I wasn’t bluffing last time I bluffed this time, but I was holding a card, and the mana, last time which would have saved me. It is the same card I used to counter your Congregate right before I killed you. Dromar’s Charm. I had five life available to me whenever I needed it(well, against your deck at least. I wouldn’t have counted on that life being available if you were playing countermagic), in addition to my blockers and such.
[Palpatine]Oh I’m afraid your little friends would not survive… Now witness the firepower of this fully-armed battle station![/Palaptine] Where’s an :evil: smilie when you need it?
As far as rematches go, I’m game and I’m sure Moxmaiden is as well. I don’t mind dying, although being picked of early every game because I’m percieved as the biggest threat gets kind of old(especially in games where I’ve been mana-screwed and am clearly no threat, then being a target is kind of like having lemon juice rubbed in a paper cut), but I can cope. Our friends from out of town said they’d like to make it a more regular thing as well and Ziactrice had a conflict with an SCA activity that weekend, but is interested in future games. So if we get you, Balance, Ziactrice, our out-of-town friends, and ourselves, then we’ve got a seven-player game. I’ve got a couple of other friends who may be interested as well. Alternative formats, drafts, etc, may be doable as well with advance planning.
I got in about just before The Dark came out and left before the Urza cycle. It was great fun, played till many a sunup, but got burned out. Managed to sell my high dollar cards, but this was after everybody started doing it, so didn’t get as much. Gave most of the rest away, but still keep around a few decks for keepsakes.
I’d have to say my favorite card was the Ernham Djinn. A 4/5 critter that can potentially come out the first turn. As it looked like the two djinns in the card were frolicking, I’d spin the card 90 degrees then spin it back while saying “ah HA ha HAH! ah HA ha HAH!” and piss everybody off.
I also liked the Nettletooth Djinn, even though it was a sucky card, because I’d always laugh like a mad loon when I brought it out. The critter looked like he was about to claw his own face off, which is terrifying to behold, because do you really want to fight an enemy who’s willing to hurt himself more than you can hurt him?
Also, there was some musician card, which would give other critters continual upkeep. Bring him out and say in a rough voice, “This is Blind Willie. An’ YOU goin’ to JAIL!”
It was all about presentation. The cornier, the better.
At one point I had a deck based on Musicians. That card was fun. Lots of Instill Energies, Twiddles, and Norritts. Some Urza’s lands to be albe to keep the Musicians around for a bit as well as some graveyard recursion to be able to bring them back.
We played some silly games. I recall one game, way back when, where only Witch Hunter’s, Clones, and Vesuvan Doppelganger’s were allowed. This meant that pretty much every creature would be a Witch Hunter. Since the Witch Hunter does nothing except run around denouncing creatures as Heretics(and bouncing them back to a player’s hand) and poking players when there are no good creature targets, it was a very bouncy/pingy game with lots of Monty Python references. No one expects the Spanish Inquisition! and cries of “A Witch! A Witch! Burn her, BURN HER!”
It was silly and it took forever to ping someone to death when your creatures rarely stayed on the table long enough to recover from summoning sickness
I started playing just as the Masques block was being phased out, and Invasion was being phased in, so I suppose I started rather late, relative to when most of you started playing.
I never played in any tournaments for cash prizes, but I played in a few for other prizes, like booster packs and comic book store gift certificates (usually to the store the tourney was being held at).
Always constructed play. I never enjoyed draft. I guess it’s due to the fact that I don’t have complete control over how my deck is built. 'Course, people always say, “but that’s the fun part!”
Oh well. I guess I’m a control freak. (But, oddly, I can’t stand blue - playing it or playing against it.)
The Internet, as far as MTG sites go, wasn’t too prevalent back then, so “netdecking” wasn’t very rampant, which is why I thought constructed was so fun. Lots of different decks to see.
Lately though, at most tourney’s, all the decks are the same, with a few rogue decks here and there. For the most part though, everyone runs some variation of the 5 most popular decks, which is why I stopped going to tournaments.
I still play today, but very rarely. Maybe about once a month, just casually, with friends.
I used to play often enough, but then someone broke into my house and stole all of my cards! :mad: They took all but three decks that my brother and I still have back home.
Bloody thieves. Just as well, though. It’s quite addictive.
But of course. Ferinstance, whenever you cast a Basalt Monolith, you have to tap the three lands for the mana one at a time, while humming the first notes of “Also Sprach Zaruthstra”. And a friend of mine and I had a house rule that, whenever you used a mana source for “one mana of any color”, and didn’t need a specific color, you had to choose a different color than any chosen thus far (so, for instance, if you had a bunch of forests and a Bird of Paradise out, you were allowed to use the Bird for red to cast a fireball, but if you had a bunch of mountains and a Rainbow Vale, then you had to tap a mountain for the red and the Vale for an auburn mana, or a yellow mana, or ultraviolet, or plaid, or whatnot).
And Mtgman, I agree that many-player games are a hoot. Despite my social deficiencies, I always seem to manage to out-diplomacy my opponents to win those. One of the only two times I ever played for ante, I won thanks to the sibling rivalry between my opponents. And it’s a happy, happy day when one of your opponents kills all creatures on the table, while forgetting that you have Nightsoil in play (he was planning on Resurrecting his Shivan Dragon, but of course, that dragon was the first thing to fertilize my Saprolings).
Came in around the Revised days, like a lot of folks did. Mostly a Limited player for sanctioned events, and plenty of Type I and 5-Color games casually. I’m also close to getting my Level 1 judge certification.
Magic is a more than a game. It’s a remarkable intellectual tool. I love inventing and/or playing around with unusual formats, ranging from the big formats (Ironman, 5-Color, rotisserie draft) to the little (Mini-master, 15-card, Three Card Highlander). Small decks with restricted card pools often reduce to a single optimal deck, and it’s a great challenge to try and find it.
Other players? I know Evil Death is a serious player, but I don’t know if he still posts here.
I started playing in 1994 or thereabouts. The last cards I bought were a box of Unglued…just because.
I was a high school teacher at the time, and about ten kids would play in the cafeteria every day after school. (This was before most school districts had banned Magic, of course.) Once they saw that I had cards, they invited me to play.
The first time I went, I put my 75-card green and red “inflatable” deck on the table. In response, my opponent set up a stack of about 300 cards, and then explained that when those ran out, he’d get the rest of the deck out from the shoebox that he kept them in.
My response? “You won’t run out.”
Fifteen minutes later…
After a few days, another teacher came by to see what we were doing. Within a week or two, he was hooked. He spent all of his afternoons playing Magic with the students, with a briefcase full of decks he had made. He even gave up his previous life-long hobby (sailing) for Magic. His wife was a bit unhappy about that, apparently.
Max: Booster draft. Don’t know the specific format. (BTW, hope all went well Saturday.)
Thanks for the pointers. I do mostly go for creatures, particularly flying ones, as I’ve always been fond of those. It just didn’t seem like there were very many of those going around. I also went for removal spells. Typically, I had either a green-white flyer/+X/+X deck or something combined with red for the direct damage spells. I get killed by having decks that either don’t respond quickly enough or respond too weakly or ineffectively.
I (and my roommate) chalked it up to just one of those things that’ll improve with experience. Thing is, I’m not sure if I want more draft experience. Other than seeing a different face on the other side of the table, there isn’t anything about it I really look forward to.
Started draft play with Onslaught block, so no worries there.
The tribal stuff in Onslaught is what I think caused me the most uncertainty when drafting. I was never sure if taking, say, the Timberwatch Elf was a good idea, because what if the next few packs had no elves? Or if I took a Goblin only to find that all that was left were Rock Jockeys? So I frequently wound up taking white fliers, which were either Birds or Bird Soldiers, and elves for mana and +X/+X bonuses. There weren’t enough of those to make a decent deck, though, and when those types weren’t available, I bombed.
Keeping it within two colors or so was no problem; I think I only splashed a third color in once.
Drafting in Mirrodin was a little easier, since there’s no tribal stuff and most artifacts take colorless mana. I could afford to use a color even though I only had a handful of decent cards to work with. It’s probably why I got away with a 3-color (green-red-black deck).
Thanks for the advice. The roommate says he wants to play in at least two more drafts, so there’ll be opportunities for improvement in my near future.
I started in '95, went through '99, and started up again this year. I’ve been a judge at DCI events, which is fun because you get a whole crapload of decks and boosters for your time and you can sell those off or play drafts with them.
I was into the game. Into the meta game. We went to tournaments hundreds of miles away. My friends were all on the pro tours. We lived, breathed, and slept magic.
Then I graduated college and just stopped.
Right now I just play group games on Sunday nights. I’ve tried playing just random decks thrown together. They’re fun to play but don’t stand a chance in hell of actually winning against zombies and scouts and guards and elves and any other deck that if the other players just leave them alone for long enough builds up an army that’s impenetrable.
Sure, I could play wrath of god or 'geddon, but there’s an almost unwritten rule that we don’t.
Last week I built a mostly proxied type I deck guaranteed to kill every opponent before their 6th turn. It did. That was fun, but I promised them I’d never ever play it again. Ever. Sigh. If I had $3000 to spend, this is the deck that would win most type I tournaments I think.
So I’m trying a different route: all green, insanely cheap huge creatures. Those “hidden” enchantments that give you a 5/5 for one green? Copperhoof Vorracs, which aren’t great 1 on 1 but in group games come out to be a 1000/1000 creature trampling through. It should be fun.
Me = AudreyK’s roommate, as some of you may remember. Between the two of us, we have way more cards than either one of us would have expected coming into it.
Obviously not a whole lot of history here, having picked up the game only about a year ago. Still, liking it a lot. It’s a fun ride.
And now, since this was originally going to be an “Ask the” thread anyway…
Tell me more about MtG Online. You pay a monthly fee, and the usual bucks for more cards and draft participation? Seems to me like it would cost more money to do this than to play “cardboard” Magic. Is it just paying a premium for always being able to find a game?
Also, tell me about tournaments. Limited, in particular (that’s the format that would be Onslaught & Mirrodin blocks, and 8th?). Do you have to dump big money into putting together a successful deck (particularly to compete with all the “netdecks” vandal mentioned)? I mean, I’m willing to spend a little money buying singles (or maybe I should just play more booster drafts, huh? ), but I don’t want to drop $60 into a deck or anything…
My Catholic high school has not only not banned the game, they now have an officially-sanctioned club for it (when I was in HS, the club wasn’t official, just a bunch of guys gathering in the geometry teacher’s room on lunch break). Those were happy, happy days.
Kind of… there is no monthly fee, but any cards cost you money. The economy ends up (deliberately) being very much the same as the real world magic card economy… commons are worthless, chase rares are $20 or so. I and all my MTGO-playing friends have plenty of spare commons to give away, but I’m not really planning on doing any MTGOing until Mirrodin comes out online (mid-November)
**
Limited tournaments are all I ever play. The difference between “Limited” and “Constructed” is not one of what sets are legal… that would be difference between different types of constructed tournaments. Rather, in a limited tournament, you show up with no deck, as does everyone else, and build a deck based on a limited supply of cards given to you. The most basic type of limited is “sealed deck”, in which everyone gets a starter deck and two booster packs and builds the best deck they can with those cards. More sophisticated is a “booster draft”, in which players take turns picking cards, like a draft in the NFL, sort of.
Anyhow, as you can probably, I heartily recommend limited tournaments to all and sundry. Prereleases (the first limited tournament when a new cardset comes out) in particular tend to be fun affairs.
Though not all of it is written very well, this thread on the official WotC message board is the kind of thing that I think makes Magic so fun and special. I chuckled at nearly every story.
You can find more such cool stories by looking up the Mirrodin card Mindslaver.
I have a big box of random cards, which we draft with by randomly pulling cards out in sets of 15 and treating them as boosters. This results in a never-ending supply of new and interesting things happening. Anyhow, I’ve drafted a terrible 5-color deck with a channel and a fireball, and a bunch of big artifact creatures to go with the channel, and a tinker to go with all the big artifact creatures. (I also had an elvish spirit guide, so I could theoretically channel turn 1).
Anyhow, here’s how it goes:
Opponent: land, go
Me: land, go
Opponent: land, go
Me: land, channel, pay 15 life, cast teeka’s dragon, cast phyrexian hulk
Opponent: EOT shock you, untap, land, ensaring bridge
Me: d’oh, do nothing
Opponent: cast 2/1 shadow creature
me: do nothing
opponent: attack you down to 1
me: draw blue mana, cast copy artifact on ensnaring bridge (with 1 card in hand)
He won a few turns later when he drew some more direct damage, but was one of the most amazing things I’ve ever seen.
There are actually (for a change) quite a few entertaining stories from the most recent Pro Tour… you can read some of them here . Ahh, Mindslaver
I was apparently thinking of preconstructed, and looking at either standard or extended. So is this dangerous territory for a relative newbie?
On a similar note, how suicidal would it be to take a “decking deck” built around Raven Guild Masters, Scalpelexis, Crafty Pathmages, and a couple Vexing Arcanixes (I suppose I should use Millstones, but I don’t have any as of yet) to even a small preconstructed tourney?
I never really owned any cards. Spring of my junior year in college (early '94) I played a lot with a friend who had a few decks. That summer I got a job in a comics and hobby shop at least in part with the idea of buying a lot of magic cards with my paycheck. (This was some time after Arabian Nights came out, and I remember that Legends came out that summer.) However, by the time two weeks had passed and I got my first check, I saw what the game could do to people – and their wallets – and I decided to have none of it; the only cards I ever got were a Circle of Protection Red and a Tim that folks playing in our back room discarded.
The one deck that I have never ever beaten was a mill/Kjeldoren Outpost deck. Always always won and with no creatures to boot. Man, I wish I could remember what-all was in that deck!
I tell you, the terminology for this game is a no-man’s land. A huge minefield. You just stepped on another one. The term you’re looking for is “constructed”. “preconstructed” is typically reserved for decks sold “pre-constructed”. This includes theme decks from each large expansion, special release sets like the “Deckmasters” set, Battle Royale, Beatdown, World Championship decks, etc.
It looks to me like you’re wanting to play in a constructed tournament of either Extended or Standard format. I’m afraid I haven’t followed the current metagame well enough to advise you as to the chances of a decking deck. If you’re looking at Extended, look for Grindstone as an alternative to Millstone. You’re going to need some mana acceleration and/or some protection for your fragile critters. Consider the Thran Turbine which can power Grindstones, Millstones, or Vexing Arcanix. As an uncommon from Urza’s Saga they shouldn’t be too hard to come across.
I bluffed this time, but I was holding a card, and the mana, last time which would have saved me. It is the same card I used to counter your Congregate right before I killed you. Dromar’s Charm. I had five life available to me whenever I needed it(well, against your deck at least. I wouldn’t have counted on that life being available if you were playing countermagic), in addition to my blockers and such.
