Return to MtG

[jibbajibba]

So for the first time since I left the UK over 2 years ago, where I was playing a bit socially with mates in limited, I have just taken up MtG again.
Never been a serious player, owing to an irrational hatred of decks with 4 copies of 4 rare creatures and 4 copies of 5 rare spells and a narrow band of stuff the alteration of which seems to be a lot of the variation in the various decks on display in organized play.
Any way opened a box of Khans of Takir with my mates here who's growing interested sparked my own. Great fun, interesting cards and mechanics.
Then last weekend went to a pre-release Tournament for the latest expansion.
Again really good and a lot less arsey out here than I used to feel in the UK when I went to a handful of events.

So despite making a daft error in deck choice after a poor set of cards for limited in the "clan" I had chosen (I should have deserted them and switched to a whole different colour strategy) I ended up 2-2 which is about as average as you can get.
I started teaching my daughter as well as a way to get her to work on her reading and mental arithmetic as well as logical thinking.

So my new fear is that our D&D game is due to restart next week after a month off for Xmas and peoples trips and exams and stuff and I can see the idea of replacing a tabletop game with a mini magic tourney as quite appealing.

I am also deep in play testing of the thief board game I made up after a thread on here about all Thief campaigns....

Ah so many games so little time .....

[Shipyard Locked]

I get back into magic every other year or so, play it really intensely, then let it lie fallow again.

These days I save money and avoid aggravation by only playing highlander (only one copy of any non-basic land card allowed) multiplayer formats. We've found that that setup eliminates a lot of the most obnoxious elements of the game - combo decks don't get out of control as easily, expensive cards have diluted impact, and multiplayer politics ensures than anyone who is going for an abusive strategy without finesse gets stomped flat.

[Doom]

I lost interest in constructed too....I was buying way too many cards that would never, never, be used, and I too found it grating that "rare" monsters and spells always seemed to show up in quadruplicate, anyway.

Going to tournaments and playing for 8 hours, but only seeing like 4 different decks was also tiresome. I found draft my poison, which I played for a long while.

Then I got really, really, sick for a few months, lost touch with all of it, and never went back. I still have a few thousand bookmarks, though, which is handy when I'm playing RPGs with many rulebooks.

[jibbajibba]

I lost interest in constructed too....I was buying way too many cards that would never, never, be used, and I too found it grating that "rare" monsters and spells always seemed to show up in quadruplicate, anyway.

Going to tournaments and playing for 8 hours, but only seeing like 4 different decks was also tiresome. I found draft my poison, which I played for a long while.

Then I got really, really, sick for a few months, lost touch with all of it, and never went back. I still have a few thousand bookmarks, though, which is handy when I'm playing RPGs with many rulebooks.

Money not really an issue. Plenty of other habits drop more than a couple of hundred a month, but the constructed format is just a bore.
Been thinking about 'cube where you stick your old cards into envelopes and redraft them

Also magic cards do make great encounter decks.

[jan paparazzi]

Me and my friends still play on occassion. We use our own version. Make a really large deck (120 cards or so) with a standard mana curve. You could use a specific set or block. Every one draws cards from the same deck. One library, one graveyard. There are no lands. You can play every card upside down and it counts as a land. That land can be tapped for mana. That mana counts as every source of mana, so you can play all the different colored cards. Can be played with two players or more. Becomes even more fun if you play a highlander deck.

[Greentongue]

The EDH (i.e. "Commander") format has been a great thing for me.
I was so burnt out from the never ending chase after the cards for playing the (popular) Standard format that I had given up.

I tried getting people to play Pauper and Peasant format to show that a level playing field is what makes the game fun but, the WOW!! factor of rares was unbeatable.

As Shipyard Locked says, the highlander style formats are a big improvement.
I have have had great luck in getting people to play them.

Unlike RPGs you don't need the same people every time, to play.
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