Never understood card games. Well, "Shithead" I get. Munchkin I get. M:TG, Pokemon, Yugioh, Fantasy Flight's LCGs (Cthulhu etc) I cannot get into. I just blank.

What is it about these games that is attractive? I have never ever played M:TG and this is a very serious question.

I mean, earlier in the thread someone said "fun, casual, pick-up game" or similar. Unpack that for me, because from the outside it seems like a min/maxers wet dream crossed with a game company selling Cardboard-Crack. Not something I feel I have missing from my life.

Quote from: BarefootGaijin;750200Never understood card games. Well, "Shithead" I get. Munchkin I get. M:TG, Pokemon, Yugioh, Fantasy Flight's LCGs (Cthulhu etc) I cannot get into. I just blank.

What is it about these games that is attractive? I have never ever played M:TG and this is a very serious question.

I mean, earlier in the thread someone said "fun, casual, pick-up game" or similar. Unpack that for me, because from the outside it seems like a min/maxers wet dream crossed with a game company selling Cardboard-Crack. Not something I feel I have missing from my life.

I won't get into all the details of the game, I presume you know the basic structure of it (You play a wizard who taps into various lands for colored mana then uses that mana to summon creatures and cast spells, all in an effort to kill your opponent(s).) Because cards are used and there are lots of them of different types the players can set up any sort of structure for a game. For example: "This game we'll play with single color decks (there are five colors)." or "No creature summoning." or "We'll have 50 hit points (instead of the usual 20.) Etc. etc.

Because the structure can be played around with the game can be both "a min/maxers wet dream" or a casual pick-up game. We could play 5 rounds of "Make the best deck you can!" then switch to something silly like "An all Goblin deck!" We could spend a half hour digging through our piles of cards and making a new deck or we might have one set aside we made the other day for immediate play.

It's the near endless variety of cards that can make the game so addicting, and when you don't have something you will want it and so invest more cash into it. ("Wow, that's a cool card, I'll have to go to the store and pick a couple up." or "I read about this killer deck in a magazine, I'll have to invest $300 to get all the cards I don't have to make it.") One deck might be a White and Red all spell deck. The next you make might be Green and Black mostly creature deck. One deck you might count on killing your opponent with damaging spells, the next you win by removing cards from his deck until he has zero left and loses by default.

A "fun, casual pick up game" could mean anything from a silly "I'll kill you with nothing but sharks!" to something more serious "This deck does A, B and C, in that order." You could meet your buddy, pull out a premade deck and start playing immediately with a quick time limit. Or you could take hours researching and building some gonzo deck. Some people take it seriously and memorize all the cards and invest thousands of bucks into it and go to tournaments, others... don't.

Hope this helps.

I should also add that much of what makes M:tG addicting is the strategy and options one must weigh with each turn. Do you make an all-out attack or hold somethings in reserve for defense.

I'll illustrate with an example: Let's say it's mid game, you have 6 lands on the table so you have access to 6 mana points. You have three creatures on the table defending you and four cards in your hand. Two of those cards are creatures, one is small and requires only 2 mana to summon, the other is larger and requires 6. You could tap all your lands and summon the large creature, that sure would be nice to have available, but then you'd have nothing left over for bonus attack or defense (until next turn.) Or you could summon the smaller creature and have 4 left over. Or you could summon nothing and keep all 6 for other uses. One card in your hand will heal 3 points of damage, but costs 3 to use. You could heal yourself for 3 points or hold it until a critter is damaged/killed and use it to save its life. The last card you have in your hand stops your opponent's spell from being thrown, destroys it utterly. What to do? Where should you spend your mana points?

You also have the three creatures already out and ready to go. Do you attack with all three or hold one back in defense? Depends on what your opponent has available for defense. Does he have any mana left in reserve? He has only 2 cards in his hand, possibly nothing useful at the moment. Decisions, decisions...

And that's every turn you make those kinds of judgements. The strategies and permutations are endless. What color(s) are you playing? What is he using? Some colors are strong on defense, others strong on attack. Some have better creatures, others better attack spells. It helps to learn all this stuff and formulate strategy on that knowledge. Creatures can be all sorts of sizes and have special bonuses. One might have 3 attack and 6 defense while another is 4 attack and 4 defense. One might be able to throw a point of damage at anything you choose. Another could have a fire breath that can be pumped up by expending extra mana ("He 3/3 but I'll tap 4 mana and make him 7/3.") All that has to be taken into consideration too.

You can see how it goes.

Both non-stop rotation and expense of keeping up.

I quit MtG and L5R because of that. Most of the rest of the CCGs just died on their own. The only one I still collect and play is Vampire, because it is a very well made game -- and the only one that completely upends the CCG paradigm (no set rotation, strongest cards are commons, no card limits, cards replenish instead of fussing about card draw, multiplayer, etc.). But even Vampire has returned to torpor, so we'll see if it can return from the grave a second time.

Outside of that I'd totally get into an LCG like Netrunner. But I have other priority buys before then, as I know that'd be at least a cool $200+ to get a set of what I want. However being fixed distribution really cuts down on rarity power creating a Pay-to-Win environment.

Quote from: Doughdee222;750209I won't get into all the details of the game, I presume you know the basic structure of it (You play a wizard who taps into various lands for colored mana then uses that mana to summon creatures and cast spells, all in an effort to kill your opponent(s).)

News to me! Shows how much I haven't been paying attention. But thank you for clearing up a few things.

Quote from: Opaopajr;750218Outside of that I'd totally get into an LCG like Netrunner. But I have other priority buys before then, as I know that'd be at least a cool $200+ to get a set of what I want. However being fixed distribution really cuts down on rarity power creating a Pay-to-Win environment.

That was part of why I tried the Cthulhu LCG. No real need to pay-to-win. Problem for me was I played it and found it incredibly boring and I eventually sold it on. YMMV etc etc.

I played Magic from Legends all the way up to Ice Age and then I got bored with it , with Ice Age the cards weren't really doing anything new and there were other card games coming out. I sold most of my Magic cards for £20 about 10 years ago. I wasted far too much money on card games , I don't play any of them now and I wish I had spent the money on RPGs or even books. I think Marvel Overpower was my favourite and perhaps the best CCG I played but the later expansions were hard to find.

Quote from: BarefootGaijin;750200What is it about these games that is attractive? I have never ever played M:TG and this is a very serious question.

For me:
I like to play games with people. You can pick cards that are easy or hard.
I like to collect things. There are thousands of unique cards.
I like to make things. Thousands of unique cards makes deck building practically limitless.

MtG scratches all those itches. I can spend way too much time just building and altering a deck as new ideas are sparked. There are so many cards now that it is easy to find new ones I don't have to keep the cards fresh. All I need is one random person that is interested in playing and I have a game.

As was mentioned, with your own player group you can have an extreme range of games that can be played with the cards. This is only limited by imagination and willingness to try something different.
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I stopped playing M:tG when the first expansion came out, and I saw what a neverending money treadmill it would become.  Gave all my cards away - don't even want to think about what they'd be worth today.

I consider playing on a "limited" basis every now and then but... I just don't see that "limited" basis holding, and I too easily see myself getting sucked back in.

I confess I never played or never wanted to play.

As soon as I heard about the "collectible" aspect, my instant reaction is "The more money I spend the better my odds of getting "good" cards to help me win?  Oh holy FUCK no."

The very idea repulsed me instantly.

Quote from: Old Geezer;750515I confess I never played or never wanted to play.

As soon as I heard about the "collectible" aspect, my instant reaction is "The more money I spend the better my odds of getting "good" cards to help me win?  Oh holy FUCK no."

The very idea repulsed me instantly.

To be fair, I've seen some pretty nasty decks based on nothing but Common cards.

But, yeah.

The combine it with expansions meaning that those cards you've collected?  Yeah, you need more now.

Quote from: robiswrong;750506I consider playing on a "limited" basis every now and then but... I just don't see that "limited" basis holding, and I too easily see myself getting sucked back in.

If you can set limits, it is a great game still. I hold myself to a $10 a week budget which is affordable to me. So far I've done that for over two years with only a couple of splurges.

Yes, you can make fun decks with just the cheap cards and if the people you play with have the same "level playing field", Life is Good.
Getting that buy in from a group is not easy, much like finding a consistent RPG group. Once the "arms race" starts, things turn sour fast.
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I enjoyed playing magic for a couple of years when it was fairly new.

I stopped playing because I could not afford to spend any money on it, and realized I would spend money I did not have.

So I gave all my cards to a friend and went cold turkey.

Game is fun as hell though.

M:tG is very popular at the game store where I play. One of the players in my group's Pathfinder game is also something of a Magic fan, and sometimes gets distracted by the Magic players (but he's a bit of a yahoo, just like I am - we both admit it).

I never got into Magic; I could have as a middle schooler back in 1992-93 but I (1) was more non-social than I am now and (2.) had heard something about having to give the winner your cards. Which is untrue, but at the time my afraid-of-socializing 12 year old self believed it. (Plus my mom wouldn't have sprung for spending the money.)

Quote from: Peregrin;750108Generation has nothing to do with it.  Teenagers and kids have always engaged in petty theft.  MtG just gives you something that's easy to steal, and it just happens to be something kids like.

At the store we occasionally have problems with theft. But back when it was a larger hub for the game there was as much of a problem of cheating - it was one of the groups who brought in a lot of the other groups, and had a "we're better than everyone" attitude.

Last I heard they were all sitting at one of their homes doing their own game, but this was after the owner and his judge had some sort of blow-up.

I remember buying MtG many years ago when it first came out.
I was in the Virgin Store checking out the RPG section (when they used to stock RPGs) and when I went to the front desk to pay, I noticed a little stack of cards and 1st edition MtG by Garfield games.

It spread pretty quickly amongst my social circles (other people I knew also discovered it at the same time) and I had a great time with it.
After a couple of years I got bored with it and I moved to another country anyway and I gave them all away (I guess I collected a few hundred cards by then.

I thoroughly enjoyed the game for the couple of years I played it. It got boring after a while though and it was sucking up RPG gaming time, to the point where some of the various RPG groups I played and ran games for played MtG in preference to RPGs.

I believe some friends from those years are still playing MtG today. Which is fine, there must be something to it to keep someone at it for that many years.

Anyway, my favourite deck build was blue and White for all the defensive stuff white had and the quirky effects Blue had.

A few year ago I visited those friends from years back and they had literally 1000s of cards in boxes and one of them gave me a few hundred cards to build decks with that I played with my kids for a while.
They were very old cards and I bet some of them were my original cards I gave away many years ago.
Playing MtG with my kids was fun and they enjoyed it too, but other things drew  us away from it after a while.
 I still have those old cards in a box somewhere and I might drag them out again and give it a go one day.

My girlfriend tried it a few times with cards some friends of hers gave us.
She liked the pictures but wanted more 'story' out of it.
Neither of us liked the 'collectible' aspect (manufactured scarcity) and lost interest quickly.