The color wheel is one of Magic's best features. I feel R&D already messes around with it too much as it is. The color wheel is such a central part of Magic's design that changing it would be more like "Other game 1.0" rather than "Magic 2.0".
"Lands on the side" can be a fun variant, such as in Live Draft. However, I do not think it works so well as part of the main game. An issue I have not seen brought up is flavor. Your library represents the various extraplanar resources that you have access to. The reason it is randomized is because the planes are not stationary. Taking one of your resources (land) and making it consistently available while your other resources (spells) are not really breaks this flavor. This becomes more apparent if only basic land is set aside while non-basic lands are shuffled into the deck.
I like the idea for Cycling on everything, but would fix it so that "generic everything can be cycled" sends cards into exile rather than the graveyard. This would allow set designers to have more control over specific cards that "cycle into the graveyard" for graveyard mechanic based blocks such as Weatherlight/Odessey/Innistrad.
I like making Tribal evergreen.
I like Instant as a supertype.
I don't understand making lands "less basic". Basic/non-basic lands is a useful tool set designers can use to control the power level of land destruction.
unless you are playing with illegal pretend cards.
In my area, we call those "proxies". And outside of sanctioned tournaments a "pretend" photocopied Black Lotus is just as "real" as the "pretend" Xenagos someone pulled out of a booster pack.
Back in 2007 I used to organize weekday meetups at several different stores in town. The one my group hit up on Tuesdays got a rep for being awful. The main issue was that the employees did not know card prices. Rather than look the prices up online, they'd shrug and tell customers that they could not sell their singles since they did not know the prices.
The store is much better now. The owner runs it himself instead of relying on others to watch the store in his place. He confessed to me that back in the bad old days he did not really care about the Magic portion of his business at all. Obviously that is not the case now.
History repeats itself though. A different store from the one I mentioned above is making the same mistake. I noticed a box of singles in this other store and they refused to sell since they did not know what to charge and couldn't be bothered to do the research.
Do you been keep the sets separate, or do you play with all combined?
So far, I only keep them separate because I do not want to go through the hassle of separating out the cards afterwards. While each set is a good game on its own, playing combined will probably make for the best experience. Once my local players have gone through more games, I will start combining sets.
Different groups sometimes have their own house rules. I've played with people who use all the maids from a set at once and people who have banned certain maids in their group to restrict obvious strategies. Someone from my own group suggested a variant in which each player gets a random private maid at the beginning of the game.
I recommend starting with the original since the expansions build upon the ideas that were presented in it.
Some things to be aware of when choosing your first set:
Romantic Vacation is the only set that does not have private maids. Because of this, I would not recommend starting with Romantic Vacation.
Also, while the maids in each set are unique to that set, each set also has card types unique to it:
Original: Has events, which are like harmful enchantments you play on other players or their maids.
Expanding the House: Has buildings, which are like beneficial enchantments you add to your play area.
Romantic Vacation: Has memories, which are like powerful sorceries that can benefit you or harm your opponents.
For instance, a solo variation of pack wars or similar?
Use one pack to make a 30 card deck per regular Pack Wars.
Use another pack to make a 14-15 card "Horde" without looking at the cards. Treat any lands and non-token advertisement cards as nameless colorless typeless 2/2 token creatures. Maybe a small "Horde" only qualifies as a "Pack". Hmm...
Defeat the enemy "Pack" as if you were playing "Horde Magic".
Deadwood (my favorite worker placement game at the moment)
Elder Sign (my favorite dice game; I don't have the expansion yet)
Other games I've played recently:
Takenoko (seems like its better to stock purple/red cards and let other people build out the board)
Sultans of Karaya (fun; proxied; will get a legit set soon)
Infiltration (not sure if the e-whip can allow backwards movement or not)
Chrononauts (base set; we like having 5 cards at the start instead of 3)
Ascension (base set only; I've resisted the urge to get expansions so far)
Games I recently played for the first time:
Risk Halo Legendary Edition (I'm not huge Risk fan, but I liked the first Halo and this version has the five foot long "Ring" map. Two Risk fans at the table told me that this map was very balanced/open compared to normal Risk)
Terra Mystica (the game took longer to setup/teach/play than I would have preferred)
Arcana (1st edition. This took 3 hours. The box said 60 minutes. I really want to figure out a fix for this without upgrading to 2nd edition)
Rune Age (with expansion. I enjoyed the game play but some cards were damaged after only one game :()
Mana Memory
I just made this up as I'm typing this. I'll probably try it out the next time I open a pack.
Open your pack. Do not look at the Magic cards.
Remove any tokens/ads/lands.
Place all the remaining cards face down on a table/playmat.
Starting life is 7 for easy, 5 for normal, and 3 for hard.
Flip a face down card face up. Then flip a second face down card face up. If the cards share at least one color, leave both cards face up. If they do not share a color, flip both face down and lose 1 life.
The game ends when you run out of life or have less than two cards face down. Score 1 point for each card that is face up at the end.
Scrabble Pack Wars
Suggested by one of my local players. You can try it solo.
Open your pack.
Remove any tokens/ads.
The remaining cards are your scrabble pieces, with each card counting as either the first or last letter. (example: "Anax and Cymede" would count as either "A" or "E")
Make a word or phrase using as many of your scrabble pieces as you can. The more cards you are able to use, the better your score.
WotC creative turned Slivers into humanoids. If their own internal creative department can screw up something that simple, I doubt Fox is going to fare any better in their adaptation.
I think a common misconception is that FNM is a place to just go play magic. While that is obviously the purpose, there is also a tournament happening. That means people are going to compete. That means people are going to take it seriously.
I definitely agree with this. Shops will want to market FNM as a "casual" event to draw in more customers, but it's as casual as an EDH tournament is "casual".
Most of my casual games happen somewhere other than a LGS.
The local shops all have a distinct line dividing the 'casuals' versus the 'tryhards'.
This divide has been around for years. Both groups want different things from the game. The shops don't want either group to leave because that's money out the door.
I used to wear a fedora every day, but not so much now.
Regarding the time it takes to learn Magic, Garfield once commented in a Duelist article on how the average non-gamer "won't have time" to play a 20 minute card game but would gladly drive 20 minutes to watch a 2 hour movie. Or something like that.
On topic:
My group plays casual games in public venues that are not a LGS. I've seen lots of things over the years.
Some examples:
"Magic is hard. Only smart people play it."
"Is this D&D?"
"Is this Yugioh?"
"Can kids play this?"
"Adults play this?"
"I heard the cards are worth money. Do you have any expensive cards?"
Protip: The answer should always be no. Especially if the person asking is a shady gansta-lookin dude.
"What kind of Magic do you use?"
"This is only a game?"
"Would you like to learn how to cast spells for real?"
I usually find this amusing, but some of my fellow group members were genuinely frightened to encounter these types of people.
I've never seen the tarot card thing happen. But I don't goldfish in public. This might eventually happen to me now that I sometimes solo the Hydra though.
My group was also kicked out of a public library once for having loose change on the table for tokens/counters. They thought we were gambling and wouldn't accept any explanations.
"Lands on the side" can be a fun variant, such as in Live Draft. However, I do not think it works so well as part of the main game. An issue I have not seen brought up is flavor. Your library represents the various extraplanar resources that you have access to. The reason it is randomized is because the planes are not stationary. Taking one of your resources (land) and making it consistently available while your other resources (spells) are not really breaks this flavor. This becomes more apparent if only basic land is set aside while non-basic lands are shuffled into the deck.
I like the idea for Cycling on everything, but would fix it so that "generic everything can be cycled" sends cards into exile rather than the graveyard. This would allow set designers to have more control over specific cards that "cycle into the graveyard" for graveyard mechanic based blocks such as Weatherlight/Odessey/Innistrad.
I like making Tribal evergreen.
I like Instant as a supertype.
I don't understand making lands "less basic". Basic/non-basic lands is a useful tool set designers can use to control the power level of land destruction.
That's great! Do you have anything for us to think about?
In my area, we call those "proxies". And outside of sanctioned tournaments a "pretend" photocopied Black Lotus is just as "real" as the "pretend" Xenagos someone pulled out of a booster pack.
In the past I've done other types of Magic casual drafting and constructed at a bar.
The store is much better now. The owner runs it himself instead of relying on others to watch the store in his place. He confessed to me that back in the bad old days he did not really care about the Magic portion of his business at all. Obviously that is not the case now.
History repeats itself though. A different store from the one I mentioned above is making the same mistake. I noticed a box of singles in this other store and they refused to sell since they did not know what to charge and couldn't be bothered to do the research.
Not really. I am a bit burned out on the original since I always use it to teach new players.
So far, I only keep them separate because I do not want to go through the hassle of separating out the cards afterwards. While each set is a good game on its own, playing combined will probably make for the best experience. Once my local players have gone through more games, I will start combining sets.
Different groups sometimes have their own house rules. I've played with people who use all the maids from a set at once and people who have banned certain maids in their group to restrict obvious strategies. Someone from my own group suggested a variant in which each player gets a random private maid at the beginning of the game.
I recommend starting with the original since the expansions build upon the ideas that were presented in it.
Some things to be aware of when choosing your first set:
Romantic Vacation is the only set that does not have private maids. Because of this, I would not recommend starting with Romantic Vacation.
Also, while the maids in each set are unique to that set, each set also has card types unique to it:
Other games I've played recently:
Games I recently played for the first time:
I just made this up as I'm typing this. I'll probably try it out the next time I open a pack.
Scrabble Pack Wars
Suggested by one of my local players. You can try it solo.
I definitely agree with this. Shops will want to market FNM as a "casual" event to draw in more customers, but it's as casual as an EDH tournament is "casual".
Most of my casual games happen somewhere other than a LGS.
Is this the same shop King Pun plays at?
This divide has been around for years. Both groups want different things from the game. The shops don't want either group to leave because that's money out the door.
Regarding the time it takes to learn Magic, Garfield once commented in a Duelist article on how the average non-gamer "won't have time" to play a 20 minute card game but would gladly drive 20 minutes to watch a 2 hour movie. Or something like that.
On topic:
My group plays casual games in public venues that are not a LGS. I've seen lots of things over the years.
Some examples:
"Magic is hard. Only smart people play it."
"Is this D&D?"
"Is this Yugioh?"
"Can kids play this?"
"Adults play this?"
"I heard the cards are worth money. Do you have any expensive cards?"
Protip: The answer should always be no. Especially if the person asking is a shady gansta-lookin dude.
"What kind of Magic do you use?"
"This is only a game?"
"Would you like to learn how to cast spells for real?"
I usually find this amusing, but some of my fellow group members were genuinely frightened to encounter these types of people.
I've never seen the tarot card thing happen. But I don't goldfish in public. This might eventually happen to me now that I sometimes solo the Hydra though.
My group was also kicked out of a public library once for having loose change on the table for tokens/counters. They thought we were gambling and wouldn't accept any explanations.
I've seen it four times. I would go to the theater again if they were still playing it.