Magic the Gathering General
- Thread starter Abhorsen
- Start date
Morphic Tide
Well-known member
Shouldn't this be in Adventures in Gaming?
Fair point I guess. Wasn't really sure where it fell. Do you play?
Morphic Tide
Well-known member
I keep up with it in a basic sense, but the costs and playstyles just kinda aren't worth it, to me. $400 mana bases just to put up with control hell are really not my thing, and I'm too much of an introvert to get into a Commander playgroup.
bintananth
behind a desk
Played with classmates a bit during HS (way back in the '90s). To keep things friendly and casual instead of turning into "collectible cardboard drug addiction" competetive insanity the slightest hint that someone was using more than a starter pack and a booster (~$10 for both back then) got them booted from from the cafeteria table.
Bear Ribs
Well-known member
Much the same for myself, toyed with it a bit in High School, decided it was too expensive to try competing and then the internet made it so that the game seemed to become play to win in my mind, with most competitive deck builds well known and the only question how much money you were willing to throw at a proven strategy.
Lol, no way those decks cost that little now!
And it's eh on pay to win. There's certainly some, but create a good budget modern deck and it'll last years and can be about $100 (I bought one for about $20, which will work fine at my LGS). The nice thing about modern is that every deck has other decks they'll just lose to, so there's never gonna be a 'best' deck.
Last edited:
bintananth
behind a desk
I remember a custom one put together for about $50 back then. A really slim black/white one that barely hit 45 cards.
- 4 Serra Angels and 4 Vampires
- 4 each of the black (+2/+1) and white (+1/+2) enchantments
- Circles of Protection
- 4 Drain Life
- 4 +3 Healing (whatever those were called)
- enough basic lands to not worry about manna
I think everything but the creatures and COP: Artifacts was common. He had to buy some of those individually from a FLGS.
Tournament winning? No. Competetive on a budget? Sure.
That's roughly my experience, though it was in college and not HS. The big breaking point was the fact you basically have to replace your whole deck all the time to keep it valid for the current format (IIRC), even warhammer 40k isn't that bad, once you've got a model you can basically use it forever (outside of a rare handful).
The fact that they also killed off my two favorite characters back to back didn't help.
Depends on the format and when you were playing. Standard is a rotating format, so yeah, it's expensive as hell (which is why I don't play it).
bintananth
behind a desk
[emphasis mine]
That's intentional. By regularly changing the format WotC forces people to spend money with them if they want to keep playing. Sorta like subscription software or online gaming in that regard.
Yup, but there are other formats that aren't, like modern or Commander (formerly EDH), or even better: limited (where you draft the cards from packs while at the event).
Agent23
Ни шагу назад!
Sounds like they are about as bad as GW.I wonder who is better at milking the fanbase while somehow managing not to piss it off sufficiently as to drop the hobby?
Easily GW. The prices for individual mtg cards come from the secondary market, not from WotC (Wizards of the Coast, owner of MtG). They've actually done a half decent job at making sure to reprint commonly used cards in order to reduce those prices (they could be doing better, but eh).
The secondary market also means you can recover some amount of your investment after leaving the hobby.
Agent23
Ни шагу назад!
Probably, GW are fucking the fan-base every chance they get, from theri constant codex changes and restrictions to stuff like paint and miniatures and prohibiting fan materials.
IMHO the biggest problem with both is that they are getting stale.
They need to produce new product lines, and not just stick with Warhammer and MtG IMHO.
WotC actually has a ton of product lines. They own Dungeons and Dragons, for example, and a bunch of well known board games like Axis and Allies, Diplomacy (my favorite game ever and a great way to lose friends, lol), Betrayal at the House on the Hill, etc.
On top of that, they are owned by Hasbro, which has a shitton of product lines.
So they're doing fine, other than going woke.
bintananth
behind a desk
You can play Warhammer without miniatures. A color-coded cardboard counter of the right size with "Ork such-and-such" and an arrow indicating which direction it's facing does nicely. 😋
Good way to playtest before buying the miniatures and paint ...