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Any 'Magic the Gathering' fans here?
I’m newer here and was just wondering if anyone here was into mtg at all, seems like a cool place
I’m newer here and was just wondering if anyone here was into mtg at all, seems like a cool place
For the past 3 years, I've been playing/tournament-organizing/leading (in various capacities) the Gladiator format - it's 100-card-singleton on Arena, played 1v1, 20 life, no commanders, companions, or sideboards, with a card pool of "everything on Arena minus a very small banlist". I was actually going to do a larger post about Gladiator to try to get some folks here to play it, so I guess keep an eye out for that coming up?
That sounds really cool
I'd be into that
Yeah that sounds like a lot of fun!
I play Magic three times a week, usually. More on holiday. EDH forever! I currently have 28 active decks. Still no mono-G or Simic deck, though. Or Dimir. And three mono-W.
if you are looking for a simic deck, lonis clues are always fun
Thank you! I do have a copy of her, and I have considered her. I have built Simic decks in the past, but they never stick somehow. I guess I am a Mardu player at heart.
With so many decks, do you buy multiple copies of cards, proxy entire lists, or proxy cards you already own? My collection of decks is expanding, but I really don't want to buy more copies of staples (fetches, rocks, etc).
Not the OP, but for me it depends. If it's a card I really like and has a bunch of printings, I'll buy a bunch of em, collect all of the different arts. But, especially if I'm on a budget, I'll proxy. I mostly play with close friends, so I'll make fun little proxies out of index cards with my own interpretation of the art and some jokes worked in. I once did a scute swarm with every word of text replaced with just "scute".
Just bought a booster box to get back into physical MTG with my brother, there was something I missed about playing with real cards and dice.
We’ve been playing a draft format called Winston (https://mtg.fandom.com/wiki/Winston_Draft). You shuffle ~3-4 packs per player together in a single pile, then place one card face down into 3 “stacks”. You alternate getting to look at each stack in order and either 1. Take it to add to your pile or 2. Pass on it and add a new card face down. If you pass on all 3 stacks you pick a card off the top of the main pile. The concept is you’re choosing between taking smaller numbers of stronger cards vs larger numbers of worse cards, because in the end you need to build out a 40 card deck with what you have. It’s a great way to build new decks and play with a small number of players! One caveat is you need to have basic lands already on hand, but those are easy to come by.
I got into it when it first came out and built an entire deck around this card https://gatherer.wizards.com/pages/card/Details.aspx?multiverseid=9773. Had to play wrath of god to kill all creatures and a couple others I can't remember the names of to rid the board of land and enchantments.
I also had a goblin based deck including a goblin king.
Few hundred cards and that was only a few editions in. Lost them all some time ago.
I play EDH with friends either in person or over spell table. I own 6 decks of varying power level.
I'm an active member of kanister's discord, which is geared toward competitive play. I'm slowly building a pioneer deck, and maybe a second depending on price tag.
I recently got back into it when they brought the forgotten realms in. I probably spent too much on getting all the commander decks of AFR, CLB, 40K, and soon LTC.
I play it with my wife on week rights after the child sleeps. The game got complicated :D
Cherish these moments with your wife. Soon the commander Arms race starts, and you'll wind up sleeping on the couch for a perceived slight in game.
Honestly, you should try to go back and find older cards to learn with. Less text 😅
I played MTG for a long time, but gradually got fed up with WOTC, so now I basically only play Penny Dreadful, a format played on MTGO where only cards that cost 2 cents or less are legal. It's basically fully free which is amazing, the cards in the format are very strong too which you might not expect. We have an amazing community, do multiple tournaments per week, it's just incredible. No other Magic is fun for me now (especially when I consider the costs associated with playing MTG in other ways).
I've been playing a lot on Arena for the last year or so. Haven't been able to play paper magic and probably won't be able to for a long time, but Arena definitely scratches the itch.
I play a lot of EDH and some tournaments as well, mostly Pioneer these days, with some Modern sprinkled in.
What kind of pioneer decks have you been enjoying lately? I usually play Greasefang, but the rise of Spirits as a top competitive deck has made it a really poor meta choice.
I'm running 5-color Niv-to-Light. Got two Omnaths in the mainboard and no Fables.
Nice! I've really enjoyed the BtL decks, they got very strong once the 5 mana Elesh Norn dropped. She shuts off so much in the format -- I've had folks concede the game when they realize none of their removal works any more.
Yes absolutely! These days I mostly draft and play Explorer on arena, and play Pioneer at FNM in person once a week. I got to attend an RCQ a fee weeks back as well, which had a fantastic sense of nostalgia for the old PTQs I used to attend a decade ago.
I played a lot of 60 card format in the past, but these days I play mostly EDH on spelltable. For me it's just an easier way to keep up with mtg without having to keep up with mtg, which has a ridiculous cadence these days. As of now I have 8 decks that I enjoy periodically updating, I keep up to date lists here.
Another Magic player reporting in! Mostly play Tin Fins and Doomsday in Legacy and occasionally dabble in cEDH and Pauper.
I begrudgingly play EDH a few times per month. Draft limited is the most enjoyable for my group of friends, but it's not really worth it to spend ~$20 on cards we use once, so we're thinking about trying to start a cube, but we don't really know where to begin, or what makes a good cube. On that note, if anybody has any suggestions for a cube, they are more than welcome!
I'll plug my favorite magic podcast that happens to be mostly about cube: https://luckypaper.co/podcast/
I'm boring so I just have a (proxied) vintage cube. One of these days I'd like to actually design a cube but then I remember I don't currently have any irl friends who live nearby and play mtg, so it's on indefinite hiatus for now.
It depends on what you want from your cube, and what power level you want the cube to be.
Playing with Power 9 really narrows the scope of gameplay (see vintage cube on MTGO). But even without power, there are lots of strong cards that can warp cube.
My friends have a couple set cubes, with the intention of replicating the limited environment. These are tons of fun, and inexpensive depending on the set and quantities of cards.
If not that, then i would start with defining what each pair/trio wants to do, build the best version of those decks, and that gives you a relative framework to expand on.
Someone else already linked Lucky Paper, but I wanted to specifically mention their episode on Set Cubes. They mentioned a really interesting point. You and your friends could always pay the $20/ea for some packs, and then sleeve them all up with the same color sleeves, and just use those as your cube. Shuffle them all back together and deal them out as "new packs." You could even go so far as to break your decks down and sort them by rarity so you can seed the packs like a normal magic pack.
Then over time you can modify it.. Perhaps with cards from your own collections from previous drafts and what not. Take out the cards that aren't a good fit, or duplicates if you're wanting to stick to a singleton cube.
I think that would be really neat to collaboratively build a cube with friends. Maybe every few times you meet everyone brings one new pack to add to the pool, and you guys can all sit down after the draft and evaluate the new cards.. See which ones to add, and which ones to cut.
I feel like a lot of people really overthink cubing. I started mine by just collecting all of my take-home cards from pre-releases, drafts, etc that weren't going to be used in my modern decks. I know everyone loves playing with power or making really optimized cubes but I'm also the kind of player who loves playing EDH with the mentality of "here's a cool legendary, let's grab a bunch of cards and see what happens."
I've always been a big fan of set cubes where you only use cards from a single set / block. I've got 3 from sets that I enjoyed enough to put the effort in (the most recent of which, I'm borderline ashamed to admit, is the new LOTR set).
The basic formula, depending on how many cards/archetypes you want to support is:
1 of every mythic*
1 of every rare*
2 or 3 of every uncommon*
3 or 6 of every common*
(* Or just use the ones you enjoy / have on hand.)
Then grab 24 of your favorite mini deckboxes (I prefer cube shells from dragon shield, but cubamajigs get a lot of love and randomly slot cards 15 cards per pack - 1 rare/mythic, 3-4 uncommon, 10-11 common.
Alternatively, you could just feed all of your draft materials into a cube too and then just keep track of how it takes form with something like cubecobra. I love the idea of a cube becoming a bit of a living environment. The hardest part is maintaining archetypes so that when people sit down and draft they can start finding targets to draft towards - I usually just let my multicolor cards dictate archetypes and as long as I have a good handful of synergies with each multicolor, I don't mind if my cube isn't perfectly tuned.
I'm a big former MTG player. Hell my username partially is from there. Got started back in Tempest. Played competitively for a long time including some pro-tours where I never did especially well, some GP top 8s. Moved on to becoming an L2 judge for a while until judge academy when I left the program. I love the game and it's still one of my favorite things, but I don't play much anymore. It feels like Wizards has been doing everything possible to kill the game in my eyes. I will still play casually and EDH can be a lot of fun if you've got the right group for it.
As someone who played relatively intensely ~10 years ago, quite casually ~6 years ago, and not at all since then...what has been happening?
A bit of context: I've been trying to get my wife into it as long as I've known her, and finally gotten her interested with the LOTR set. Any perspective on the last several years would be appreciated.
This is an old thread but I happened to be reading and Hyppie didn't reply so I thought I'd add some info and my perspective.
2019 was a year of massive change for MTG:
In 2020, WotC started doing crossovers with many other IPs (later dubbed Universes Beyond). Ikoria had Godzilla cards in booster packs (each one linked to a "real" Magic card in the set). They introduced the Secret Lair line - cards sold directly to consumers from their online store. The first of these was a crossover with The Walking Dead and contained mechanically unique cards which would be legal in Eternal formats such as Legacy and Commander/EDH. Subsequent offerings were mostly collections of reprints with a certain theme, usually with very bold art and sometimes removing the card frame/borders altogether.
Ikoria also introduced the Companion mechanic - a spin on Commander brought to every format. It was way too powerful and after a wave of bans they had to errata the entire mechanic. Then they still had to ban a couple of them.
My perspective as a player: I hate the crossovers and the Secret Lairs with that don't look like Magic cards. I don't want to have my wizard duel interrupted by Optimus Prime. They keep adding more and more of them. In the past they did a few that were silver-bordered (not legal in any sanctioned format) which I was OK with. I was for many years a dedicated Modern player, but after the release of Modern Horizons 2 I quit. What I find particularly egregious from the set are the Evoke Elementals - a cycle of creatures with strong enters-the-battlefield effects that can be played for 0 mana and exiling a card from hand of the same color (the creature also sacrifices itself, so it acts kind of like a sorcery, but there are cheap ways to respond to the sac trigger and return them to play to get the ETB again and keep the creature around - Ephemerate and Undying Evil to name a couple). There are also a few other 1-drop creatures that are just way stronger than other existing modern cards - Ragavan, Dragon's Rage Channeler, Esper Sentinel... There's a sentiment that Modern became filled with decks that are just "MH2 Tribal".
The LotR set is also the first crossover set to be Modern-legal for whatever reason ($). The top 2 most-played cards at the most recent Pro Tour were 2 cards from that set - The One Ring and Orcish Bowmasters. It sucks that WotC now just injects extremely powerful cards into the format in order to sell the newest sets. It never felt this way to me before with Standard sets only having minor fluctuations in power lever.
Yeah, I feel like it's blatant that they were ordered to make as much money as possible for daddy Hasbro. I'm also a big LotR fan though, so while I was cutting back on buying in protest to these anti consumer actions, I have bought a fair amount of that new set.
Agreed on the other universes feeling weird as well. I don't like that a Transformers deck and a Wurm deck could be on the same table, just feels off. But I also hate crossovers, they just never really do it for me. So I'll return to yelling at kids for being on my lawn.
The worst part of it though is that these sets are selling incredibly well. For as much as people cry out about Modern Horizons 2, it's Magic's best selling set of all time. Lord of the Rings is second. [1] It had been out for about 6 weeks when they reported that. It's going to probably be the best selling set by the end of the year. It's mental.
[1] https://articles.starcitygames.com/magic-the-gathering/the-lord-of-the-rings-tales-of-middle-earth-already-second-best-selling-mtg-set/
Thank you for the comprehensive reply. I somehow missed this notification for a few months. You just clarified a lot of the changes I saw while playing MTG, and gave valuable context. Thank you, genuinely.
Ha, I thought the thread was old when I replied!
Happy to help :)
I play a bit of EDH - my group splits between in-person and using tabletop simulator. We play a lot of jank. I keep a relatively up to date list of decks I play on Moxfield.
that empress galina deck is jokes
I commander play once a week. Currently running a Braids Conjurer Adept deck. It's focused around dropping gigantic scary sea creatures for free! I'm also running a group hug deck. Everyone gets card draw, everyone gets to put down extra land and have the lands add extra mana to their mana pool and then I drop insurrection or approach of the 2nd sun and win game. It gets pretty out of hand at times but damn it's fun!
I’ve been playing EDH for about a decade now. Played standard casually off and on before that. I’ll occasionally cube draft as well. Still love the game, despite Hasbro doing their best to ruin it.
I have some friends I play Commander with, we try to play once a week or so but often times we're too busy or schedules don't line up.
I have 5 decks, and currently trying to work on a mono red burn deck but it's proving difficult to do what I want to with it.
My other decks are BW Lifegain, BUG Hydras and X spells, BU Rogues, BGR Sacrifice, and Mono Blue Counterspell/Clone/Pillowfort.
I'm not exactly a fan but I do play because my son is a fan. I used to collect the cards back in my teens in the late 90s because I was/am a fantasy nerd and liked the pictures (especially the dragons and unicorns). I hadn't learned the game until my son showed interest in playing Pokémon tcg a couple of years ago. I told him how the game is based on mtg and he got curious. I got him a starter deck and we both struggled to learn (some things are still a struggle). Luckily it so happens my sister and especially her partner are huge mtg fans, so they taught him how to play. From that point in he was hooked.
We play on and off with 40 card decks, mainly using jumpstart boosters, as we're both still learning. He's built his first deck from cards he's collected as well (green). I know they're not allowed in tournaments but I'm partial to the un-sets and have sprinkled those in some of the decks we have. We play on and off as the game also has to compete with Fortnite and Minecraft for time. He beats me nearly every time we play though, take from that what you will :)
EDH because I like to just create decks based on shady ideas or a whacky mechanic and EDH makes it somewhat plausible to go off!!!. Can't do that very much in 60 card formats
Legacy (lands), Modern (Jeskai Grinding Breach), and Pioneer (Abzan Greasefang/Temur Storm Herald) all in paper. I keep trying to get other people to play Canadian Highlander (the best format) but no one wants to play it with me in paper. Maybe one day.
I'm also eyeing up becoming a L1 judge just so there's a proper one in my local area.
You should absolutely become a judge if you feel the inclination. The process is a lot easier now than it used to be, so it shouldn't be an issue to get you in as long as you have the rules knowledge for it. Even if you're not running events having a recognized judge at events makes rules disputes so much easier.
If you have any questions about it let me know and I can hook you up with information. I was an L2 previously before I left the program so I've been around a lot and have a lot of knowledge.
Evaluated my collection recently--looks pretty sweet. I mainly just play high powered cube.
Love the game, hate the company. I would love to play real vintage magic without the game devolving to who can slap the most money on the table.
That said it was so much cheaper to get 2 laptops and load cockatrice onto them, fill them with tons of classic vintage and legacy decks, and put that on my board game shelf.
In highschool and college i played standard then took a break from 2011 until 2021. Now I have a group of friends who play edh on a monthly basis. I mainly like to play things that are non combat based wincons or combo decks. Mainly a blue player too.
pretty new to the hobby as my mate got me into it with the 40k comander deck precons, but i now have 4 edh decks i play 5/6 im cooking up and have spent far too much money on this cardboard crack.
decks i have for edh atm are dirmir mill deck,black discard, necrons with some tweaks and phrexian tribal.
Looking at the sheer time since I've first held a MTG card, I should be a total veteran. I first started "playing" (in a sense) at the age of 7 in 1999. The bigger brother of a friend started collecting cards in late 1995 or so, and we basically played by putting a huge pile of cards between us and randomly took cards we liked, not even using Mana or anything, just comparing attack and defense of creatures. We played in a better game structure until 2003 (still not really following all the rules), until the 8th edition hit stores. That was when I bought my very first own deck. We played almost every day back then till 2007 after which we more or less abruptly stopped. School had ended and we all went our seperate ways.
I wanted to get back into the hobby after that, but Magic Arena and similar stuff wasn't my kind of thing and I didn't find any groups that played. Lucky enough, the Lord of the Rings special edition brought a friend back into the game and right now we're just having a blast finding out about all the new game mechanics (what's a planeswalker, what the hell is milling and so on).
So yeah, all in all MTG has been a big part of my childhood, but I never got into it all the way.
I'm still playing a lot.
Mostly EDH, Draft and oldschool cube. To be honest, I've been a bit tired of recent shenanigans by Wizards of the Coast. Too many sets, too much powercreep, too focused on Commander. I should really get to selling a bunch of my collection because it's just too much these days.
I played mostly EDH and was thinking about getting back into it as one of my friends is. However, there's so many new sets coming out and I'm not a fan of the most recent collabs. I had a cube back on the day i would love to create again however don't have that many friends interested in it.
It's been years; used to play back when all there were were just physical cards. Built a sick red/white deck that stood up to a lot. Beloved Chaplain + Fire breathing was almost unfair. Moved a lot as a kid, MTG got me through a lot of awkward first-lunches at new schools. Used to love sitting down for hours coming up with a new deck around some creative new engine; finding those synergies between cards was great. Fiddled with MTGArena for a bit, nabbed every freebie they used to promo just in case I ever pick it up. Seems like they decommission quite a lot there, I wonder if my old deck stands up to the modern mechanics or if it's invalidated by decommissioned cards.
For the most part, I just play Arena online- purely because it's free.
Recently however, I have a small group of friends and we play paper EDH about once a month. However,even then I'm using an old deck, because Magic is otherwise a money out, and I try to be a responsible adult. But I will admit that being able to banter with your friends is something I miss when it comes to Arena. On Arena, I often play ruthlessly, being a big Spike. But in paper, I'm a Timmy, regardless of win or loss.
I used to enjoy it but WotC’s practices lately with pricing and product fatigue have taken me out of it. I have some Commander decks I’ll hang on to but I’m not actively seeking new product at this point.
Fucking same. I literally cannot keep up with sets and product releases anymore. I have my commander decks and a proxied power cube and that’s the extent of what I have anymore. I buy a fat pack randomly, but haven’t done that in at least six months.
I used to play almost daily back in high school - but I haven't touched it much since. My favorite deck was a rat deck built around Pack Rat (so obviously not tournament approved).
I can't really get into it online, it's just not the same as sitting across from someone, having a good time just trying to outwit each other. We all usually knew each other's decks by heart, so it was always a fun time if we wanted to reorganize and outplay each other.
That being said, I don't think I'd like to play in most environments where people currently play MtG - I'd really only play with some friends every once in a while. Just isn't something I can feel serious about anymore.
I love playing commander, but I only get to play once or twice a week.
I just did the Commander Masters Prerelease. Ended up running Rafiq of the Many (1WUG, 3/3, Exalted, if creature attacks alone, double strike). Very fun!