Some friends of mine at work and I recently started playing again. Casually and only kitchen table stuff... But now I've been building decks again and having a blast.

This weekend we're all signed up for a Lorwyn Pre-release sealed deck tourney. Should be fun.

Any other MtG Players?

Used to. No money.

I hear ya. Fortunately I played for a LONG time before stopping sometime after Mirage. Started playing again around Mercadian Masques and Stronghold. And then again just recently with the advent of 10th edition and the new Lorwyn stuff. So I haven't had to buy much... I'll admit though... This most recent deck I built is all my poor repressed childhood coming out of my wallet. Now that I can afford to build the type of deck I'd LIKE to play, I've already sunk $90 into it.

Ah, magic. I actually started it a few years ago, built a deck out of everyone's "throwaway" cards to create a sort of unstoppable deck. It relied on numerous blue counters and red direct damage, as well as the essentially-immortal "Squee, Goblin Nabob" who you could retrieve from the graveyard and put back into play as well.

I Used To But The Straw That Broke The Camel's Back Was When They Went Keyword Crazy.

cards used to have a keyword and an explanation, or even just a special ability. nowadays they add 30 new keywords each block. things haven't been this retarded since ice age, after which the designers decided they weren't going to add any more of them because they make the game stupid. you pretty much have to buy a rulebook just to understand what your own cards do.

heres an alphabetical listing of keywords in current use:

• Absorb
• Affinity
• Amplify
• Attach
• Aura Swap
• Banding
• Bands with Other
• Bloodthirst
• Bushido
• Buyback
• Channel
• Convoke
• Counter
• Cumulative Upkeep
• Cycling
• Deathtouch
• Defender
• Delve
• Double Strike
• Dredge
• Echo
• Enchant
• Entwine
• Epic
• Equip
• Fading
• Fateseal
• Fear
• First Strike
• Flanking
• Flash
• Flashback
• Flying
• Forecast
• Fortify
• Frenzy
• Graft
• Grandeur
• Gravestorm
• Haste
• Haunt
• Hellbent
• Horsemanship
• Imprint
• Indestructible
• Kicker
• Landhome
• Landwalk
• Lifelink
• Madness
• Modular
• Morph
• Ninjutsu
• Offering
• Phasing
• Poisonous
• Protection
• Provoke
• Radiance
• Rampage
• Reach
• Recover
• Regenerate
• Replicate
• Ripple
• Sacrifice
• Scry
• Shadow
• Shroud
• Soulshift
• Splice
• Split Second
• Storm
• Substance
• Sunburst
• Suspend
• Sweep
• Tap
• Threshold
• Trample
• Transfigure
• Transmute
• Typecycling
• Vanishing
• Vigilance

and here are the keywords that are actually important:

• Fear
• Haste
• Landwalk

My brother just started playing...I don't, though.

Yu-Gi-Oh and Pokemon are all the rage now.

I kind of liked the LotR TCG.

The deck I'm building right now is as follows:



The premise being that you get out the artifacts (Akroma's Memorial and Thrumming Stone) and then use Ripple from the stone when you cast 1 of the rats. Then you just burn through your deck as long as you want (about half the rats to account for a Wrath / Damnation) to put a bunch into play. Since they're all flying / trample / haste / vigilance they can attack right away and they're damn near unblockable.

The blue is splashed in to protect the rats from Extirpate (aka "the lamest new card ever"... seriously. 1 swamp to completely devastate this deck, or seriously hinder any other) The idea there being that you play Willbender morphed and then use is morph ability when your opponent plays Extirpate. Since the morph isn't a spell it can counter the Split Second ability that Extirpate has and redirect it to your opponent. Sneaky.

hahahahahahaha rats RATS


that's basically the plague rats deck I was never allowed to build. I'm surprised they didn't add a Swarming keyword.

It's the plague rats deck I HAD before they imposed the 4 per deck limit on all cards in '93. Good times.

they imposed the limit specifically because of plague rats.

Holy crap, Magic... I still have all my old cards, but I stopped actively playing around Tempest or so ... I was so fortunate to get my hands on a lot of those great cards from Arabian Nights, Legends, The Dark, Revised etc. I think I started playing in '94... which was bad because all the other guys who started a few years earlier had moxes, timewalks, the works, haha.

I built myself some truly unstoppable white/blue, black/blue and red/blue decks, some of which I even won some local tournaments with... I kind of specialized in playing creatureless control... I collected artifacts that could be turned into creatures, like Jade Statue... etc.. It used to be fun until they started releasing a new expansion almost every 2 months or so... I just couldn't afford to keep up any more.

And no matter what kind of killer deck, you always needed new cards to keep up with all the new abilities they kept making up. Jon's list shows how ridiculous it has become.

It became an incomprehensible mess.... errata after errata, banned, restricted, unbanned, unrestricted, massive deck-affecting rule changes such as tapping an artifact wouldn't stop it from functioning any more, etc. I got tired of it.

Still fun to play for kicks with my old cards now and then, but I really don't want to pour all my money into it ever again, haha.

God, do not make me pull up my 500+ cards and start building decks again.

For the record, I have a lot of cards that are actually illegal to play nowadays...got really lucky in some random deck/booster buys.

I'll trade!

I still got my nature deck. So many elves, so much power.

The only cards that are legal to play in T2 are 10E and expansions from Ravnica on. So some 98% of all magic cards are tournament-illegal.

They do this so you have to spend thousands of dollars on the newest cards every few months if you want to play in any official tournaments.


Also, the last good block was Onslaught.

Yep. Kinda sucks, but it's still fun to play with friends.

I stopped playing when the whole double sided cards came out. Just seemed...cheap to me.

didn't those debut in odyssey? or do you mean morph?

I don't remember what deck it was, just that it was centered around ninjas.

I played a little in high school, usually just using a deck made up of somebody else's leftover cards. It was fun, but the most of kids who played were *******s, so I never really got into it.

I really love Magic, but it's too much of a cash commitment to really get into, as well as finding other people who aren't insane who will do the same.

If you think Magic's bad, you should price out a warhammer (40k or regular) army. I know a guy who has 5 armies too.

Somewhere in the neighborhood of 3 grand dropped on little plastic/steel molded figures.

If by "Now" you mean 1999, then sure.

I work at a Toy Store.

They're still popular.

Onslaught sucked.

Just to balance things out. No, I never played Magic the Gathering. Or Warhammer.

My brother still plays with his friends (high school senior). never really got into Magic, although I played SW:CCG for a while.

I have an old blue-green creature fatty deck somewhere.

Entirely seventh edition and below. I hated the look of the new cards.

I still have a large stack of those things from like 6 years ago. I never played much, just when me and a friend got bored in class, but they are fun.

but they only added 4 new keywords. mirrodin added 9. also, one of those 9 was Indestructible.

i tried to play a couple times, but no one bothered to explain basic rules so i gave up like 9 years ago.

If we are rating a set by the amount of keywords, Betrayers of Kamigawa was a good set.

Onslaught was a set filled with boring medium-range creatures with dull flavor (hurr durr beasts are awesome ), overpowered small beats (Goblins are a stock fantasy race so they must be good right, right?) and horribly underpowered-could-be-cool Wizards and the ever-so-dull Elves (even worse in Legions/Scourge where they're birch twigs on legs). It managed to botch the race matters theme by adding really good creature sweep (Slice and Dice goes in almost every red multiplayer deck I make), reusable kill (Slide/Rift) and big win-more finishers (Visara).

The best sets I've played with are Ravnica/Guildpact/Dissention and Invasion/Planeshift/Scourge booster drafts, but the current T2 metagame is probably the most varied in years and I probably would play some if I had money for $200+ playsets of lands.

Lorwyn looks like a big pile, especially limited and even though I like the flavor of the set I am not going to buy any packs, even for limited. They really are pushing control though, which is my favorite archetype after land destruction/burn decks.

Also keywords are a good thing. After the initial learning threshold they are easy to remember.

edit: Also almost half of those keywords are used on less than five cards, and even more are rubbish abilities that noone uses anyway (lol Epic)

edit edit: :wtc: why is landwalk an important keyword? Flying or trample are more important as keyworded abilities, as they are interactable evasion abilities. Landwalk is lame and that's why it isn't printed anymore (exept maybe some base set stuff?)

I've got a couple of co-workers who are addicted to the game, one of which claims to have about 80% of all the MtG cards ever made.

I've got a LOT of cards. Full sets of Alpha / Beta / Revised / 4th / 5th / Mirage / Ice Age / Mercadian Masques / Stronghold ++ all the boosters / starter decks / tournament packs / random singles I've picked up over the years.

10th Ed is really balanced and good so far. MOST of the keywords don't get used. It's a really good core set. (it's also the first black bordered core set since Beta)

I play when I'm made to by my D&D guys. I enjoy it, I just never really am certain about what's going on. >_>

I've never liked the idea of card games where you have to collect cards. The company basically makes profit margins on the range of hundreds of percent, with almost no initial R&D investment.

I just woke up (it's 3:30 pm) after the Midnight Lorwyn prerelease tourney last night.

The whole event was poorly organized, and I've now got a card shop I'll never provide patronage to again because of craptastic service.

But the cards are kind of neat. *shrug*

Eh, I dunno about that. They have to put a lot of thought into new cards, new card types, balancing therein (though obviously they don't spend too much time on long-term balancing issues), but I don't really care if they make so much profit--I just love playing the game.

Exactly. And if you're not interested in playing competitively (like me) then you don't end up having to spend a ton of money on cards because you can use all the legacy stuff you've already gotten over the years.

I kind of have to agree with obi. Also, the warhammer thing hurt my soul on a deep level. Tell this man you know that he is a corporate whore.