Magic: The Gathering

[Jason Tandro]

If there is already a thread for this (I searched but I could nay find) please merge this into it.

So does anybody else play Magic: The Gathering. The tl;dr of this post is that I am a recent addict of the series with a ton of cards and around 10 decks. And I still want more and more. I only play casual never done any league or tournament play but I might eventually construct a few with modern consideration to try it out. I'm not certain of the difference between Standard and Modern if I'm being blunt I just use the basic rules and 60-card decks. Still learning but my decks are pretty solid.

Spoiler: My Backstory

So yeah a little more than a year ago I began my obsession with "cardboard crack" as I've heard it called. I used to play it when it first came out with my brother though I was pretty bad I would imagine. I was big into Pokemon TCG when it first came out and played even at a "Pokemon League" (earned two badges), but if I'm being blunt we didn't play properly at all. I also bought one pack of the Gundam Wing TCG but never played, and I played a bit of YuGiOh in high school. But I have not properly fallen in love with a trading card game until I picked Magic back up.

How bad is my addiction? I have bought 3 deck builder kits and 1000 bulk buy cards off eBay, to say nothing of a few starter sets and a few deck boxes worth of hand-selected cards from my G2K. At first I thought my favorite color combo would be white/blue, and I owe my re-education of the game to the Duels of the Planeswalkers app and my friend Jacob who is right now the only person I play with (though I've played with a few others here and there). I had a Jace Beleren set and he is my favorite Planeswalker strictly because he is a little bitch. Blue magic = friendship ruiner.

This led to my first hand-crafted deck, a blue and white deck based around Cancel, counter instants and flying white enemies, with a few Defenders mixed in (Guardians of Meletis FTW 0/6 Defender). I named it "Flying Fuck" and so began a tradition (thought a loose one) of alliterative deck names.

Since then I have not really worried too much about following the series as it evolves until only recently when Kaladesh launched. I loved the aesthetic and bought two deck builder kits for it. I also just yesterday bought an Amonkhet DBK and hooooooly god is the artwork for it beautiful (yes I skipped over Aether Revolt. I really wanna go back and buy a lot of Eldritch Moon / Shadows Over Innistrad DBKs because ever since I started playing I have shifted definitively into a Black / White player. Health maintenance, insta-kills and hard to kill enemies. Which is weird because I'm still oddly conservative as a player.

Spoiler: My Deck Roster

I had my Flying Fuck (Blue/White, Cancels and Fliers) and Holy Hell (Black/White, Angels and Health Healing / Draining / Burning spells). The former I dismantled and the latter was sadly lost along with my Jace Beleren Deck Box.

My current Deck Roster (though I only play casually so I haven't confirmed if all these cards are legal to use in Tourneys) goes a little something like this:

My headliners are my "Death Cycle" based upon the Divine Comedy. I play these five in success usually. They are all solid decks but the main problem is they are mono-colored (I prefer dual-colored as I imagine most people do.)

Death - Black - Burn cards and zombies / skeletons aimed around just killing.

Hell - Red - Burn cards and devils baby.

Silent Hill - Black - I added this in due to my love of the game and it's between Hell and Purgatory. The idea was to have artifacts and monsters like the Eldrazi who look like they belong in the world of Silent Hill. Mechanically the deck is based around graveyard manipulation - because like Silent Hill you memories will come back to haunt you. (Yes I'm proud of this one lol)

Purgatory - Blue - Basically all counters, cancels and freezes. Designed around keeping your creatures and spells trapped.

Heaven - White - Healing spells and angels. It's actually pretty damn hard to beat.

==

I also have in order of creation:

Burning Bush - Creature heavy Red/Green. Pretty simple setup, based around getting creatures out in the field as fast as possible.

Kaladeck - My first Kaladesh Deck and tri-color Red/White/Black. Basically it's a servo and bot showcase themed around a group of thieves trying to steal Servos from a machinist. That's the story.

Artifact Anarchy - An all Artifact / Artifact Creature deck with a handful of Red spells thrown in mainly because I ran out of Artifacts. It's experimental but it actually did pretty well.

Wolves of Timber Gorge - Red / Green Wolf and Werewolf Deck.

Classic Red - A deck made up from all classic red cards that I had in my bulk cards. Beasts and Goblins and burn spells baby. It'll be fun.

Mummy Dearest - Black / White Zombie deck based around the Amonkhet launch.

 

[Cthulhu]

I've played it on and off (like, on occasion) over the past couple years, like at the odd game night (which is once every 3 years or so so far ). Used to have some noob decks with a colleague, we'd play a couple times a day. The tablet games are also fairly decent, although I'm sure the vs computer player games are just rigged.

 

[Joe]

I played a couple of the Magic games on Steam. One of them I greatly enjoyed though I feel the quality fell over time.
Used to like full-on Blue decks.

 

[wander]

I player Slivers a looooong time ago. I had a Golgari Swarm deck as well.

Not something I ever kept up with just because whatever you play one year is irrelevant/dead the next year.

 

[Jason Tandro]

I player Slivers a looooong time ago. I had a Golgari Swarm deck as well.

Not something I ever kept up with just because whatever you play one year is irrelevant/dead the next year.

Yeah the ever shifting mechanics are frustrating which is why I exclusively do casual play with friends.

 

[tangerine]

I am a HUGE MTG fan, collector and player. I mainly play Commander. I always buy a new box set whenever one comes out. I just bought a box of Amonkhet today, actually, and I scored some really awesome White and Black cards. I'm going to make a couple of decks tomorrow. I got this really weird foil card called Counterspell that has hieroglyphs and such all over it. It really surprised me because it wasn't listed as being in the set. This is it:

Naturally, I squeed and cheered over finding a rare card. I love it when I find a rare card. My rarest card is a foil Tarmogoyf.

 

[Jason Tandro]

Amonkhet is absolutely beautiful, nice snag on the rare one that looks awesome! I've noticed this batch has some amazing white / black cards - my first out of box deck was a Mummy Deck (because of course it was, lol). Kaladesh had some great Green/Blue but I prefer White, Red and Black. Burn cards for days baby, lol.

My friend Jacob did a draft last week and was playing with the 40 card draft deck and we're gonna grab another fat pack and arrange one that I can attend since I've never done that.

Never played Commander either but I like the concept. I always try to base my decks around one central card or card mechanic as the "boss" of the deck, but I also have to make sure my deck tells a story - I even go the extra mile to make sure my Mana cards match the setting of said story, both of these I learned from Jacob.

My "Death Cycle" is probably the best example of that.

So where do you play? You got a local league?

 

[tangerine]

Yeah! Amonkhet is beautiful! The art style of the green cards are especially well done--the Naga ones in particular. Then I saw this card and I wanted to add it to a green deck just because it looks so good.

I play at a local store called The Kessel Run. I actually don't have any friends that play with me anymore because I moved away from them lolol so I have to go there to find strangers to play with.

 

[Jason Tandro]

Well if I should ever meet you at a KupoCon or TLS Meetup be sure to bring a few decks and we'll Magic it up lol.

And yeah I've bought cards strictly for the art because either I like it or my wife might like it. Usually ones involving cute girls in perilous situations or creepy girls being creepy.

Cards such as:

Also I added a great creepy ass Vampire deck to my repertoire with a playset of these little nightmares as the headliners:

 

[Cthulhu]

I liked the art in the Innistrad series, that was the main year where I / my colleague played it

Plus it's probably one of the more traditional and recognisable genres. The stuff afterwards, ehhh not so much.

should I take pictures of my collection?

 

[Jason Tandro]

Dude yes! Let's see your stuff. And yeah when I started playing Innistrad was the newest content and I loved the survival horror-y stuff, especially since I love horror stuff (creepypasta channel and whatsit).

Eldritch Moon... Well obvioulsy that's right up your alley Yop my man!

I thought I would like Kaladesh a lot more than I did but frankly I think the promotional art was cooler than some of the concepts in the cards itself. I found dealing with vehicles and energy counters to be obnoxious though there are some absolutely amazing Artifacts and Blue Instants in the set.

As I say don't have too much in the Aether Revolt line.

I really do love the Amonkhet stuff. Ancient Egypt design is amazing.

 

[Lulcielid]

I have a MTG Black & Blue deck, played a few games in 2013 and stopped playing since then, it had interesting mechaniques and lore but I am more of a Yu-Gi-Oh guy

 

[Cthulhu]