Magic: The Gathering

As I mentioned in my first post, video games will not be the sole topic here. This post will deal with the popular trading card game "Magic: The Gathering," and what I think of it. It will not be a standard review, as I have no idea how I would review a card game using my normal system.


Nicol Bolas. The ultimate evil in the realm of Magic (And the most awesome dragon in the game. Plus a pretty useful planeswalker.)

I admit, I play this game. Quite regularly. Usually every other day or so with my friends while I eat lunch. In that way, it is a pretty great game for middle or high school students, but can be played by anyone, provided they know those who play.

Having yesterday helped teach this game to a person, I remember how hard it was to figure out everything in the beginning. It came fast, but is a little bit of information overload to start. It also will consume quite a bit of money over time. I have spent close to sixty dollars on cards, and just play casually. I know some serious players who have spent hundreds.

The basic rules are pretty simple. There are four ways to win: Bring your opponents life total down to zero (From twenty), deal a total of ten infect damage to him (Separate from the other type.), have their turn start with them being unable to draw a card, or finally, have a card that causes you to win or lose. The last option is very rare, and many of those cards are illegal.

There are also many formats of play. I will cover three of the most common. There is standard, which is a deck using the last three released sets. There is than modern, which legalizes all cards from the eighth edition onwards. Finally, there is legacy, which uses pretty much any card, outside a small banned list. Most decks created casually, with little attention to card set, fall under modern or legacy.
These decks all generally use sixty cards, with the option of using more, if you so choose.

I consider Magic primarily a social game. Every once and a while I get together with some of my friends, eat some food, play about a dozen games, and call it an afternoon. I play a game, talk about life (Real life, not the life in my game.), and generally lose. I don't care. There are several types of Magic players, at least as designated by Wizards of the Coast (Which I'll get into later.) which are the following; "Timmy", who always tries to get out the strongest monster and win big, "Johnny" who wants to win using a specific trick and in his style, and "Spike," who wants to win fast and consistently. The quality of winning matters to the first two, but not to the third (The first want to win using their style, the last just cares about winning.)

(Ignore this paragraph if you don't play Magic already. Or don't if you don't want too.) I took a test to find out what kind of player I am here. This one takes into consideration many things, and goes far beyond anything else I talked about (I'm a Johnny (With three each in Timmy and Spike) Control Rogue Social-Casual, which I more or less figured.) I could probably do an entire blog about that quiz. I probably will later. Maybe it'll be my next post. This lays out the motivations for players gen

At the core of this - Why do people play this game? Most people I know play it socially, with a few playing to win. There are many reasons you might play this game. The person I helped teach it too, my friend, lets go with "Marie", purchased a large amount of cards the were on a deal that day. Her sister (Let's say "Yukiko"), who I also helped teach, but has less money, simply anticipates the time when she can buy her own. I actually feel kind of bad for introducing them to this, as it could quite possibly suck up quite a bit of money over the years, but I do gain two new people to play with.