I played a little bit of it when it first came out, but saw how the game got turned into a greed machine. Stores cracking open starter sets to steal the rares out, then closing them up again. Laughing when people bought the entirely common starter.

I've jumped in and out several times, but each time I run up against mechanics that just destroy the game. Annihilator was the worst I think i've seen. Last year I dropped my cards off at the shop, got some trade for it and grabbed an RPG or three with the money.

There are way better CCGs. Vampire: The Eternal Struggle, for example. Middle Earth: The Wizards was a lot of fun. Ani-Mayhem as well!

 I do enjoy the idea of a card game like MTG, I just wish they would release a "non-collectible" version (a fixed set).

started playing near the end of "the dark" and revised edition, quit midway through the urza series (trilogy of releases?).  had only played with my gaming group at the time, and one of the guys would buy singles to create fast killer decks.  became no fun as we weren't going to spend the $$$ to try & keep up.  

ended up trading my collection in at my local comic store for store credit.  

was fun splitting a booster box with another guy a couple of times, though.  like xmas morning going through all those packs

ETA--wow, ani-mayhem, still have those.  ME:TW, too.

Quote from: Greentongue;750061Was it the non-stop rotation of new releases and the expense of keeping up?

Did you enjoy the game itself?

I played from beta to sometimes after Ice Age.  I even went to the Ice Age unveiling and played in the release tournament (or whatever it was called).  I eventually sold all my valuable cards and overall I think the experience ended up paying for itself.  It was fun, but I never really liked the collectible aspect of it, even if that's what ended up making it more or less free in the end.

I thought Jyhad/Vampire was good and I think the CCG version of Illuminati (INWO) was actually more fun that the boxed version (still a great game) because it played faster.  

Overall I loved deck building in CCGs and I'd probably enjoy a game where there was deck building but not collecting.  Though I haven't looked into that and the OMNI verison of Illuminati needed more than 1 of each card for that.

Quote from: Coffee Zombie;751938I do enjoy the idea of a card game like MTG, I just wish they would release a "non-collectible" version (a fixed set).

This where "Cube" fits. It is one of each card that you like and that you think are balanced together. You then play "normal" MtG by drafting 45 cards (3 "packs" of 15) from just that pre-selected set. I have an all commons Cube.  It is fun and cheap to build, especially if you already have most. Since you build the Cube yourself, you can put whatever you want in it. The only concern is to keep it balanced.

A separate "mana base" of lands to pull from lets you build a 40 card deck (23 spells + 17 lands) to play with.
=

Quote from: Brander;751992I think the CCG version of Illuminati (INWO) was actually more fun that the boxed version (still a great game) because it played faster.

Oh yes. INWO was a great and very fun game. Me and my friends bring out our old decks, build from cards we bought in cheap cheap bulks back when the CCG-bubble burst, a couple of times a year. It's hardly a balanced game but the combinations and overall feel of cheeky gonzo satire really gives a great game.

So INWO, and the On The Edge, the Over the Edge rpg spinoff ccg, I still play once in a while.

I used to play Raw Deal, which was a horrible experience for newbies; when they rebooted it, the new version was fantastic, but there were a few toxic communities who hated the new version, and then the game died.

Quote from: Doughdee222;750209A "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.

It's worth pointing out, as with any other game; if you're both expecting the same type of game - casual or serious - then you'll get a good game, probably. If your expectations are different, it will be shit and awful. You need to play at your level, and with others at your level.

Quote from: Coffee Zombie;751938I do enjoy the idea of a card game like MTG, I just wish they would release a "non-collectible" version (a fixed set).

Have you tried Dominion or other deckbuilding games, or any of FFG's LCG's (Non-random, small, expansions each month)? I've heard very good things about FFG's Netrunner.

I really liked MtG but I just couldn't afford to keep up with my friends when they decided to adhere to tournament rules. I kinda hated playing the deck building arms race also. I just lilked making fun theme decks and seeing how they'd play.

I much prefer non collectable card games.

I played in 94-95. The game is fun, but I just couldn't keep sinking money into it. Especially since I was a kid and I didn't exactly have tons of money.

I got into a couple more CCGs after that too, and its hard to stay into more than one unless you got a good bit of cash.

The massive money sink and the stacks and stacks of commons and uncommons. The sheer waste of it. Then came the revisions and bannings and etc and getting the hell out was the solution.

I've always played at home with my friends. What I never liked was the direction Wizards took to power down spells and defang control decks. That was my favorite part of the game. Before you had ridiculous decks because players could build synergies between not necessarily strong cards, but now the focus is on dropping singularly powerful cards that just win on their own. The strategy is dumbed down. And then there were the M10 rule changes, and removing combat damage from the stack...

My group basically plays in a metagame frozen in time without any of those changes because we never liked them, and we stopped playing strictly by tournament rules a long ago because of it.

Quote from: Simlasa;751841My 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.

That's pretty much like me, I wanted more story, and more social interaction with the people. Its like watching chess masters who are so worried about the game they forget they're playing with people. I can sit at home and play innumerable video games  against people who don't talk, don't interact or at least not well.  IF I  play a game with other people in person, I want the interaction to be more than just "X damage to Y."

Played Magic twice in my lifetime. Once during 4th Edition/Ice Age till 5th came out with four friends. Just all sitting around a table playing endless multiplayer games of three or four hours. And then I started again during the Odyssey block up untill the Time Spiral block. That was in a club house with a lot more players. We shared one card collection with three players and that quickly made use better than most casual players, but just not good enough for Pro Tour Qualifiers.

I found it very expensive and 90% of all the cards are pure shite. So you had to buy the cards you liked best instead of booster packs. I bought them on Ebay all over the world. Even in China, Taiwan and Singapore. Pretty cheap and always reliable. The American border procedure sucks ass btw. I takes almost three weeks to get your cards instead of a week and a half from China.

One day we started playing coop pc games instead of going to Magic and we never returned. We are doing this now ever since. Played a lot of Left 4 Dead and Borderlands. And Civilization V.

I always wanted to roleplay and heard one dude he played them all and he liked vampire the masquerade the best. So I bought the Bloodlines PC game. I loved it and started hanging around WW and Shadownessence fora on the internet in 2007. It took me one year before finally buying the game (I had my doubts about Requiem, it didn't appeal to me as much as VtM) and started posting on those two fora. And I complained about the lack of lore and ended up in endless flamewars being accused of being an grumpy grognard, who just didn't like any change.

I never liked the audience on those fora. Just not my crowd. I tried other Dutch fora like Mandragon.be and 4GM.nl, where I met 3ric. Mandragon stopped and we both quit 4GM. I didn't have a WW forum account anymore and then Shadownessence stopped (it started again), so I ended up here. Best forum experience so far.

We still play Magic once in a while. It's usually with one big pile of cards. Everyone takes cards from the same pile. No lands, you just place a card upside down on the table and it counts as a five mana superland. Really fun and you have to think well about which cards are gonna end up as lands. Recently I made everyone start playing Heartstone which is like Magic with only sorceries and creatures.

I always wanted to roleplay since we played Warhammer Fantasy in the late nineties. I like it isn't competitive. I was a bit fed up with people at Magic tournaments trying to screw you, because of the rules.

There is one world I'd really like to see as an RPG - Ravnica. It was how I always played Planescape, I admit.

I really liked the game. It was way too expensive so I stopped, though. Same thing with 40k.

I got in the Unlimited/Revised era.  Antiquities, Fallen Empires and Ice Age were the expansions I had the most of.  We did a lot of group play.  Like a lot of people I knew, RPGs vanished for a year or so and we went full-bore into Magic.  Never got Homelands and kind of dropped out of Magic and went back to RPGs.  The collectible side was fun, but I thought Jyhad was a much better game with all the politicking.