…and want to talk about it?
Didn’t seem like there was general discussion thread for it. What do people think?
It’s a license to take money from nerds and give it to WotC? 
I played for years, but I certainly don’t miss it. Though I should probably dig all the old cards out of the closet and see if I can get anything for them.
I play, but pretty casually, just a lot of Commander with some friends and an FNM here or there. I’m up for discussion.
I’ve played obsessively for years, but only limited, and more recently, almost only cube. Theros and M15 were both big misses for me as far as limited environments, so I’m holding out hope for Khans.
I’ve been playing more or less steadily since late 1994.
It’s a great game. These days I’m pretty much just a limited player because I’m not interested in investing enough time and energy in the constantly changing constructed format du jour. I do enjoy legacy, which changes much more slowly and requires little additional investment beyond the cards I’ve acquired over the years and will very occasionally draft enough of new sets to put together a competitive type 2 deck.
I also love cube, though my local player base of people interested in cube has shrunk recently, so I can’t really get together a good 8-man any more.
I have some old cards and still occasionally play with friends, but I’m way out of date: I just gave Theros a cursory glance, and if there’s a set past that now (I think there is?), I don’t even know what it is.
This also describes me pretty well.
Although my old group invented a format that is great for casual, relaxing Magic on a fairly level playing field: Ante league. You crack three packs (of basically anything in print aside from Modern Masters) and examine your pool. You can choose to pull one color completely, everything else must go in your deck, along with any number of basics. Each game is played for ante, flip cards until you hit something other than a basic land, winner of the game keeps both cards and adds them to their deck. You can do one on one games, 2 Headed Giant, several player free for alls, whatever. If a deck gets too bad (or too good!) you can retire it and crack three new packs. Great format to pass the time between rounds of cube draft or whatever.
I made a thread about it back in February when I was re-introduced to the game by my son (I once played back in college from Legends through Ice Age).
I’m still playing, mainly Standard Constructed games with the kid and then we try to make either Friday Night Magic or Monday Night once a week. I prefer to play draft but Monday nights they draft Conspiracy which I don’t have any interest in. On those nights I’ll bring a Std Constructed deck but lately I’ve just been casually playing towards the bottom of the rankings with more “kitchen table” oriented decks (Hey, let’s try to make an Inspired deck!) rather than competing against the Mutavault, Sphinx’s Revelations, Supreme Verdict yadda-yadda decks at the top. That’s fine by me since I’m mainly there to share an experience with my teenage son and spend a night out of the house.
We do have a big box of older expansion cards, mainly bought from cheap mixed lots on eBay that we sometimes build Commander decks from but I wouldn’t try to play a tournament with one of those creations.
Ugh, I knew that JSexton was going to make it here before me.
I played a lot from 1996-2002 or so (weekly tournaments, PTQs, Grand Prixs, and 6 Pro Tours) but scaled back as my group of friends broke up. I met my wife in 2004 and that dealt a death blow to my serious Magic playing days. I still play Magic online here and there, maybe once or twice a week, and about 4 paper tournaments a year. I hope to increase that as time goes on (and as my 6-year-old becomes able to play alongside me), but for now it’s pretty casual.
Oh, and it just dawned on me that I know MaxTheVool IRL and will in fact be teaming with him for the upcoming team Grand Prix in San Jose in January.
Did you play around the SF bay area by some chance?
Haha Ninja’d!
I don’t know if you tried it or not, but Conspiracy draft is actually incredibly fun. One of the best recent draft sets, IMO.
The drafting is fun. However, PLAYING it requires playing free-for-all multiplayer, which I have zero interest in, due to the politics of it. If I wanted to play diplomacy, I’d play diplomacy.
However, adding some of the draft-matters cards from Conspiracy to a Cube is, imho, awesome.
That was my conclusion as well, Commander works better for free-for-all. Conspiracy works well enough as a regular draft set, with two-player games, all the Will of the Council and Tempting Offer mechanics still function, just not as intended.
Yeah, but I can’t use the cards in standard constructed which is a significant part of what makes the $15 draft fee palatable.
Not true! Do an 8.man draft, then split into 2-man Two Headed Giant teams. Play 3 matches, round-robin, against the other 3 teams. No politics or diplomacy required, but you still turn on the multiplayer aspects.
Fair, although a reasonable number of rares are worth good money and can be traded for standard cards. (Did you know that a foil Lore Seeker is worth over $100?)
That’s exactly what I would do if I drafted conspiracy again, although it does render the voting and dethrone aspects far less interesting than intended.
I agree about keeping politics out of Magic. I even play Commander as one on one games. I appreciate some people like it but it isn’t for me.
I have never played limited but would like to one of these days. I always play constructed.
I’ve quit twice, and sold my cards after quitting the last time, but have gotten back in on a more limited basis because some of my friends play casually.
As long as I don’t get caught up trying to collect the game, as I did in the past, then I can enjoy it on a limited basis.
One of the two ante games I ever played, I won because of politics. Really simple politics, though: It basically came down to sibling rivalry, and I wasn’t one of the siblings.