I saw the online game EB the other day and got curious about the game. I read some of the old threads about it and did some google searches but want more basic color about the game. First off is most of the strategy in putting the deck together or is there a significant amount of strategy in the gameplay itself? How large is the player base and is the game still popular? I would probably play online, are there still alot of players? Are there tournaments for money? Do any versions of the game entail taking your opponents cards when you win (love those types)? What would you generally liken the game too when it comes to skill vs. chance? If you don’t mind please don’t use too much lingo as my research is about 3 hours old. Thanks.
It’s been a while since I’ve played M:tG, but I still have a lot of my cards.
There is a lot of strategy that goes into both making a deck, and playing a deck… but I would venture to say most of the strategy involved would be in the making of a deck (pretty much any deck you make, can be improved in some fashion… but you won’t figure out it’s weaknesses until you play it a few times). There is a lot of strategy required in gameplay too, though. I’ve seen people put together unbelievable decks, but just couldn’t play them right at all.
As far as tournaments go, I believe there are still tournaments (“leagues”) and many of them offer prizes for the top winners… I’ve seen prizes ranging from packs of cards, to a rare cool card, to cash. There are also some card shops out there that will let you play with people just for fun.
There are some cards that allow players to “take cards from eachother”, but they are disallowed in tournament use, because not everyone likes the idea. But the option is there for people who want to live life on the wildside. 
Personally, I had played the game since the Unlimited version came out (it was the third version of the game… Alpha, then Beta, then Unlimited, then Revised… etc etc) and I had a LOT of fun with it. If you are interested, I suggest going to a local card dealer and asking about tournaments (I think you can find them online as well), so you can see how many people in your area play.
LilShieste
Much strategy is involved in both building a deck and playing it, but the strategy involved in building is what’s most important. A well constructed deck is one where you will have higher probabilities of having “useful” cards in your hand.
The original version of the game proscribed playing for “ante”, in which a random card was selected from each player’s deck, and the winner of the duel taking the loser’s ante card. Virtually no one plays this way, because people don’t want to risk losing a valuable card (or simply screwing up the balance of their deck.)
The skill/chance ratio is perhaps 60/40 (WAG.) What you draw in your initial seven card hand (and the cards you proceed to draw from your deck in subsequent rounds) are very important, but a skillfully constructed deck means that most of the time you should get a “good” hand.
What are you trying to get out of MTG? If you want to compete and do well in tournaments and such, you will have to carefully construct uber-powerful decks by researching and buying lots of singles (buying individual cards, as opposed to buying packs.) Also, tournaments are geared toward specific sets of cards. Many tournaments will only allow cards from the most recent “cycle” (currently Onslaught, I think), others are geared toward the expensive and often powerful cards from the very earliest releases of MTG (Alpha, Beta.)
For me, MTG is a social game, and is all about who I’m playing with. I enjoy playing it with friends, but in my experience many of the more serious players are freaks or weirdos.
As you may know, there are thousands and thousands of cards available for sale on Ebay. The easiest way to start playing is probably for you and a friend to buy a preconstructed starter deck ($8-10) and use those to get a feel for the game.
About tournaments: there are several different types of tournaments, including tournaments where you buy a starter and two or three booster packs of cards and have to build your deck out of those. That type of tournament is probably the easiest for beginners, as people with a closet full of rare and out-of-print cards don’t have an overwhelming advantage.
If you want to play with the actual cards (as opposed to the online version), a good way to get your friends started is to make a league. Everyone buys a starter and three boosters, and can only play with those cards. Once a month, everyone gets to buy a new booster or two. And, since you’re only playing with in-print (and hence, replaceable) cards, it’ll be easier to convince your friends to play for ante.
It’s called Magic: The Gathering Of All Your Money for a reason. I’d go for pre-con decks and then toss in some boosters for tuning, but you can blow an obscene amount of cash on cards. God knows I did.
Don’t trade your Fungusaur for a date with your friend’s wife, even if she’s really cute.
Long time Magic player here. The game is really amazing, but I am not sure I can add anything more than has been said. Here are some links:
Magic: the Gathering Home Page: This is the main page for M:tG
Brainburst.com: A strategy site.
Star City Games: Another strategy site, but a bit better than Brainburst.
Star City’s “New to Magic” Page
Londes.com: My personal favorite site, and I am a moderator on their message boards. I am Rob Smasher over there.
Hope these help.
Bwhahahahaha! Oh man, I am such a geek for laughing at that joke.
Stop now before it is too late! Its more additive than crack and the SDMB combined! Actually I have no idea how addictive it really is-I just said no.
I’ve always called it Magic - the purchasing.
Now quite as expensive as Warhammer- $40,000 tho.
Brian
just say no to really expensive games
RUN.
Dude, I still have a kick-ass thallid deck built somewhere around here. Nothing like a table full of counters.
Magic is an evil pointless game. Yes, there is strategy, and that is having the money to buy the good cards. The company gave me a free beta deck before anyone knew who they were or what the game was. I hated it then, and I hate it now. It was one of the two reasons why the miniature RPG industry died. The other reason was Games Workshop/Citadel getting greedy and charging $35 for a four inch long plastic dwarf cannon and what have you.
Oddly enough, GW is pretty much the only company that survived the reign of cards. All the good honest companies like Grenadier Models, Ral Partha, etc were crushed under the growing monopolies. There’s a very extensive book coming out soon about the rise and fall of miniature RPGing. I don’t know the title, but I’ve been privy to some of its contents, and it looks to be an incredible book.
I was always a burn deck player. Nothing pissed people off like being killed by lotsa fireballs halfway into the game.
Boo-hoo. Don’t forget to stand back when you throw your sabots into that newfangled textile mill machinery.
If miniature wargaming got sick and died, it was because people weren’t as interested in it as they were some other form of entertainment. You might as well blame television for killing the studio system and keeping us from having films as good as Gone With the Wind or Mildred Pierce anymore. What are you going to do, be mad at millions of people for finding something interesting that you don’t?
And if anything, Wizards of the Coast redeemed themselves on the miniatures thing by producing D&D3.0 (and now 3.5), which by all accounts practically demands the use of miniatures to keep track of character position.
I’d like to mention that it may be a good idea to consider Magic Online as opposed to cardboard Magic if you’re just starting out. Though some of the social experience of going to tournaments and basking in the sweet scent of unwashed bodies shall be lost, it’s known for being quite a bit more convienent, especially if you have a job.
Another vote for trying Magic Online. You can download it for free and play the 7th edition starter decks for free.
I still enjoy playing the starters, there’s a lot of depth to mastering the gameplay… even without spending a penny or doing any deck building.
Fanatical Magic player, judge and writer here. I’ve been playing in tournaments for several years, written a couple dozen articles on Magic, host a weekly eight-man tournament at my apartment and have travelled to, among other places, Antwerp, London and, most recently, Prague, to play and judge. As such, I can say with the utmost confidence that if you get hooked, that’s it. You’re dead. There’s no getting out. Even the guys who quit come back. Yes, even you.
First of all, I need to explain the concept of “colors”. Magic cards are either white, green, red, black or blue. Some are colorless and some are multicolored, but let’s not worry about that now. You just need to know that the more colors you run, the less consistent your deck will be. If you run only one color, you’ll almost always be able to use every card you draw. The drawback of using only one color is that their abilities are limited. Blue, for example, has a hard time destroying opposing cards once they’re on the table.
Before I continue, let me point out that everything I say pertains to tournament Magic, not casual play.
There are two distinct “formats”, as we call them, Constructed and Limited. Constructed means you build a 60-card deck according to certain rules, bring it to the tournament, and play it. Limited means you come to the tournament, in one way or another (there are different versions which I will cover later) get access to a pool of cards, from which you build a 40-card deck.
As for Constructed, a lot of the strategy is in the deckbuilding, but the playing is at least equally important. One of my Magic-playing friends, Thomas Rosholm, has played on several Pro Tours (the highest level of Magic tournament play) and played in the World Championships twice, and whenever he borrows a deck I built he always does better with it than I do. Also, you keep seeing the same names do well in tournament after tournament (yes, Magic has celebrities too), which obviously wouldn’t be the case if it were all luck.
Since everyone, barring financial difficulties, has exactly the same resources available to them (they have the same cards to choose from, after all), it mainly comes down to skill and what is known as the metagame. The metagame is the second-guessing of your opponents that occurs before the tournament.
For example, currently there are three very popular decks. They’re called Tog, RG and UG. Don’t worry about the names. A fourth very powerful deck, MBC (you’ll get used to abbreviations), will probably get beaten by RG and UG if they play a certain card called Compost, which they will, if they expect MBC to be played in the tournament. Follow that?
So, a player playing RG or UG can choose not to play Compost, hoping that no-one will play MBC since they fear Compost too much. That is a metagame call. If they expect MBC, they will play Compost.
Another player might think that since no-one expects MBC due to Compost, no-one will play Compost, and thus MBC is the right deck to play. That’s a metagame call.
Yep, it’s complex. After big tournaments low-level players copy the decklists and try to figure out what other low-level players will do.
That’s metagaming, which is basically what deckbuilding is about. That, and playtesting your ass off.
Now, Limited. There are three popular styles (known as “formats”): Sealed Deck, booster draft and Rochester draft.
In Sealed deck, you appear at the tournament and get one starter pack (75 cards) and two booster packs (15 cards each). From these, you construct your 40-card deck.
Sealed deck has always been luck-based, and with the most recent sets (Limited is always played with the most recent sets) it is more so than ever. There have always been cards that are known as “bombs”, ie cards so insanely powerful that they can win the game on their own. In Onslaught and Legions, the two most recent sets, there are more than ever before, and Sealed deck events tend to come down to luck a lot. Which sucks, but it’s still fun to play.
In booster draft, you sit down at a table with seven other players. Each of you gets three boosters. You open the first booster simultaneously and secretly choose a card. Then you give the fourteen remaining cards to your neighbour to the left, receive fourteen cards from the right, choose a card from those, and so on. The second booster is passed left-to-right, and the third booster is passed right-to-left again. Then you build a 40-card deck.
Booster draft is very skill-based. It comes down to being able to figure out, on the basis of the cards you pass and get passed, what colors your neighbours are playing, so that you don’t play those colors. If you’re playing green, for example, you want to get passed good green cards; you don’t want your neighbours to play green, thus taking all the good green cards.
Rochester draft is similar to booster draft except that only one player opens a booster at a time and lays out the cards on the table for all to see. This means that the entire contents of each player’s deck is known to each player on the table, which rewards good memory. Most good players think Rochester draft is the most skill-based single-player format there is.
The strategy in gameplay, whatever the format, is much more subtle than the deckbuilding strategy. It’s often difficult to see when you’re watching someone play and it’s hard to learn with a conscious effort; you just have to keep playing and keep working at it until it comes naturally. For some (like Cole Swannack, who won the New Zealand Championships at age 12 and then almost made the top 8 playoffs at Worlds) it comes quickly, for others (like me) it comes slowly.
Are there tournaments for money? Ummm, yes. Here’s coverage of Pro Tour Yokohama, played this weekend, where winner Mattias Jorstedt took home $30.000 for his troubles.
Playing for ante (taking the other guy’s cards) almost never happens anymore, and certainly never in tournaments.
About skill/chance, I’ve heard several bridge players, including a couple of professional ones, compare it to bridge. I don’t play bridge, so I can’t comment. Many Magic players enjoy chess, bridge and poker, so I suppose there’s a similar attraction.
I don’t play Magic Online regularly, but I used to. Basically, it’s an online version of the game, with implemented rules and whatnot. The problem is you still have to buy the cards, digital ones, at the same price as cardboard ones. But the good thing is that you can always find an opponent, no matter where you are or what the time is. There are always drafts waiting to start. You should be able to find the client without too much trouble.
Wow, just previewed. This is probably my longest post ever. Hope you have the stamina to make it through.
Some resources:
www.claymore.nu/mtgrules (my site) holds a rules FAQ. It’s a tiny bit outdated, but you’ll probably find it helpful.
www.starcitygames.com/magic.php has daily articles, some of which are labelled Fundamentals and go through the basics of the game.
www.magicthegathering.com is the official site and also has daily articles, most not directed at the top-level tournament players.
www.wizards.com/sideboard has articles, event coverage, and other stuff.
My advice to you is to find a local gaming store which hosts Magic tournaments. This weekend, there is a prerelease tournament, where you get to play Sealed deck with Scourge, the new set, before it’s available in stores. Go to the store, ask if they’re hosting a prerelease, and ask for help with learning the rules. They probably have the Magic Online Beginner’s CD, which goes through the rules and has a good tutorial, or a leaflet which teaches the basics of the game.
Then turn up this weekend (and bring a pen and a twenty-sided die) and play. Prerelease tournaments are the ideal place to start playing tournaments, and almost every player’s first tournament is a prerelease. They’re not as serious as other tournaments, although people do expect the rules to be followed. There are no take-backs.
One warning: Magic players can be absolute, complete and total assholes. Especially to new and less knowledgeable players. There are nice guys too, but they are (as nice guys tend to be) much more quiet. If you run into an asshole, don’t let it get to you, and don’t talk back, just play the game. If you win, don’t gloat, and if you lose, don’t care about him gloating. Don’t be afraid to call a judge, though, unsportsmanlike conduct is against the rules.
If you show willingness to learn, the low-grade assholes will lighten up and accept you. The high-grade assholes won’t, but there’s nothing anyone can do about that.
Well, hope you got through this post alright, and hope it helped. If you have any questions, feel free to contact me at pls@claymore.nu.
I just found an online basic rules primer. It’s specifically written for Magic Online, but the rules are the same for the cardboard version.
Hi there KC.
I’m an old veteran of magic, having qualified for a couple of pro tours here and there
The one thing that a newbie on the magic scene needs to know is : some of your cards are valuable and other magic players will try to trade these off you for absolute rubbish, beware.
Best thing is to find out which cards of yours are worth something and go to a long time player and swap one of your rares for hundreds of commons. They’ll most likely be glad to get rid of them.
Play the good players in your neighbourhood (there’ll be a club somewhere!) to get to know the rules, since everybody I know that has started magic and used the rules book that comes with the game has got something wrong - usually something important too!
Once you have a firm grounding with the basic rules of the game then you can learn certain tricks which improve play.
There are hundreds and hundreds of little things which improve your play, and the only real way to learn them is to play top players.
I was lucky, in that my local games and comics club had 3 other pro tour players with whom I could match my skills, and I lived with a card trader from whom I could borrow any cards I needed for tournaments.
If you want to take part in tournaments, then I’d suggest starting off with Limited once your playing skills are good enough, since it’s less expensive and improves both your deck building and your playing skills.
Oh, and I’d definitely disagree with those above that say that Magic is 90% deckbuilding and 10% playing skill. It’s more like 70% playing skill, 20% deckbuilding and 10% metagame (knowing what your opponents will be playing).
This is a good point that I forgot to mention. There’s a price guide at http://www.magictraders.com/pricelists/.
Not to mention that you get no rule book in starter decks these days.
I think that’s skewed too. Imagine bringing AstroGlide to a tournament and running into Wake decks all day. Try to playskill your way out of that!
I’d call it 45% playing skill, 45% deckbuilding (which, to my mind, includes metagaming) and 10% luck (including being paired against good/bad matchups). An important thing to remember is that your losses almost always look like bad luck on your part or good luck on your opponent’s part, but with careful contemplation you can usually find that you made some mistake or your opponent did some masterful play. Still, every now and then you get steamrolled and there’s nothing you can do about it, and that’s the luck factor at work.