From this page:
http://www.rockandrollconfidential.com/hall7.htm
Chet
Niiiiice!
I spent last weekend with a friend who used to play professionally. He recounted the story of one of his former “colleagues” who recently married. When asked how he felt just before the ceremony, the groom replied: “I feel like I just attacked with everything, and it’s too late to take it back.”
For some unknown reason, I decided to pick up Magic for the first time last week. I’ve played through the sample games, but I’m really kind of wondering, “Is this all there is?” Ok, maybe if I give it some more time and plays it’ll get better, but right now, even with the incredible variety of cards, the game seems…well…limited. Play a land, pass, play another land, maybe get a creature in, pass, play another land, play another creature attack with first creature, get blocked, both go to graveyard. Wee. Color my mana unenthused. Your choices seem so limited in this game, you either sacrifice your creature or you suck up the damage. It seems so all-or-nothing. I’m sure with more cards there are more options, but doesn’t it still come down to sacrifice either the creature or the life (or force the other player to sacrifice his creature.)
What’s the cause for all the buzz? (Is ‘buzz’ the right word for a 10 year old game?) I think I would prefer a deeper damage model, I picked up Mage Knight at the same time and it looks a lot more interesting to me. I wonder if the “collectable” nature might have more to do with the buzz than the game itself. For me, I got that xmas day rush when opening boosters for both Magic and Mage Knight even though MK seems like a better game to me.
-sk
I was moderately into Magic about 7 years ago. It’s hard to pinpoint the appeal. There was an addictive element to it that came with buying new packs of cards. Each new pack was like a little Christmas present and you always had the hope that you would get a rare or really powerful card. Unfortunately, at the time I had no money and couldn’t afford to keep buying new cards, so my Magic habit withered away. No matter – I sucked at it anyway.
I used to play a fair amount, and the appeal was largely in the card interactions. In some ways, the game essentially plays like Gin Rummy. You stack your deck with various combinations of cards that work well together, in the hopes that one of those combinations will work its way into play. Essentially I thought the deck construction meta-game was the interesting part.
I stopped playing when it became apparent that WotC was changing the rules every time a new card set was released. Basically there was no way to keep up short of spending lots of time and money.
- Alan
I assumed this to be the general concept behind the game (especially the money part).
Kinda like Project Entropia aspires to.
If you haven’t already heard this, consider yourself lucky, but a current buzzword in the business community is “residual income”… the general principle being not to sell something ONCE, but to sell it (or something purely derived from it) again and again and again and again.
Magic was a “residual income” kinda game.
Wow Brian! Where did you hear this buzzword from?!?! I have never heard of such a business concept! Amazing! Did this concept come from Doom?
Current buzzword, oh brian you kill me.
Chet
That’s a new definition of residual income. For tax purposes, residual income is net profit minus the charge for the sum of investment already used.
From http://casparija.home.attbi.com/dweb/l54.htm –
“RI is a measure of income in which RI = Income - [(Required Rate of Return) * Investment]”
In fact I found no use of residual income in this way. If it’s a new buzzword, then they are mangling the use of accepted economic terms. I hate it when they do that.
Magic seems like a neat game when I watch people play it, but I can’t bring myself to make the initial investment. Like all hobbies, though, I can vaguely understand why some people would like to spend money on it. You can do more with Magic cards than stamps.
Perhaps a Magic player can explain to me the difference between Magic and any number of other card battles games (like Pokemon). Is there anything that makes one better than the other?
Troy