4 Reasons That Magic: The Gathering Sucks
Offline CAUTION: Unless you have been/are a player of Magic: The Gathering, the reading the following post will be a thorough waste of your time. You have been warned!
Reason #1: Mark Rosewater
Mark Rosewater is the worst thing that has ever happened the M:tG. He's the Kevin Siembieda of the TCG world, insisting that his pet game is just the greatest thing ever while injecting it with an ever-escalating base of more and more powerful cards (he's the 'brains' behind Tempest, Urza's Destiny, Odyssey, Mirrodin, Ravnica, Future Sight, Shadowmoor and Eventide).
He blatantly throws favors to celebrity players on his precious 'Pro Tour' circuit, including my favorite example, immediately banning - with no warning or precedent whatsoever - AEther Vial at the behest of Eugene Harvey (declaring it, much to the bewilderment of the magic player community, a 'Super Dark Ritual')
Reason #2: 10 Editions later, and the Paris mechanic is still broken
It's no secret: your opening draw in M:tG usually makes or breaks the game for you.
...So why is it that the mechanic tied to this crucial part of the game still sucks?
Taking a Paris is awful. You immediately surrender card advantage with a slim chance of improving your draw. If you draw a hand with no lands in it, you're basically screwed.
Aww, crap.
Why can't I just do a one-time replacement of some of the cards in my hand? Why can't I just draw a whole new hand a fixed number of times? Why can't my first draw be four cards from my library with no lands in it and 3 cards from my lands, with the two being shuffled together afterward?
Opening draws just have too much weight on the overall game as is.
Reason #3: Storm
This mechanic has been broken since it's debut, and has never been addressed (mainly because it is a pet mechanic of a majority of M:tG player celebrities)
It's ridiculous, and one of the primary reasons that the Paris mechanic is forced to remain the same (otherwise combo decks - decks that essenially exploit loopholes in the game - would become far too consistent).
Reason #4: 'It won't happen again! It won't happen again! No, this time we really mean it...'
...And then they put Rosewater back in charge.
From Skullclamp to Arcbound Ravager, WotC simply fails to keep the playing field open and relatively balanced.
Kamigawa was a solid block. For a while I wouldn't play anything other than Kamigawa Block games, as they were just some of the most interesting M:tG games I'd played in a while (you might note which lead designed was [i]not heavily involved in Kamigawa...)
Now things are back to the same old, same old - literally (after the Pro Tour babies were done whining and crying to dear Markus). I mean, they can't even be bothered to come-up with new broken junk:
Hmm...
Man, I'm tired of this game. Somebody else needs to release a half-decent TCG.
"Natasha has just come up to the window from the courtyard and opened it wider so that the air may enter more freely into my room. I can see the bright green strip of grass beneath the wall, and the clear blue sky above the wall, and sunlight everywhere. Life is beautiful. Let the future generations cleanse it of all evil, oppression and violence, and enjoy it to the full."
- Leon Trotsky, Last Will & Testament
February 27, 1940
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*Kicks Kevin in the nuts*
Haven't played in years, but I still have all my cards.
How the fuck? > >
Maybe its a good thing I stopped playing...
Can't disagree. Most of the cards that involve drawing new ones are patently useless. There's a few in the blue deck that work, but not many. And I agree that the first draw pretty well determines the game. Unless maybe you're playing with 20 card decks. But then you can't possibly reduce your opponents health to 0 before you run out of cards.
That is disgustingly cheap. Reminds me of the card you flip once and anything it touches is disintegrated. Ugh.
:|
You're fucking kidding me. Where the hell did this Storm thing come from? It is decidedly fucked up.
Ugh. And I thought they'd been too free with adding new abilities with every new release as it was.
I guess so. Magic used to be pretty awesome in the early days. I remember playing it constantly. Only reason I stopped is because I moved and no longer knew anyone who played. My deck is classic enough to get owned today, if these cards are any example.
Enlightened Atheist, Gaming God.
A few years ago, a bunch of my friends got into this game, and I tried it on for size mainly because I didn't like not being able to join in "the fun." I came to despise the game after about three editions, and my first tournament was, if memory serves, the last time I took my cards out of their boxes.
I hate it for different reasons than you, but you have to understand where I'm coming from. The only game I play anymore is Diablo II. Yeah. I know. It's old and overly simple... that's half the point. I can drink a bottle of wine, play for several hours, and never have to put any serious thought into it.
I can play spades or hearts the same way. Once you learn the rules, you can pretty much keep playing with just about anybody.
At first, I really liked MtG because of the large variety of card combinations you can play. Blue/Red vs. Black/Red or Black/Blue. Blue denial deck vs. white protection deck, etc, etc, etc. It was fun going through the cards and trying to figure out new ways to use cards that seemed useless.
Soon, it became very frustrating. MtG favors people who spend lots of money, and that pisses me off. People were pulling out decks with $250 worth of cards, and I'm sitting here with shit that I pulled out of three or four packs. It also favors people who spend inordinate amounts of time planning and doing math before they play. For that matter, it favors people who spend hours reading discussion boards trying to figure out how to plan new decks. Also, it's pretty much impossible to not keep buying new cards as new editions come out.
I don't know anything about the politics of MtG pros or tourneys. All I know is that for every game you play, you have to spend hours and hours preparing, and that's just not good for someone like me who works full time, researches, writes, and tries to have some time left over for heavy drinking and debaucherous sex.
Atheism isn't a lot like religion at all. Unless by "religion" you mean "not religion". --Ciarin
http://hambydammit.wordpress.com/
Books about atheism
Oh, God... two more reasons it sucks right there:
Reason #5: The 'Pro Tour' Circuit
Would you like to give me 20 dollars so that I can 'seat' you in a room full of unacceptably disgusting (in terms of everything, including personality, cleanliness, appearance and social habits) people; a room that never has enough chairs, leaves you elbow-to-elbow with said disgusting people and has some of the most atrocious acoustics ever encountered?
Well, if I'm your local PTQ ('Pro Tour Qualifier') organizer, and you want to 'Go Pro!' and win those 'Awesome Prizes!' WotC raves about, that's what you've got to do. My friends talked me into going to one live PTQ once.
Never, ever again.
Never.
I watched a man who was pushing 300 lbs attempt and fail to dress and eat a hot dog. He couldn't seem to figure-out that one activity should come before the other, and didn't appear to be certain of the operation of his lower jaw. He tilted his head back, lodged the food into his mouth, then proceeded to squirt condiments all over the food and himself while making the most awkward chewing motions I've ever seen.
I sat through a 'game' with an opponent who showcased the absolute worst sportsmanship that perhaps has ever been on display. He snarled and made insulting remarks under his breath every time I removed a permanent or attacked him, laughed at me every time he managed to do the same and at the end of the game when he was beaten he slammed his fistdown on the table, mumbled about how WotC needs to ban rogue decks from turning-up at PTQs and stormed-off.
Reason #6: '...And in the new Edition...'
Blocks are released way too often. Keeping current in Type 2 is almost strictly a game for only kids with rich parents who buy them whatever cards they want; college kids don't have the money, adults don't have the time.
Hamby sums it all up nicely right there. So who are you left to play with when you go to a tournament or local gaming store?
Exactly the people described in Reason #5.
- Leon Trotsky, Last Will & Testament
February 27, 1940
I play a dead CCG based on professional wrestling. In terms of nerddom, it's about the pinnacle. However, the new sets of the game are created by the players (the creator of the game is deceased) and they're free for download.
So, I'm taking time out of my schedule to go to Philly in June to Wizard World East and play in a tournament of Raw Deal....and I'll probably have a blast with my nerdosity.
I'm a part of the "Fuck Magic" crew from way back. If you want to buy a pile of crappy rares, I have a pile of crappy rares for sale.
"Like Fingerpainting 101, gimme no credit for having class; one thumb on the pulse of the nation, one thumb in your girlfriend's ass; written on, written off, some calling me a joke, I don't think that I'm a sellout but I do enjoy Coke."
-BHG
Once upon a time, when i was a wee lil kiddie (ish?) i played magic, i think i quit after Tempest? or no, probably Mirage... Suffice to say i had a highly "illegal" Sliver deck >.> if i lived past turn 10, it was next to unbeatable
Speaking of which, why the fuck is anything illegal in that game? Developers make the cards, the rules, the tourneys, and then say NO DICE BITCH! buy new cards >.< (damn... answered my own question )
What Would Kharn Do?
I agree completely. Just to illustrate the brokenness of these cards I made a deck that can kill 10 players on turn 2.
No, that's not a joke, and it's not a lie...
And to make matters worse the deck is extended legal.
Magic is going to die if this continues. The cards are too powerful and under-costed.
After eating an entire bull, a mountain lion felt so good he started roaring. He kept it up until a hunter came along and shot him.
The moral: When you're full of bull, keep your mouth shut.
MySpace
Lets put it this way, it's been a decade easy....wait 2009.....and well it was before Aaron's break in to the school.....that would have been major high school strike......ummm sheesh...umm 1997, the year I graduated college. It was getting annoying with the changes of rules and so called illegal decks then, forget now.
Well, I played for a few months several years ago. However, one of the problems is as Hamby said, it favors people who spend too much money. Over the few months that I was in the game, I turned into that guy.
The thing is that I never set out to be that guy. But the game does favor people who spend a little bit more, so that is what I did. Several times. Eventually, I ended up with a crap load of cards and I found myself walking into games with “I win automatically” decks. At that point, the game is just not fun anymore.
So I gave the guy who got me into it several well made decks. For the rest, I just showed up at a gaming night, told everyone that I was done with the game and handed out random handfuls of cards to everyone. Probably everyone there got a stack about the size of about 4 starter packs at random. If I did nothing else, I made it so that those people would not have to spend the cash that I did for a good long while.
=
It definately does favour those willing to sink money into it. I refused to buy single cards at the $5 to $10+. I figured if I couldn't get a good card in the regular packs, fuck it. I did still end up with quite a few uberrare cards. Even have a few of the holographic ones. But I almost spent as much money on them as I used to spend on hockey cards for a season. Which is to say a lot. lol.
Enlightened Atheist, Gaming God.
The new set coming out, they have said every card will be multicolor.
Every card.
So we can see more broken favorites like:
After eating an entire bull, a mountain lion felt so good he started roaring. He kept it up until a hunter came along and shot him.
The moral: When you're full of bull, keep your mouth shut.
MySpace
Yeah. They are pushing big creatures heavily.
At the risk of a horrible derail, I see a parallel to Dungeons and Dragons. When I was a kid, I played D&D 1st, and then 2nd edition. Because of the way the experience charts, monster manuals, and weapon damage was set up, you levelled up slowly. I recall one campaign that lasted close to two years. (Once a week) At the end of two years, we all had characters in the neighborhood of level 13 or 14, and we were just short of gods compared to most of the critters in the monster manual.
I remember thinking I was the shit among people who were the shit because I had some kind of vorpal sword that also rolled four dice for damage. Our magic user could do, I dunno... maybe 10d6 fireballs, or something like that. (That'll average to what, about 35 points?)
Anyway, right when third edition came out, some friends got me to play again, and I felt like I'd stepped into the Dungeons and Dragons Meth Campaign. By the fifth session, I was level five, and I was already doing more damage than my character from the good old days. By the time the game ended (at a few months) I was rolling something like 24d10 for my damage. A fucking round of combat took thirty minutes to figure out how to deal with a demigod who had +25 save vs. magic against a mage with six different feats increasing his resistance to magic resistance by 17, not counting the shield of super-duper magic-resistance anti-shielding resistance put up by the level 38 gnome tinkerer with a cloak of negate everything within fifty yards unless it's a demon from the outer planes, in which case, stand on your head, sing the Canadian National Anthem, roll ten dice, and drink a beer.
Needless to say, I wasn't impressed.
Atheism isn't a lot like religion at all. Unless by "religion" you mean "not religion". --Ciarin
http://hambydammit.wordpress.com/
Books about atheism
Well I would say that's more due to a bad DM than the game mechanics really, since none of the rules are written in stone. My friends and I still get together for a few games once or twice a month and we have only gone up maybe 2 levels in almost a year, as well our DM ain't artifact/magic items happy (I have played with those types in which by level 5 your pretty invincible). There are some good things and bad things about 3rd edition (or 3.5 depending how technical you want to get) but it depends on what you want to incorporate in to the game that matters or what you don't want to incorportate.
Ha! That's nothing. Behold:
Yup. 'Protection from everything'. If you don't have a board cleaner or a way to make the other guy sacrifice this dude, you're done.
Or, how about this one:
Planeswalkers themselves are retardedly broken; good 'ol Nicol is the brokenest among them.
(For those who know Magic, but don't know what Planeswalkers are: They're a new permanent that comes into play with a number of counters equal to the number shown on the bottom right corner of the card. As a sorcery, once per turn, they may activate one of the abilities on the card - as a 'cost' to play the ability, you add or remove a number of counters equal to the number to the left of the ability. So, for example, Nicol here comes into play with 5 counters. Once per turn, you may add 3 counters to him to destroy a non-creature permanent, remove two counters from him to take control of a creature or remove 9 counter from him to deal 7 damage to a player, force them to discard7 cards and sacrifice 7 permanents; frankly, I don't know why it doesn't just say, "-9: You win the game," other than perhaps to get around Platinum Angel)
*Facepalms*
Good 'ol Mark Rosewater. Just like how '75% of Mirrodin will be artifacts!'. Great design methodology; pre-conceive whatever you want the set to look like, and then force every decision to fit inside that framework.
...I can't help but wonder, after doing something like that, how can they possibly push the envelope further for the next block?
- Leon Trotsky, Last Will & Testament
February 27, 1940
D&D's fallen into the trap that almost every hack'n'slash booty-hunting RPG falls into: the problem of escalation. After players have already played the shit out of the first edition, picking-up all of the feats and toys that are in the books, what do you do if you want to release a 2nd edition?
Answer: invent some new & better toys and feats.
So, now, 4 Editions later, the toys and feats are just a joke. The current, sad state of wimpiness for the poor dragons and Terrax in the monster manual is a well established gag in the RPG internet community.
Actually, you can see the same problem happening right now with online MMOs like World of Warcraft (I don't play, but I do often hear the complaints from those who do play)
NOOOOOOO!
Ron Edwards says it best: it is not somehow the end user's fault for expecting your game to work well and fulfill it's agenda right out of the box. If I'm having to tinker around with the mechanics of the game before it works, there's something wrong with the mechanics.
D&D's agenda is pretty simple: the game wants you to go and explore the world it's laid-out, and it rewards you for exploring it by giving you better tools to explore it with. Here's where escalation really clashes with the agenda - it's difficult for the game to keep rewarding you if you get too many rewards right off the bat because each subsequent reward nets diminishing returns.
Sadly, there's not much that can be done to 'solve' the problem of escalation. It's an inherent quality of hack'n'slash treasure hunting. What WotC needs to do is just invent a new game; of course, that's a slightly riskier venture than just re-packaging their old landmark title with news bells and whistles, so they won't.
- Leon Trotsky, Last Will & Testament
February 27, 1940
I gotta side with KB on this one. I ran a brief campaign with 3rd edition, and I followed the rules out of the box, including recommendations for treasure rolls, encounter levels, and experience rewards for non-combat encounters.
I'm all about tweaking rules, but you gotta know the rules before you break them, so I was doing my best to play it out of the box.
It's broken.
Atheism isn't a lot like religion at all. Unless by "religion" you mean "not religion". --Ciarin
http://hambydammit.wordpress.com/
Books about atheism
I used to play 3rd ed DND. Leveling up was rare and getting magic items was rarer. Your DM can either hand out XP and loot like mad, or your DM could hand out small portions of XP and make enchanted items genuinely rare and valuable. I remember asking about why there were so few magic items and was accused of wanting to powergame. I'm pretty sure that our DM was not using standard item and XP tables; so I suppose if we played the unaltered game it could degrade into powergaming. If you wanted to you could just reduce XP rewards and reduce the value of loot. That would tone things down a lot.
Has anyone here heard anything about 4th ed? I read some reviews of it that make it sound like the worst bastard offspring of DND and MMORPGs that they could devise.
"You say that it is your custom to burn widows. Very well. We also have a custom: when men burn a woman alive, we tie a rope around their necks and we hang them. Build your funeral pyre; beside it, my carpenters will build a gallows. You may follow your custom. And then we will follow ours."
British General Charles Napier while in India
My brother built a deck running Dramatic Entrance that gets him out on turn 3. I tend to run hand manipulation in my decks now just for that reason (Tidehollow Sculler, Castigate... That'll show that fucker
). If you actually had to pay for him at cost it wouldn't be so bad.
Agree on all accounts. Nicol Bolas is possibly the worst card ever printed. I think Jace is fair though. His pump ability is balanced and his power ability is somewhat hard to use given the overall suckage of would be blocking blue creatures.
That's exactly the problem. They've got themselves into an internal arms race. Every block is going to have to be more broken than the last. That is until there's no where to go with it...
After eating an entire bull, a mountain lion felt so good he started roaring. He kept it up until a hunter came along and shot him.
The moral: When you're full of bull, keep your mouth shut.
MySpace
Omfs. Those cards are patently ridiculous. I have been completely convinced to never buy another deck of Magic cards.
Re: D&D...I haven't played that much. I did play Star Wars for quite awhile though. Perhaps it was simply designed better, or perhaps it is flawed in the same ways now as I haven't played it in ages, but as long as the GM wasn't being stupid, there was no adrenaline stage in levelling up. Becoming as powerful as the Emperor(who was considered to be the most powerful being in the universe previous to the prequel trilogy) would take years of constant play. Becoming more powerful than the Emperor was not a concern, as the universe is expansive enough to have counters for Force users here and there. A species, for example, literally pushes awareness of the Force away from it, leaving a Jedi or Sith completely Force blind when too close to the creature. Another species, this one intelligent, was made void of the Force, so that the Force could not be utilized to do anything directly to any member of the species, including utilizing the Force to enhance lightsaber skills for deflection of projectiles. Beyond that, the Jedi and Sith are merely 2 of dozens of different applications of the Force, so encountering a weaker opponent could still result in defeat if you weren't prepared for it. No matter how powerful you were.
Enlightened Atheist, Gaming God.
Completely agree with you, that's why we never followed all the recommendations for rolls, encounter levels and experience rewards (well yeah we did for killing creatures but tweaked it for other actions and encounters), with that said if the rule didn't make sense or did not seem to balance the game out we tweaked it, although to be fair my DM learned the rules inside and out as did 2 of the other guys so that we could adjust it accordingly. But of course it comes down to the type of game you like to play, hack n slash, mystery, powerplay etc, etc.
I get the changes of rules they did from 2nd ed to 3rd ed, however the they screwed up a bit on the new rules.
I have the 4th Edition bundle.
(...It's sitting atop, uh, a stack of... well, just about every RPG system that was ever published.
*Sheepish smile*)
Really, to be honest, it feels like a repackaged 3.5 with new and fancier artwork. There's some cosmetic changes (and some bizarre ones that people are more or less rightly cranky over, like new rules for backstabbing... now, basically, the rules absolutely require you to have miniatures to play with, rather than 'merely' forcefully 'encouraging' the use of minis), but the agenda and base mechanics remain the same: get out there, chop some Orcs, loot the bodies, move on.
I mean, I'm a fan of the Indie scene and I prefer more cerebral and atmospheric games, but the basic formula does still work and it's not like there's any huge fundamental changes. MMORPGs have largely tried to emulate DND (Hell, WoW basically is DND), agenda and mechanics-wise, so I think it's a combination of people having backwards perspectives and the fact that it's sort of become cool to bash DND 4th Edition.
It is broken, right out of the box, for the same reasons that 3.5 is broken (that we just finished discussing), but it's not some horrible abomination in the same vein as, say, what the new sets of M:tG are.
- Leon Trotsky, Last Will & Testament
February 27, 1940
Whats in the rules nowadays about... err... well... lets say each player has a card similar to this
Would they be able to block each other o_O?
And damn some of these cards would give my old deck a hell of a run for my money O_O
What Would Kharn Do?
No, if a creature has protection from any of the colors listed there, Progen cannot block it.
It's really not a card that I expect to see much play, honestly. Too expensive when the game usually ends by turn 4/5/6.
Theism is why we can't have nice things.
Progenitor belongs in every Tooth & Nail deck ever made from now on.
That's only if you're playing a one on one game, or type 2. I play a lot of legacy and multiplayer games and he comes out quite often using dramatic entrance. Which by the way can be cast in a legacy deck on turn 2 with out too much trouble. Thankfully he's a legend so you can only have 1 out.
After eating an entire bull, a mountain lion felt so good he started roaring. He kept it up until a hunter came along and shot him.
The moral: When you're full of bull, keep your mouth shut.
MySpace
A permanent with protection from a quality can not be targeted by spells or abilities that have that quality, can not receive damage from sources that have that quality, and in the case of creatures can not be blocked by creatures that have that quality.
Progenitus has protection from creatures, and therefor can not be blocked by creatures that are creatures.
After eating an entire bull, a mountain lion felt so good he started roaring. He kept it up until a hunter came along and shot him.
The moral: When you're full of bull, keep your mouth shut.
MySpace
Right, and anything with protection from any of the five colors Progen cannot block. Because it is a rainbow.
Theism is why we can't have nice things.
Just to toss my 2 cp in:
M:tG : I started playing somewhere around '94 soon after Revised was released. I played until about Fallen Empires, though I did buy a few Ice Age and ended up dusting them off for some of the Weatherlight sets. Things I got tired of:
D&D: I got started on the D&D (original) red dragon boxed set. It came with basic rules, dice, and a couple adventures, including one that you could solo like a choose your own adventure as a tutorial for a budding DM. Eventually my friends and I moved to AD&D 2nd and that moved smoothly enough because we had so much of it memorized. Much like LC, we had house rules for things and ignored some rules, and other times the DM just winged it.
3rd edition came out and I was wary. I eventually opened up to the fact that the rules were simplified. Stats, saves, AC, and skills in particular. We never really tracked XP that much, and generally, the GM would plan levelling to go along with the adventure instead of actually calculating crap. Magic items would rarely be found so that was never an issue. 4th doesn't seem so interesting to me. Some of my friends like the simplified skills/abilities, but I think it seems even more just a tactical combat game. Warhammer did that ages ago.
We still game, usually using v3.5, sometimes something indie, sometimes white wolf... sometimes we just wing it completely and, yes, end up just a group of adults playing make-believe.
I spent a lot of time DMing and recently had a chance to be a player again. Making seemingly broken characters is fun! Whee! Why yes, that 6th level rogue does have power attack, why do you ask? Say, can I use my half-orc monk who does 1d8+5 damage unarmed? Bull's Strength? For me!? You shouldn't have. I'm going to run past those enemy fighters and punch some spellcasters' tracheas out of their necks. I'll be right back.
I almost feel like breaking combat is totally worth it to get back to the talky plot bits. My favorite sessions as GM are when the dice never come out. Otherwise, combat takes up 90% of the game time.
-Triften
triften reminded me of something: people badmouth White Wolf a lot, and I don't think that it deserves the criticism that it recieves. White Wolf is a well made and streamlined rpg ruleset. I prefer it to DND's stat and skill system. People like to badmouth White Wolf because a lot of emo and goths like it. Those people are ass holes, but the game is well made and enjoyable. The group that I played DND with in highschool also played White Wolf occasionally, and I thought it was great. Unfortunately, White Wolf has gotten a bad rap thanks to emos and goths loving the White Wolf vampire game. Though, I suppose it doesn't matter anymore since the White Wolf production company went out of business.
"You say that it is your custom to burn widows. Very well. We also have a custom: when men burn a woman alive, we tie a rope around their necks and we hang them. Build your funeral pyre; beside it, my carpenters will build a gallows. You may follow your custom. And then we will follow ours."
British General Charles Napier while in India
What do you have against emos and goths?
I think the emo look is hot. And someone cut in fishnet is nnmph.
As long as they aren't cutters.
Theism is why we can't have nice things.
I don't have anything against goths, but I don't care for the way emos act.
CASE IN POINT:
After eating an entire bull, a mountain lion felt so good he started roaring. He kept it up until a hunter came along and shot him.
The moral: When you're full of bull, keep your mouth shut.
MySpace
Thought that was Troika?
What Would Kharn Do?
Trioka is a video game manufacturing company. They are still in business and might make more White Wolf video games. I was talking about the table top RPG branch of White Wolf. They are out of business and they won't be publishing anymore table top RPGs. They even made a 2nd edition White Wolf; it just will never be published. Oh well, I don't play table top RPGs anymore anyways.
"You say that it is your custom to burn widows. Very well. We also have a custom: when men burn a woman alive, we tie a rope around their necks and we hang them. Build your funeral pyre; beside it, my carpenters will build a gallows. You may follow your custom. And then we will follow ours."
British General Charles Napier while in India
I've never found Hitler so attractive.
I didn't at all mind White Wolf's products (though they were not, as advertised, narrativist games); I got a real kick particularly out of the latest edition of Wraith.
WW essentially signed their own death warrant as a company, though, by being so just plain mean-spirited and petty with regards to their intellectual property. The RPG industry is full of people - designers and fans alike - who have no time, money or patience for people who essentially threaten to sick the wolves on anyone that dares attempt to tinker around with their precious ideas. Hell, even the big dog on the block that everyone loves to hate, WotC, has made it plainly clear that the d20 system is there for everyone and anyone to play around with and even publish their own material with.
White Wolf would bark and snap at the merest suggestion by a fan that they would like to release their own version of Werewolf or Vampire.
The 'goth and emo' crowd that WW is so notorious for having as their only fan base is, in fact, a direct result of their behavior in this arena. The mainstream and indie RPG crowd was told to fuck off - so all they had left was harcore fans of all things dark and vampiric.
- Leon Trotsky, Last Will & Testament
February 27, 1940
LOL. I actually don't have a problem with emos. I just had to take that opportunity to post emo Hitler.
After eating an entire bull, a mountain lion felt so good he started roaring. He kept it up until a hunter came along and shot him.
The moral: When you're full of bull, keep your mouth shut.
MySpace
Super Mecha death christ?! FUCK YEAH
Well, I disagree with you that MTG sucks. I feel that a lot of the things you mentioned are problematic for the game, but only on a professional level.
These complaints really only pertain to people who play tournaments all the time rather than to casual players (besides the Paris thing). Plus, there is a card that stops storm now and it does it for zero mana.
I think that everyone has bad draws sometimes no matter how good your deck is and that does stink. However, this is a problem that most TCGs have and is not something exclusive to MTG. It sucks, but is not bad enough to label the game as terrible or anything.
I would like to also mention that Kamigawa is a horrible block. Too many cards worked only within that set. I did like it, but it was not a block I will ever buy packs from because chances are I will get only one card that's useful.
Finally, I want to close with a remark regarding your comparison of Goblin Welder to Master Transmuter. Those two cards are nothing alike due to the colors you need to field them, the way they work within their blocks, and their mana costs. Although their mechanics are similar, they are very different at the same time. They did come out ten years apart from one another as well, which is not really that bad at all.
I feel your criticisms have a bit of a base, but are dated with the release of the Anti-storm card and also apply (for the most part) only to tournament level MTG players. If there is truly so much pandering to pro tour players, then oh well. The game still functions well and is exciting and fun to play. There's not much else for me to say, so I suppose I'm done. Once again, I disagree with you, but you do make valid points. They're just too narrow for most players I feel
Nicol Bolas is so useless. It never sees play and when it does the player using him is already in a position to win without it. There is no point to it. Final abilities on planeswalkers are rarely used because opponent's either destroy them or the player controlling the planeswalker has the sense to not build up to it. In Nicol Bolas's case, he is actually the worst planeswalker printed. Too much mana
Magic the gathering online is the most broken "non random generator" card scheme I have ever seen....
If you spend money you win ..... The cards are broke and if you dont win with broken cards "idiot" you will win from randomly generated benefits in card play....
=
Just started playing MTG in the last year or so. I had known of it since its beginnings back when I was in high school but never got into it because I don't have extra money to sink into a card game.
With the creation of Cockatrice (a free program that allows you to play online with any card for free) - I jumped in head first.
I don't need to go into the whole strategy vs luck argument. Anybody with common sense knows that card games are at least 50/50 luck. Doesn't matter how well you play or read your opponent (which is impossible over Cockatrice online).
When I started playing last year I was instantly introduced to the joy of caw-blade decks. And this was before they banned Stoneforge Mystic in standard. It got to the point where if you weren't playing with caw-blade, you had no chance of competing. Even after Stoneforge was banned, cawblade still dominated and was the majority of top 10 decks at tourneys.
Now it's even more obnoxious.
The Dark Ascension set that recently came out includes a new mechanic called "undying". Look it up if you want more info.
By itself undying is annoying but not too irritating. But lately I've been encountering decks that combo undying with birthing pod and phantasmal image.
IN EFFECT:--- phantasmal image on undying creature, sacrifice to pod for bigger undying, image stays on board-plus gets to copy another creature at will-PLUS GETS UNDYING +1/+1 COUNTER. And all for just the cost of tapping birthing pod.
The worst part is these decks have 5 or 6 creatures and like 40 lands/mana cuz the only way they work is with multicolored (at least white-blue-green, maybe +3 in color types)
Bad enough dealing with wolfrun, delver, geist of st taft, swords, and that fucking dickhead pike.
But this shit is obnoxious and it feels like since its from the newest edition there is no clear rule on the combo from Wizards, just a consensus from all the nerds, most of whom play this annoying deck.
It has ruined my experience with the game and makes me not want to even bother.
Christ I wasn't even around for Affinity, but it seems like every year it just gets more and more bullshit/broken.
Lol. Since it's come back anyway, I'm surprised the Eldrazi haven't been mentioned. Annihilator is ridiculous.
Enlightened Atheist, Gaming God.
I used to collect the cards, I would buy a pallet of them at a time. 42 boxes of each set. I had over 100,000 cards at one point (not including the land cards)
I sold my collection in 1998 for $10,000 to a guy who started his own gaming company. Today that same collection would have been worth $50,000
Today I won't even touch the game even when my friends try to get me to play. I refuse to be caught up in a continuous collectible (anything) as the resell value might be profitable but you can't frame them like a painting from Peter Max.
I went to a comic convention once and these idiot nerds were all sitting at tables off to the side fucking with their Magic cards. We noticed after a few minutes that they began flinging cards randomly onto the ground; just for the fuck of it. They didn't attempt to pick them up, no one was paying them any attention so, me and my friend just start collecting the ones that they discarded hoping they'd be valuable down the line. I actually still have them and these are from the very first set so they might be worth some cash to someone.
Other than that, I really didn't get into the game and thought it was silly. It reminded me of an old dungeon crawling PC game where you encountered monsters and decided what to do next, but in card form. Couple friends didn't get why I wasn't into it, but it just looked boring and pointless not to mention those cards were expensive. I was more into comics and those little pewter statues associated with Warhammer (never played the game, just liked the statues).
Hello,
Is something burning? no. I smell something that is odd. hmm? oh, now I recognize it, nerds. lol.
You guys got beaten up at school and said, oh, since God did not protect me from being thrown in the trash can, then there is no God and thus I'm an atheist.
Nerd fallacy. Perhaps I shall expound on this.
Respectfully,
Jean Chauvin (Jude 3).
A Rational Christian of Intelligence (rare)with a valid and sound justification for my epistemology and a logical refutation for those with logical fallacies and false worldviews upon their normative of thinking in retrospect to objective normative(s). This is only understood via the imago dei in which we all are.
Respectfully,
Jean Chauvin (Jude 3).
Poor jean smells himself. lol.
Back to more important things...
There is a MTG title released for the 360, PS3, and Steam; called Duels of the Planeswalkers. It has a sequel simply seen as Magic 2012. While cheap and fun, both Wizards and the developer Stainless released a product that is NOT equatable with the card game, and is plagued with shoddy design and bugs. It's SO bad that listing all the problems would take 20 posts minimum, and the majority of the bugs in the '09 release were also carried over to 2012, along with a whole new set of broken mechanics.
Both Stainless and Wizards are well aware, having acknowledged this publically, promising to fix them, and proceeding not to. Check their forums if you don't believe me. No searching necessary, the community is rather pissed.
Now they are preparing to release 2013, and I want everyone to tell everyone they know who may be even remotely interested in MTG to not buy this or any other DOTP game unless or until a QA department exists and does its job.
Enlightened Atheist, Gaming God.
Okay I did some calculation on the game of Magic the Gathering and came up with a bone chilling outcome.
get this The competitive tournament player that plays Friday night Magic every Friday night for a whole year spends about $1100 a year on tournament costs, cards, and dice/card sleeves/play mats/deck boxes. and that's thinking they spend on cheap accesories and singles off of ebay or internet stores.
So I'm being nice here when I say for one year Friday night magic costs about $1100 if you wanna win 1st sometimes and be competitive and have the top tier deck.
Okay so after selling cards that rotate every 3 months they earn about $318 by the end of the year.
Then also They spend another $221 every three months on necessary single cards on average. after the first 3 months that is. During the first month if they did not start off with any cards it will cost them about $600 to buy the top tier deck and accesories.
that's about $1400 a year on cards actually. Then count the $75 a year on accesories like dice/play mats/ life counters/ counter beads/ tokens/ deck boxes/ and sleeves. Then count $240 on tournament entry fees assuming they only play Friday night Magic Standard tournaments. Then there is about $480 a year on munchies and drinks that people like to eat and drink while they play.
SO AT THE END OF THE YEAR YOU SPEND ABOUT $2200 on MTG Standard FNM tournaments.
thats only saying if you play with non-foil cards. AND you only win about a maximum of roughly 500 rating points if you think realistically.
Then lets say you sell your cards that rotate out and the end of each block. You would make about $424 off of card sales. and if you win your matches probably losing one here and there (this happens even to the best of best decks and players) you win about $800 a year in cards which you could probably sell for about $600.
So...............
Lets say at the end of the year after selling all of your cards that you aren't going to need in next year's first block......you make about $1024 cash. Well......................
The $2200 you spent minus the $1024 that you got for the year............That means.............
YOU ARE OUT ONE GRAND AND THEN SOME THAT'S over 1000 dollars my friend just to play a lousy 192 matches of Magic the Gathering and win about realistically i'd say at most 500 rating points a year. That's...............
at the most roughly 600 games of Magic and 500 rating points at the cost of $1000 dollars if you are lucky.
AND...... that's............... roughly ........... 2 dollars per game and rating point. Matches Last about at Max 50 minutes.
SO...... that's..... 1 dollar for every ten minutes you play. I don't know about you but i don't have $1000 a year to spend on this
fucking game
AND..... only a handfull of nerds will be impressed by your rating points.
That's.......1000 a year to own....... wow a handfull of cards..... and impress about 5 nerds?????
FUCK THAT SHIT. i'm buying me a cheap car! or how about every playstation and PS2 game ever made with consoles included..... or how about a trip to tahiti........ man fuck MTG
LMFAO $1100 a year? WHA? First of all unless FNM really got jacked up in price due to all the little retarded kiddos thinking price gouging is SO COOL then yeah it's possible. Hell I remember when Damnation was $5-$10 each, Fetch lands were $36-$60/set depending on colors, Force Of Will was about $60-$80 a set, etc. etc.... I loved Magic all through Ravnica and even some of Timespiral. It was Planeswalkers that did me in and yeah I do regret selling some cards especially my fun decks I had like Dirty Kitty, Sunny Side Up, Solidarity, Trainwreck, T1.5 vial/goblins, etc... and yeah I had 3 full sets of fetch (60 fetch lands) plus a spare set of wooded foothills, 4 sets of goblin piledrivers, 3 sets of wasteland, 4 sets of crucibles....I had around 2k rares in my folder as well with alot of cards upwards of $20 now (kiki-jiki), Glimpse of nature, etc... but I sold them to get out of the game because of work and game shops closing down.