Magic and Loss, Part 1: Magic in the Cards
filfre.net
filfre.net
My son has introduced me to Yu Gi Oh and Pokémon but they both lack the fundamental elegance of MtG. It’s probably not fair to call Magic simple given the size and complexity of the rules at this point, but at the lowest level it really is just about combining simple things to achieve infinite variety. The best cards have short text and chime nicely with the theme of the card and wider story. The worst are like Yu Gi Oh, a page of complex tiny text that tries to do too much.
One of the saddest things is that, as you become better at the game with a deeper grasp of the rules and the cards, you never really recapture that feeling of the early days, when every card was exciting. Draft comes close (picking cards from random booster packs to try and piece together a deck) and Cube certainly captures the nostalgia (drafting with packs made of your favourite or most powerful cards). But still the smell of an opened booster takes you back.
Wizards has made many mistakes over the years and but Magic is extremely healthy and several recent sets have been all-time greats. Both Magic Online (the ugly but fairly complete online client that has _every_ card) and Arena (the more modern client that’s a bit simpler and easier to play but only has recent stuff) are actively maintained so you can play anything, anytime.
My only sadness now is that I never really made it to the pro tour, but there’s always time.
It’s the same with everything, isn’t it.
There’s a stage in life when you’re relatively young and it makes sense to go deeper into whatever inspires you. But as you grow older it’s probably good to make an effort to try more new things, to get back some of that feeling of discovery. It may not work out quite like that but it’s worth to keep trying.
The ability to experience raw, messy joy is something you’re not taught to cherish.
In my experience it is a good lesson for about 50% of absolute beginners, but a great lesson for 99% of folks who have just started grokking their "first" language etc.
I am now in the process of teaching an absolute beginner in my family and in this case I'll stick to my specialties because I can tell they'll become frustrated if they can't get _something_ working on their own. Thus, I bet they want clear "unstucking" help rather than a "let me google that with you". They are more concerned with the 1st thing, and not the broader "how does someone who know this stuff goes about learning?"
Anyway, I digress - in any case these initial lessons are great for me as a teacher to experience that discovery through them
In real life, every player has thousands of cards they’d happily dump on you if you just want to learn and have fun. You won’t be able to build a very competitive deck (or one up to date with current formats) but it’s fun to play over the table with friends.
The best investment for physical cards is probably the Commander format. This is a particularly social, multiplayer format, where all cards are legal (except for powerful stuff that’s been banned). You can build a deck over years and it’ll always be valid (if not good). This is also available on Arena, but most of the fun is getting round a table.
If you want to get competitive, there’s lots of content out there and many popular streamers to learn from. Magic Online is probably where the highest skilled players still play and test for tournaments but you’re unlikely to go infinite there.
I'm not sure how my friend group found Magic originally, but it was around like 3rd edition or so? We all really liked it and spend way too much money on cards. We would play around the kitchen table in a single game, 5, 6, 7 people all with decks a mile high building huge armies before someone finally gave in to break the peace and attack, usually resulting in everyone else attacking them. Great fun.
I had some access to the internet at work and during a break I started looking up stuff about Magic and found a deck that won a tournament recently. It was a red burn deck, and the tournament was a draft, which I had no idea what that meant, but I had a "winning" decklist and I had most of the cards in there. I traded with my friends for the other stuff I was missing and we set about to play. I think I killed everyone one after another with that "stupid deck" with cards the others just flat out gave to me because they were "bad". I took that deck to a tournament a couple of weeks later and found out what the difference between drafts and constructed decks were, mainly that my deck needed 20 more cards. I still get fourth place and a box of booster packs.
My friends one by one stopped playing not too long after that. I went on to win most local tournaments and play in a handful of pro tour events, but none were ever as much fun as sitting around the kitchen table.
I played with an all red deck with quick spells to inflict major damage (Fireballs, Lightning bolts, etc…) and Forks to double the power of those spells. The grown ups didn’t like it because “it was a cheap strategy”.
I sold all my Magic cards in college - I really wish I would have kept those.
It could be worse! I started playing in Dec 1993 when 2nd (Unlimited) and Arabian Nights came out, but sold all my best cards by the late 90s.
As a teenager I was pretty happy with the profit. It was probably a grand or two if I recall correctly, from selling my mint unlimited Lotus, multiple moxes, 40 dual lands, 4 Juzam Djinn, Time Walk, Chaos Orb, etc...
I was interested in RPGs and wargames in the early 90s. Even in my relatively backwater hometown there were events, stores or clubs were I could socialize over them.
It was all swept away by MtG within a few months, and I had the misfortune of not "getting it" myself and suddenly being left without anyone to play anywhere.
So I'm still repelled by card games to this day.
After playing with printed cards for a while, I went shopping for games with a similar vibe but a smaller pool of cards. Epic Card Game has been a lot of fun, especially in a draft format. I am not sure why it was never popular, though I assume the ridiculously un-googleable name has something to do with it.
120 unique cards for $15 was hard to beat, and I was since able to acquire the entire collection of cards for less than $100 (whether that's a good thing or a bad thing is up to you).
Other more eclectic mentions are Mindbug, Riftforce, Superjack (regular cards), Arcmage (opensource).
Yes, it was crack for kids.
It’s really possible that Cuttle was the predecessor to Magic.
That is a really captivating album.
Back in my day: https://web.archive.org/web/20220529033205/https://magic.wiz...
Search for "oldschool 93/94" and "Premodern"
Makes me feel better that it was just a video game :)