to spend money again.

In recent years some boardgamecompanies have been trying to adopt this format too. There is a bad trend of releasing 'expansions' for popular games, more often than not ruining the appeal or dynamic of the original game. Carcassonne and Settlers of Catan spring to mind as prime examples. Videogames have been successfull in this as well. First you pay money for the original game, and then in order to get better gear or new areas you have to pay for DLC. You don't have to, but the game (like MTG) will be more fun if you do. I think it's impressive buisnessformat.

Right, but again, you're labouring under the notion that the "pieces" of the game that you get in the starter deck are not only incomplete, but that the game will release an infinite amount of pieces.

The truth is, Magic is several games that you can mix together. For example, I have the five Commander preconstructed decks. I have the Archenemy and Planechase decks. And I have the common & uncommon playsets of several sets. Each time I buy a Magic product I'm not 'adding' to a previous game, I'm buying a new one. Much like how if I bought Cluedo then Battleship, I'd say "I have two games" rather than "That Parker Bros are so smart, releasing small slivers of game mechanics so you keep buying their new property". The Commander decks are completely different to the Archenemy decks and the limited environment of Rise of the Eldrazi. It's not like other games like MMORPGs and board games because when you play, you don't play with all the pieces that you have. You never do. In Magic you select which pieces you want to play with, and that in turn, completely alters how the game is played. As such, the unending stream of content is not a way of forcing people to buy new elements, but rather, it's releasing entirely new games that are combinable with previous games.

So when people buy the latest set, they can be buying it to combine with their previous cards or to play separately as its own game, or both. Magic makes products like this all year round, and the reason it all sells so well is that people who treat Magic as a bunch of games (as I do) are happy to buy the precons, and people who want to deckbuild and participate in larger formats can buy it for that purpose, but both want to play Magic in a new way.