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PaperclipPerfector  17d ago (text post)   2760 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for April 12, 2024

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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So... has anything interesting happened in Magic: The Gathering the last 27 years?

I walked by a game store the other day and saw a new starter kit for sale. I used to play it when I was a kid, maybe a year when it first came out, and then forgot about it around 4th edition.

One thing I remember is going to Mtg nerd meetups and seeing nerd kids there with one or both parents. They were even playing with them, with their own personally designed decks even. My parents didn't do this stuff at all. I was jealous of kids with grown-up money being able to buy rare cards and kick my butt with them.

Back at the game store I decided I wanted to try introducing this cuteness in my own parenting life. The package on the starter kit says 13+ but I thought I'd give it a try with my 6 year old. He can read and do math so... should work?

And... It does! It's a hit. My kid's hooked and we play every day. I'm probably a little hooked too.

So. What else should I do? There's a score tracking app called Lotus that seems perfect. There's a lot more "tokens" involved in modern cards, wtf? Do most people use post-it notes?

I see there's lots of online Mtg options but I don't think I want to open that door since my kid is not at all addicted to screens yet.

Any tips here on what else to look out for? I've heard Commander sucks and I should skip it.

I'm pleasantly amused to have this generational experience of playing a game I loved as a kid with my own kid, 25 years later. Surprised it has held on so long. Also holy shit I'm old.

I'm not entirely sure what happened to my old cards. Hopefully we find a massive cache of them in Grandma's attic soon and have our minds blown.

Wizards got really woke recently. Other than that, don't pay enough attention to it myself.

I really like MTG Arena, because I am addicted to screens. In particular:

  1. It's free to play. If you want to get all the fancy cards you have to pay real money, or play the game regularly in order to complete enough daily quests to get card packs, or be good enough at drafts that you can win more stuff than you lose. But if you're okay with being slightly-underpowered, or if you scrape together enough to make one good deck and keep playing that deck, you don't have to pay a cent. And I never have. Back when I played physical magic I had to pay real money AND be underpowered compared to my friends who paid more than me.

  2. You can just pick up and play with someone, instantly, at home. As someone without a lot of friends, and who doesn't like going out and doing things, it's convenient to just feel like playing Magic on a whim and then a few minutes later after the game boots up I have someone to play against, and then I can stop when I'm bored, and then play another match a few hours later. It's really convenient. I guess if you and your son are playing together that's less of an issue.

But everyone is different and your situation is quite different from mine.

As a side note, how do you make things fair when playing against your son? Do you just go easy on him? Do you give him a way better deck than you and then trying to overcome the difference? My fiance and I have not had much success playing together because I've played a ton and she's played almost none and I'm too much of a tryhard I can't figure out how to avoid utterly destroying her except with incredibly patronizing handicaps, and it ends up no fun for either of us.

Completely disagree on commander. 60 card is great for learning with your kid, but for playing with more than one person it's just a way better format. The pre-cons are slow and weak, but extremely understandable for a kid. You can both upgrade them with printed proxies as he gets smarter, or leave them intact and see if you can rope the wife/other kids into playing!

When you buy those pre-cons they come with the tokens you need. People use dice on top of cards, post-it notes, and Infinity Tokens.

Over the past 5 years Magic has gotten worse, in my estimation. More woke, worse print quality, tougher balance. I don't pay for cards anymore, or at least very little. However it's still the best game ever made. I'm seriously considering paying aftermarket prices for the warhammer 40k precon commander deck that I played with recently, it was a blast.

Finally if he wants to get into the social aspect of FNM etc. I'd suggest it, eventually. But the reputation of MTG nerds is well-earned. He will find and meet cheaters and assholes - he'll also potentially find some of his best, lifelong friends. I think it's worth the risk once he's good enough to give it a shot. Be prepared to spend $ to keep up with the meta-game though.

More woke

How is this coming through in the game? Black elves? Trans paladins? Or do you mean that WotC woke corporate politics is a spectacle?

To be clear, there's general inclusivity (good, IMO) like them committing to half male half female characters, a ton of different races, etc.

Most local game stores you go to are also going to be woke. The game is good enough it wouldn't stop me from going, but I played regularly at a kitchen top with more average people.

Perhaps my biggest issue with the progressiveness of WotC/Magic is that the whole game's culture is hypocritical towards the aforementioned cheaters and assholes. There's millions of people who would love to play MtG professionally, I think it should be without question that anyone caught cheating a single time in a qualifier level tournament is banned for life.

IIRC, black Aragorn was one of the most egregious instances. I think there have also been some complaints about ugly (overweight) women in the art, but I don't recall any specific examples.

Lol they actually went for it.

I'll just kind of treat this like the planes walkers are in a Rick and Morty multi-verse and stumbled on the DEI dimension and summoned a black elf and be amused.

shuts eyes

crosses fingers

trans paladin. trans paladin. trans paladin

Be prepared to spend $ to keep up with the meta-game though.

Meaning, like, usual costs of socializing? Cover fees, food, etc? Or something else?

No - when you play 60 card at a game store, you'll generally be playing "Standard". This is a format with cards just in the past two years. As they print new cards, you won't be allowed to play with older ones (in that format). So minimum a couple times a year you'll have to adjust or fully rebuild the deck.

If you want to be competitive, you'll have to build more than one deck and adjust it mid-season.

Remember though, nobody is forcing you or your son to take it very seriously. You can spend $500 on a standard deck or $10. A competitive deck will be something like $50, and if you crack packs and go to pre-releases you can sometimes trade for what you want etc.

If he loves it it's absolutely worth a shot of going to pre-releases first and then diving into FNMs.

Power creep

Be prepared to spend $ to keep up with the meta-game though.

This probably depends pretty heavily on what level you're playing at and what particular deck you're playing.

I have an Imoti deck that I built for like $12+shipping+sleeves that had a much better win rate, back when we were tracking, than several friends' decks who spent hundreds. That's an extreme case, but the principle (you can make capable decks under budgetary constraints) stands.

True, and I always prioritized fun over winning.

I still remember my favorite play of all time - swinging for 36 on the final turn of an FNM with a tier 3 deck with Jarad when that was exactly his life total. The look on that guy's face is seared into my mind.

Also holy shit that was almost 10 years ago.

Commander's great, I certainly recommend it. (Admittedly, it's almost all I have experience with.)

I like basically all the distinctive features: the multiplayer aspect means it's more of a social experience, that games self-balance (as people will selectively address the most worrisome threats), and increases the threat assessment and political manouvering needed, which I enjoy. It's slower (at least, at casual levels), which means more big splashy plays will occur. You get a creature to build a deck around, which allows for a greater diversity of themes, maybe? It's singleton, so you get more variance and get to run across more weird cards than whatever the staples might be.

I imagine that it could be worse if you're picking up games with strangers instead of a circle of friends, so I don't know if that's where the complaints are coming from? Or maybe people worrying about power level? But power level problems can be managed by having more interaction, players, and just talking to the player to get a more fun time.

Did people have specific complaints about why it's bad?

Also, I've found lifetap the best life app.

The Jumpstart 2020 and 2022 sets are great for beginners. Each booster pack has cards from a single color and theme, and you can shuffle 2 packs together to make something that plays out like strong limited or draft decks. You can get a booster box of 24 packs for ~$100 and treat it like a cube. Highly recommend.

Card Kingdom sometimes puts out ‘Battle decks’, which are a cheap way to get playable 60 card decks that feel strong enough. Nothing too crazy, but good for kitchen table games.

Draft or limited are super fun but very very challenging and not for beginners.

Commander can actually be fun but it very much depends on the play group. If all 4 players are chill and playing decks of similar power then the format can be fun, but it’s often pretty complex and politics plays a big role. It’s definitely the most popular format and the easiest to find IRL games for, and it isn’t too hard to build a budget deck for $50-100 that plays perfectly well in low power pods. All that said, the format allows huge variation, and the experience of playing against a high-powered deck with a budget deck can be torture. If your kid wants to play with others this is eventually where you’ll probably end up but I wouldn't rush there.

Oh, also, I'm noticing none of the starter kits at the game store involve black mana in their decks? What's going on there?

I guess they wanted two 2-color decks for the starter kit, so naturally one color wouldn't make the cut, and since black is the "does a bit of everything for the right price" color, well.

The last 27 years? Isn't the game about that many years old?

The place to start catching up would probably be checking out the beginnings of the Modern format.

For tokens, people usually bring dice.

The last 27 years? Isn't the game about that many years old?

In my kid brain, since it had such an outsize impact in my life, it felt like I was playing Mtg for my whole childhood. And also when I would read about prior editions, it made it feel like I was a second generation player. But when I look it up and do the math, it seems like the game came out 30 years ago, I started playing it a year or two after that, and I stopped playing it a year or two after that.[1]

Current day Mtg game mechanics seem familiar, but there's so many modifiers? Vigilance? Haste? Flash? Wut? And yeah the tokens. Wondering what else I missed. Fallen Empires had token "creatures" but they were a different thing.

Anyway, half wondering if I play against any current day players if my ways will seem old and cringe.

The place to start catching up would probably be checking out the beginnings of the Modern format.

Oh, that's good to know! Wouldn't want to spend time and money picking up old cards that aren't even allowed in friendly games anymore.

  1. Also in my mind, I felt like I was using the internet for a whole lifetime between when Amazon came out but before Google came out, but they were only 4 years apart. Kid time dilation is real.

You could probably grab tokens from your friendly local game store's chaff pile, if they host MTG events they likely have a surplus of basic lands and tokens.

I think the biggest rule change since your old times was mana burn - at some point they got rid of it, now excess mana simply disappears at the end of every phase.

https://magic.wizards.com/en/news/feature/returning-home-guide-returning-magic-players-2018-04-24

There's a lot more "tokens" involved in modern cards, wtf? Do most people use post-it notes?

One of the reasons I don't like the modern game, but anyway. Most people will buy one of those little Chessex boxes of like 24 D6s, then put them on the cards to represent whatever the "obvious" token is, or even use them just on the table as "number of 1/1 White Human Soldier Tokens in play".

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