
The Twenty-Five Year Journey of Magic the Gathering - wskinner
https://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/the-twenty-five-year-journey-of-magic-the-gathering
======
mcv
I recently dug up my old cards from the storage. My 11 year old nephew learned
to play Magic while on vacation, bought two cheap decks, and taught it (badly)
to my 9 year old son.

At some point in all that, of course I need to show this old shoebox chock
full of old Magic cards. Instead of letting him play with my old cards, I
decided that my son needs to have his own cards, so we went to my local game
store and bought him a "deck builder's toolkit" that's a much better deal than
the old starterdecks in my time, but somehow lacks a copy of the rules.

The shopkeeper, who knows me from way back, warned me not to let him play with
my old cards, because some of those are now worth quite a bit. He urged me to
look up the value of my old multilands in particular. I think I bought them
from a friend for about $4 a piece. Turns out they're now $800 a piece.
Insane.

Also insane: all my old big monsters are obsolete, as new big monsters are way
more powerful than the old ones. But new spells are weaker than the old ones.
That's 25 years of balance tweaking, I guess.

~~~
hajile
The official rules are 250+ pages of legalese.

For reference since you've been gone a while, the best casual format (by far)
is Commander (EDH). Buy him a couple cheap duel decks to learn the basics
(phases, stack, etc). Then buy one of the prebuilt Commander decks (the 4
color ones would be best) to get started All that together is around $60 ($100
if you want a second Commander deck to play with him). Not a bad deal for the
tabletop experience.

Commander is a Singleton format (only one of any card that isn't a basic
land), so buying the occasional pack can mix things up a little. Cards that
are unplayable in constructed are often great in Commander (and only having
one isn't a disadvantage). A 4 color deck (if you have just one) or having all
five colors across both decks increases the chances of being able to use
whatever you open.

Note: if you're going for raw power, buy singles from a dealer instead of
packs, but packs are great for casual (or drafting of course).

Edit: I didn't think about 9 year old hands, but you can play 60-70 card
Commander so he can shuffle easier.

~~~
mcv
An official format that allows only one of every card is a great idea. Back in
university, some people also got tired of all the highly tuned decks with
dozens of very similar cards, and decided to play with that rule, calling it
"Highlander decks" (there can be only one!).

I believe my son or nephew also insisted I shouldn't have more than one of
each card in my deck, so maybe the guy who taught my nephew only played
Commander.

Although googling for it, it seems Commander comes with a lot of extra rules.
I'm not sure that's what I'm looking for.

~~~
hajile
Highlander became Commander. There are only a couple extra rules. In human
speak:

1\. cards in your deck (100 total including the commander) have to be the same
colors as your commander.

2\. you start at 40 life and a commander in your command zone.

3\. if your commander goes to the graveyard or exile, put him back in the
command zone, but he costs 2 more colorless to cast each time this happens.

4\. if a commander personally deals 21 damage to someone, they lose.

If they insisted on one card, they were playing commander or brawl (MTG's new
"commander lite" using 60 cards, standard only with slightly different life
rules).

------
deeponey
The article seems to gloss that this is one of the most potent pay to win
loot-box hustles of all time, primarily targeting minors. The game is amazing
but has this sleazy side. For this reason most grown-ups I know jumped to one
of the living card games, Netrunner or Game of thrones.

~~~
ubernostrum
My usual analogy is golf.

If you show up to play a round of golf, and your opponent has a nice set of
professionally-made clubs while you're using some sticks you carved by hand,
you're probably going to lose, badly. But that doesn't make golf "pay to win"
\-- at the competitive level of golf, everybody has made the investment in
that baseline of good equipment, and you're back to practice and skill as the
differentiator.

Magic is similar. If you show up to a constructed tournament with whatever you
could cobble together from a few booster packs, yeah, you're going to get
crushed by people with competitive decks. But at the competitive level,
everybody has made the baseline investment to have access to the full card
pool, at which point you're back to skill (of designing/choosing/playing
decks) as the differentiator.

Anyway. Top-tier Standard decks are in the couple-hundreds-of-dollars range,
and even if you just go out and get the cards for one of those decks and
nothing else, there's enough value in the cards that you can trade/sell and
get back not 100% of what you paid in, but enough to make switching to a
different deck not all that bad.

~~~
FranzFerdiNaN
That’s a bad analogy. If golf had specific rules about length and material of
each golf club that also changed every year, requiring you to buy new clubs to
match the rules, you might have a point.

~~~
jon_richards
Golf companies also don't sell you unknown bags of gear that may either
contain something useful or a complete pile of crap.

~~~
mcv
Interesting idea for a new type of golf tournament: at the start, everybody
gets a closed bag of random golf clubs, they pick one to keep, and pass the
rest of the bag to the golfer to the left while they get to choose their next
club from the bag they get from the right.

------
heimdall
> In the game, players were fashioned as “planeswalkers,” who cast spells and
> travel between planes of existence. The spells themselves were the cards,
> ...

I played 1999-2004 and now 2016+, mostly non-tournament casual for this exact
idea that most players seem to have forgotten. Decks with an emphasis on
flavor feel more in line with the core theme of the game, and it's a very
rewarding experience to roleplay a Planeswalker using their library of spells.

Many new players (especially tournament-minded) seem to treat the art and
flavor as tertiary to the mechanics. One person told me they'd still play the
game even if it was black text on plain white cards. Apparently the point was
to win, not enjoy the aestetic.

Win or lose, I enjoy the fact that my decks have a rock solid roleplay theme
and are usually under $40 each.

~~~
mcv
I certainly do like the art. Although over the years, a lot of art has become
more generic. The first sets of cards had in my opinion much more iconic art.
Look at Llanowar Elves, for example.

And some cards are really pure works of art.

~~~
luckettpat
I feel like there used to be more variety and weirdness in the art style.
Something like Plague Spitter [https://bit.ly/2PWwvyf](https://bit.ly/2PWwvyf)
or Stasis [https://bit.ly/2ovqWdu](https://bit.ly/2ovqWdu) wouldn't happen
anymore. Most of the art these days feels like generic fantasy art that could
be painted on the side of a van.

I will acknowledge this may be totally unfair, old-timer nostalgia.

~~~
gpderetta
The Fascist Art Director [1] is a thing.

[1]
[http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?multiver...](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?multiverseid=74348)

------
Areading314
I credit Magic: The Gathering for quite a few points on my SAT Verbal for all
the arcane vocabulary the cards taught me! The art was/is fantastic too.

~~~
iopuy
Necromancer, tabernacle, exsanguinate, odious... the list goes on.

~~~
mcv
"Student's spelling leaves a lot to be desired, but is worryingly good on
occult subjects."

------
dagenix
While the game is great, I find the random card dynamic of the card packs
pretty troubling. There is no legitimate gameplay reason why you can't just
buy the cards you want for a flat rate.

~~~
aperiodic
This is just one of the reasons why Limited (building a 40 card deck from only
packs that you and your group open) is clearly the best way to play Magic.
Another: even though it seems more variance-prone, it's arguable the most
skill-testing format in the game.

~~~
mcv
Though one of the cool elements of the game is that you can also play a game
with a random stranger you just met. That happened a lot back when I was
playing a lot in the 1990s. But that game is less likely to be balanced, and
it got increasingly less balanced as more cards came out and balance and ideas
started shifting around.

------
yazr
How do you play MtG online ?

Surely there are (illegal? grey?) clones where the big ticket items are free ?
How do these clones maintain a game play balance ?

Non player. Curious.

~~~
automoton1
Cockatrice is what I've used in the past.

[https://medium.com/@mrdeprey/how-to-connect-to-cockatrice-
an...](https://medium.com/@mrdeprey/how-to-connect-to-cockatrice-and-play-
magic-d430f80caa7b)

------
bikamonki
In line with the spirit of the article, WotC needs acknowledge and amend this
horrible mistake:

[http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?multiver...](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?multiverseid=1488)

"Invoke Prejudice" Whenever an opponent casts a creature spell that doesn't
share a color with a creature you control, counter that spell unless that
player pays X, where X is its converted mana cost.

Also note that the multiverse ID is 1488!!!

This is no coincidence, not a dumb joke. These are hate symbols that can and
should be removed from the game.

~~~
Sniffnoy
What exactly do you expect them to do? The card was, in fact, printed; do you
expect them to just remove an existing card from their database or something?
They can't, like, _recall_ it or something. What, are they going to ban it
from tournament play?

If you just want an instance of a person from Wizards acknowledging that that
art was not something they should have printed, here's an example:
[http://markrosewater.tumblr.com/post/145475725553/would-u-
gu...](http://markrosewater.tumblr.com/post/145475725553/would-u-guys-ever-
print-invoke-prejudice-wo-new)

(Also, although troubling, the multiverse ID clearly _is_ a coincidence, as
cards seem to just be numbered first by set and then by card number.)

~~~
mcv

      > What, are they going to ban it from tournament play?
    

Plenty of cards have been banned from tournament play. There's no reason why
this one can't. Maybe it already has?

~~~
Sniffnoy
So, first off, this is something you can easily look up. No, it's not banned.

Second off, I think banning a card for non-gameplay reasons sets a pretty bad
precedent.

Third off -- banning it wouldn't _accomplish_ anything except bringing more
attention to the card. This isn't a card that sees tournament play. This is an
_old_ card so it's only legal in Legacy and Vintage, the formats that allow
basically every card ever printed -- that's what it's competing against. It
does not remotely meet the bar to show up in Legacy or Vintage tournaments.
Banning it would not reduce its tournament appearances because it doesn't have
any. It'd just draw attention to it because it'd have to, y'know, show up on
banned lists. Better to just apologize and otherwise let it die in obscurity.

