The General Magic the Gathering Thread

The lands with the adventure covers are quickly becoming chase cards. D&D players want to collect them and Magic players want to use them as bling for their EDH decks.

This Tiamat full-art is the priciest card so far, despite being a fairly unplayable Magic card. No one cares if she’s any good, they just want to say they have the dragon queen!

I bought a booster box. First time I’ve done that… ever. Going to my MTG freak buddy’s house tomorrow to open them.

I’m sure I’ll get a bunch of cards I don’t want.

I basically see these as pieces of collectable art. I don’t care much about the game, because if I start to care I’ll get way to into it and ruin my life.

The whole D&D thing strikes me as a #branding exercise that I have no interest in.

I super bonus have no interest in bringing d20s into Magic.

Didn’t we always use d20s to track life?

Again, sorry, I haven’t played seriously since the 90s. We used our D&D dice to play Magic.

2d10 is obviously the superior life-tracking choice, or 1d6 + 1d10.

Anyway c’mon man, random d20 rolls with gameplay effects is rather a different thing ;)

Most of my irritation is that I can’t stand bonus RNGs in my CCGs. There’s enough randomness in card sequencing that adding more is just unnecessary and irritating. To my mind, card sequencing is the perfect amount of randomness by itself because players have some control over it via deckbuilding (and loot/scry/draw/whatever effects) but not too much.

Fuck Hearthstone, is what I’m saying.

I liked Hearthstone. RNG brings in a factor that can keep games winnable when you got totally hosed. And I liked not having lands.

I agree. I post a wrote in Roguebook complaining about the extra RNG in that game. But speaking from a former HS and MTG player. Doesn’t HS have less RNG due to the lack of lands? I’m probably wrong since it’s been quite a while since I played MTG and HS.

Nothing feels worse in Magic than getting no lands/all lands. Hearthstone fixed that, and I loved it.

Lands are a fundamental part of the game, though, so they can’t just get rid of them.

In my opinion, they put the right amount of D20 rolling into this set. You couldn’t really leave it out…it’s a D&D staple mechanic! The benefits of rolling well are largely minor, and same with the downside of rolling poorly, not overpowering the main effect of the card.

Same general concept with classes, equipment, and delving into a dungeon. I’m not gonna be sad when these mechanics (other than equipment) disappear after those set, but for “the D&D set”, it’s important that they be there.

Oh I played me some HS, don’t get me wrong. They just eventually introduced way too much RNG in the card text and I couldn’t take it any more.

Games being decided by screw/flood is a thing in Magic, for sure. But assuming competent deck building it’s what, maybe 10-15% of games nowadays? High, for sure, but that’s the price of poker and definitely too deeply baked into the game design to make any cures better than the disease.

I don’t think screw/flood is much worse at all than bailing your curve in a HS draw or whatever.

I will say that I like Eternal’s tweak to power and costs quite a lot. That’s a solid game for sure.

She’s extremely playable in Commander.

Going back to Dominaria and (more excitingly) a cyberpunky Kamigawa!

Not too sure what New Capenna is going to be for sure, other than the art making it look like a magical Roaring-20s art deco gangster thing?

Hahaha. Fortnite and Street Fighter cards coming to MTG.

I was playing a mode in Arena where you summon random cards and someone got Godzilla. So… nbd? These happen.

Also the RNG in the D&D set is a complete non-factor. It almost never determines a game.

Warhammer 40k and Lord of the Rings too (which I will definitely be buying up!).

But those aren’t standard sets…they’re Secret Lair editions. Basically reprints with new themed art.

I was busy slaughtering the fauna in Path of Exile when they did the live stream on Twitch, so I put it on in the background. Holy cow, MTG announcement events are cheesy. And I’ve been to Oracle conventions and seen Blizzard announcements, so I know from cheesy announcement presentations. :) Best moment - when they put up the Chun-Li art and announced that her card would have multi-kicker.

I like the cyberpunk Kamigawa theme, hope they implement it decently. Everyone else in my playgroup seems most excited for Dominaria stuff, but personally I’m kinda over that and prefer the other planes. Not interested in 40K (which they kept saying as “forty thousand” instead of “forty K”, wonder if Games Workshop requested that for some reason) but the LOTR stuff will be putting a major dent in my wallet come 2023.

Tomorrow, Oct 3 at noon Pacific, the Limited Resources and Lords of Limited folks are doing their team draft showdown for Midnight Hunt. I’ve really enjoyed watching these in the past, so I thought I’d post a note here in case anyone else wants to catch this one. They stream on Twitch - I usually watch Marshall (marshall_lr) or LSV (lsv).

After getting a little bit into Arena a couple of months ago–my first MTG experience since middle school–I finally went to my first in-person event: a local Crimson Vow Prerelease.

I’m terrible at the base game, had a cursory knowledge of the new set mechanics and cards at best, and was pretty nervous about playing in any kind of tournament setting. And with all of those caveats, it was so much fun! How are these not better advertised outside of the Magic world? I would have jumped at this chance years ago if I knew there was an event where:

  1. I didn’t need to bring anything but card sleeves, some random dice, and my phone.
  2. Players of all skill levels are welcome, even if you just know the basics of how the game works.
  3. There are literal printed instructions guiding you in how to build your deck.
  4. Other players are excited to help with deckbuilding and share their own strategies.

If the game stores (or WotC) advertised a one-hour learn to play Magic workshop beforehand and maybe bundled in enough basic lands to walk away with a playable deck at the end, that would be an amazing way to get non-players in.

But I’m pretty deep into the video game and board game communities and it took a lot of coincidence and repeated exposure for me to understand that a prerelease would be a good onboarding event for me.

Glad you had a good time! Pre-releases are easily my favorite MTG events, too. Followed by draft and casual commander, both of which you might find fun as well. Draft can be a little overwhelming since you need to make decisions about the cards you pick, but I’ve helped plenty of new players get the idea…basically if you pick a couple of colors and stick to them, you’ll end up with something playable, and with some experience you’ll be able to start layering on more strategy. As for commander, any of the precon decks are playable to get started, and if you let folks know you’re looking for entry-level games, you should be able to find a pod not doing anything too insane while you get your footing.

Great question. WOTC marketing is really good at spamming their existing playerbase with announcements, but not so much at reaching out to new players.

Thanks for the suggestions, @ineffablebob ! Prior to the prerelease, I picked up one of the recent Commander precons mostly to get a feel for how the physical game played out with tokens and counters and whatnot. I’m planning on taking it to one of the local area Commander nights to see what that’s all about.

I’m definitely going to the next prerelease in February once life slows down, post-holidays, and might give drafting a shot then.