Magic: The Gathering Discussion

[Ghost_Wheel22]

I started during the golden era of the Urza block and much fun was to be had until I lost interest when Mirrodin came out. Took a several year break, came back for Time Spiral and since then been able to afford the better dream decks of yore. Having a Power'd Donate deck or a random infinite combo or bizarre win condition (y halo thar Battle of Wits) is pretty damn exciting. Just lately its seems the only decks that win consistently are complete dick decks and zero fun to play.

Kinda weird was I seemed to become 100x the player after I quit then when I was a reputable player. I'm pretty much a juggernaut in most formats except Dissension drafting. Fuck that block in the ear.

[miokomioko]

I started playing way back in Beta, and kept up with it pretty solid until about... Weatherlight I think? Homelandsish time, I guess. It was definitely something that I had kept a deep dark secret, as I usually do with things that I do that fall into the "incredibly nerdy" catagory. Then when my girlfriend and I stayed with my father over break, I found all my old cards in my old room and she insisted I teacher her how to play. God damn her because now I brought all my cards back home, ended up on ebay, bought a couple boxes of booster packs, a bunch of random 500+ random card lots, a bunch of singles off ebay as well, and frequenting the local comic shop trying to revitalize my collection with all the insane amount of cards that have been released since I stopped playing...

...and the reason I stopped playing was because my divorcee mother went all gnarly born-again Christian thanks to her new boyfriend, who informed her that my Magic: The Gathering cards were evil. Yeah, my cards were evil and little reclusive middle-school me had thousands of them torn away from me and hidden somewhere, so my harmless little hobby turned into smoking pot with my school's stoners. Thanks mother.

I few years later, snooping around for something, I found my cards and reclaimed them and she had pretty much forgotten about the whole thing. But, I think I ended up selling a lot of my more valuable Beta cards and such because I know I had more than I currently do.

Either way, I was overwhelemed with the amount of sets and game mechanics I needed to catch up with. It was very old-timer of me the way I was like "what is this shit? cycling? phasing? transmute? fear? lifelink? madness? scrye? clash? Could they make it any more complex?"

So, my girlfriend and I tried to enter the local Shadowmoor sealed deck tournament release party event thing, thinking it would be incredibly nerdy and fun and the people that would be there would be rather entertaining. Thinking that Magic: The Gathering had probably died out in popularity since I was into it in the early/mid 90's, (I was appalled at future sight cards thinking that was the new border system) Anyhow, we show up at 10:00, competition starts at 10:30... the place was fucking packed, and all 36 seats for the tournament were full. I was amazed. Kinda' depressed, I went home and spent another few hundred dollars on boxes of Shadowmoor and Tenth Edition, deciding to get serious about this now that I realized how huge the game really still is and how frequent monetary-reward tournaments go on all over the world. Also, I had realized how much fun it was finally having some kind of real income as an adult for collecting this stuff. Scrounging enough money to buy a booster of legends only to get some weak shit and no Mana Drains, but when I can just click a button and I have hundreds of cards at my door in a few days, that's what's awesome about being an adult. And reminds me of back in the day when my dad would buy a whole box and just give me one booster a day, best thing ever.

I have only been in one tournament in my life but I don't think it was DCI sanctioned and it was so long ago that I know there weren't any solid rules or strict judging going on, all I know is I kicked ass with getting my Rock Hydra early in every game until the semi-finals where someone oubliette'd it. sigh. Anyways, I've been actively trying to restudy and catch up on all the gnarly DCI rules and judging and whatnot so I can perhaps enter some tournaments in the near future without looking like an ass. If any of you nerds are in the Santa Barbara area, my girlfriend and I need some people to play with, it's getting a little tired playing eachother, I miss 2 on 2 team games. Now I'm just eagerly waiting on the mail

[Zilong]

Psychatog/Upheaval is the bane of my fucking existance. I have NEVER been able to beat that piece of one-trick pony shit.

lol, if you think that shit is bad, you gotta see dredgatog with ichorid, that shit is just fucking recockulous.

This is how I feel, the game is just too expensive to play in tournaments. There are some decks that are relatively cheap to put together I guess, but even they end up splashing green for Tarmogoyf. Honestly, fuck Tarmogoyf.

Kinda hard not to splash green for goyf when the damn thing is a 2 mana 5/6 a good amount of time you get it out.

[Rysa]

I played from about Weatherlight until the end of the Mercadian Masques block. My two favorite decks were a Red Wildfire deck with heavy artifact use (got me 2nd place in a city tournament once) and a Blue/Green Deck that abused Gaea's Cradle, Deranged Hermite, Berrin Master Wizard, Stroke of Genius, and cards that let you untap land when they came into play. I won with that deck by either making a infiinite army of Squirrels or would cause the person to draw their whole library in one turn with Stroke of Genius.

Anyway, bahahahahahaha at Shaharazad being banned

I had a deck built somewhat around the concept of cause my opponent to eventually run out cards. It was a black/white deck with Yagmoth's Bargain which let me skip my draw phase if I wanted. Then using a combination of creatures that could not be targeted by spells or abilities, a creature that prevented my enchantments from being targeted by spells or abilities, an enchantment that protected all my creatures from spells or abilities, and the enchantment Worship, which let me stay at 1 life infintaly as long as I controlled a creature. I had other ways to win, but decking my opponent was alwayas a possible outcome, granted that would always take forever. Only drain spells could work around Worship (since Worship prevented damage that would take me to below 1 life and drain life made me lose life). About the only thing that could kill the combo if I got it off was a red deck with things like Wildfire or Flame Wave or someone dropping a Wrath of God.

[Tricen]

I found a program that is free and has a database of cards and you can play each other on it. Anyone wanna give it a shot?

http://www.magic-league.com/download/Apprentice.exe

[Tythera]

While I only played with my roommate we used to sealed a lot with Apprentice, it's pretty fun. If you're looking into drafting there's a program called Netdraft that handles all that, I never did it but my roommate used to use an IRC channel (probably the one for that site) to catch people setting them up. You save your deck after the draft then load it in Apprentice to actually play.

[Tricen]

Oh snap :O Do want <_<

[Korietsu]

I found a program that is free and has a database of cards and you can play each other on it. Anyone wanna give it a shot?

http://www.magic-league.com/download/Apprentice.exe

Apprentice isn't too hot to play with unfortunately, unless they've upgraded it to do turns correctly.

[Tricen]

Oh;;, is there any other onlie free ones?

[Korietsu]

Oh;;, is there any other onlie free ones?

Not that I know of, however, if you're on vent and playing, apprentice is fine.

[Maguspk]

Let's do some fucking apprentice. I don't care if it sucks, for now it will do. My name will be Magus.

edit: Ok I don't know how to go online. Wtf

[Tricen]

Check AIM

[Zilong]

isn't magic workstation better than app?

Only problem with program like apprentice/mws is that both players need to know what the card does and the rule on shit like stack/priority/layer, since afaik, all those program does is give you a representation of the cards, not actually apply the rulings.

[Tricen]

Err apprentice makes you do everything manually?

[Zilong]

afaik, yes.

[Korietsu]

Yeah it does.

[Tricen]

Is there a manual <_<? Cause like, how do you haunting echoes or truamatize or morph

[Tricen]

I like this apprentice thing, a lot. Been playing for hours now lol.

[Maguspk]

Apprentice fucking owns. Stayed up til like 8 AM playing it. Going to bed now.

[Lordender]

Last time I played magic was when visions released and I started when the game released. I had a lot of fun playing MTG but most of the people i knew who played ended up quitting/moving away so i kinda got out of it.