I hope that this post doesn't offend anyone - I'm genuinely looking for you guys to give me your thoughts on how I'm feeling here... Please chime in, but please don't get offended with how I'm feeling right now...
I haven't really "come back" to Magic yet - my journey back into this game literally started on Monday. I haven't even played a game yet because I haven't found anyone to play with. I've found a couple friends who want to learn (I've told them how awesome the game is). My brother still has all of his old cards and would love to play - but I only see him maybe once a month (he lives in a different state).
I played this game from age 12 to 17 or so (maybe 1994-1999) My memories of MTG are absolutely AWESOME! I look at a beta Royal Assassin or a 3rd Edition Sol Ring and get all giddy inside. It was the best game ever. I remember going in on booster boxes with friends, playing at school during lunch, having our little tournaments after school and winning booster packs, etc. My brother and I would dig through our collection of several thousand cards and talk about cards, etc. We would look up card prices in the latest Scrye, but the value of our cards didn't really play into anything. The internet wasn't a source of information for us (I guess it was around but we never would have searched the internet for anything MTG related). The most I ever did was buy a MTG Strategy book and learn some things from it. Sure, we knew about a few "famous" killer combos, but for the most part, we just dug through our collections, built decks, and played. I absolutely loved it.
I've spent countless hours the last couple days reading through the posts on this forum, and MTG seems like a completely different game than what I remember. When I read these posts, it doesn't seem as fun now. I'm sure back when I was 15 there were formats, and insanely competitive tournaments, and a few select combos or decks that always got played. If that stuff did exist, I didn't know anything about it. I feel like the more competitive and widespread the game has gotten, money, market-demand, and "politics" (for lack of a better term) have creeped in. It seems like you guys all know that if "format-x" were introduced, everyone would just use "card x" and "combo x" or that there would just be "x-type of decks" that get played all day long. I feel discouraged when I read something to the effect of "If you're going to be competitive in Modern, you're going to have to buy card x, y, and z". And it seems crazy that if I wanted to play Standard, I'd have to buy all new cards every couple years. It's nuts that I could say "What if there was a format that included the following sets..." and you guys could say that just a few cards or just one or two type of decks would dominate that format, which would make it lame.
I guess I feel like the naivety we had back then, and the lack of the internet being a resource for us, kept the game "pure" (maybe not the right word) and fun. I felt like we were all on a more-or-less equal playing field. We were all just kids in school, so we were all on the same budget. We didn't know every single card, every card combo, etc. We couldn't go on the internet and buy singles (or if we could back then, we didn't know it). No one person in our school could really get too far "ahead" of the rest in terms of cards, or skill level, because we all had roughly the same resources. We followed the rulebook, but except for the "banned cards" list during our little tournaments, any card you had in your box was fair game - and the games never felt lopsided. We just had a blast - plain and simple.
Am I trying to recreate memories and a past that doesn't exist anymore (or can't exist)? I really want MTG to be the game I remember... I just don't know if that's possible.
This is a great post and does a great job of highlighting the changes in the game from 20 years ago to now. I also was a high schooler playing in 1994 through 1998 and had a lot of the same thoughts about when I re-entered playing in 2008. Simply put, try to find (or cultivate) a play group that has a similar mentality to your own. Easier said than done, but finding a few others who share the same kitchen table view of magic you have would be the best way to re-create your experience.
take what I say with a grain of salt as I have been unable to cultivate that group myself. I mostly limit myself to limited and the occasional EDH game. EDH has a format is as close as I have gotten to the old school feeling of the game. I'd guess this is primarily because it's a purely casual environment where net decking isn't as common and people are just as apt to build decks that follow a theme as try to build the most focused streamline deck they can.
Casual play still exists and accounts for the lion's share of sales, but those are typically not the people invested enough to come and post in online forums about the game. There are plenty of people who play with siblings/spouses/roommates/coworkers/what have you, but you're probably going to have a harder time finding those groups. If you're just playing with friends and you just pick up some packs or preconstructed products, go for it.
You should take a look at commander/EDH, especially if you're not getting back into the game with a group of people to play with. It's (generally) a casual format with a lot more room to build whatever you feel like. It uses an eternal card pool so you can still run old favorites like Sol Ring. It's also popular enough that you can walk into almost any shop and find a game going. The deckbuilding restrictions can be a little daunting at first. You find yourself without enough room for everything that you want more quickly than you expect, and there are some decent precons if you want an easier starting point in the format. As someone else who got back into the game after years away, it hits a lot of the things I liked about the game when I was first playing. We have a very active commander forum on this site if you want to look deeper into that format.
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[Pr]Jaya | Estrid | A rotating cast of decks built out of my box.
This is a great post and does a great job of highlighting the changes in the game from 20 years ago to now. I also was a high schooler playing in 1994 through 1998 and had a lot of the same thoughts about when I re-entered playing in 2008. Simply put, try to find (or cultivate) a play group that has a similar mentality to your own. Easier said than done, but finding a few others who share the same kitchen table view of magic you have would be the best way to re-create your experience.
take what I say with a grain of salt as I have been unable to cultivate that group myself. I mostly limit myself to limited and the occasional EDH game. EDH has a format is as close as I have gotten to the old school feeling of the game. I'd guess this is primarily because it's a purely casual environment where net decking isn't as common and people are just as apt to build decks that follow a theme as try to build the most focused streamline deck they can.
I started at around the same age as you and OP. Started at 12-going on 13 (in 2004) and mostly just played terrible decks from whatever I could find in piles of stuff I got from people. . stopped playing at 16-17ish because it kinda died here then (second or third set in time spiral block). Came back in like 2009, didn't take the game too seriously til maybe 2013ish then started playing PPTQs when they started
I mean I'd call myself mostly a spike or a grinder now as I play in a fair bit of PPTQs and whatnot but even I look back with nostalgia on when I played as a kid, just because the game felt so different to me back then. I still enjoy the same now but maybe I just had a different perspective back then
One thing I love about EDH is that it reminds of when I played as a kid, since in EDH its just 1 ofs, which most of my decks were since that's mostly what I had back then and my decks were just jank
The game has evolved a lot, I admit. I have been playing since 1997 and seen so much change during all this time, not always for the better. Lots of power creep have made cards that were once great seem like garbage now, and many rules change have also been implemented, which have made some players quit. Not me.
I only play casual multiplayer games because I find them most fun since the competitive level is not as intense as in Modern or other official formats. I would recommend that you stick to this kind of games (casual multiplayer), this way you will not feel so "out" of the game. Also, you won't have to dish out a ton of money to build decks that define each format. There is a lot of creativity in casual decks. I find lots of satisfaction in building decks that that try doing something new, even though they are not that good. Of course, I also own power decks that I have refined over the years. When I play with my friends, I balance my decks so that I can have fun bashing them all with a great deck, then follow with a more ordinary build.
The forums here are a great way to get assistance and ideas, so don't hesitate to jump back in playing MTG! It's going to be 20 years soon for me, and I don't see myself quiting for a long time yet!
If you're looking to simulate the kitchen table Magic feel in pickup games with strangers, then Commander is probably the way to go; 60-card casual multiplayer has kind of disappeared since Commander started really taking off.
If you're looking to simulate the kitchen table Magic feel in pickup games with strangers, then Commander is probably the way to go; 60-card casual multiplayer has kind of disappeared since Commander started really taking off.
this is very true, I used to know a lot of people with more casual decks maybe 6 years ago, bot those disappeared once people figured out commander. I mean a few of them still exist but they're few and far in between
I've been playing commander pods at the past few GPs I've been to and they're so fun to pick up
I'm mostly going to echo what's already been said - it's really about finding fun people who enjoy playing more casually. And it's true, a lot of websites and forums are filled with posts from more competitive players - but that doesn't mean there aren't a ton of players that like to make fun decks that aren't crazy top-tier. I think it just looks that way because we casual players 'lurk' and read more than post.
I would agree with everyone else that Commander is a fantastic format, and a good place to find like-minded players. If you've got a game store nearby, a lot of places run Commander Nights, many without entry fees or the inevitable tension caused by prizes.
On the other hand, I do want to add that there are lots of players that would love to play the other formats 'casually'. There has been a lot of buzz lately about how Modern has become a 'turn three format', and how it slowly continues to squeeze out all but the very top decks. I think some of the negativity you're feeling is being reflected in the community, but those same issues are also sparking more interest in the possibility of a newer Frontier format - it's all part of the slow evolution of a game like this.
Personally, I'm building a 'Modern' deck built around Soulfire Grand Master that would get absolutely destroyed in a tournament, but it's ridiculously fun to play with friends who have similar time and budget for the hobby. Most people would never put a playset of Deflecting Palm in their Main Deck, but I do, because I can, and it will be fun to play against my friend's equally 'Modern' Devil Burn deck. Obviously, just one perspective from a relatively new and not-competitive player, but I think there are more of us out there than a lot of people think.
Commander is by far where the fun is at right now in magic for constructed, but that's only the case because wizards has very few fingers in that pie as it's a constructed format and they only print commander pre-cons for it, not boosters. The reality is that wizards didn't keep up with the times in how they handled print runs and the secondary market ran off without them. To put it in a nut shell, wizards has forgotten about the players in many ways and treats players like garbage. They have really bad promos and are scared of giving anyone anything good in any kind of preconstucted product. They frequently overprint or underprint products and often over-price products on the market, print products as sets instead of as boxed units of the same type, such as with commander decks (yes, that is why your Atraxa decks are nearly non-existent on store shelves and all you can find are the other ones), are printing necessary lands purposefully at rare to force people into buying more boosters instead of printing them at uncommon and putting cool stuff in those rare slots, and I have no idea how the LGS rewards system even survives or operates.
That being said, this game will shoulder on while the giant slug of a corporation keeps trying to find the door of the closet it shoved itself in.
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1. (Ravnica Allegiance): You can't keep a good esper control deck down... Or Wilderness Reclamation... or Gates...
2. (War of the Spark): Guys, I know what we need! We need a cycle of really idiotic flavor text victory cards! Jace's Triumph...
3. (War of the Spark): Lets make the format with control have even more control!
If you head on down to the casual threads, and in the Homebrew section there are a few Old School variants floating around. In the past few years nostalgia formats have been on the rise, other people miss that old school feel too. So just hunt around for folks interested in Old School and casual. They're harder to find but they do exist. 93/94 happens to be my favorite "format". You should post some pics of your rare stuff, would like to see if you've some drool worthy cards.
I agree magic was more fun when i was discovering it, but the game itself probably is better now: more balanced, more combat based. You could stabilish a casual format for your group so that no online strategy cannot be applied (something like alternative drafts, tribal wars (Google), some format based on intro packs and a limitation in the change of cards...), or you could Just play no format at all and Just agree it is casual magic.
I am in a similar situation. Personally, commander doesn't appeal to me tremendously because of the politics involved in multiplayer, but I will say that limited (draft & sealed) are a great way to play if you don't want the hyper-efficient net decks everywhere. There is some serious skill in drafting however, so it is not necessarily any less "competitive."
Another option, assuming you have at least a couple friends who play (or are interested in playing) is cube. It takes a bit of work, but one can make a fun-as-hell cube for a modest price. I have a 270-card common/uncommon cube that ran about $250, and I could easily have cut that cost in half by eliminating about 20 cards (I had most of them anyway)... most of the cards are between 10 and 25 cents. I've been pretty pleased with the decks that have come out of it.
I hope that this post doesn't offend anyone - I'm genuinely looking for you guys to give me your thoughts on how I'm feeling here... Please chime in, but please don't get offended with how I'm feeling right now...
I haven't really "come back" to Magic yet - my journey back into this game literally started on Monday. I haven't even played a game yet because I haven't found anyone to play with. I've found a couple friends who want to learn (I've told them how awesome the game is). My brother still has all of his old cards and would love to play - but I only see him maybe once a month (he lives in a different state).
I played this game from age 12 to 17 or so (maybe 1994-1999) My memories of MTG are absolutely AWESOME! I look at a beta Royal Assassin or a 3rd Edition Sol Ring and get all giddy inside. It was the best game ever. I remember going in on booster boxes with friends, playing at school during lunch, having our little tournaments after school and winning booster packs, etc. My brother and I would dig through our collection of several thousand cards and talk about cards, etc. We would look up card prices in the latest Scrye, but the value of our cards didn't really play into anything. The internet wasn't a source of information for us (I guess it was around but we never would have searched the internet for anything MTG related). The most I ever did was buy a MTG Strategy book and learn some things from it. Sure, we knew about a few "famous" killer combos, but for the most part, we just dug through our collections, built decks, and played. I absolutely loved it.
I've spent countless hours the last couple days reading through the posts on this forum, and MTG seems like a completely different game than what I remember. When I read these posts, it doesn't seem as fun now. I'm sure back when I was 15 there were formats, and insanely competitive tournaments, and a few select combos or decks that always got played. If that stuff did exist, I didn't know anything about it. I feel like the more competitive and widespread the game has gotten, money, market-demand, and "politics" (for lack of a better term) have creeped in. It seems like you guys all know that if "format-x" were introduced, everyone would just use "card x" and "combo x" or that there would just be "x-type of decks" that get played all day long. I feel discouraged when I read something to the effect of "If you're going to be competitive in Modern, you're going to have to buy card x, y, and z". And it seems crazy that if I wanted to play Standard, I'd have to buy all new cards every couple years. It's nuts that I could say "What if there was a format that included the following sets..." and you guys could say that just a few cards or just one or two type of decks would dominate that format, which would make it lame.
I guess I feel like the naivety we had back then, and the lack of the internet being a resource for us, kept the game "pure" (maybe not the right word) and fun. I felt like we were all on a more-or-less equal playing field. We were all just kids in school, so we were all on the same budget. We didn't know every single card, every card combo, etc. We couldn't go on the internet and buy singles (or if we could back then, we didn't know it). No one person in our school could really get too far "ahead" of the rest in terms of cards, or skill level, because we all had roughly the same resources. We followed the rulebook, but except for the "banned cards" list during our little tournaments, any card you had in your box was fair game - and the games never felt lopsided. We just had a blast - plain and simple.
Am I trying to recreate memories and a past that doesn't exist anymore (or can't exist)? I really want MTG to be the game I remember... I just don't know if that's possible.
I've been playing since those days and recently some friends of a coworker learned I played through him and wanted me to come over and hang and teach them some skills and such. We kind of covered the fact that Modern is expensive and Standard is a huge money pit, but they still wanted to play structured, casually competitive Magic. To these ends we meet once a week and cycle between competitive EDH, Drafting of a standard set, or cube draft. Competitive EDH has forced them to hone their skills and learn and be exposed to older, powerful cards and why those cards are powerful. Draft lets them gets exposed to new cards and get practice to become good enough to become competitive limited players should they choose to go to a sanctioned event while building a collection of relevant standard cards, and cube draft is a mix of the two (and is also good if someone is running low on cash one week to draft with). Some of the guys are interested in getting into legacy, on a budget, but for the most part, this gives us a variety of different ways to play the game and learn skills that are relevant to most competitive formats. If one of them really wanted to take up standard, they'd have the skills and just need to research the metagame, but this seems to be a good way to expose someone to all aspects and levels of Magic without significant cost investment.
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EDH: Grand Arbiter $tax, Freyalise Stompy, Mimeoplasm Death From the Grave
Have you heard of "Cube" Magic? It's a great way to (relatively inexpensively) recreate an old environment like the one you're nostalgic for. I was the same way. I created my '94 Magic Cube to play with my old friends.
I guess I feel like the naivety we had back then, and the lack of the internet being a resource for us, kept the game "pure" (maybe not the right word) and fun. I felt like we were all on a more-or-less equal playing field. We were all just kids in school, so we were all on the same budget. We didn't know every single card, every card combo, etc. We couldn't go on the internet and buy singles (or if we could back then, we didn't know it). No one person in our school could really get too far "ahead" of the rest in terms of cards, or skill level, because we all had roughly the same resources. We followed the rulebook, but except for the "banned cards" list during our little tournaments, any card you had in your box was fair game - and the games never felt lopsided. We just had a blast - plain and simple.
I started playing around the same time (The Dark/Revised); my first play groups were very casual, and the internet was way too slow to use as a resource the way I use it today, so I can definitely understand what you're getting at.
However, after reading a lot about the history of the game since then, I actually think the phenomenon you're referring to happened even before you or I started playing, in the first six months or so of the game's history. Don't have the source for this handy, but I recall Garfield saying in an interview that they had never anticipated Magic becoming as popular as it very quickly did, so they didn't worry too much about balance issues or what might happen if someone had multiple powerful rares in one deck, because they assumed everyone would just buy a few boosters and play with their friends, so that no one person would see all the cards. When people asked what to do if it gets a lot bigger and game balance became a problem, the attitude was sort of "we'll cross that bridge when we come to it." (if that sounds familiar to someone who knows the source I'd appreciate it... I think it might have been an article on the history of the Pro Tour?)
So anyway, I feel like late '93 - '95 was sort of crossing that bridge; releasing Unlimited was a deliberate push to get more cards into people's hands after people started realizing which cards were more useful and the secondary market prices on those cards skyrocketed (when I started playing, even after the Unlimited print run, Ancestral Recall was still $125), testing and tweaking the formats for high-level tournaments and codifying those rules for locally-run tournaments, paying more attention in design of new sets to ensure fewer "broken" cards slipped through the cracks. All of this served the needs of a quickly-growing base of players who were interested in Magic as a balanced environment in which to test their skills. In some ways this was inevitable, because they designed the game (in general) so well that more and more people were driven to master it. For every person who finishing a game of Magic and says "oh, hey the game's on" and leaves the table, there's another who said "that's interesting. I wonder if I won/lost that game because of card X, or some other factor? Let's run it another twenty times or so and see if we can figure out what happens on average." (okay, maybe only one in five is the latter person. That person is uber-nerdy. But I have a lot of sympathy for him/her. )
Bleh, this is long and explainy, sorry. What I'm getting at is the push towards highly competitive play was probably inevitable once the game hit enough momentum, which it hit long ago, given the way it appealed to the puzzle-solving/skill mastery part of people's brains. I can see how the culture that's grown up around that can be overwhelming, but I wouldn't let it discourage you from getting some people together to play casually. I have a friend who starting playing way back (Alliances, I believe), we used to play all day every day, but growing up and jobs and kids and stuff so who has time... nowadays he just plays the Magic Duels app and he's fine with that. Once in a while I'll get him to come out to a draft and he has fun. The idiosyncrasies of competitive constructed just don't affect him, because he never plays competitive constructed. If you feel Magic has gotten too serious, I would not play Standard. Too much of a learning curve, plus it changes subtly week-to-week in addition to changing drastically four times a year. I don't even play Standard right now, and I like competitive Magic. It's just too costly/time-consuming.
If you decide to start your own casual play group by teaching your friends to play, the only way the competitive culture is really going to affect you is if you decide to go out and buy specific cards. A Snapcaster Mage is going to cost you $40 whether you want it for a casual deck or a competitive deck, because all the competitive players are draining the supply. But that card will probably be reprinted in the spring, so that sort of thing is sometimes temporary. If you're happy with the cards you have access to, nothing's stopping you from shuffling up, going exactly as deep into strategy and competitive structure as you feel you want to. I'm in a similar place with the game Dominion (the big deck construction game from Rio Grande). I have all the stuff and will invite people over every week or so to hang out and play. When I talk to my brother about the game he'll say, "you know there are forums and tournaments, and I've been following the strategy of this, and when such-and-such is the setup you always want to do such-and-such..." my reaction is usually, "whoa, bro, that's a lot. I just want to have a beer with my friends and do a little bit of math." We have a pretty nerdy friend group, but there's a threshold at which we need to keep it casual, else somebody's spouse will roll their eyes and go see what's on the snack table. So I play the game completely ignorant of what the "best" moves are, with a carefree attitude of "hey, let's try this!" I have fun. You can do that with Magic, if you can find enough people of similar mindset (protip: if you teach them yourself, they're probably going to share your mindset. This is how I built my casual Magic group in the 90s )
Finally, I would echo what a user said above about looking into building a Cube. Cubes are great because you get to handpick the cards you want to play with, so you can restrict it to a certain era if you like. Or keep the power level low, focus it less on combat math and more on fun combos... whatever you want.
Well, as I said earlier MTG is only doing badly due to not keeping up with the times very well. The game just isn't designed for an age with an internet where people can post and think tank deck listings and with so many cards being legal in many formats it's impossible to keep up with the secondary market demand. Wizards has a hard time playing whack a mole with print runs because by the time they can get a card to the printer their last released set just increased the demand on another completely different set of cards. Even as a casual player of MTG I've had months where it's just biting the bullet and spending 200 usd because the market is just not going to let the price drop on those needed cards.
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1. (Ravnica Allegiance): You can't keep a good esper control deck down... Or Wilderness Reclamation... or Gates...
2. (War of the Spark): Guys, I know what we need! We need a cycle of really idiotic flavor text victory cards! Jace's Triumph...
3. (War of the Spark): Lets make the format with control have even more control!
Some random thoughts from a fellow old-timer who recently returned to the game:
1. The aesthetics of the game have changed. That was the hardest thing for me to get over. The art no longer has that iconic 90s fantasy "Magic" feel to it, most of it is not really resonant or unique to me at all and a lot of it looks semi computer-generated. I also hated the new frames. But...it's not the 90s anymore so I really can't complain. Everything about the card aesthetics is objectively "better" now, it's just different from what we originally fell in love with.
2. One of the problems of being a grown-up is that things in general just aren't as exciting as they were when you were a kid and just discovering them. The adult brain just can't be (and probably shouldn't be) immersed in game to the extent that you were as a kid, and the thrill of discovery is a little blunted by the millions of people on forums who have already figured everything out, what's good and what's bad, how much money you have to spend to be competitive.
3. On the bright side, Magic is pretty much objectively a better game now. Wizards has had decades to refine their design and development to create the most fun gameplay. The game is also way, way more popular. When I was a kid we had to travel to attend any kind of tournament because the local comic shop would never get more than 5 or 6 people to play and it wasn't even worth it for them. Now I go to FNM at my local store and there are regularly 30-40 people there.
4. Playing the actual game of Magic is shockingly similar now to how it was in 1994. It's still the same awesome, fun, challenging, thought-provoking game that we originally fell in love with. In fact, probably even better if you're really honest.
5. Magic players are still the same cool, welcoming, interesting people as ever. There are just a lot more of us now, and to me, that makes this pretty much the best time ever to be a Magic player.
So I hope you do come back to the game, you can't actually go back to when you were 12 years old, but to me playing magic is about the closest you can get.
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If you can cast a spell, you're doing well, If you can't, that's okay, too. It usually takes a few turns before you have enough mana to do anything. Meanwhile, you should figure out whether you need to discard (p.11). Then announce the end of your turn, and let your opponent have a go.
I kind of go back and forth on this. I returned as well a few years back (during Theros block) after over a decade away from the game. I originally started during the Unlimited / Revised days and have a soft spot for white bordered cards. As such, I've worked on two personal projects that fill that niche for me. First, I built a white bordered cube, starting with a bunch of cards that I still owned from my old collection, and adding to that over time. I dumped in proxies of Moxen and Black Lotus to make it spicy, but otherwise they're all authentic and white bordered beauties: Old School White Border Cube
Earlier this year, I decided to make a set of 5 white border decks, one for each color in Magic. I think they're beautiful! I don't get to play these decks, or the cube very often, but they're always available and whenever I dig them out, I get to feel all nostalgic about the good old days of Magic.
I've since moved on and play more Standard, Modern, Commander, and I'm slowly building a Legacy deck. But old school is where my heart is, and where I'll always remember having the best times playing with my friends back in the day. Maybe you could do something similar. Set yourself up with a nice cube or old school deck that you can play when the mood strikes you. And also start digging into the current game in some form or another. It really is still great, even if it's much different from what you likely remember. Whatever you decide, I hope you have fun!
Some random thoughts from a fellow old-timer who recently returned to the game:
1. The aesthetics of the game have changed. That was the hardest thing for me to get over. The art no longer has that iconic 90s fantasy "Magic" feel to it, most of it is not really resonant or unique to me at all and a lot of it looks semi computer-generated. I also hated the new frames. But...it's not the 90s anymore so I really can't complain. Everything about the card aesthetics is objectively "better" now, it's just different from what we originally fell in love with.
2. One of the problems of being a grown-up is that things in general just aren't as exciting as they were when you were a kid and just discovering them. The adult brain just can't be (and probably shouldn't be) immersed in game to the extent that you were as a kid, and the thrill of discovery is a little blunted by the millions of people on forums who have already figured everything out, what's good and what's bad, how much money you have to spend to be competitive.
3. On the bright side, Magic is pretty much objectively a better game now. Wizards has had decades to refine their design and development to create the most fun gameplay. The game is also way, way more popular. When I was a kid we had to travel to attend any kind of tournament because the local comic shop would never get more than 5 or 6 people to play and it wasn't even worth it for them. Now I go to FNM at my local store and there are regularly 30-40 people there.
4. Playing the actual game of Magic is shockingly similar now to how it was in 1994. It's still the same awesome, fun, challenging, thought-provoking game that we originally fell in love with. In fact, probably even better if you're really honest.
5. Magic players are still the same cool, welcoming, interesting people as ever. There are just a lot more of us now, and to me, that makes this pretty much the best time ever to be a Magic player.
So I hope you do come back to the game, you can't actually go back to when you were 12 years old, but to me playing magic is about the closest you can get.
1. Part of me thinks the 90s art was sweet and almost nostalgic even if I didn't play back then. But the current art is so much cleaner
2. I used to get so excited about it in my first few years playing, in a way I can't match now
3. I know there were times about 9 or 10 years ago where my LGS didn't even have enough people to fire anything on Fridays. I don't remember if the store in a nearby town did. Now we have enough people to fire FNM at 3 stores every week, with regular events such as Game Days and prereleases at all 3, with PPTQs at 2 of the 3 local stores. Plus there are a lot of PPTQs relatively close
4/5. TBH I've enjoyed playing Magic more since playing at competitive events. It's still the same game but I enjoy playing large events more than casual events like FNM. I still get a great feeling the odd time I get to play FNM at the store I started playing at but large events are my favourite. Plus I've met some great people I would have never otherwise met
I would echo what others have mentioned about building a cube. The nice thing about a cube is that you can build with cards that are fun for you and your play group. Perhaps for you and your group, building one with only old frame cards would be the way to go. It sounds like you have access to a few collections from back then to build one with.
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I haven't really "come back" to Magic yet - my journey back into this game literally started on Monday. I haven't even played a game yet because I haven't found anyone to play with. I've found a couple friends who want to learn (I've told them how awesome the game is). My brother still has all of his old cards and would love to play - but I only see him maybe once a month (he lives in a different state).
I played this game from age 12 to 17 or so (maybe 1994-1999) My memories of MTG are absolutely AWESOME! I look at a beta Royal Assassin or a 3rd Edition Sol Ring and get all giddy inside. It was the best game ever. I remember going in on booster boxes with friends, playing at school during lunch, having our little tournaments after school and winning booster packs, etc. My brother and I would dig through our collection of several thousand cards and talk about cards, etc. We would look up card prices in the latest Scrye, but the value of our cards didn't really play into anything. The internet wasn't a source of information for us (I guess it was around but we never would have searched the internet for anything MTG related). The most I ever did was buy a MTG Strategy book and learn some things from it. Sure, we knew about a few "famous" killer combos, but for the most part, we just dug through our collections, built decks, and played. I absolutely loved it.
I've spent countless hours the last couple days reading through the posts on this forum, and MTG seems like a completely different game than what I remember. When I read these posts, it doesn't seem as fun now. I'm sure back when I was 15 there were formats, and insanely competitive tournaments, and a few select combos or decks that always got played. If that stuff did exist, I didn't know anything about it. I feel like the more competitive and widespread the game has gotten, money, market-demand, and "politics" (for lack of a better term) have creeped in. It seems like you guys all know that if "format-x" were introduced, everyone would just use "card x" and "combo x" or that there would just be "x-type of decks" that get played all day long. I feel discouraged when I read something to the effect of "If you're going to be competitive in Modern, you're going to have to buy card x, y, and z". And it seems crazy that if I wanted to play Standard, I'd have to buy all new cards every couple years. It's nuts that I could say "What if there was a format that included the following sets..." and you guys could say that just a few cards or just one or two type of decks would dominate that format, which would make it lame.
I guess I feel like the naivety we had back then, and the lack of the internet being a resource for us, kept the game "pure" (maybe not the right word) and fun. I felt like we were all on a more-or-less equal playing field. We were all just kids in school, so we were all on the same budget. We didn't know every single card, every card combo, etc. We couldn't go on the internet and buy singles (or if we could back then, we didn't know it). No one person in our school could really get too far "ahead" of the rest in terms of cards, or skill level, because we all had roughly the same resources. We followed the rulebook, but except for the "banned cards" list during our little tournaments, any card you had in your box was fair game - and the games never felt lopsided. We just had a blast - plain and simple.
Am I trying to recreate memories and a past that doesn't exist anymore (or can't exist)? I really want MTG to be the game I remember... I just don't know if that's possible.
take what I say with a grain of salt as I have been unable to cultivate that group myself. I mostly limit myself to limited and the occasional EDH game. EDH has a format is as close as I have gotten to the old school feeling of the game. I'd guess this is primarily because it's a purely casual environment where net decking isn't as common and people are just as apt to build decks that follow a theme as try to build the most focused streamline deck they can.
You should take a look at commander/EDH, especially if you're not getting back into the game with a group of people to play with. It's (generally) a casual format with a lot more room to build whatever you feel like. It uses an eternal card pool so you can still run old favorites like Sol Ring. It's also popular enough that you can walk into almost any shop and find a game going. The deckbuilding restrictions can be a little daunting at first. You find yourself without enough room for everything that you want more quickly than you expect, and there are some decent precons if you want an easier starting point in the format. As someone else who got back into the game after years away, it hits a lot of the things I liked about the game when I was first playing. We have a very active commander forum on this site if you want to look deeper into that format.
I started at around the same age as you and OP. Started at 12-going on 13 (in 2004) and mostly just played terrible decks from whatever I could find in piles of stuff I got from people. . stopped playing at 16-17ish because it kinda died here then (second or third set in time spiral block). Came back in like 2009, didn't take the game too seriously til maybe 2013ish then started playing PPTQs when they started
I mean I'd call myself mostly a spike or a grinder now as I play in a fair bit of PPTQs and whatnot but even I look back with nostalgia on when I played as a kid, just because the game felt so different to me back then. I still enjoy the same now but maybe I just had a different perspective back then
One thing I love about EDH is that it reminds of when I played as a kid, since in EDH its just 1 ofs, which most of my decks were since that's mostly what I had back then and my decks were just jank
I only play casual multiplayer games because I find them most fun since the competitive level is not as intense as in Modern or other official formats. I would recommend that you stick to this kind of games (casual multiplayer), this way you will not feel so "out" of the game. Also, you won't have to dish out a ton of money to build decks that define each format. There is a lot of creativity in casual decks. I find lots of satisfaction in building decks that that try doing something new, even though they are not that good. Of course, I also own power decks that I have refined over the years. When I play with my friends, I balance my decks so that I can have fun bashing them all with a great deck, then follow with a more ordinary build.
The forums here are a great way to get assistance and ideas, so don't hesitate to jump back in playing MTG! It's going to be 20 years soon for me, and I don't see myself quiting for a long time yet!
this is very true, I used to know a lot of people with more casual decks maybe 6 years ago, bot those disappeared once people figured out commander. I mean a few of them still exist but they're few and far in between
I've been playing commander pods at the past few GPs I've been to and they're so fun to pick up
I would agree with everyone else that Commander is a fantastic format, and a good place to find like-minded players. If you've got a game store nearby, a lot of places run Commander Nights, many without entry fees or the inevitable tension caused by prizes.
On the other hand, I do want to add that there are lots of players that would love to play the other formats 'casually'. There has been a lot of buzz lately about how Modern has become a 'turn three format', and how it slowly continues to squeeze out all but the very top decks. I think some of the negativity you're feeling is being reflected in the community, but those same issues are also sparking more interest in the possibility of a newer Frontier format - it's all part of the slow evolution of a game like this.
Personally, I'm building a 'Modern' deck built around Soulfire Grand Master that would get absolutely destroyed in a tournament, but it's ridiculously fun to play with friends who have similar time and budget for the hobby. Most people would never put a playset of Deflecting Palm in their Main Deck, but I do, because I can, and it will be fun to play against my friend's equally 'Modern' Devil Burn deck. Obviously, just one perspective from a relatively new and not-competitive player, but I think there are more of us out there than a lot of people think.
That being said, this game will shoulder on while the giant slug of a corporation keeps trying to find the door of the closet it shoved itself in.
1. (Ravnica Allegiance): You can't keep a good esper control deck down... Or Wilderness Reclamation... or Gates...
2. (War of the Spark): Guys, I know what we need! We need a cycle of really idiotic flavor text victory cards! Jace's Triumph...
3. (War of the Spark): Lets make the format with control have even more control!
Another option, assuming you have at least a couple friends who play (or are interested in playing) is cube. It takes a bit of work, but one can make a fun-as-hell cube for a modest price. I have a 270-card common/uncommon cube that ran about $250, and I could easily have cut that cost in half by eliminating about 20 cards (I had most of them anyway)... most of the cards are between 10 and 25 cents. I've been pretty pleased with the decks that have come out of it.
Two Score, Minus Two or: A Stargate Tail
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I've been playing since those days and recently some friends of a coworker learned I played through him and wanted me to come over and hang and teach them some skills and such. We kind of covered the fact that Modern is expensive and Standard is a huge money pit, but they still wanted to play structured, casually competitive Magic. To these ends we meet once a week and cycle between competitive EDH, Drafting of a standard set, or cube draft. Competitive EDH has forced them to hone their skills and learn and be exposed to older, powerful cards and why those cards are powerful. Draft lets them gets exposed to new cards and get practice to become good enough to become competitive limited players should they choose to go to a sanctioned event while building a collection of relevant standard cards, and cube draft is a mix of the two (and is also good if someone is running low on cash one week to draft with). Some of the guys are interested in getting into legacy, on a budget, but for the most part, this gives us a variety of different ways to play the game and learn skills that are relevant to most competitive formats. If one of them really wanted to take up standard, they'd have the skills and just need to research the metagame, but this seems to be a good way to expose someone to all aspects and levels of Magic without significant cost investment.
EDH: Grand Arbiter $tax, Freyalise Stompy, Mimeoplasm Death From the Grave
wasn't there a time where each fall set was breaking sales records of the one before?
Magic is at an all time high. I've been seeing more and more new players start playing and tournaments having high attendance all around.
See the link in my sig.
My Kamigawa cube.
My Mirage Cube
I started playing around the same time (The Dark/Revised); my first play groups were very casual, and the internet was way too slow to use as a resource the way I use it today, so I can definitely understand what you're getting at.
However, after reading a lot about the history of the game since then, I actually think the phenomenon you're referring to happened even before you or I started playing, in the first six months or so of the game's history. Don't have the source for this handy, but I recall Garfield saying in an interview that they had never anticipated Magic becoming as popular as it very quickly did, so they didn't worry too much about balance issues or what might happen if someone had multiple powerful rares in one deck, because they assumed everyone would just buy a few boosters and play with their friends, so that no one person would see all the cards. When people asked what to do if it gets a lot bigger and game balance became a problem, the attitude was sort of "we'll cross that bridge when we come to it." (if that sounds familiar to someone who knows the source I'd appreciate it... I think it might have been an article on the history of the Pro Tour?)
So anyway, I feel like late '93 - '95 was sort of crossing that bridge; releasing Unlimited was a deliberate push to get more cards into people's hands after people started realizing which cards were more useful and the secondary market prices on those cards skyrocketed (when I started playing, even after the Unlimited print run, Ancestral Recall was still $125), testing and tweaking the formats for high-level tournaments and codifying those rules for locally-run tournaments, paying more attention in design of new sets to ensure fewer "broken" cards slipped through the cracks. All of this served the needs of a quickly-growing base of players who were interested in Magic as a balanced environment in which to test their skills. In some ways this was inevitable, because they designed the game (in general) so well that more and more people were driven to master it. For every person who finishing a game of Magic and says "oh, hey the game's on" and leaves the table, there's another who said "that's interesting. I wonder if I won/lost that game because of card X, or some other factor? Let's run it another twenty times or so and see if we can figure out what happens on average." (okay, maybe only one in five is the latter person. That person is uber-nerdy. But I have a lot of sympathy for him/her. )
Bleh, this is long and explainy, sorry. What I'm getting at is the push towards highly competitive play was probably inevitable once the game hit enough momentum, which it hit long ago, given the way it appealed to the puzzle-solving/skill mastery part of people's brains. I can see how the culture that's grown up around that can be overwhelming, but I wouldn't let it discourage you from getting some people together to play casually. I have a friend who starting playing way back (Alliances, I believe), we used to play all day every day, but growing up and jobs and kids and stuff so who has time... nowadays he just plays the Magic Duels app and he's fine with that. Once in a while I'll get him to come out to a draft and he has fun. The idiosyncrasies of competitive constructed just don't affect him, because he never plays competitive constructed. If you feel Magic has gotten too serious, I would not play Standard. Too much of a learning curve, plus it changes subtly week-to-week in addition to changing drastically four times a year. I don't even play Standard right now, and I like competitive Magic. It's just too costly/time-consuming.
If you decide to start your own casual play group by teaching your friends to play, the only way the competitive culture is really going to affect you is if you decide to go out and buy specific cards. A Snapcaster Mage is going to cost you $40 whether you want it for a casual deck or a competitive deck, because all the competitive players are draining the supply. But that card will probably be reprinted in the spring, so that sort of thing is sometimes temporary. If you're happy with the cards you have access to, nothing's stopping you from shuffling up, going exactly as deep into strategy and competitive structure as you feel you want to. I'm in a similar place with the game Dominion (the big deck construction game from Rio Grande). I have all the stuff and will invite people over every week or so to hang out and play. When I talk to my brother about the game he'll say, "you know there are forums and tournaments, and I've been following the strategy of this, and when such-and-such is the setup you always want to do such-and-such..." my reaction is usually, "whoa, bro, that's a lot. I just want to have a beer with my friends and do a little bit of math." We have a pretty nerdy friend group, but there's a threshold at which we need to keep it casual, else somebody's spouse will roll their eyes and go see what's on the snack table. So I play the game completely ignorant of what the "best" moves are, with a carefree attitude of "hey, let's try this!" I have fun. You can do that with Magic, if you can find enough people of similar mindset (protip: if you teach them yourself, they're probably going to share your mindset. This is how I built my casual Magic group in the 90s )
Finally, I would echo what a user said above about looking into building a Cube. Cubes are great because you get to handpick the cards you want to play with, so you can restrict it to a certain era if you like. Or keep the power level low, focus it less on combat math and more on fun combos... whatever you want.
Welcome back!
1. (Ravnica Allegiance): You can't keep a good esper control deck down... Or Wilderness Reclamation... or Gates...
2. (War of the Spark): Guys, I know what we need! We need a cycle of really idiotic flavor text victory cards! Jace's Triumph...
3. (War of the Spark): Lets make the format with control have even more control!
Two Score, Minus Two or: A Stargate Tail
(Image by totallynotabrony)
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I live in a pretty small area with 2 small towns but there's still enough to have 3 stores do okay sales. That's something that still surprises me.
1. The aesthetics of the game have changed. That was the hardest thing for me to get over. The art no longer has that iconic 90s fantasy "Magic" feel to it, most of it is not really resonant or unique to me at all and a lot of it looks semi computer-generated. I also hated the new frames. But...it's not the 90s anymore so I really can't complain. Everything about the card aesthetics is objectively "better" now, it's just different from what we originally fell in love with.
2. One of the problems of being a grown-up is that things in general just aren't as exciting as they were when you were a kid and just discovering them. The adult brain just can't be (and probably shouldn't be) immersed in game to the extent that you were as a kid, and the thrill of discovery is a little blunted by the millions of people on forums who have already figured everything out, what's good and what's bad, how much money you have to spend to be competitive.
3. On the bright side, Magic is pretty much objectively a better game now. Wizards has had decades to refine their design and development to create the most fun gameplay. The game is also way, way more popular. When I was a kid we had to travel to attend any kind of tournament because the local comic shop would never get more than 5 or 6 people to play and it wasn't even worth it for them. Now I go to FNM at my local store and there are regularly 30-40 people there.
4. Playing the actual game of Magic is shockingly similar now to how it was in 1994. It's still the same awesome, fun, challenging, thought-provoking game that we originally fell in love with. In fact, probably even better if you're really honest.
5. Magic players are still the same cool, welcoming, interesting people as ever. There are just a lot more of us now, and to me, that makes this pretty much the best time ever to be a Magic player.
So I hope you do come back to the game, you can't actually go back to when you were 12 years old, but to me playing magic is about the closest you can get.
Earlier this year, I decided to make a set of 5 white border decks, one for each color in Magic. I think they're beautiful! I don't get to play these decks, or the cube very often, but they're always available and whenever I dig them out, I get to feel all nostalgic about the good old days of Magic.
I've since moved on and play more Standard, Modern, Commander, and I'm slowly building a Legacy deck. But old school is where my heart is, and where I'll always remember having the best times playing with my friends back in the day. Maybe you could do something similar. Set yourself up with a nice cube or old school deck that you can play when the mood strikes you. And also start digging into the current game in some form or another. It really is still great, even if it's much different from what you likely remember. Whatever you decide, I hope you have fun!
1. Part of me thinks the 90s art was sweet and almost nostalgic even if I didn't play back then. But the current art is so much cleaner
2. I used to get so excited about it in my first few years playing, in a way I can't match now
3. I know there were times about 9 or 10 years ago where my LGS didn't even have enough people to fire anything on Fridays. I don't remember if the store in a nearby town did. Now we have enough people to fire FNM at 3 stores every week, with regular events such as Game Days and prereleases at all 3, with PPTQs at 2 of the 3 local stores. Plus there are a lot of PPTQs relatively close
4/5. TBH I've enjoyed playing Magic more since playing at competitive events. It's still the same game but I enjoy playing large events more than casual events like FNM. I still get a great feeling the odd time I get to play FNM at the store I started playing at but large events are my favourite. Plus I've met some great people I would have never otherwise met