f13.net

Not a zero sum game. (http://www.f13.net/index2.php?subaction=showfull&id=1095796609&archive=&start_from=&ucat=2&)

Oh boy cardboard crack. I gave this game up 8 years ago and still get withdrawal pains occasionally. I have about 20 cards somewhere that even the smell of gives me flashbacks....mmmm ok maybe I said to much.

Again this comes back to another thread where we talked about a game decided on player vs player skill thats not just twitch. Fantastic idea....problems I can forsee are the devaluing of spells by the catass crew and a rampant ebay trade...

Give in to Magic Online. You know you want to. I'd have to say this is the most fun I've had with an online game. Probably the most expensive though. I can't help myself when it comes to virtual cardboard.

Also agree on Magic: The MMOG having alot of potential as a concept. Taking a combat system that works, is fun, is strategic, is varied, is proven, and stands the test of time, then putting it into a MMOG? Sign me up.

Spent about 300 quid in one month (Not Dollars.)

Don't do this.  Flee.

Save yourself...

(though I agree that the League format is the best fun you can have for the cheapest price...)

MtGO is simply way to expensive. And I cant even go look at the website otherwise I might suffer a relapse. The only way is to go cold turkey.
Musssst ressssiiiist.

Come on; the first hit's free...

Seriously, it does take some financial discipline not to overspend.  While this was true in paper magic as well, it was mitigated by the fact there weren't tournaments and drafts available to you 24/7 the way there are in MTGO.  Always having a prize giving event available is very seductive; "just one more draft" will quickly run up your tab if you arent careful.

If you go in wanting to play in constructed tournaments with the big boys, you will have to invest a lot upfront to get the cards you want. But, the flip side of the pricing stucture is you could buy a lot cards day1, and never spend another cent since there's no monthly fee.  Consider, you could spend $17 a month on a typical mmmorpg subscription, or take the $204 a year that represents and buy 55 booster packs day 1.  Or spread it out over time, or spend in spurts when you can.  It's doable on a budget, but you need patience and self control to build your collection slowly.

I know some people who draft a few times a month, no so much to win the draft itself but to assemble a collection of cards they want and trade stock they can use to get the cards they want.  Call em raredrafters if you will, it's a viable choice for starting a pool of decent cards.

Other don't buy packs, but just buy event tickets ($1 a pop); any draft, league or tournament you do costs 1 or more of these but they are also the default currency of the game.  You can buy sell and auction with tickets as the medium of exchange.  You can easily find people selling commons for 64 or even 96 for 1 ticket, and uncommons for 12-32 per ticket depending on who you find.  Rares are usually 1 a peice or more with the good ones being more expensive of course.  Decent trading can build use a useable card pool quickly.  By way of example, when 5th dawn first came out, you could sell a hot uncommon, Eternal Witness, for 4-5 tickets; so if you bought a booster for 3.69 (or drafted one), you could get 4-5 tickets which you could use to get a boatload of other cards, or buy a new booster with, plus you got to keep the other 14 cards in the original booster.  Certain personality types will enjoy "playing the market" almost as much as playing the game.

Or you could do like me; league you way to victory.  It the most cost effective and it also does build your card pool over time.

So really you have a few choices.

That's one reason I think a subscription based game based on it would work.  Many people wanted MTGO to be just that; pay X a month which gets you 4 boosters a month and everyone has at it in a massive limited game.  It just much more palatable to pay a small fee a month rather than one large sum once a year.

Oh did I mention, joining a clan like say Bat Country is a good way to get access to lots of cards and people to play with.  :-)

Xilren

Get away from me ye silver tongued devil!

Blah too many cards , think the last expansion I saw was 'Ice age' (was that the name? Came out in 95..:P)...I miss my old power deck. 60 cards red/blue...fireballs, forks, counterspell, mana drains, juggernauts, a shivan dragon for fun and as many volcanic islands as money could buy. :P

Shannow, online is a different world than paper Magic. After the initial investment, I think mine was about $150 or so. Mostly tournaments - which run all day in flights, everyday. I think I started trading - a lot. Resulting in close to 5,000 cards or so. After that about 2500 got deposited into the clan fund (whatever you want to call it). Basically as such, I have a binder of about 4,000 cards that everyone in the clan can just pick and choose from. I also do try to find specific cards for Bat Country.

Remember - online, WoTC controls how much of everything there is. There are no REAL dollars, and there is no set older than Invasion. When a set goes out of print, it really goes OUT OF PRINT. Cards maintain their value online because of how guaranteed it is for there to be a limited number of say - foil spiritmongers. IRL there may be a couple hundred, hell, possibly a thousand. Here - maybe 50. They cost roughly $120-$160 a piece.

Why would anyone buy them? Shit, I don't know - but they've been that cost since I started and they'll probably stay exactly at that.

It's a fun world. But cutthroat, much more so than offline.

Seriously stop it you lot, Ive spent the last 30 minutes thinking about my old league and the old decks I used to have. I cant afford to be sucked in, really I cant......okjustonemoreboosterpackkthxbye!

arrgh.

:P

Ok, one last post and a serious one.

It's a lot of fun.  Really.  I joined Bat Country and got hooked up with some 'extra' cards for merely the price of the dud cards I would never have had any interest in anyway (not black ones...)

I got a nice deck together and for a 'casual' player it's the fucking business.  You can have fun for no reason whatsoever even to the extent of (as I do) playing at work when you're supposed to be doing other stuff.

(What ?  Don't look at me like that, the server drives were rebuilding, I had time..)

But DO NOT WHATEVER HAPPENS get drawn into constructed play.  You'll spend a fucking fortune trying to make a deck to beat 'the big boys' and it's JUST NOT WORTH IT.  It's like being an SWG catass or something.

The wife and I are playing the leagues and not only is it the cheaper option but you at least feel that you're skill with the cards comes into play - everyone gets random cards in boosters, so everyone's in the same boat.

Even though the rest of the bastards pulled bloodshot cyclops and phyrexian collusi.

Buggers.

Heh, had to smile when I saw that. In my only 8th Ed league I drew exactly those, plus a number of pump troops (including fallen angel, man she is nuts with cyclops), enrage, and raise dead to bring a piece back.

It's not even the most degenerate thing I've seen (one degenerate deck faced and beat me every single goddamn round in a MDF league and none of those games were tie-breakers), that's one of the reasons I switched to drafts over leagues, you have some control over what you get. Sure some guy could open pristine angel and you'll never see it in your pile, but at least he wont get the sweet uncommons/commons. Though yeah, leagues are the best way to start, and if you don't play it that often then you might as well stick with them.

Any room left in Bat Country for another player? :)

I started playing MTGO a few months after release, so I've got a fairly nice collection and would be happy to donate extra cards... I even posted a few times about the game on this board under the nick of Pyrite.

I used to draft a lot, and did fairly well, but I eventually got sick of Mirrodin Block and the lack of any color signaling.  Now I primarily play prismatic, with my favortie deck being a 260 card Singleton-legal deck.  As of this Thursday (today?) the format will be a lot more accessible to those without the power cards, as they finally banned nearly all the tutors available online (including the mother^*&%* wishes except for the white one), along with the gamebreaking Sundering Titan.

8th edition League, eh?  I've tried that a few times, but the thing about 8th is that sometimes five boosters isn't enough to leave you with a playable deck.  

As the profile says, I'm currently living in Korea, so I'm not sure if my play times would sync up with anyone else's.  but throw my name on the /buddy list (Raging Turtle) if you want a game or want some advice on how to avoid getting ripped off.

Not to turn this into a bit MtG thread (wait, that's that point!) but I don't want to talk about something somewhat design related, Constructed vs. Limited play.

It's a great example of people not knowing their own game.

I read an interview with some guy who won some Magic tournament and one of his quotes was something like "I like Limited more than Constructed...I mean, everybody does."

In fighting games, you find a lot of games that are fun at low to mid levels, but are degenerative at high levels. (Dominated by a small set of characters, strategies, etc) Fun if you don't know too much and don't find the broken things)

Magic has that to the EXTREME.

Everyone begins playing magic by playing casual constructed, but serious constructed is a horrible game. At some point you have to ditch constructed and switch over. Because WoTC doesn't understand their own game.

The most fun part of magic is really making decks. I think for most people that is as/more fun than actually playing. But in high level constructed play, most of the time "making" a deck means copying a deck and switching out 4-8 out of 60 cards in it. And WoTC *encourages* this.

I remember reading an article by a WoTC guy that posted some deck lists, and said something like "Even if you aren't going to play one of these decks (which you probably should), be prepared to face them plenty of times."

YES, you WILL face them plenty of times if you write in your fucking article that everyone should play those decks!

The absurdity is, there is very little skill in playing Magic, especially in constructed where you know your own deck very well. There aren't a lot of tough decisions to be made. A lot of the skill is in deck design.
---

So, how does WoTC encourage this? They print the decks of the winners, for one. WHY!?!? Why publish that? Wouldn't it be a lot cooler if you just heard about a deck that was doing well, and to piece together reports of what was in it, what was in the sideboard, etc? It seems to my that would be a lot more interesting, and make it take longer for decks to start being rampantly cloned. And in trying to reproduce those decks people would be doing more unintentional experimentation.

Another thing WoTC does is purposely make most of the cards useless in constructed. I would *think* if I were a designer my goal would be to make every card useful. Sure, in the end some will be more useful than others, but I would never make a card that I personally thought was garbage. In fighting games a goal is to make all the characters pretty even. In RTS games you want the sides pretty even. In FPS you want the weapons pretty even. Isn't that an obvious concept?

There are a lot of bullshit reasons for why they do this, but they are just that, bullshit. None of them make any real sense. They want to be able to predict what the "meta-game" will look like...why? Why do they need to do that? If it's easy to predict doesn't that means it's pretty stagnant and boring? And it doesn't work anyway - look at them missing Skullclamp for example.

I understand that some cards can be good in limited and not so good in constructed and vice versa, but there should never be cards that are bad everywhere, which is basically the goal of the core set....sad.

Because people would find out anyway. It's the same with "cheat sites" (http://www.anarchyarcanum.com) for MMORPGs.

But what WotC als did (and possibly still do) is to release the top 10 world tournament decks for people to buy. This adds even more to the "flava of the month" deckbuilding, bewcause a lot of people will be able to own those decks, and the cards in them.

Keep in mind, though, that the "killer deck syndrome" has been the same ever since M:tG was released, and was in many ways worse before tournament restrictions (whether the 1R-2U-4C limit or any other rules they have changed up through the years). Early M:tG was dominated by Louts-Mountain-Channel-Fireball first turn kills or all-Lightning Bolt decks. There have always been powerful combos, the differences from then to now is that 6th Edition cleaned up the rules something fierce, and all the extra powers and effects (not to mention the sheer number of cards) make it harder to spot combos as easily.

Regarding MtgO, it's not entirely true that you can buy a starter pack and some boosters at the beginning and that's all you need: Expansions are continously rolled in and out of the "standard" constructed tournament set, so your Judgement cards are not useable in a Mirrordin or whatever. But there are lots of other formats to try anyway. Just be aware of the "planned obsolesecence" in the standard format.

You make some good points, but I disagree that wotc doesn't know their audience well.  In many ways, the whole purpose of them even having a Pro Tour was a marketing ploy to drive card sales, and it works.  The ability for any player to know what the top or hot decks are was happening anyway on places like the old Dojo site, whether wotc sanctioned it or not.  But actually this freely available information helps the non hardcore player more than anyone.  Why?

As you said, it's easy to find a top decklist, then copy it and play it.  It evens the field in constructed by removing deckbuilding skill from the equation so contests come down to player skill (and luck of course).  So, if I'm joe random scrub with a netdeck copy of the latest Ravager Affinity build, I actually now have a better chance to win a constructed PTQ than if I had to rely on my own crappy deckbuilding skills.  People who did this still have to be able to play it well, but it encourages people with dreams of making the big show to invest in the rares they need for these top decks.  And people who get a little success under their belt like winning or making a top 8 at a PTQ event start believing they too can make it to the pro tour and stay there.  It makes it very attractive to spend the dough on the cards.  Everyone thinks they're better than average, so all they need is a good deck and some luck.  It's a psychologically insidious marketing ploy, and it works.  Sorta like random drops in a mmorpg :)  Sure, lots of people try it for a while and get burnt out but there seems to be no end to new players starting up and buying into the dream.  To many players, it;s not deckbuilding that's fun, it's WINNING thats fun.

That being said, no question most people prefer limited over constructed.  But, they do have PTQ and Pro Tour events using these formats too.  I think wotc has done an overall good job since they basically started this whole genre, and many competitors have tried to follow suit with mixed success.

One other point about magic which is true in both paper and online; WotC seems to believe that it's better to shoot for fewer but more hardcore customers that spend more per head than a lot of customer that only buy a little.  It would seem to be a riskier strategy since less customers mean when 1 leaves it effects you more, but those hardcore players spend a LOT per head.  Compare and contrast this to mmorpg subscriptions.  In a mmorpg, both the hardcore and the casual pay the same flat fee a month where as in mtg, the hardcore pay substantially more than the casual; it's basically a usage based system more akin to the old pay by the hour history of mmorpg's than anything else.  I would love to know how much money MTGO has done in sales to compare against subscription revenue from games like EQ and SWG.

Xilren

Only if you plan to play in serious standard events.  This is why I don;'t play standard constructed unless its just for fun in the casual rooms.  It's too expensive to always stay current in the standard constructed format.  But i think taking magic too seriously is a mistake, same as with mmorpgs; just play for fun.

Fer instance, last night Schild and I threw together some prismatic format decks and had a go.  These decks must have at least 20 cards from each color, and must be a minimum of 250 cards total using; you can use all card expansions and most of the tutors and fact or fiction is banned.  I assembled a 350 card monstrosity of a weenie deck and of course, beat schild to a bloody pulp with it. :-)  Good fun.

Xilren

But see, I thought the player skill in MtG WAS in deckbuilding.  *I*, knowing nothing about MtG, can manage to play a game of MtG successfulling having read the rules once or twice.  There's little player skill tthere, mostly luck.  Especially if you have a high-power netdeck.  I did this with the trial in MtGO, playing against Lanei, who'd played MtG for years.  Good deck+luck determines the outcome of a match moreso than 'player skill' in the game itself.


This somewhat proves my point...  Not just Margalis, as I've heard this sentiment from other people who actually follow MtG.  If there was player skill in the game, wouldn't people be more interested when a player was doing well?  Once past the newb barrier, you might as well have the game itself played out by 2 robots.

As a counter-example, the hitting game in baseball requires quite a bit of skill.  Barry Bonds is a great hitter...  I will not be able to to hit 100 mph fastballs by ordering a copy of Barry Bonds' bat from the bat manufacturer.  Whereas, with a copy of the latest Pro Tour net-deck, I, knowing just enough about it to know what the abilities on the cards do, can smush lots of other decks into the ground in MtG.

As a side note, when it comes to deckbuilding, I haven't a clue.

--
Alkiera

That's why I said it was a good thing in terms of keep card sales moving; people who aren't great deckbuilders can take a netdeck and WIN with it, potentially getting to the Pro Tour.  That attracts a lot of marginal players to the constructed scene.  And deckbuilding IS a part of it, which is why there are drafts and limited event in the pro tour too.

BUT, don't kid yourself that playing in a high level tournament doesn't require any skill.  In many way, MTGO babies players by making it hard for them to screw up; triggered affects and optional abilities always ask you "do you want to do this?", mana burn warnings, proper shuffling and tapping, being able to undo land taps.  Having just been to a paper event, you wouldn't believe how common it is to miss little things when playing in real life that could easily cost you games.  And there's a reason many pro players had demostrated consistent success as opposed to the fly by night scrubs who might win a PTQ with a net deck.  Knowing exactly what cards to sibeboard in games 2 and 3, knowing how to play the mirror match, being able to bluff well or make sure you don't put all your land cards on one side of your hand, being methodical so you don't miss optional effects, knowing how to slow play and get away with it etc.  Stuff like that seperates the average players with good decks from the consistent tournament winners with good decks and good playing skills.  It's not just what card does what knowledge, it's how you play the whole game.

As for me personally, doing that stuff well requires so much practice and concetration, it's not nearly as enjoyable for me.  Which is why online suits me much better.

Xilren

Most of the skill in actually playing Magic is not making mistakes or overlooking things. It's quite possible to play perfect games.

Compared to most sports or skill-based games the player skill side of magic is very low.

If Wizards didn't publish deck lists, they would eventually be found out, but at a much slower rate. If a deck made a big splash for the first time, you wouldn't know all 60+15 cards the next day. You might have to see the deck in a few more tournaments before it became clear what all the cards were and what their numbers were. Do they have 2, 3 or 4 copies of X spell? You can't figure that out from a couple of matches.

Then there is the idea that serious play SHOULD be dominated by a few decks, which should be predictable in advance! That's just a dumb idea.

I think it IS good business sense, but for the opposite reasons given above. LIMITED is where the money is. Constructed is mostly secondary market, buying from other players and shops. In a limited tourney you have to buy X pack for every tournament you enter.

I played a MTGO league and got a Ravager. If I bought 3 more Ravagers, I could make a standard Ravager deck, and I wouldn't have to spend any more after that unless I switched decks. However if I want to play a draft tourney, I have to buy 3 packs from Wizards every time.
---

Limited is basically the serious version of casual constructed. As a newb you don't have a ton of cards, you just go with what you've got. And, the skill is in maximizing what is available to you. Maybe X is not a great card, but it's playable and your job is to maximize it's effectiveness.

In a lot of games, maxmizing what you have given certain limitations is a lot more interesting than an unrestricted free-for-all.

I have to say that the majority of the fun I had playing MtG was in sealed deck tourneys.  No building the perfect deck... you played what you had.  

When the game became more about who held a deck with the most bazillion dollar cards, I lost interest.

It's a good game.  It's a fun game.  I even miss the sealed deck tourneys.  I just refuse to get sucked into the "I won because I could load my deck with more high powered cards than you" mentality.  It's almost EQ-esque in some ways.

Great, now im quoting myself.  Got an inkling to google about and here is what i found...

From a May 9th, 2003 press release (http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=magic/magiconline/news050903) on Wizard’s site we get this:



70 million cards eh; we can do some rough back of the envelope calculations on that.  

From Hasbro’s 2003 financial reports (http://ccbn.mobular.net/ccbn/7/538/587/) we get this:



Magic accounts never go away so no idea how many of those accounts are active.

Since this is almost a year out of date info, Im sure the numbers are higher now but lets pull figures out of our butts.

70million cards; i'll be generous and save a full third of those cards were given away as prizes from various events, leagues, drafts and tournaments; that's roughly 46 million store bought cards.  In further feats of making-up-number madness, lets say cards cost an average of 20 cents a piece (booster prices of $3.69 for 15=24.6 cents each and tournament packs of $11.29 for 75=15 cents each, split the difference for 20).  20 cents a card would equal out to ~$9,200,000 in card sales.  That's not counting event tickets at all, which run $1 and almost any event takes 2 or more to do: they might schedule 12,000 events a month, but lets guesstimate 2,000 events a month gather an averege of 64 players at 3 tickets each; that's another $4.6 million a year right there.

So, in total "pull stats from rectum" mode, let's say mtgo has made $13-17 million dollars in revenue in it's existance, up to mid 2003.  I'd actually say that's a conservative figure, but it gives some idea what ballpark we are in.

Xilren

Regarding the leve of skill in constructed: there's more to it than many people here seem to think.  Yes, a lot of it comes down to not making mistakes, but for a deck like Raffinity (the current top deck), its very hard to just pick up the deck and when.  Knowing when and what to sacrifice, how to do the crazy stack tricks, what to use the deck's limited removal on, etc.

     Kinda the same thing in poker - No, its not as skill intensive as many people make it out to be, and there's a lot of luck involved, but there's a reason many of the same names keep appearing at the final tables.  Same way in Magic; most people who play constructed seriously know who Kai Budde and Gabriel Nassif are.  However, most people on MTGO don't play constructed seriously; I'd say most people either spend most of their time drafting or playing in the casual rooms.    The REAL skill in magic is in drafting

    And yeah Xilren, MTGO is making a killing.  When they get people to pay full price for digital objects, and they only have to pay for bandwith and not printing and shipping costs, its pretty damn easy given the amount of Magic addicts out there.  

     I've got the next five days off for Chosuk, so hopefully I'll see some of you online.

There is a HUGE difference between the skill required in poker and magic. In poker, you don't bring your own deck.

In magic, certain decks stack up very well against certain other decks, and some decks are just plain better than others. It is quite possible in magic to start out at a large disadvantage.

Magic and poker both have the luck of the draw, and skill involved in playing your cards, but in poker you can't choose what to bring to the table.

In magic a lot of the same names end up at the end because they choose the right decks for the metagame, and because player skill does make a difference when everyone is playing similar decks. Obviously if you take deck construction out of the equation skill and the luck of the draw are the only things left.

That said, there just isn't that much skill. Not nearly as much as there could be if actually MAKING a deck was a part of it.

The biggest problem with saying that deckbuilding is dead is that it isn't. You can take a net deck and do well with it, but the best players take a netdeck (or not), play it to death against metagame decks, and make changes along the way. You can read all sorts of articles from top players saying "I tried X card but it isn't fast enough" or "I dropped the number of X card down to 3 because you don't want 2 in your opening hand" or "The card is too much of a liability againast non-X decks, so I moved it to the sideboard". The fact is, deck building isn't dead, just that many kiddies choose not to utilize it.

Personally I'm having heaps of fun making a cog deck. I realised yeterday that it is just too cute and redundant to be a teir 1 deck (it's close, but there are better decks that do similar things and are less fragile), but it's fun so I'll keep playing it. There are so many card choices that make such small effects alone but seem to change the deck a whole lot. Just yesterday I put in some Triskelions, but found that while they are a great addition, they have a tendency to clog up your hand along with the salvaging stations (they both cost 6). Plus when you do get them out, they are usually too expensive to properly abuse by bouncing them before they get blasted with arti hate. Good stuff.

Yeah, there is still some tweaking, and of course all the net decks have to come from somewhere. However, I still think it would be much much better if the goal was to have every card be good.

There are some cards that could be good in the "right deck" but no right deck exists for them. I can accept that. But every card should at least have potential.

The fact that there is a pretty regular metagame is really sad. I've watched a couple tourny replays on MTGO, and most of them are incredibly boring. I saw a few cool decks, like one that ran land destruction and persecute, and a Tooth and Nail deck that used Etched Oracle to generate card advantage. The vast majority though were extremely standard TaN or Ravager builds, most of which differed from each other by 8 cards at the most.

Compare these two cards: Tel-Jilad Exile vs. Troll Ascetic

Exile - 3G
1G: Regenerate
2/3

Ascetic - 1GG
1G- Regenerate
Cannot be the target of spells or abilities your opponents control.
3/2

Why would these cards be in the same block? Ascetic is clearly way way better. On guys that regen power is better than toughness, and the fact he can't be targeted is huge, and he costs less...

So, Exile in constructed is a dead card. It's nearly impossible to think of a circumstance where it could be better. That's just one example, but there are plenty.

I think the reason for disparity in card power is twofold:

1) It's all about selling boosters. There has to be a critical mass of cards for an expansion to work because otherwise you risk players getting everything they want rather quickly. Out of every pack you open, the majority of them are going to be worthless, so you need to buy more boosters to get 15 cards that are either worthwhile for you to either play or trade. Thus, more boosters are sold. Coming up with all those cards being good would be fairly difficult, so they cop-out by padding the expansion with a little crapola.

2) It's all about limited. Tel Jalid exile is nothing special, but he's decent for filling out your creature count, plus regen can be really useful at times. I've personally lost a round because of this card, regen is just that strong of a mechanic sometimes. I'm sure I would have hated ascetic more, and my opponent would have loved it, but you don't always see an ascetic in the packs. Alot of cards are like this, cards that would never see play in constructed are either decent, filler you hate but will use if you have to, or  can even be very good indeed. I think that's healthy. It would be too difficult for me to describe exactly how, and if you draft you probably understand how, but I think subpar cards are very healthy for limited. I think it would kill alot of how the format works if all cards were of the same relative worth.


As far as the exile/ascetic example I think that is just fine. One card is subpar, but it's still quite playable in limited and is thus healthy for the format IMO. It's cards like chimney imp where you would never play if you had a brain (if you just HAD to play it you might as well quit now) that I'm not sure if a good case can be made for. It might be that it's good there are cards that no-one wants, as it makes for less overall playables in a limited pool, and thus makes deckmaking a little harder. I've heard quite a number of draft veterens hating on MDF because there are too many playables. Maybe they have a point, maybe not.

I don't think it is too much of a problem though, but I get almost all of my boosters through limited, so I don't usually get the sensation of opening a pack and seeing nothing of use.

Agreed.  And let me throw in one additional factor to consider.  Who do you want to cater to in your design phase? Just standard constructed for serious players?  That would be like designing future expansions of your mmorpg for just the catass crowd, which I though was commonly accepted as not a wise thing to do.  It would simply reinforce the gap between the two groups making it less and less attractive to new players and current casual players.  Eventually, you would end up with a small niche game that only appeals to the hardcore.

Let's face it; serious players who either stay on the pro tour or make it thru PTQ's semi regularly don't buy individual boosters; they buy boxes and cases of the things, and buy needed singles they need.  Their goal is to always have 4 of everything they need to play with in contructed.  So those individual booster sales really only stem from limited play, and casual player.  There are still people who just play magic with their friends and never go to tournaments at all.

WotC started the Friday Night Magic concept some time back to try and spur the development of casual friendly events in gaming stores.  Their goal of course is to push these players along in the hopes they will become serious players, who spend a lot per captia.

It is all about the benejamins to wotc, and they clearly benefit from supporting both serious constructed AND limited formats.  So it's not a horrible thing that some cards will only see use in limited play, or even multiplayer, so long as the formats continue to be available and supported.

The more varieties there are, the more people they can hook.

Xilren

Quick note on the comparison to other MMOGs. You could compare MTGO to any online board game or card game to be sure (chess, checkers, backgammon, poker, etc.), but the comparison to MMORPGs is flawed for one simple reason. Player vs. Avatar. Online games are social and they build the skillsets of the player. MMORPGs are social as well, but are set up to build the skillset of a virtual avatar. The only player skillset that gets built by MMORPGs is typing and perhaps a little number crunching and minor strategy. Games that have strikingly simple gameplay, but offer vast options and strategy have always been fun so translating them into computer format does not diminish that entertainment, especially when you can involve other players online instead of playing against AI. MMORPGs are based on a system that has rules and regulations out the wazoo. How could we ever expect it to be translated into something fun on a PC? D&D is essentially cooperative storytelling. That's where all the fun comes... from the roleplay. Alas, the computer version of it concentrate on the gameplay of D&D rather than the creativity. What this means is we get a digitized form of incrementing a counter to increment another counter to increment another counter to... The actual fun of the game that MMORPGs are based upon was never figured into the equation. Either that or the players forgot which portion made the game enjoyable. With MTGO, you can't miss the fun. It's a card game. You need the cards and your wits to play it. Both need to show up at the table or you cannot play the game.

A good read on why all the cards can't be good, by one of the developers:
http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=mtgcom/daily/mr52

I suck at posting websites, sorry.  Anyway, its interesting whether you agree or not, just to see the developer's viewpoint.  I think the concept that 'bad cards might become good later' is flawed, but the rest makes sense.  [/url]

Bad cards sometimes do become good, and some cards could be good if they found the right deck but never really do. And some cards are good in limited, some good in constructed. I can accept that.

What I can't accept are artifacts like "gain 1 life any time an opponent plays a red spell." These types of cards are always useless, yet they keep printing them over and over again.

(http://www.wizards.com/global/images/magic/alpha/iron_star.jpg) (http://www.wizards.com/global/images/magic/5e/iron_star.jpg) (http://www.wizards.com/global/images/magic/7e/iron_star.jpg)

Sorry I couldn't help myself. BTW, that's an alpha, 5th edition and obviously a 7th edition there. Always crappy, always there.

The Core Set has basically turned into a junk set. But Mirrodin block has some of those same things, and it is supposed to be an EXPERT set.

Angel Feather, for example, is gain 1 life for every white spell..yay!

If you read the article I posted, it explains why those specific life gain cards are always reprinted- new players like them, and they're an important part of learning about the game, and slowly learning why cards are good or bad.  the new versions in Mirrodin (angel feather, etc) are just there so they can replace the old ones in the 9th edition core set.

Wow, that article did sum it up perfectly for me, and I have to say I agree with him. Does anybody else remember the sensation of realising that something sucked even though you thought it was good? One day you look down at your coveted card and think, hang on, that's actually pretty shitty, 1 mana for one life, and IF I play a green spell, IF I have a mana open. Or the day you realise that scaled wurm might own, but beating face with a grizzly bear for the past 5 turns is much better. It's a great feeling to go from the scrub who just throws in stuff that looks cool to actually making a deck of efficient creatures and useful spells (consequently it makes it less fun for your friends, I distinctly remember my green deck being banned at one point).

/me is convinced

That email the guy sent in was funny though: "I have never in all my years seen anyone play a Lion's Eye Diamond, for ANY reason"...





Heh.

But this ignores that a card that is shitty on its own can rule in combos with others. That Scaled Wurm is king if you can discard it, then bring it into play from the graveyard for 3W (Breath of Life).

(Those "1 for life when spell played" cards were king back when the rules weren't as clear, and you could trigger it multiple times per spell cast. :) These days it's just one more cheap artifact to add to "Affinity for artifacts" or to be sacrificed to a Krak-Clan Shaman or the like.)

Who the hell ever thought this? Jesus. I played Magic since The Beginning. Never saw or ran into anyone who thought they could do that.

Everyone in the card shop I gamed at. Back in the days before Fallen Empires when Arabian Knights boosters were selling for $25 an unopened pack. Ah memories.. thank goodness for them, because it keeps me out of M:TGO.

There was a reason the CCG mags printed new rulings every issue: The Alpha/Beta and Unlimited rules (and cards) were vague to the point of silliness. Books were published over the years, listing all cards and their current "real" game text instead of what was printed on the card.

For instance the card that said "opponent loses next turn". It meant "opponent skips his next turn", but could be interpreted as "after your next turn, unless he wins, you opponent loses the game." And consequently was interpreted that way by some. (It's like the Talisman "Heal" spell, which states it restores your character to four life. Play it with CS nerds, and your 6-life character now has 4.)

Or when someone in a tournament tore up an Orb of Chaos before dropping the pieces on the playfield, which made it touch quite a lot of cards. And having an official M:tG judge allow it.

Then we have "funny idea but I'll kill you for making it a card" stuff like Sheherazade (in Arabian Nights), which creates a sub-game you play with the remaining libraries, the loser of that game loses half their life in the main game. And the ante-specific cards like Jeweled Bird - it didn't take long before noone seriously played with ante anyway.

For people who came to the game around 5th edition or later, all this seems silly - but we didn't have the blessings of a cleaned-up rule set back then. Hell, even the timing rules between interrupts and instants caused much confusion. And how fast was tapping something for mana? It took many versions before "mana sources" became uninterruptible.

Aah, memories. The Legends distribution fuckup, the meh-ness of Fallen Empires and The Dark, the stupidity of snowcovered lands, the strangeness of flanking, the cards shifting in and out of sets and in and out of banned/restricted lists, the 1R-2U-4C deck building rule before the cards started indicating their rarity...

The release of Netrunner, Jyhad/V:tES and Battetech, all Richard Garfield designs that were in many ways superior to M:tG...

The plethora of card games released in the first two years after M:tG, probably 50 a year, all of which have sunk like rocks. Oh, On the Edge, where are you? Good riddance to you, Spellfire! The tits and asses of Xxxenophile.

Ah, the original urban legend.
(http://www.wizards.com/global/images/magic/unglued/chaos_confetti.jpg)



Which is something I'll touch on soon. They should really offer ante in MtGO.



The people I played with back during beta/unlimited realized that if something seemed stupid (like getting 1 life per 1 Colorless from an iron star). Anyway, perhaps common sense just isn't a skill that many MtG players possess. That wouldn't surprise me.



And now with squirrels we realize the power of spores. I also remember making some SICK Thrull decks back then.

Also, Fallen Empires had the land batteries. Icatian Town is great midgame advantage if necessary. Thelonite monk was just awesome, complete mana denial against anything except for monogreen. And how can you forget Hand of Justice?



I'll argue that all day long:
Maze of Ith, City of Shadows, Amnesia, Ball Lightning, Cleansing, Frankenstein's Monster, Dance of Many, Safe Haven (followed by Wrath of God and then an Armageddon),  Mind Bomb, Sorrow's Path, Stone Calendar, Witch Hunter, Eater of the Dead (arguably one of the best black creatures - ever) and more. I'd go on, but The Dark rocked.


I don't remember this, but I probably followed it. Meh, it's been a while.

On another note, Kamigawa is the best fun I've had since Legends or Dark. It's released on October 25th.

OK...this makes no sense.

THey have crappy "gain one life cards."

They put them in an "expert" set so they can move them into 9th...

They are ALREADY in the core set! Why can't they keep the old cards in 9th, or better yet just put the NEW cards in 9th? I think it's absurd that the core set is only supposed to be existing cards. The set is mostly for new players, right? Why do they care that a card exists or not? How do they even know?

If I'm a new player, I open up a 9th pack, and get Angel Feather, am I really going to think to myself "I've never seen this before - I'm confused! Help me!"

Here is the other thing you guys are missing: If they TRIED to make every card good some would still be bad. You would still have that learning experience. Inevitably some cards will be less good than others.  So they shouldn't have to print cards they know will be terrible.

(http://www.wizards.com/global/images/magic/darksteel/angels_feather.jpg)

(http://www.wizards.com/global/images/magic/8e/ivory_cup.jpg)

Ok. Let's look at these two cards. One of them requires you to pay (http://gatherer.wizards.com/magic/images/symbols/Symbol_1_mana.gif) in order to gain the life. The other doesn't.

The new player is going to learn about timing, triggers, etc. The veteran player would never play Ivory Cup, but there's a chance he would play Angel's feather. Every card has it's place. The question is when.

Yeah I never understood the underwhelming response FE got. It seemed like a pretty decent expansion to me.  But I never got to play it much since I had a girlfriend who was much more interesting, and I dropped out of MTG shortly after. Ah psychobabes.

I always put it down to the Thrulls and Saprolings taking more subtlety to use effectivly than most players could deal with.  It was also a time where lean decks of rack with copy artifact and counterspell were only made more effective by cards like Hymn to Torach.



Err, what he said.  At the time I stopped playing most folks thought The Dark was the best expansion ever for MTG.  I never saw anyone saying it was less than stellar.

AOFanboi is right - you just had sensible friends Schild. I worked a store and judged tournaments back then (our first nationals even)... I remember the arguments and heated timing debates as well as the sheets of paper with card text 'as they should have been' sent to me from WotC.

Allthough I was mistaken that the MtGO pricing scheme was stupid (they're clearly making money). I still believe they could have made more, by offering a true alternative to the cardboard game.
A true mmorpg (as suggested earlier) with a lot of the mmorpg stables, but with MtG duels replacing combat.
Cards should be loot as well as the games main tradeitems. New expansions should come with new lands to explore in order to get the cards. And true skillbased PvP would be a natural consequence of this.
And all the truly fun antebased cards you could never get anybody to play with would once again be part of the game.

In fact, it would make it possible to see Magic played the way Garfield thought it would, before he discovered the nature of Mr. Suitcase/the original catass.

I like MtGO, but am rarely online with people I know, so I don't get to play casual constructed (I hate playing multiplayer games with strangers). I prefer draft but usually loose because I run out of time (I take yoo long to consider moves, so allthough my decks/picks are good, I am defeated by the fucking chesstimer built in...)

Making things obvious is part of it. Lets use the example of the pay 1, gain 1 life cards we are all fixating on. They are bad, and very obviously once you know why. The first way in which they are bad is that lifegain is pretty sucky, secondly it does not affect the board, thirdly it requires you to have mana open, which means you're not using it for something useful.

These are all things you can figure out just by playing that lifegain deck MtGO offers in its trial. If it wasn't so pronounced you might not realise that it is bad. But after a number of games you realise that the ivory cup is the last thing you want in your hand. After so many times topdecking the cup when you need SOMETHING you figure out that it does nothing for you.

My brother figured that out for himself, which is remarkable since he's hopeless on doing things for himself, it was just so obvious that he couldn't help but see it. Now he only plays it because there's no reason not to, its not like he can take it out of the deck, and it's not like he can fake he has a counter/removal (and it's not like I'll let him use my account to make and play decks). He used to love that card, now he knows better, he even knows why, which is the most important part beause now he knows how to critique cards based on the rules that make ivory cup shite.

It's better that new players realise early on that the cards they are using are bad, because it sets them up to recognize those aspects that make cards good/bad. They need to learn those things or they continue to be run over by others who have figured the rules out, which leads to people quitting when they might not have if they stood a better chance. If the line was more blurred everywhere it might take longer, or it might not happen at all. Hell, some people STILL play ivory cup, so maybe they should have made it even worse. :P

The same thing works in reverse too. A friend used to play an old version of this shadow creature (I THINK it was Frozen Shade) where you could play one black mana to give it +1/+1... only the old version neglected to say "until the end of turn". So you'd end up facing this huge monstrocity, he'd just pump in all his spare mana and win when you couldn't deal with it (we banned that version btw, it was just too crazy). From that I figured out that so much of the time, mana is dead, and using it is like getting something for free. Which then led me to put in some pump creatures (Folk of the Pines from Ice Age) which looked pretty bad without the pumping. If that card hadn't been so obviously good I would not have stopped to ask why, and thus figured out about using dead mana.

Of course some of that is negated by the internet these days, but not everybody knows to look these things up, or could be bothered if they do.

I love talking magic. :P

EDIT: Yes is was a Frozen Shade, either alpha or beta version: "B: +1/+1".

I saw THIS (http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&category=49188&item=5922750272&rd=1) on eBay while surfing.  It seems there's still a decent market for these cards.  I had tons of alpha and legends cards and just gave them to a friend... wonder if that's how he financed his new home remodel.

I'm probably mis-remembering. I think I am confusing it with Homelands (http://www.coolstuffinc.com/main_magicResults.php?action=Magic%20the%20Gathering%20Cards&scs_Homelands=Homelands&search_exactWording=anyWord&form_searchMethod=Advanced&form_search_number=115). Or I let Sorrow's Path color my entire memory of the expansion, forgetting Uncle Istvan etc.

Looking at the sets via links here (http://www.coolstuffinc.com/magic-the-gathering-cards.php), they sure didn't make things easy for "non-computer" M:tG, like The Dark's Frankenstein's Monster which has three different types of counters to keep track of. Would fit better in MtgO, though I doubt they will ever add older sets to the game. (Among other reasons because WotC changed contracts at some stage, causing some artists to leave.)

It's pretty much a gaurantee that any reprints of older cards in a new expansion/core set will have new artwork, specifically to get around paying under the old system.

In terms of cards that would work well on the online version of Mtg, whether the regular one of our mmorpg concept, the older computer game had some interesting ideas.  Mircoprose had a small set of computer version only cards that had random effects in their game.  Fer instance, they had a Rainbow Knight white card which got protection from a random color when it came into play, or an Aswan Jaguar green card that randomly selected a creature type from your opponents deck and had "X: tap to destroy target creature with type Y".

You could develop other card concept that take advantage of the online medium that just wouldn't be workable in real life.

Xilren
PS: I second the implied vote for a MtG forum :-p

I am obviously a total Magic n00b, since I still occasionally play crap like Iron Star and Ivory Cup (mostly because my collection is still small).  I am becoming more interested in M:tGO (I have an account and a couple thousand cards, I think)- is there any room left in the guild? Is there anyone patient enough to play a few games with me and tell me why I suck? I seem to be ok in the tactical (game play) part, but my strategery (deck building) seems to be very poor. At least that is my impression.

I third the vote for a M:TG forum. I am a total newbie to the game so any tips, tricks and suggestions are welcome. I never played the card game, but I downloaded and installed the online client and am playing practice games and guest games to get the hang of things. But yeah, a forum would be nice. Then I could read about all the things you pros know.

Edit: Err, I took an extra dose of stupid this morning.

Why not just use the "Bat Country" forum for all f13 related gaming groups right now? It's not like the CoH related stuff isn't anything more than a post a week.

This thread reminds me why I always played M:tG with friends who wouldn't pull stupid rules-bending shit, and also why I generally dislike forced grouping in mmogs.

Err..so no beta cards allowed? Frozen Shade was a handy card, iirc, without the cheaty version.

A certain other site seems to use one forum (Game of the Picosecond Forum) as a catch all like that. I support doing the same with [COH] Bat County here, since single games rarely deserve a full forum to themselves. The gamer's attention is a fickle thing, and a new shiny is always over the horizon.

I would be willing to play with people and give some tips. My collection is pretty small so don't expect a beatdown.

I'd rather give it a whole forum than a catchall. Later if it completely dries up we can merge it into the gaming discussion.



I'd agree other than the fact that some of us started playing in 1994. Once again, after the initial investment and maybe a tournament or two when new sets come out and a league here and there, MtGO costs just barely more than an MMORPG, has no monthly fee, and uses your brain.

Edit: Oh, and I forgot, Champions of Kamigawa fucking rocks the casbah. And to add, here's 3 of my favorite cards from the upcoming set.

(http://www.wizards.com/global/images/magic/chk/boseiju_who_shelters_all.jpg) (http://www.wizards.com/global/images/magic/chk/moonring_mirror.jpg) (http://www.wizards.com/global/images/magic/chk/nezumi_graverobber.jpg)

Surely.  One of the things I think we could do immediately would be to post up card pools from leagues and such so people could analyze how and why you would build a deck a certain way and how to play the thing.

Teaching magic to folks who can understand is it's own pleasure.  It's just a cool game.  Besides, with more folks online we could dip into more formats as a group, whether multiplayer games or doing things life a mock draft so people could learn the in's and outs of that.

Xilren

Your wish is granted. Xilren's last post about draft discussion and group planning was the kicker. <-- HAR HAR, MAGIC JOKE, HAR! Enjoy.

Ok I've been out of the game too damn long. What's up with the double-sided card?

And Yeah, I can see where you'd like the land and the artifact. Very nice.

The double card is a flip card, new to this newest set. Basically it counts as one guy, then flips given a certain condition and "powers up" into the other side of the card.

The idea is cool, I just wish they had found a way to squeeze in more artwork.

As part of the MtgO guild, I have no problem giving any newb a quick game or some instructions or help.  I seem to be playing it a lot lately (and spending waaay too much money) and the wife is playing it TO THE EXCLUSION OF ALL ELSE.  She's a little more wary about giving advice, since she's under the impression that her style of play 'sucks'.

I'm in Bat Country as Lodehenge - not Ironwood.

I won't be jumping on M:tGO any time soon, but thanks for finally getting me to dig out my cards and look through them. Luckily I still had my black & red deck and my white weenie deck laying around cohesively. Plan on getting my supervisor and the children's librarian back into it and play on lunch.

Nah, I guess "banned" was too strong a word, we just forced him to use the revised version that had the effect running out at the end of the turn (he still used the same card, we just all took the "until end of turn" as implied after that). It is still quite a useful card with the revision, so he only lost the ability to say "I win" when he played it. But yeah, that's the sort of play you should just never use in friendly games beyond a couple times for showing off.

I have a few cards that are really vague like that, my old group always assumed the least overpowered explanation was probably the proper one. Going through my old cards, there's a LOT of those kind of cards, and we never really had problems with them, and never had to ban a card from play.

It's really about the folks you play with...and yes, that's another dig at forced grouping in mmogs (for geldon! :))