Rather, it looks like Redshark is exclusively for Pokemon, not a M:tG program that’s been patched to Pokemon.
Don’t Forget [||text=+[wither]"]Wither](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Search/Default.aspx?name=+wither) and [|. The entire Planar Chaos Block that turned the entire game on it’s ear, [Future Sight is the best “small” set IMHO] and the Un Sets.
Those just look broken to me. To say nothing of the fact of the changes to the game that WOTC would rather not remember.
Tolarian Academy any one?
Then again, if you can understand how to play Old Fogey and Blast from the past, you should be set.
Apprentice?
Man, that takes me back. I mean, I think I played one game with it. but man. **Next you are going to tell me that Magic will be 20 years old in 3 years. **
:eek: Oh wait.
Eh, Wither isn’t any more broken than Deathtouch, which has been part of the game from the beginning. And if you can get out anything with Annihilator, then you should have already won the game about three turns ago.
I didn’t mean that it was barely hanging on or anything – obviously they’re still successful if it’s up to its -nth expansion. I just meant that it’s still out there being played.
I still have cards in my closet that I haven’t touched for years. I doubt they are worth much though, as I only started playing around the time 4th edition came out, so I didn’t get any of the rarer cards from the first editions. I stopped playing sometime around 1998.
I took a look at some of the cards from more recent expansions, and it seems like they’ve become a lot more powerful for the mana cost. Was it just a gradual creep in each expansion having more powerful cards than the previous, or was there a specific one that did it? If before you could get a 5/5 creature with a specific mana cost, now it seems you can get a 6/6 with first strike, flying and kicks ass without any downsides.
Yeah, it happened slowly. Not all expansions are as powerful as the previous ones though. Onslaught Block, for example was weaker than Odyssey Block and Marquadian Masques was considerably weaker than Urza’s Block.
Aw crap, you’re right. I’m completely mixed up. Apprentice is the one that has the Pokemon patch–except it’s still really Magic-ish.
Well, technically, Apprentice is just a tabletop. We used to play chess on it too. I don’t really remember the details though.
Creatures have gotten much better. Spells in general have gotten weaker, although burn spells have gotten a bit better recently with Lightning Bolt returning and Burst Lightning being a direct upgrade to Shock. Basically anything that helps creatures attack is better, and anything that lets you win outside the attack step is weaker. Mana fixing reached its absolute peak (outside of the original duals) last year, but is still stellar; 3 color decks are very common at the top levels of play. Counterspells in general are much weaker, and blue instant card drawing is basically non-existent.
It is clear that Wizards has focused on making the game about creatures, but still prints a bunch of kooky stuff that allows cute combos to appease that section of the player base. There definitely is power creep for creatures, especially expensive ones, but this is a decidedly good thing - for a long time creatures over 3 (maybe even 2!) mana were basically unplayable unless they were effectively unkillable, won you the game immediately, or you got them into play by means other than directly casting them.
I think the way that power creep mostly happens is that at any given time, most cards are at a “normal” level of power, but there are a small handful that everyone agrees are broken. Right now, for instance, the head of that class is Baneslayer Angel, with the same price as the good ol’ Serra Angel, but bigger and with more abilities. But what happens is that gradually, as more and more of these broken-at-the-time creatures come out, they become part of the norm that everything’s compared against. For instance, Relentless Rats was considered broken, but since then, there have been enough Elf-lords printed that you can basically make a Relentless Rats deck out of Elves, and nobody even notices: There are at least four different Elves that cost 3 mana, are 2/2, and give all your Elves +1/+1, and all four of them have additional bonuses on top of that.
To add to what Chronos said, there has also been reevaluations of the game and its concepts. For example, remember how poor creatures were in the early days (overcosted, underpowered), especially considering how easy they were (and still are) to remove. My theory is that WotC simply does not want an entire class of card to be obsolete, as they were in the Draw-Go and heavy combo days.
Anyway, one note I’d mention to those surprised at the game still being around is that it’s actually undergone a HUGE upswell in popularity lately, thanks in good part, some say, to a couple of things: the introduction of never before printed cards in base sets for the first time since Alpha, and the big success of the XBox/PC game Magic: Duels of the Planeswalkers, which partly serves as mostly true to live introduction to the game and its concepts.
About the time you started playing, I made the decision not to be a competitive player. I had just gone to pro tour Dallas('96) and seen 95% of people walking around like people who had just had their dreams crushed. I did get to chat a bit with Brian Hacker, who was in the quarterfinals at the time, and he was in a good mood, but George Baxter(a local player I knew casually) had just been eliminated and despite winning over $5k, he looked crushed as well. It was then that I decided this game, as run by WotC and structured for competition, would not be a good choice for me. There was way too little room at the top, and half the top 64(the only ones which got money, and they were about a quarter of the overall group) had spent more on the plane ticket and hotel than they won. So they were going home in the top 25%, but actually poorer than if they had stayed home. This was happening all over the competitive circuit. Weekend road trips to pro tour qualifiers in another state became torture as you were probably coming back empty-handed, or even if you did win, you couldn’t afford to fly to Rome, or Paris, or wherever the hell the PT would be.
It was a huge treadmill of frustration, and it trickled down. The players who weren’t good enough/lucky enough to recoup their losses at the pro level would come back home and a significant fraction would bring their bitterness and disappointment with them. I had friends who went to the pro tour and had a great time and didn’t walk away angry and jaded, but it was about a 3-1 ratio the other direction among those I knew. The ranks of the frustrated would dominate the local shops and smaller events. When I say dominate here, I don’t mean they were malicious and evil. They wanted to get back into the pro ranks, so they would treat local events as practice for the pro level. They would build the most competitive deck they could, play in every event they could, and keep that hyper-focus throughout. What this led to was an extreme mismatch between the goals of the players. A casual or beginning player would sit down across someone who was trying to hone his skills for a world-class competition, and you’d get situations exactly like what drove CandidGamera away from his store.
Not only that, but it was a self-perpetuating cycle in most places. Without population density which allows the hyper-competitive/skilled to find each other and practice with each other, they would slaughter the ranks of the less driven/talented in their small town and make it to the big show again, only to fall again. It’s not really surprising, when you look at it, that most of the successful players come from densely populated areas. New York in the US was a major focal point, and the ridiculous population density of Japan has produced dozens of M:tG Pro tour stalwarts. I’d be willing to guess that if CandidGamera, or others who had similar experiences, looked up the players who wrecked their gaming fun on the DCI site, they’d find they had somewhere between 1-4 pro points lifetime. That’s someone who has played one or two PTs, but not succeeded at either.
It isn’t a co-incidence that I made my exit from competitive Magic right as the official Pro Tour made its ascendance. Prior to that each shop could run events, local owners may stake a large event, etc, but these tournaments were for bragging rights and small prizes, meant to drive traffic into game shops. They were generally friendly. You didn’t need a DCI number to play in an event, or have fun. That changed with the official way to keep score in Magic, the pro tour. I can’t imagine what M:tG would be today if it hadn’t built the DCI. If they had done more like Games Workshop did and just let those who enjoyed their game build the leagues and competitive aspects.
To their credit, or maybe it was just finally hearing the cries of shop owners who were tired of seeing customers like CandidGamera driven away, Wizards has recently introduced lots of rewards and a flatter tournament/prize structure. State/city championships, real leagues, casual nights, etc. Things which don’t directly feed into the tournament structure for the pro tour, and thus are safe havens for those who don’t want to get on that treadmill. I think this is a very good move. I just wish, to echo the sentiment of a store owner I know, that they had done it before they put me out of business.
There are essentially two markets for old cards, the collectors market, and the status market. The collectors market means you’ll probably be able to sell most of your older stuff, but the status market is much bigger and drives prices higher. If you have any of the tournament staples, Lighting Bolt, Wrath of God, Birds of Paradise, or even basic land, you’ll do better to sort them out and sell them individually. Plus the fashions change and some of the cards which have been languishing for years suddenly become wildly hot. I’d use the sets page of FindMagicCards.com to look up sets you have cards from and get a feel for which cards you might not know are hot are hot.
In your case, obviously you need the money, but anyone else sitting on old cards, I’d advise you to just hang on to them until you need the money. The values of the older cards(Legends and older for the most part) just keep going up and up.
We’ve recently been hosting game nights and have a bunch of kids from my daughters generation(~14-16) who have been coming. We’re teaching them how to play and they’re really enjoying it. Plus they get to learn from us as opposed to people only interested in using them as a stepping stone to get to the next pro tour.
There’s something about the physical experience of playing Magic which is very different from playing online. I’m not sure if it’s the cards(and whatever addictive substance they coat them with, which gets stronger with age) or just spending the time with friends, but I’d definitely keep some decks around if I ever decided to quit.
Squirrels became the infinite combo of choice when Squirrel Nest was printed. In conjunction with Earthcraft it forms a single-color two-card infinite combo. This is one of the more popular “budget” decks for the older formats like Legacy and Vintage.
I enjoyed those sets, and probably bought about four to five boxes of each. Sad that these days they’re only sought after for the basic lands.
This is a very good summary of the state of the game in terms of game balance. If you like creatures and turning cards sideways, this is your golden age probably. I would add that it is easier than ever to pick up the game because they’re building showcase decks(Premium Deck Series) and pre-constructed(Planechase, Duel Decks), or even partially pre-constructed(Intro Packs) decks to bring to casual events(Friday Night Magic, Open Dueling) which should keep you clear of the frustrated pro-tour wannabe faction for a while. And many of these decks are a lot of fun and really solid decks that you can learn a lot about how to play and how to build decks from. Not at all like the old pre-constructed decks, which were really just a bad joke.
Enjoy,
Steven
Although, one of the most amusing games I’ve ever seen was one of those ultra-lopsided matches you were complaining about. One of the players had clearly spent a mint on his deck (his mana base consisted entirely of true dual lands and Moxen, for instance), but had no skill whatsoever in how to use it. The other guy had a much more modest deck, but actually knew how to play. The rich player ended up losing to damage from his own Juzam Djinn (which the other player had neutralized but not killed) and Mana Vault (which he never bothered to untap, even after he had the mana to do so).
Man, I wish there were a way to play against people and I wouldn’t have to spend a buttload of money on cards. Magic was a fun strategy game and I played it a lot in high school, but I don’t want to shell out the cash I did shell out now for it.
Find a local shop that does sealed deck or draft. $15 for a few hours of fun is a better deal than you’ll get at the movie theater, and if you get lucky and hit some money cards to sell on ebay, that night is free.
Problem now is, there’s been so much stuff that’s changed in Magic since I played, I wouldn’t know where to start. Some of it seems obvious, but some of it is craaaazy.
I’d suspect that if you’re doing a draft or sealed deck competition, it would be pretty tough to get the right cards for the insane combo decks that might be floating around. Whenever I participated in sealed deck, basic strategies held the day, as creature and card advantage were pretty much the easiest paths to victory.
I’ve been out of magic for several years, but I never sold my cards. I briefly reconnected with the game when I moved into a new town that had a local shop, but my decks couldn’t stand up to the new stuff. Regardless, when I would show up, everyone I played with was very patient in explaining what each new (to me) effect did, and what card did what, etc.
But it worked both ways, as I would be playing old cards that even the “veterans” hadn’t seen in years, or heard of at all. I always got a kick when my opponent would ask, “what’s Stasis?”
Most of the super-competitive jerks that I dealt with in my most recent flirtation with the game were State Championship regulars. Though it felt awfully good the one time I went up against a Type I uber combo deck of one of them and beat him.
It was something involing a lot of zero-cost artifact cycling that lead to an absurd storm count and then some black spell with storm that drains two life from the opponent, I believe. This was on turn three.
I tapped two mana and played Trickbind to counter the Storm triggered ability. His wad shot, he just picked up his cards and forfeited.
(Split Second is probably my favorite card ability. I also once killed a guy with Krosan Grip - he’d loaded his mana pool up, and was starting some combo with slivers and I cut off the mechanism he was using to spend mana - so he manaburned himself to death.)
I sold a small lot of cards to a member of these boards in advance of the convention, and made a good starter sum. I’m in the last stages of sorting out the rest of the cards now. If Troll and Toad’s buy list prices hold at the convention, I could be looking at over a grand, not counting the Black Lotus. Tarmogoyf, Mana Crypt, Maze of Ith, Savannah - some of the remaining headliners after selling my other dual lands, Force of Wills, and the Tolarian Academy.
(Offered for the curious only - it’s too close to the convention for me to consider further offers to buy)
Eh, you’ll get used to it. 
Seriously, the new mechanics are new to everyone every year. Start playing limited at a pre-release when the cards are new to everyone, and start with a core set (Magic 2011 coming in a few weeks) or the first set of a block (Scars of Mirrodin coming this fall)
Not sure when you quit, but the only major changes to the game that would befuddle a Magic-playing time-traveller from 1994 are:
No interrupts, (almost) all abilities use the stack.
Artifacts work whether tapped or not.
Tapped blockers still do their damage.
No mana burn
Combat damage assignment is different, but rarely matters
And a few new evergreen mechanics:
Equipment
Planeswalkers
Indestructable
Scry
Intimidate
Everything else is either a block mechanic that went away after the block was over or just naming conventions. (Exile=RFG, Battlefied=In play, Aura=local enchantment, etc.)
(Deathtouch and Lifelink are technically newish evergreen abilities, but if you think of them as “thicket basilisk ability” and “spirit link”, you won’t be far off. Tribal can usually be safely ignored.)