Magic the Gathering: somebody please explain its appeal

[greenslime1951]

@Bosstone

Would you rather the cards had no text, and instead you had to refer to a rulebook several volumes large to see what the rules say the card you want to play does?

No, I’d rather there were certain things you couldn’t do, regardless of some card surfacing that says you can. This is for the same reason that I play chess, and I don’t want the Wizard Chess Company to proclaim that there are now new pieces that can levitate or teleport or give other pieces the plague. Or that I play baseball, and the ball is round and there are four bases, and that will still be true if I play baseball next week. I don’t need the constant stimulation of everything being in flux; within the confines of the rules of those games, there’s still infinite variety. You don’t need to introduce new elements into a game every month to keep it interesting–not if it’s a good game.

Of course, Wizards’ motivation for doing that is something other than simply trying to make the game better.

[Chimi]

@greenslime1951

You don’t need to introduce new elements into a game every month to keep it interesting–not if it’s a good game.

And in my opinion, Wizards doesn’t need to introduce new elements to make it an interesting game. If they went outta business today, quite a big chunk of the players would stop playing…but quite a few of use would be sad, but continue to play and update our decks!

Part of the appeal of the game, for me, was prereleases. Back when you would have hints, and reveals of this whole new world, with new cards, new abilities, which all need new ways of thinking, and then you get up in the morning, hang out with a bunch of people who share your interests, then break open your packs, have a whole mess of cards in front of you, 45 minutes to build whatever you can out of them, surrounded by people doing the same thing, and knowing that you have to beat them. Reading cards, trying to figure out what fits together, trying to work out the economy of your resources, trying to decide which of several different decks you can build with what you got. Then sitting down in front of a stranger, or a friend, or a bitter Friday Night Magic rival, knowing that the only thing between you and loss is the choices you’ve made, and your ability to read your opponent, bluff him, and push home the damage.

The appeal is the same as any competitive game. Sitting down across from your foe, and matching wits until one of you goes down. Learning, taking what you’ve learned, and making yourself better equipped for the next fight.

Now, I was never the best, so I got my joy other ways too. I loved to put together decks for my local games, Friday Night Magic and the like, that really shouldn’t have worked, and making them work. Being the oddball. The dark horse. Seeing the look in the eye of a player who knew he was better than me when I pull off silly trick with a card he would never use. Someone linked to Door to Nothingness earlier. It’s a bad card. It’s awful. And there’s nothing better than standing up and announcing to the room that you just kicked someone through it.

[MaxTheVool]

@Jragon

ETA: Max, while tournaments that are sealed deck or draft even the playing field a bit, an ubergamer who’s been intently following the new release is going to have bounds better luck than a casual player. Especially drafts, drafts are horridly newbie unfriendly.

Sure, but at that point, you’re just in the same place that you are with any game… someone who is better is better. In constructed magic, someone who is trying to get into the game faces two hurdles: other players are better, and other players own way more cards. Limited removes one of those two barriers, and sealed deck has enough luck and variance that worse players have as good a shot as they possibly can of beating better players without removing all skill from the game entirely.

[MaxTheVool]

@greenslime1951

No, I’d rather there were certain things you couldn’t do, regardless of some card surfacing that says you can. This is for the same reason that I play chess, and I don’t want the Wizard Chess Company to proclaim that there are now new pieces that can levitate or teleport or give other pieces the plague.

Then clearly magic isn’t the game for you, as that’s exactly the opposite of the way I feel. I don’t play chess, but I feel that if I did, after a while I would start getting bored and look for new things to be happening… new types of pieces, new moves, new starting configurations, etc. That’s the whole appeal of Fairy Chess. Magic just takes that and makes it the actual game.

So the primary appeal is that it’s fun, because it’s an interesting and well balanced game in which every time you sit down and play you think “I might see something I’ve never seen before… in fact, I might see something that NO ONE has ever seen before”. If that doesn’t appeal to you, well, I don’t know any other way to explain it.

[Critical1]

@MaxTheVool

Nothing of that sort ever happened with the released game. The story, possibly apocryphal, involves an early playtest card.

The closest I can think of to a case where the rules have been made to specifically supersede a card involved the card Abeyance, which was printed way back in approximately 1996.

actually Abeyance was crystal clear in its effects and the rules handled this in an also crystal clear manner, it was some dumbass down at wotc who grossly overpowered that card by giving it abilities that were not written anywhere on it.

long live turbo peace talks!

[Lynn_Bodoni]

It is interesting to note that no one has actually answered the question–what is the appeal of this game? Is it its chaotic nature? The constant need to upgrade and improve one’s deck(s)? The open-ended nature of the game? The fact that the rules are in a constant state of flux?

For me, I enjoyed buying decks or packs, and seeing what cards I got. It was like a lottery, except that I ALWAYS got at least a couple of really good cards in a booster pack, and of course got more great cards in a deck. Then there was deck building, which I really and truly sucked at, but I enjoyed anyway. And there was the fun in seeing how other people would build and play decks.

[MHaye]

The main attraction of the game is that it changes, but it stays the same.

The core methods of gameplay don’t change, or at least very rarely; there was one major shakeup in 1999 (necessary to dispose of some overly-complex early elements and poor decisions built up over the years), and a lesser one in 2009. But through all that, the core game - a game of resource management and responding to other player’s moves) remains intact.

What changes is what you play with. Limited has been discussed. Constructed formats continually change as cards are added to and leave the environment. This means the best strategy and mix of cards changes over time.

The relatively rapid change of the Standard environment also offers some hope for the new player getting into the game. The fact that veterans have the main cards and they don’t will become less of a factor when new cards are added, and especially at the beginning of October when about half the Standard environment ceases to be Standard-legal. The veterans are forced to explore new areas, and this keeps the game interesting to them and the card-gap manageable for new players.

There are other formats to play as well, that allow more cards. But, as a rule of thumb, the more cards there are in a constructed environment, the more powerful the decks are and the less turns people take (although this doesn’t necessarily mean less decision-making). Also, these wider environments can offer significant cost barriers to entry (although again, once you have assembled the cards for the decks you want, the cost of updating the decks is minimal).

Then there are people like me, who don’t play the game but enjoy the bizarre interactions you can come up with sometimes.

Finally, the OP’s claim that there are no rules is nonsense. You can only know what a particular card does because of the framework provided by the rules. Some cards generate effects that change the rules, but there are still rules even when the game’s components can change them.

[asterion]

As an aside, I bet the OP would absolutely hate Fluxx.

[gonzoron]

@greenslime1951

It is interesting to note that no one has actually answered the question–what is the appeal of this game? Is it its chaotic nature? The constant need to upgrade and improve one’s deck(s)? The open-ended nature of the game? The fact that the rules are in a constant state of flux?

I think I did answer it in my first post in the thread, but yes, all of those things are appealing to fans of magic. (Or more specifically, each of those appeal to some but not all Magic players.

Since Wizards has a vested interest in selling cards, they’ve done a lot of thinking and research about how Magic appeals to different types of players. One thing they’ve done is consider 5 different stereotypes of player, and design different cards with those hypothetical players in mind. (“Spike” plays to win above all else, “Timmy” plays to experience exciting moments, “Johnny” plays to flex his creative skill at combining cards together, “Vorthos” enjoys the flavor, story, and art and how those are reflected in the rules, “Melvin” enjoys the intricacies of the rules and their interactions) Myself, I’m a Johnny/Melvin with streaks of Spike. I play for completely different reasons that a Timmy/Vorthos, but we both enjoy the game.

I doubt, for example, that it has all that much appeal as a strategy game, because it’s impossible to form a strategy that’ll be any use say, two months from now.

On that, you’re dead wrong. In some ways, “the more things change, the more they stay the same”. Regardless of the new cards, there are still archetypes of decks that surface again and again. The identities of the color factions drift a bit over time, but remain overall predictable at what they can do, if not exactly how they do it.

I can sit down to draft a set I’ve never seen before and still have a decent idea of what’s good to pick and what’s not. It’s likely that certain strategies are more or less powerful in this set, and the only way to know is to explore it (or read articles about other people’s explorations), but the path to beating your opponent is 99% the same, and the bulk of the strategy stays the same.

Can I be surprised by a card I didn’t account for? Sure… so? If I didn’t want surprises, I’d play Tic-Tac-Toe.

[Anamorphic]

@MaxTheVool

Then clearly magic isn’t the game for you, as that’s exactly the opposite of the way I feel. I don’t play chess, but I feel that if I did, after a while I would start getting bored and look for new things to be happening… new types of pieces, new moves, new starting configurations, etc. That’s the whole appeal of Fairy Chess. Magic just takes that and makes it the actual game.

I was going to say, then you should check out Nightmare Chess, which does exactly that. It’s a deck of cards that you add to a traditional chess game that grants different pieces different rules and abilities as you play them. It obviously turns chess into a whole different game, but it’s fun.

It looks like it’s gone out of print though, and copies of the game are not cheap. Too bad!

[BlackKnight]

@greenslime1951

No need to question my motives just because I questioned the appeal of your favorite game. That wasn’t by any kind of extension an attack on you or others who play it; therefore there is no need for you to “retaliate.”

Sex-starved neckbeards was not, of course, an attack on anyone who plays the game. Right. You were so certain your motives would be questioned that you bent over backwards to ask an honest question without being insulting.

Right.

[hogarth]

@greenslime1951

It is interesting to note that no one has actually answered the question–what is the appeal of this game?

I’ll repeat my answer, since apparently I wasn’t clear enough: The deck-building part is the most fun. Trying to find neat combinations of cards is like looking through a flea market for hidden treasures, to me.

[gonzoron]

@asterion

As an aside, I bet the OP would absolutely hate Fluxx.

Or Nomic.

[BigT]

@BlackKnight

Sex-starved neckbeards was not, of course, an attack on anyone who plays the game. Right. You were so certain your motives would be questioned that you bent over backwards to ask an honest question without being insulting.

Right.

Honestly, this board would be 100 times better if stuff like this resulted in punishment. I’d say under what grounds, but that, ironically, could get me punished.

[markdash]

There are, of course, many answers to this question. Here are a few of mine:

-It strikes a good balance between luck and skill. Games such as Chess are entirely skill based, which means an inferior player would soon get frustrated at losing game after game to a superior player. Magic has enough of a luck factor that an inferior player will still win a healthy portion of the time, thereby keeping them interested, but also has enough of a skill component that better players will win more over time (unlike an entirely luck-based game like Chutes & Ladders).

-The variety of cards and effects lead to unseen interactions. I like to watch a somewhat famous Magic player who streams his online play, and even though he plays for hours every day, I have seen him on numerous occasions encounter a situation he hadn’t before, even though he’s played his deck against the opponent’s deck hundreds of times.

-Because there are so many cards which come from so many different angles, the game is “breakable.” That is, anyone can find a new combo which exploits a hole in the “metagame,” or environment of decks and strategies currently in favor. For example, if most people are playing aggressive creature decks or slow control decks, you might find a new combination which is resistant to both these strategies, giving you a leg up on the competition.

-There are so many varied formats. I am a personal fan of sealed formats (especially booster and rochester draft), but there are so many others for players to choose from (2-headed giant, standard, legacy, modern, vintage, commander, pauper, casual, etc.) that the game can offer something to everyone. It’s really rare to find a game that’s so easily customizable and can take advantage of different skill sets among the players.

[iamthewalrus_3]

@greenslime1951

In any case, I apologize for criticizing your favowite game.

Gosh, thanks. Could you apologize for your dismissive tone as well?

There are lots of valid criticisms of Magic, and none of them really bother me. “It’s too complicated” is the one I think you’re really hitting on. And, yeah. It’s crazy complicated. Obviously not to everyone’s taste. Lots of moving pieces. But not, you know, arbitrary and infinite ones.

You’ve mentioned chess a few times to contrast Magic. But chess is incredibly complicated as well. Not in the number of pieces or the size of the board, but in the gamespace. It takes years and years of study to become a great chess player, almost certainly more than it takes to become a great Magic player. But I can still have fun playing chess without memorizing opening books, or being able to see six moves ahead, as long as I’m playing against someone of a similar level. Similarly, it’s quite possible to have fun playing Magic without knowing all the cards. Hell, some of the most fun experiences are when your opponent plays a card you didn’t even know existed until that point.

It is interesting to note that no one has actually answered the question–what is the appeal of this game?

It’s fun? It’s a cool strategic challenge with enough luck and variety thrown in that you get some great stories of coming back from near defeat. Different people get different things out of it for sure. What’s the appeal of any other game?

[KidScruffy]

I’ve never met an avid gamer that was unable to grasp the concept that some games appeal to some people, and other games appeal to others. So I question the OP’s premise that he or she is “an avid gamer”. What games do you play, besides Baseball, Monopoly, and Chess? Because if that’s it, you’re not an avid gamer – you’re a chess nerd that likes sports and socializing. If you’re a chess nerd that likes sports and socializing, let me explain something that an avid gamer would already know: some people like some games, and others like others.

[hajario]

I’ve read a few of these threads and I still don’t get how the game actually works except in the most hazy way. That’s fine. I realize that I probably had to sit down at a table and play to really get it.

I do have a couple of questions.

1. How much does it cost per year for a semi-serious player to keep up an excellent set of cards?

2. Is there a problem with counterfeiting? Not so much to sell on e-bay but for some one to get themselves the best possible set of cards.

[stpauler]

I’ve really got into boardgaming this year and while I’ve never played MtG, this thread has been really enlightening. I’ve heard that without it, a lot of the boardgame stores would go under as they are definitely a cash cow for them. (I swear, every update from my local stores lately was ‘Avacyn this and Avacyn that’.)

That said, the OP complaint seems to follow along the same lines as “why do new books come out and what’s their appeal? We could just read the same classics over and over”.

[gonzoron]

@hajario

I’ve read a few of these threads and I still don’t get how the game actually works except in the most hazy way. That’s fine. I realize that I probably had to sit down at a table and play to really get it.

Here’s the “elevator speech version”

You and your opponent(s) each have your own deck of cards that you put together beforehand. You draw 7 cards to start and 1 at the start of each turn. You each start with 20 life points and try to get your opponent to 0. Some of the cards provide a resource called “mana” that comes in 5 colors. The rest of the cards require spending a certain amount and color of mana to play them, and they do what they say on them. Some cards stick around until destroyed, some have their effect immediately, then go away. One major type of card is a “creature” which sticks around from turn to turn, and once per turn can be used to attack your opponent’s life total unless he blocks with his own creatures. The other cards are mostly about enhancing your creatures, hindering your opponents’ creatures, giving you more cards and them less, destroying their cards in play, getting your cards that were destroyed back into play, giving yourself more mana, depriving your opponent of mana, or making you gain life points or making your opponent lose life points.

Nearly everything I’ve said in the last paragraph is occasionally untrue, due to the text of a given card, an unusual strategy that you are pursuing, or the format you’re playing in, so don’t go nitpicking it.