Magic: the Gathering

[m3laNcholy]

I was broswing some old post today and saw somebody reffering Magic the gathering in his post and a few guys also talking about magic.

How many of you guys play/used to play/know the game?

I am asking cause many succesfull magic players have recently gone pro at poker.

Noah Boeken, Dave Williams some other guy from sweden I think was at this years final table at the WSOP along with Williams.

I have been playing MTG for 6 years now (as oposed to playing poker for 2 months or so), so if some of you are playing too, I 'd like to know. At what level do you play. Maybe if you've been at a couple of Pro Tours we might even know eachother.

b cool.

[Grand_MasterB]

used to play for several years..stopped at about 6th edition... sold all my cards off for some decent change about a year ago. that was such a fun game though... very like poker in the mental aspect and thats what i liked about it

[Resources]

i played wayyyyyyyyyy back in the day.

back in 4th-8th grade if i remember correctly. so....back in....early-mid 90s

i remember opening a neighborhood lawn service so i could have money to buy booster packs. i think i started playing when beta/unlimited was printing.

all i know is....i had SO many cards by the time i was finished. i would take the money i made from cutting grass, and buy whole boxes of boosters. i would then make a set, and sell it to get more money to buy boosters. normally, it took about two boxes to make a set......but i got enough money to almost buy 3 more boxes of boosters. the chain went on....lol.

i think by the time i was in 6th grade, i had pretty much every single card printed and all i remember is having boxes upon boxes of cards. (my mom was so pissed whenever she opened my closet, cause there were just blinders and boxes of cards everywhere).

magic started turning retarded for me when it seemed like the people at wizard just ran out of ideas. so i think i quit playing in 8th grade.

cards basically sat in my closet collecting dust for a few years. but my junior year of HS, i needed money to buy a car.....so i dragged out the boxes and sold my collection on ebay.

$15,000+ (believe me, i was shocked.)

my honda civic that i still drive today... was literally built from paper

[Legendash]

Haha, check this out my mate came 3rd at Columbus protour http://webcast.wizards.com/04columbu.../nick_west.zip he sounds so english it's weird, and his trousers are amusing.

[™]

I used to play it. Back in the day when it was pure. Not what its become today. I used to play in the ProTour. It was a lot of fun.

[elipsesjeff]

I wish I could use my old school reverse damage to take back the money the players that suck out of me on.

MTG used to rock before they expanded it too far.

[TylerK]

cards basically sat in my closet collecting dust for a few years. but my junior year of HS, i needed money to buy a car.....so i dragged out the boxes and sold my collection on ebay.

$15,000+ (believe me, i was shocked.)

my honda civic that i still drive today... was literally built from paper

Ooh. How do I find out how much my old magic cards are worth?

[a500lbgorilla]

cards basically sat in my closet collecting dust for a few years. but my junior year of HS, i needed money to buy a car.....so i dragged out the boxes and sold my collection on ebay.

$15,000+ (believe me, i was shocked.)

my honda civic that i still drive today... was literally built from paper

Ooh. How do I find out how much my old magic cards are worth?

You'd assume they'd depreciate over time since fewer people play.

-'rilla

[boost]

you all are nerds. worse then D&D geeks.

[whileone]

cards basically sat in my closet collecting dust for a few years. but my junior year of HS, i needed money to buy a car.....so i dragged out the boxes and sold my collection on ebay.

$15,000+ (believe me, i was shocked.)

my honda civic that i still drive today... was literally built from paper

Ooh. How do I find out how much my old magic cards are worth?

You'd assume they'd depreciate over time since fewer people play.

-'rilla

They stopped making the really good ones. Since the're made of paper, they wear out. The supply is shrinking. I don't think the amount of players has fallen off that much, because of worldwide growth. Also, with the rising euro you see lots of folks from europe buying cards, and bidding up the prices because they are, relative to the dollar value, cheap.

i played far far more magic than was reasonable. i bought lots of cards, but sold them and paid for a semester of school and living expenses. I actualy sold a collectors edition a couple of months ago for $700. nice little income boost.

[™]

Magic was expensive but I spent FAAAAAR more money on Warhammer. If any of you have played that, its the biggest money pit in the world. SOO EXPENSIVE

[Zangief]

Yes, I played MTG. I won a few local tourneys before the Pro Tour really started. My discard/land destruction deck was fun. Sedge Trolls, baby!

And let me share The Answer with everyone: NO, you cannot go back and play MTG anymore. It doesn't matter that you can pronounce "Kumano, Master Yamambushi" properly or that you wear deoderant. You will still get smoked by some 14 year old. Don't try it. I've endured the pain for all of us. LEARN FROM MY IGNORANCE!

[mike4066]

I played for about 2-3 years..

Quit playing after 4th edition was printed.. Iceage was probably the last production run of anything I bought while I was playing.

I sold most of my valuable cards individually to people I knew at very fair price..

Ended up selling the remainder of my collection and buying my ex-wifes engagement ring.. Now I wish i still had the cards

[Zangief]

I played for about 2-3 years..

Quit playing after 4th edition was printed.. Iceage was probably the last production run of anything I bought while I was playing.

I sold most of my valuable cards individually to people I knew at very fair price..

Ended up selling the remainder of my collection and buying my ex-wifes engagement ring.. Now I wish i still had the cards

I always think of you as a baby monkey because of your avatar.

[a500lbgorilla]

Magic was expensive but I spent FAAAAAR more money on Warhammer. If any of you have played that, its the biggest money pit in the world. SOO EXPENSIVE

OMFG WARHAMMER!

I played warhammer for about 2 years a long time ago. Me and my friends poured a little money into it and then just "pretended" to have specific units.

I used to obliterate everyone at that game. (Warhammer fantasy. The future 40k or whatever, I got raped at)

-'rilla

[™]

I dont even want to think of the thousands i spent on Warhammer(fantasty). I had a Chaos Army, a beastmen army, empire, wood elves, undead, goblin, and was working on a lizardman one when I quit. Those were the days.

[a500lbgorilla]

I only had one complete army. It was chaos.

It pwned.

-'rilla

[bigred]

I spent my money on real stuff. Like porno.

Edit:Stay out of my posts rilla.

[ensign_lee]

I played it. Then there were just too many expansion packs to keep up with...geezalou!

I think I picked up pokemon for awhile , then when that started eating into about 75% of all I spent my money on, I stopped. I think that's when that Yu-Gi-Oh game started or so? That was a good, cheap game for a while...and then the same thing that ate at Magic started happening to that. You just got in too many damn coin flips against a similarly talented deck and you were friggin' OWNED by a better deck.

So I gave up for a while, obsessed myself with my job for about a year and a half. Then I found poker.

So to answer the original post, yes, I did play Magic. I was REALLY little, though. I think in 6th grade? I remember I lucked out getting some awesome card from some booster pack, then trading it away for something virtually uselss because I thought it looked cool. ooops

[johnnyawe]

so does anyone STILL play??

I played a few times but never really got into it, which is strange. Anyways, a friend of mine plays tournaments in the philadelphia area. He was explaining to me that it is a special type of league/format where you're only allowed to use "old school" cards. Wish I remembered more cuz it seems like it would be right up you guys' alley.

[The_Cheat]

I was in a tourny with a guy who played a lot of MTG. He kept shuffling the cards one handed, and just chunking them together. I finally told him that if he didnt shuffle like a person, i was going to kick his ass.

nerds, the just piss me right off

[m3laNcholy]

I (poster) still play.

I see that all people who have ever played the game have sth bad to say about it, mostly as far as the money spent is concerned.

I know that you need to spend a lot of money to keep up with the game, but thats only if you are planning on playing for fun...forever. Thats not me (and probably you probably agree since many of you are pro/semi pro at poker)

So here's my story at Magic:

I started playing in 1998 just after Exodus was released. For 5-6 months I was playing for fun, spending quite a lot of time and money on it (I was a student back then). Hobbies are ment to cost money. Then I heard about tournaments/pro tours/ people making money. I was intrigued. I also heard about Greek Nationals to be held after six months. So I decided to give it a try. I came in the top 8 and won a trip to Berlin for the European championship.

To make a long story short. Since then I have been to Italy, Germany, Belgium, France, Bulgaria, England USA and even Japan (some places twice, some places I might forget) to play in Pro tours/Grand Prix/ World Championships. All for free. I have stopped buying cards and boosters after the first 2 years playing the game (having a big community and friends that give you cards to go to the World Championship helps!)

I have spent like 2k euro on the game, then I sold all my cards to probably make have of that back. Right now I mostly play limited and only once a month or so mostly in qualifiers for Pro tours and Grand Prix, and of course nationals.

Money can be made at Magic but it is not directly involved (like in poker) you cant make a living out of it unless you are like top 20 in the world.

I am a highly competitive person (like most of you into poker I think) and want to excel in anything I do. If I was bad at Magic, I would have quit during that first year, period. I wouldn't wanna play for fun FOREVER. I play to win, I am not nearly as good as the pros out there. But hey I am 23 years old and I have been all over the world for free to play a game that I really enjoy playing.

No offence to anyony in this great (poker) forum but all I here form ex- magic players is that "the game is rotten", "they ran out of ideas", "they dont make cards like they used to" and "the good old days".
And (no offence to anyone again) people who say these things are mostly (always in my opinion) players who were never good at the game either cause they didnt try hard enough or cause they were plain bad.

Sry for the long post.

b cool all

[™]

so does anyone STILL play??

I played a few times but never really got into it, which is strange. Anyways, a friend of mine plays tournaments in the philadelphia area. He was explaining to me that it is a special type of league/format where you're only allowed to use "old school" cards. Wish I remembered more cuz it seems like it would be right up you guys' alley.

I believe your friend is playing in a Type 1 tournament? The only problem with those is making a type 1 deck can cost more than my car. Many of the cards will cost in the hundreds of dollars for just one when you start buying those old cards.

[lolzzz_321]

I only had one complete army. It was chaos.

It pwned.

-'rilla

My Blood Angels SPace Marine army would pwn j00

[lolzzz_321]

Does ne one play MTG on-line?

[Legendash]

My friend does (see post above) he is now good to the point where he never has to buy anything because he wins boosters from drafts. It took him about 2 months to attain that level. Though he is one of the best constructed players around his limited game only came good after lots of online magic.

If you're not good at magic to start with, online will be pretty daunting, most people on there know what they are doing as they are happy to pay even though they will probably never get the cards off the site(you need a full set)

[a500lbgorilla]

I only had one complete army. It was chaos.

It pwned.

-'rilla

My Blood Angels SPace Marine army would pwn j00

Maybe becuase those are 40k armies?

-'rilla

[™]

'rilla, was it Warriors, Daemons, or Beastmen?

[alias2211]

i played MTG from about 2000-mid2004, when i started playing poker. then i stopped playing MTG. i have no interest in going back even though i have a huge collection now and used to play a few hours a day. not interested one bit.

[a500lbgorilla]

'rilla, was it Warriors, Daemons, or Beastmen?

Warriors.

Beastmen suck.

-'rilla

[zenbitz]

Ha,, you guys are almost normal.

I play big old cardboard wargames... like 1000s of pieces, 100s of hours...

I played a mini's "a little" but can't paint, so gave it up.

I have a MTG deck that I bought off a homeless guy for $10. It's like a green elfy deck.

[FyrFytr998]

I was heavy into Magic. I thought nothing of dropping a few hundred to make a deck. Some of my favorites:

Sligh
Stompy
Suicide Black
Replenish (MY all time favorite!)
Land Destruction
Tinker
Mono Blue Control
And that green /black deck that utilized Deranged Hermit and Phyrexian Plaguelord.

Those were the days.

[cassette]

cards basically sat in my closet collecting dust for a few years. but my junior year of HS, i needed money to buy a car.....so i dragged out the boxes and sold my collection on ebay.

$15,000+ (believe me, i was shocked.)

my honda civic that i still drive today... was literally built from paper

Ooh. How do I find out how much my old magic cards are worth?

You'd assume they'd depreciate over time since fewer people play.

-'rilla

more like the opposite. tons of people still play and the really old cards are worth more than ever.

[a500lbgorilla]

!

-'rilla

[Radashack]

Funny this got me thinking, I still have boxes of cards, and a few really rare cards lord of the pit and other early discontinued cards. I played until my middle school banned it as gambling.

[elipsesjeff]

Axis and Allies still pwns joo all!

[a500lbgorilla]

Funny this got me thinking, I still have boxes of cards, and a few really rare cards lord of the pit and other early discontinued cards. I played until my middle school banned it as gambling.

Good thing your middle school was there to set you straight early on to save you from a life solely financed by gambling.

-'rilla

[m3laNcholy]

I was heavy into Magic. I thought nothing of dropping a few hundred to make a deck. Some of my favorites:

Sligh
Stompy
Suicide Black
Replenish (MY all time favorite!)
Land Destruction
Tinker
Mono Blue Control
And that green /black deck that utilized Deranged Hermit and Phyrexian Plaguelord.

Those were the days.

Sligh is my first ever tournament deck which I played to win my first invitation to Euros. I was playing almost solely Yawgmoth's Bargain in the year 2k which got me my trip to worlds where I played replenish (great deck) to a 4-2 record.

I am playing online (not that much lately due to poker).
My nick name is "kiutsushou" on MTGO.

[™]

The last deck I made and played in a ProTour was an Oddessey Block Constructed Mono Black deck. My Nanuko Shades could wreak anything you throw at em. OBC mono black decks were glorious.

[whileone]

I used to play the chassis.
1 of every double land.
4 cities of brass (or 4 birds of paradise)
1 of every mox
1 black lotus
1 time walk
1 time twister
1 wheel of fortune
1 demonic tutor
1 fork
1 regrowth

there were a few other big restricted cards, but i can't recall them of the top of my head.

that gave you plenty of early mana of every color, and usualy enough for the long haul.

With this deck you could pretty much throw in whatever cards you wanted to play. wienie madness? 4 jihads and a bunch of little white monsters, go to town. blue control? np. stasis, kismet, counterspell.

it was pretty fun, but the game degenerated into what 15 cards do you use in addition to the standard stuff? i mean, you get mana from everything, you cycle through cards wicked fast. you're immune to land destruction. terror, or armageddon, dosn't matter, will kill off monster problems.

the goes something like this.
round 1 i place my land, i place a mox. i cast time walk.
round 2. i place a land, black lotus for blue, time twister. maybe drop another mox... whatever i've got 3 untapped mana and 7 cards in my hand. the only thing in the graveyard is the timetwister. If i get a second mox... the game's probably over. channel 19 mana, fireball you for 20... crap like that. or maybe some big 5/5 that costs 4 to cast...

it was sick.

[Anonymous]

I used to play magic.. I was pretty good, live in dallas. I played in the JSS tho.. I placed 27th at the most recent one in kansas city. and i qualifed for 1 pt but didnt go. so u prob dont know me, but i like poker now, been playin online alot

[arkalore]

I use to play for a couple for years, was never that good and I spent way to much on it.

Now, I'm selling off the cards one by one to finance my bankroll, I can tell younow that the older cards are selling very well.

[TylerK]

I just have to point out that you're all a bunch of freaking nerds.

Also, the high point of my Warhammer 40k days was when I made a Legion of the Damned dreadnought conversion...I basically just took a regular dreadnought and glued a bunch of skulls and bones on it. It was sweet.

[Iconoclastic]

I played in junior high but never had an allowance and didn't have the time to get a job so I stopped buying cards. Me and my friends still play draft tournaments every once in a while with all the commons I still have after I sold most of my rares.

My best original deck was a Type 1.5 White/Red Shard Phoenix-en Kor-Mogg Maniac combo deck. It had enough red cheese to beat any creature/weenie deck and with Disenchant could stop any combo deck. With a great sideboard it tore through every great deck, from Necro to Sligh to blue decks to Ernahmgeddon.

If I had the resources I probably would have gone on the Pro Tour.

[Fnord]

I will not be out-geeked!

I played the classic game a bit in school, but never owned cards.

Later on I got cards after the prime and beat up the local type 2 scene a bit (WoTC game center was open back then.)

My favorites:


Green Aggo (often a turn 4 or 5 kill)

Land (22):
15 x Forest
3 x Gaea's Craddle (1 green per creature)
4 x Treetop village (monster land)

Creatues (28):
4x Llanowar Elves (manna bunny)
4x Wild dogs
4x Pouncing Jaguar
4x Elvish Lyrist (enchantment removal)
4x River Boa
4x Albino Troll
2x Uktabi Orangutan (artifact removal)
2x Weatherseen Treefolk (big finisher)

Enchantments (4):
4x Rancor

Spells (6):
4x Giant Growth
2x Hurricane

Sideboard:
2x Uktabi Orangutan
various color and combo hosers


Black Control

Make an annoyance of yourself, then use Yawgamoth's Will + Diabolic Servitude to cast your creatures twice. Most decks can't cope with all of the card advantge you generate, plus with so much mana you rarely lose by default.

Land (28):
15x Swamp
2x Spawning Pool (creature land)
2x Blasted Landscape
4x Rishadan Port
1x Dust Bowl
4x Dark Ritual

Spells (12):
2x Vampiric Tutor
4x Duress
2x Snuff Out
2x Diabolic Servitude
2x Yawgmoth's Will

Artifacts (7):
4x Powder Keg
3x Ticking Gnomes

Creatues (13):
4x Ravenous Rats
2x Skittering Skirge
2x Phyrexian Plaguelord
2x Thrashing Wampus
1x Highway Robber
2x Bone Shredder

Sideboard:
4x Perish (Green surrenders)
4x Phyrexian Negator (Speed vs combo or blue)
2x Engineered Plague
Insert your other favorite hosers...