The first deck that I came across had that card for the cover.
Even though I have no idea how the card works, I thought the artwork was pretty nice.
Magic the Gathering? Waste of money?
- Thread starter Dream
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The first deck that I came across had that card for the cover.
Even though I have no idea how the card works, I thought the artwork was pretty nice.
^2 vices and no racks?
I'm curious, are magazines scams? They force you to buy a new one each month to keep current.
There are divisions of the tournament play that allow use of old as well as new cards. Besides, for casual play there is no such thing as an outdated card. It's only when you start getting serious and decide to "professionally" compete that you need to start worrying about what cards are "legal". Which is pretty much true of any past time. You don't see professional golfers using $20 clubs.
I'm curious, are magazines scams? They force you to buy a new one each month to keep current.
There are divisions of the tournament play that allow use of old as well as new cards. Besides, for casual play there is no such thing as an outdated card. It's only when you start getting serious and decide to "professionally" compete that you need to start worrying about what cards are "legal". Which is pretty much true of any past time. You don't see professional golfers using $20 clubs.
^ Agreed. I've always preferred casual play myself, because it's easier to manage than the block rotation system required for tournament play. I can use any cards I prefer, unless there's a really significant reason not to use them (i.e. any gag cards from Unglued or Unhinged, if their functionality can't be meshed into the regular mechanics. Some can).
The point of some cards is that they're rare and expensive; it helps keep it balanced. At least it's not like Warhammer 40k, where you can't even play without buying a $60 rulebook, a $30 codex, and over a hundred dollars worth of miniatures (how I wish I were exaggerating).
If you just play casually with friends, then you can get by with cheap sets and booster packs and still have fun.
If you just play casually with friends, then you can get by with cheap sets and booster packs and still have fun.
With the case of 40K you are actually under-exaggerating
If you were to play a standard game and have to buy everything from scratch you'd soon blow past the 300-400$ mark and that's a comparably small army with few variations possible (and maybe not even every miniature available to the army).With TCGs i don't think it's a rip off.. you know what you are getting into and you can't "blame" anyone when you play the game. What about all the other products out there? One can consider all brand products to be rip offs too because often enough their quality is not that better than a no name product yet people still buy them (and even professionals are often fooled when presented with unmarked products to judge which is a brand product).
Additionally every game i know of has died after a while if there was no new support.. the initial game might be excellent with long term playability but after a while players will still get bored and look for other games so i can't fault TCG companies when they establish a set renewal cycle to keep their games fresh and interesting.
It forces extra cards into their hand and stops them from playing them. Racks would just get in the way.
I'm not.. it is really professionally organized, has tons of support and has many variations of play to suit everyone's taste.
It is now the biggest pretty much guaranteeing it a place and future unless the producers really fuck up and torpedo the game somehow (which i don't see happen anytime, they're too experienced for that).
As for being a well designed as a game, I'll point to the cards that end up getting banned in tournament format, sometimes almost immediately after being released, because of unanticipated synergies with other cards making them game breakers. Then I'll mention how around 95%+ of the cards in each set are actually completely worthless, regardless of how they might be "cool looking" or "neat". This forces people to either play a limited number of deck types with the few actually good cards/combos or flail around trying to be original and get consistently stomped into the ground.
The further back in the Magic line you go, the less this happened, as sets were more evenly balanced. You were much less likely to encounter "I win" cards that ended the game the moment they hit the table in the original set. Since almost all of the cards were similarly powered, you could have a crazy amount of different decks with roughly equal chances of doing well.
The rotation of legal card sets is a full year. My bad. However, in my experience, the regular release of new sets every few months effectively pushes older sets into non-utility, even if they remain legal. Casual is definitely the way to go with this game. Of course, if you're like me and the only people you can play with all follow standard tournament restrictions at the one comic store within an hour's drive of your house, then you're out of luck on that front.
The further back in the Magic line you go, the less this happened, as sets were more evenly balanced. You were much less likely to encounter "I win" cards that ended the game the moment they hit the table in the original set. Since almost all of the cards were similarly powered, you could have a crazy amount of different decks with roughly equal chances of doing well.
The rotation of legal card sets is a full year. My bad. However, in my experience, the regular release of new sets every few months effectively pushes older sets into non-utility, even if they remain legal. Casual is definitely the way to go with this game. Of course, if you're like me and the only people you can play with all follow standard tournament restrictions at the one comic store within an hour's drive of your house, then you're out of luck on that front.
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The deck I posted a picture of above.I have no idea what the last two posts are about.
I will admit, sometimes it's amusing when those sort of happen by accident, but they wind up being very powerful. Dark Depths + Vampire Hexmage.
I wouldn't necessarily say 95% are functionally useless, but I do see where you're coming from. I think part of the problem is that a lot of cards wind up being reprinted under slight alterations, and in other cases the mechanics don't work as well as they should (Eldrazi 
).
I will admit, sometimes it's amusing when those sort of happen by accident, but they wind up being very powerful. Dark Depths + Vampire Hexmage.
What are the rules concerning Jace, the Mind Sculptor these days? I heard from someone that he is the most deadly card in existence in MTG?
I'd have to look that up myself, as I'm not always familiar with how they'd rule on him for tournament purposes. But looking at his abilities he's clearly powerful, and one might even consider him potentially broken. I'm not sure he's the sort of card I'd use strategically, but maybe just to annoy the heck out of someone. But I'm usually strategic.
Only 11 cards have been banned in Standard since 1999 out of around 10,000 unique cards (Ancient Den,
Arcbound Ravager, Darksteel Citadel, Disciple of the Vault, Great Furnace, Jace, the Mind Sculptor, Seat of the Synod, Skullclamp, Stoneforge Mystic, Tree of Tales, and Vault of Whispers, if you're curious) and most of those were banned 7 years ago. None of them were banned "almost immediately after being released". Hardly a sign of a poorly designed game.
Maybe if you're talking about Legacy. Not every card is designed for constructed formats. No card is "completely worthless", even things like Darksteel Relic!
He is banned in Extended and Modern, legal in Legacy and Vintage.
