Magic: The Gathering

[Melancthon]

Anybody play?  I call it Nerdcards and I love it. I only play casually (no Standard decks, etc.) but I have a decent collection of cards.  I just love the process of building a deck, going through the cards I have, test-playing and refining, perfecting my mana curve, going back to the drawing board and starting over....  I really think it's one of the best games ever made.

Some of the decks I'm running now that I especially like:

A Reanimator deck with Eldrazi (Annihilator two coming over on the third turn is damned scary).

A Turbo Fog deck with a stupid-nasty combo of Prismatic Omen and Last Stand.

A Naya deck with a sick Spearbreaker Behemoth/Novablast Wurm combo (not to mention an Armadillo Cloaked Uril the Mist Stalker- 9/9 Trample Lifelink untargetable beatstick).

A Blue Black Vice Deck that bounces your shit and is incredibly frustrating to play against.

If you play lets talk about it!  If you don't play but you're interested I'll tell you about it.  It's too much fun to be ignored.

[Zaen]

Hmm... I haven't played in years. I've had some great decks as of recent, but a friend of mine once destroyed his opponent in a series of moves that made him draw 1000+ cards... Yeah, that was intense.

[VampragonLord]

magic is such a nerdy game.....holy shit i want that novablast wurm.... ill trade an eye of ugin for it? >.>

[Kaijyuu]

I have one deck.


It is a dwarf deck. It is awesome. Though slow.

[Eat_an_Octorok]

I spent a bunch of money on a crappy White deck a long time ago. Swords to Plowshares was the only smart purchase I made. Did the n00b thing of building a Circle of Protection deck. Slow as hell, and rarely ever won.

I've gotten a ton better at deck building now, but I prefer to play Yu-Gi-Oh, as it's cheaper and I like the art more. Plus, it has CARD GAMES ON MOTORCYCLES!

FTK and OTK are my deck building specialty. If not that, then swarming fast enough to win by turn 2, or 3 at latest. The best strategy is to defeat an opponent before they can do anything. All strategies fail to work when they don't even get off the ground to start.

magic is such a nerdy game.....holy shit i want that novablast wurm.... ill trade an eye of ugin for it? >.>

The fact that you mention real cards means you're one of those nerds.

[philsov]

*gets out old man cane*

I picked it up back in... 94?  95?  It was 4th edition for the mainline and the current expansions were Ice Age and Alliances.  I kept buying a decent stream of starter/booster packs (maybe once a month-ish) up through 98/99 (Tempest/Weatherlight, iirc) when most of the circle kind of seperated and/or got bored with the game and/or discovered girls.

I really liked how it was back then; there was a lot of strategy and total deck thought instead of (and I hate to make an example out of you mel) a handful of OP cards that just carry the player to victory.  As these sorts of decks became more and more common we eventually established a "no rares or greater" rule for many of our decks which really kept the spirit alive.  Course, blatantly OP stuff like channelling + fireball got shot down quickly.  But still, that's part of the reason why the game got less popular with us; it became less about the player/deck and more about specific cards.

My favorite deck to date is my "weenie roast" deck -- it's white/red featuring a lot of white weenies (especially ones with banding and first strike) and red direct damage spells, complete with a decent spread of buffs and some light self healing.  Dwarven warriors + firebreathing is siiiick combo for its commoness, btw.  Favorite cards in the deck include Temper, Shiv's Embrace, and the obligatory Lightning Bolt.

I still have most of the cards -- whipped them out back when I worked at the Summer Camp from 01-05 and traded out some of the older ones for newer ones... its weird playing with someone like 6 years younger than you in that whenever EITHER of you lays down a card they/I just pick it up to see what exactly it is and then keep playing.  Like, in one or two of the expansions I bought a lot of there were plenty of Shadow-types.  Basically these creatures exist on another plane and can only be blocked or block other shadow creatures.  Sooo... when I play them, little Johnny can do -absolutely nothing- about it and I end up stomping his face in by default.  Similarly some of my monsters who had "snow-covered land walk" were equally useless as snow-covered lands died about in about 96.

My other main decks include:
-Black / red = the opposite of my weenie roast deck; a lot of death spells and moderate to strong red monsters.  Favorite spells included Animate Dead and Tortured Existence.  
-Pure green; creature heavy with plenty of trample/regeneration + a few walls, some self-healing, and a few oddballs like the Lure+Venom combo, Elvish Fury (weaker giant growth with buyback), and some War Drums type enchantment that when pumped with some mana puts the next card in my library summoned and into play if it was a creature.
-All color = laugh it up, but this was during the era of the Slivers.  Rounded off with the coat of arms artifact, if able to survive into turn 4-ish there was little to be done by the other guy to prevent defeat.  This is also the home of all my other gold cards, the most OP of which after Sliver Queen is Vhati Il-Dal (I think I spelled it right?), especially when coupled with a simple prodigal sorcorer.

Never was a big fan of the black/blue combo which came into power as I was in personal decline with the game.  I understood the merit with counterspells and deck control and death and life draining, but it just wasn't my style.  Dunno.  Same goes for the white/greens I've played against.  MAN, do those guys rack up on the healing.

To date the most expensive card I've randomly gotten in a pack is Final Fortune ($10, at its prime.  woo.) Never got enough into the game to ever buy singles, though when I did some more serious trading with random people we usually used a semi-current gaming magazine with exchange rates to get rough equivalents for the high-pricers.

[VampragonLord]

The fact that you mention real cards means you're one of those nerds.

gasp! really? i had no idea!

@phil, if you wanna see something truely depressing, look at the newest set, the eldrazi are just beyond ridiculous.

[Zaen]

Hmm.. the last deck I bought was with Shapeshifting, it was a Kithkins/Giants deck. It's pretty much set, as everything works together so well without anything being super powerful. I do have a nice Red/Green deck where I have plenty of Trample cards as well as tons of attachments to add First Strike and tons of instants such as Monsterous Growth. I also have a nice White/Red Deck with a slew of Gustcloaks and a few Bushido, Doublestrike/first strike samurais, one of which is a flip. I tend to play a defensive game until about mid-game where I get the lands I need to just unleash an onslaught.

My favorite pure power deck, though, is my Ogre/Demon deck. It's from the Kamigawa set with a few of my own inputs. Essentially, it's full of some low cost powerhouses and Overblaze + an Ogre, where if you have an odd number of life and your opponent is even, you can win without much to stop it. I guess Red protection would be the only safeguard, but even then, I think I had a way to get that Overblaze back again.

I'm pretty sure those decks are like that, but I haven't checked them in a while. But I do know for sure that I have a throwaway Blue/Black deck that's essentially worthless due to the fact that all my good Black cards are either in another of my decks, a Green/Black from Onslaught with my own tweaks, or the Ogre/Demon deck. So it's got some crappy zombies as well as some of my nice blue cards, but I really just put it together for when I want to take it easy on someone new to the game or not very good.

I need someone to play against severely.

[The Damned]

Funny how this thread pops both a week after my idle curiosity gets me back into it and around the time that the spoiler for M11 completes.

For the record, Leyline of Sanctity looks stupid. It's basically a free Ivory Mask that screws over Red and Black in a Standard where White is already the strongest color. Ugh.

I've always been interested in Magic, but I rarely been able to play it considering the prohibitive cost of everything. As such, I'm curious what the opinions on the relatively new "mythic rare" move by WoTC. I for one don't like it. The fact that relatively recent, in-print card can get up to $50+ is ridiculous.

[Melancthon]

magic is such a nerdy game.....holy shit i want that novablast wurm.... ill trade an eye of ugin for it? >.>

No way, I traded a kid my Omnoth, Locus of Mana for two of them, and they are ridiculous and fun.  Plus I never hard-cast my Eldrazi, they're either getting reanimated or I'm sacrificing four Eldrazi Spawn for Hand of Emrakul.  My Eldrazi Spawn deck plays a couple Dragon Appeasement, so every time I sacrifice a creature I get to draw   .  I managed to draw my entire library down to the last card one game and win with the handful of burn I drew.

I hate to make an example out of you mel

No worries, I have no shame in doing what it takes to win!  Besides, my friends and I pooled our cards and all build and share decks, so nobody is getting destroyed because they can't afford the good stuff.  We have about twenty decks, and while most of them are built to be as nasty and brutal as possible, plenty of them are just for fun.  We've got an Enchanted Evening deck that doesn't win that often but win it does it does so by taking control of every permanent in play with Aura Thief.  The first time I won a multi-player game with that deck against people who didn't know what was coming was just hilarious.  "That's mine now.  Yeah that too.  Yes, your lands too.  All of it.  It's all mine!"

I also have a five color sliver deck that's gone through a lot of re-builds.  One of the best tools I've found for it so far is a combination of Distant Melody (draw cards equal to the number of Slivers you control), Fires of Yavamaya (creatures you control have haste) and the Gemhide (all Slivers tap for a mana of any color).  When it goes off you can draw and cast a bunch of Slivers which can immediately attack or tap for mana to cast more Slivers.  It's good stuff.

[CT5Holy]

Damned: Just play Pauper (commons only) or Casual. And wait for cards to rotate out of Standard so they (hopefully) get cheaper.
Vamp: The Eldrazi are expensive =/. I mean yes, you can ramp up and stuff, but one lone Eldrazi won't do much against a board full of guys and you're at low life.
philsov: There still is a ton of strategy involved. Lots of decisions - should I counter this now/use a removal spell, why did he attack a 1/1 into my 4/4, etc. There are so many more (and likely better) examples of tough decisions out there.
Speaking of decisions, drafting is great. Since you're building your deck from scratch, you have to make lots of decisions to build a good deck, and then you have to play it! It's a lot of fun and a great way to play competitively or casually without needing to spend too much money.

I really like to play, but recently I haven't been feeling the urge to build decks. Although, this last week I built this really fun (to play as, not so much fun to play against) toolbox deck. Cephalid Illusionist + Shuko to mill library, Krosan Reclamation for Battlefield Scrounger -> get it into play, stack your deck. Deal with threats accordingly, get Solitary Confinement out, win. Probably my strongest deck.
It seems like for every one decent deck I build, I end up building like five garbage ones. But it's still fun.

Another fun way to play is Elder Dragon Highlander (EDH).

Oh, speaking of slivers, Dormant Sliver -> lots of slivers -> play them, including Frenetic Sliver -> get rid of your Dormants so you can attack ftw.

[VampragonLord]

the eye reduces their cost by 2 and lets you fetch them.... cmon <.< i havent managed to pull an eldrazi yet, though theyd fit SO perfectly into my deck (big creatures + HUGE mana rush)

i miss my rainbow deck.... 13/13s for WUBRG >.<

[SentinalBlade]

philsov: There still is a ton of strategy involved. Lots of decisions - should I counter this now/use a removal spell, why did he attack a 1/1 into my 4/4, etc. There are so many more (

This is true to an extent.

I have been playing since revised(so i picked up the game before i could understand wtf puberty was).

I miss the days where the power 9 were the only greatly over powered cards (black lotus, stasis, and so forth)....

I recently went to my first tournament in 2 years. The guy who won had spent 430$ on his deck, buying as many Jace and other cards as possible... Of course, every other player there (there was about 40) had...well pretty much the same deck.

It has become about getting those "select few" cards, and knowing when to play them... its no longer diverse... half of the rares and 3/4ths of the commons and uncommons never actually see real play. I came in 8th. Which isnt to bad, but i think its because NO ONE was expecting me to play certain cards (soulquake, for instance. which is devastating, but not as devastating as many of the others that were being played)...they kept waiting for me to pull out those big guns everyone else was. I asked Greg(the guy who owns the shop) how much money the top 5 put into their decks(everyone is required to register their deck, to make sure nothing banned is gonna sneak out in a semi-final)...  four put in just over 200, with the winner putting in the aforementioned 430...

All four of those people had the same deck.

It just isnt fun...its like playing a tournament with decks right out of the box. There is no diversity, and everyone is Expecting the SAME cards to be played...there's nothing new...its just a matter of knowing "when to hold them, when to fold em" kinda thing... And that is less actually less strategy, and more like your taking a chance and hoping their is  a better opportunity to counter a spell, or some such

TL;DR
I'm going back to Legacy tournaments, and casual play.

[BloodyBlade]

Play Yu-Gi-Oh.