Did the bulk of my playing in 3rd and 4th edition. When was that? 1994?

At the comic shop I played at, you were required to HATE Atogs (because of the infinite combo). If you opened a shiny new pack of cards and got an Atog, the owner would let you use his staple gun so you crucify this abomination of a card on the "wall of Atogs". There must have been 400 or so Atogs stapled into directly to the drywall.

Oh man. Memories.

I love it when people say that magic is really hard, it's mostly luck of the draw. How is that hard?

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Communication is two ways. One must speak, then listen. ~Me

Well, no, not really, magic is still a skill game. For one, you can adjust the luck of the draw to your heart's content. Backgammon is a skill game too, and that's even more random.

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Tactics yes, Tact no...

The skill part of the game makes it interesting ... How to manage the resources you have under the constraints of the general rules and the more specific format being played.

I resurrected my old MTGO account last night (CullingTheMarcus) and gave a few drafts a try. I need to get a bit better. I lost in the 2nd round of an 8-4 draft because I suck at making picks (though using Forgemaster to fetch Blightsteel Colossus really goes a long way with a poor pool). I ended the night winning a 4-3-2-2 draft (admittedly not as competitive) on the back of a strong blue pool (Consecrated Sphinx is insane!) with decent red removal. I still think my picks were probably well below par compared to any decently competitive regular drafter.

Consecrated Sphinx, and Blightsteel Colossus, AND Forgemaster?

Jeez... That's pretty awesome.

And all you need blightwidow to do is just buy time. For Dinos, once you hit 6, you slam Fangren Marauder, and good luck to anyone who can kill you through it(except infect). Once you hit 7, you slam a Quilled or Engulfing Slagwurm, and just bring more beats.

The name of the game is stall and removal. While Burn the Impure is a decent removal spell, snapping up a Phyrexian Rager for the card advantage is usually just what you need in dinos, a 2/2 dude to buy time and replaces itself.

Considering that 2 for 1's are hard to come by in this format, and Burn the Impure is a 1 for 1 removal, albeit a decent one, I usually grab the Rager.

Ripped a Tezzy the other day, didn't know what to do with it, people to my left and right were in black and blue respectively, I couldn't hold the colors and get the artifacts I needed...

Tezzy alone covered my next two drafts, so I wasn't that worried, but it's an interesting question, how do you draft with that kind of a bomb?

You need solid artifacts to make him useful, but you also need to fight for blue-black

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Tactics yes, Tact no...

I saw someone draft Tezz and take it to the top. Basically, pick blue/black picks as you normally would, and when you can't, just pick an artifact. It doesn't matter if it's an Auriok Replica, a Vector Asp, or a Golden Urn, as long as it's an artifact. Don't value artifacts higher just because you need them, you need to clamp down on the signals, or abandon the Tezz ship.

You then go blue black good stuff, with a slew of the least janky artifacts you can find.

I lost to that deck with a White/Black card advantage brew.




So Jhirad, I drafted UW Fliers recently, and I'm far from impressed with the archetype. I know you prefer WR Metal Aggro, so have you tried UW Fliers? I had 3 Glint Hawks, 3 Leonin Skyhunters, 2 Glint Hawk Idols, a Serum Raker, 2 Sky Eel Schools, and a Gust Skimmer.

I just couldn't get there. Strandwalkers, Acid Web Spiders, Walls of Tanglecord, and Blightwidows are just the bane of my existence. I won on the back of Scrappy Serpent, but when I don't draw him, I just get wrecked by a Tyrannax.

Why didn't I just draft Dinos... All I need is like, a Culling Dais and things like Volition Reins and Corrupted Conscience don't even do much.

Yeah, I'm not a big fan of the fliers, usually I prefer to just get glint hawks, glint hawk idols and bladed pinions. And then figure I'm covered if they have fliers/

Though, I have played stuff like that as long as I had a number of "wrenches" to throw. Quicksilver Geyser, Certarch, Neurok Replica, Rust Tick, etc...

grabbing a red trigon doesn't hurt either

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Tactics yes, Tact no...

I played in endless limited tournaments and online drafts for the Mirrodin, Kamigawa and Ravnica blocks, and finally Time Spiral (just the first set). Then I discovered go, and it was hard not to choose KGS for free over Magic for hundreds of dollars and counting.

fun fact: My username is a reference to Magic red decks.

Really@MountainGo?

I always wondered about that...

So I lost to a Tezz deck the other day, with a pretty dece poison deck.

Soo many 5/5's... He just turtled up behind 5/5's and then ultimated me a few times.

I will quite easily first pick Fangren Marauder in triple MBS drafts.
It is an amazing card, I've won several drafts with it (IRL).

But in a MBS-SOM-SOM draft I would probably like to pick Spine of Ish Sah.

I saw this thread and it reminded me that back when mtgo came out I played some magic, spent some money, won some drafts, got a bit addicted, forgot to sleep for a month, ragequit and left 3 accounts and their cards in exile.

This was about 7 years ago. This was before I found that go is a pretty good game also.

I managed to get access to these accounts again and I had no idea what kind of collection I had when I quit. I wouldn't have been surprised if they were empty or had thousands of cards. Anyway, turns out there were thousands (mostly valueless) but a simple online pricer I found valued my collection at around $800 (no idea how accurate that is).

Anyone know what my best plan is for selling it?

Also, should I reinvest that money in a few packs for drafts from the current format or will it be a slippery slope even though I'm 7 years older, wiser but with the same fascination for games... ?

Hmm... diving into BSG SOM SOM after 7 years of no magic would be asking to lose quite a bit of money.

I don't know how to resell MTGO Tickets, but you can check online to see if there are legitimate ways of reselling them.

If there are, my recommendation would be to go around to the classified bots/humans, and try to liquidate your collection as much as possible, into MTGO Tickets, then resell them online.

If not, I don't think you can reclaim old cards from Wizards... but there is a reclaiming system where you collect a playset of every card in one set, and Wizards will send you a real set of those cards.

And if that's impossible, well, there's always new cards and drafting...

There are sites that offer quotes for buying collections so I assume that it's possible/legit to just sell for money. Looks like I have enough cards for a full onslaught set (I have the same number of rares but I have >4 of the crappier ones and <4 of the more expensive ones) but I'd have to do some trading. It's unlikely I'll be able to get another full set. It's only worth doing if I can sell the real cards for more though. The cards have no value to me beyond sale value. I haven't found much good up-to-date information on all this yet. Going to take a bit of research.

Re the game itself:
Aside from new mechanics, the main rule change seems to be instant resolution of combat damage... that makes me sad.
Planeswalkers and cards that level up are pretty cool/funny ideas.

Re jumping into drafts:
Yeah, I don't think that's really possible... so much I'd be missing with no knowledge of the card pool even if learning the new mechanics/rules and brushing up on my skills wasn't a problem. On top of that infect doesn't sound like a fun mechanic to jump in to the middle of as it seems to reward experience/knowledge of the card pool. Maybe I should wait for M12 ^^

No Mana Burn, mana emptying at the end of phases, a simplified stack, ordering blockers, Deathtouch Trample rules interaction change, Layering of stat changes...

Little stuff, but important nonetheless.

Onslaught... (looks up the set)

Let's see... the things that stick out to me are:

The cycle of fetch lands. Oh my god the cycle of fetch lands.

Golbin Piledriver is used in many Legacy Goblin decks. Goblin Sharpshooter is used in EDH and other multiplayer formats.

Arcanis is amazing in EDH, widely used General, I think.

But yeah... pretty much... the cycle of Fetches. Windswept Heath, Wooded Foothills, Polluted Delta, etc.

Each of them is worth about 100 dollars per playset in real cash. It's something I'm hoping my Zendikar Fetches eventually become.

Never played MTG, this thread completely affirms my perception that it's just a huge scam designed to get people to pay a ton of money to some company.

The same could be said of many hobbies.

Also, I hate Batterskull.

And jeez did the format get more swingy and cutthroat... it's so easy to get blown out with more board sweepers and mind control effects. Last night I played a guy whose rares were Life's Demise, Phyrexian Rebirth, and Sunblast Angel. G...G...

I started playing when the Zendikar set was released. I love playing a mono black vampire deck.

I tried this game for the first time around last week. Nobody at my work plays go, but some people play Magic. I decided to try it out. I bought a deckbuilder toolkit, and put together some cards.

It's kind of entertaining to play, but I like go much better.

Still, at least there are people that play this game at my work.

I'm really new to this game, but so far I like black and blue cards the best. I like cards that take control of other people's cards, make them discard, or counter their spells.

Cards with high attack (eg. 20/20) are not as interesting to me for some reason.

I really do like go a lot better, though. When you play this game, you can be totally surprised at some random card that they happen to have.

At least with go, I can see the entire board.

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be immersed

That's may main problem with "collectible games". I know some people like this aspect of them, but I really prefer to have more info in front of me about what my opponents even might be able to do. Unless I go out and research EVERY SINGLE CARD out there, it feels like I'm playing without knowing all of the rules.

Not that I don't like less than full info games or ones that involve some chance (I'm a big wargame fan when I have the time...) but most of the CCGs make me feel like I'm playing half blind instead of making informed decisions in my play.

Bruce "Owns MtG & Yugio & Evangelion Decks" Young

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Currently reading: Plutarch, Cerebus, and D&Q 25th Anniversary