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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.

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