Magic the Gathering

[Jub]

I don't know if we have many members who play MTG these days, but I've just recently gotten back into it. I don't have the cash for Standard, but I enjoy drafting and more casual play.

Speaking of drafting, I won my most recent draft with the following picks:

Main Deck - Mythics/Rares:
-Jace, Unraveler of Secrets (Pick 1,Pack 1)
-Relentless Dead (Pick 2, Pack 2)
-Asylum Visitor
-To the Slaughter
-Elusive Tormentor

Main Deck - Uncommons:
-Sinister Concoction
-Broken Concentration
-Morkrut Necropod
-Kindly Stranger
-Drunau Corpse Trawler

Main Deck - Commons:
-Sleep Paralysis
-Vessel of Malignity
-Rancid Rats
-Crow of Dark Tidings
-Just the Wind
-Twins of Maurer Estate
-Murderous Compulsion x2
-Explosive Apparatus
-Ghoulcaller's Accomplice
-Reckless Scholar
-Stiched Mangler x2

Sideboard:
-Indulgent Aristocrat
-Alms of the Vein
-Stormrider Spirit
-Throttle
-Rottenheart Ghoul

Other Cards:
-Humble the Brute (Pick 2, Pack 1) [White wasn't open, and UB seems better than UW]
-Seagraf Skaab x2
-Press for Answers
-Deny Existence
-Drownyard Explorers
-Fleeting Memories
-Stallion of Ashmouth
-Vessel of Paramnesia
-Explosive Apparatus x2
-Vampire Noble
-Furtive Homunculus
-Nagging Thoughts

At the table, I was very happy with how open both blue and black were. I was seeing lots of both colors wheel and got blue cards as last picks in packs 1 and 2. Getting Relentless Dead when I did cemented me as UB control. This deck went 2-0, 2-1, 2-0 in my group and won me 4 extra packs and a shiney, if useless, Angel of Deliverance promo. I'm still getting back into the swing of MTG, and this is my 3rd ever draft. I was playing at the beginners table, though I think this deck may have been solid enough to make noise at the next table up.

Without looking at every card I was passed, do you see any cards that I should have passed to cut out a potential threat to my deck? Do you see any mainboard cards that should have been cut or sideboard/other cards that I may have misrated?

Beyond that do you have any cool decks you've drafted recently, stories to tel,l or questions to ask?

[Crossroads Inc.]

Oh man remember those epic "make your own magic cards" threads from back in the day? Those were epic

I still play with a big group of friends every Saturday and Sunday
My favorite deck is one designed to basically make me unkillable and win purely from my opponent running out of cards before me

[Lagmonster]

One of these days I have to either sell my collection or try to play again. I have many of the cards from Alpha to Invasion, but I stopped playing when I felt that they weren't really going to revolutionize the game enough to keep buying new cards.

[Crossroads Inc.]

Omg! For the love of FSM don't sell them.
Older cards tend yo be broken and do crazy things that make modern players brains melt!

About 90% of all the cards I have were printed from the year 2000 and earlier.
I have plenty of old school decks that often amuse and cause great consternation amongst my friends

If you have a big collection of old cards as well, you just need to find the right people to play with

[Formless]

Oh man remember those epic "make your own magic cards" threads from back in the day? Those were epic

I still play with a big group of friends every Saturday and Sunday
My favorite deck is one designed to basically make me unkillable and win purely from my opponent running out of cards before me

I wasn't around when those threads happened. Were the results as interesting as Robo-Rosewater's?

[mr friendly guy]

I used to play back in the day, just with my best friend and his brother (who was a real magic nut) in university. These days I just use Duel of the Planeswalkers 2012, 2013, 2014, put in a few mods and create your own deck to play against the AI. Although I did enjoy playing Two headed giant online in DoTP 2014. There was a German steam user who went by the moniker Liliana Vess (after the necromantic planeswalker) who I had great fun with in two headed giant. We seemed to communicate well and we had epic games.

There was also that time when playing Two headed giant the opposition used an open communication channel and I could see them discussing which cards to play. I kind of told them that I could see what they are planning.

[LaCroix]

Omg! For the love of FSM don't sell them.
Older cards tend yo be broken and do crazy things that make modern players brains melt!

About 90% of all the cards I have were printed from the year 2000 and earlier.
I have plenty of old school decks that often amuse and cause great consternation amongst my friends

If you have a big collection of old cards as well, you just need to find the right people to play with

Only if they don't insist on using card legality rules.
Usually, you can't play what isn't legal in modern tournament format.
And you have to accept the latest errata on cards.

A lot of fine decks have been dismantled by the erratas.

[Lagmonster]

That and nobody will play against a lot of the broken legacy decks. People take one look at Time Walk and fold, so it's basically just there to show kids what it was like having adult money on a teenager's taste in 1993.

[TheFeniX]

I built a few decks after digging up my old cards. My friends and I only play against each other, but we have fun doing so.

I put together a White deck to get my wife into the game. It's a Flying/Vigilance/First Strike (any creature has at least one of those criteria on them) to reduce her choices on what to do. She can always go "over the top" with vigilance flyers and still have blockers. The First Strike means she can block with multiples to destroy large attackers with losing anything. There's creature removal in the form of Swords to Plowshares, Reprisals, etc. I've also got 4 of a card that give +1/+2 and makes it so if she controls another white creature, it can't be targeted by enemies. Nothing with a mana cost over 5 except some angel that basically wins her the name. A few resurrections and I even threw in 2 Enduring Renewals for a "I got my shit" setup. Can't remember some of the names off-hand. I could post the deck as it does stupidly good.

She loses with it all the time because she refuses to push her advantage. "This deck sucks." Meanwhile, I just crush pretty much anything aside from some of Chris' cheese decks since my deck is mostly older cards and newer cards have some redonculous synergy.

That and nobody will play against a lot of the broken legacy decks. People take one look at Time Walk and fold, so it's basically just there to show kids what it was like having adult money on a teenager's taste in 1993.

Man, I try not to judge other people's taste in hobbies. But there was this one guy at our local hobby spot. There's always that ONE GUY. Used to brag non-stop about how he could dump hundreds a month into his hobby from his proceeds delivering pizzas because he lived at home with his mother and had no rent. Aw man, that guy used to DESTROY me (and a lot of other people) by just having cards for days. He'd sideboard non-stop to the point no one who knew better would let them see what they're playing. I used to hate people who would say "cut, but don't look at the bottom card," but this guy changed my mind on that instantly.

All that didn't bother me, but to hear him just brag on and on about it... Jesus.

He kept all his alpha shit and other rares (no matter how inconsequential) in hard plastic cases next to him. When he played a card, usually a land with info written in marker on it, he would shuffle through the hard stack to find the real one and place it on the table deliberately. We all knew he had the cards, he had fucking everything. He didn't need to bother with that unless asked, but man did he love eating up time for no good reason.

One time, someone played a newer rare and he asked to see it to make sure it's real, so he pulled it out of the sleeve and started picking at the corner. The entire table half-stood up at once and was like "What the Hell are you doing?" and the guy was insulted because "I wasn't damaging it."

So many people were ecstatic when he got ran off. He was "helping" some kid find his rares out of Alliance packs. He then was in the process of trying to scam said kid out of a Balduvian Hordes. It's like... WTF, guy had original Moxes and shit and you're scamming 12-year-olds out of shit like this?

God damn.... what a fucking asshole. Sorry, just picked a bad memory from an otherwise enjoyable part of my life.

[Terralthra]

I only play on Magic Workstation these days. The cards are too expensive to do what I like (experiment with deckbuilding).

[Crossroads Inc.]

Omg! For the love of FSM don't sell them.
Older cards tend yo be broken and do crazy things that make modern players brains melt!

About 90% of all the cards I have were printed from the year 2000 and earlier.
I have plenty of old school decks that often amuse and cause great consternation amongst my friends

If you have a big collection of old cards as well, you just need to find the right people to play with

Only if they don't insist on using card legality rules.
Usually, you can't play what isn't legal in modern tournament format.
And you have to accept the latest errata on cards.

A lot of fine decks have been dismantled by the erratas.

Ask I say, you just need to find the right people to play with.
"Casual Play" is the best thing ever. Legacy? Modern? Who cares? Shoot, I play with a group that uses Unhinged and Unglued cards and we don't bat an Eye
It's awesome stuff.

So yeah, my advice is avoid tournament players like the plague and look for those guys that just pal around.
I've played against tournament goers, and very few of them have any notion of "Playing for fun" anymore.

[Lagmonster]

My point was that even in the most casual groups, some decks just get banned. Casually. Given no limits, I could build a reliable infinite turns deck that roars out of the gate to victory 95% of the time. My opponents know that, and even if they can build similarly broken decks, it reduces the game to the luck of the shuffle, and nobody likes that, so people just start saying, "I won't play against X deck".

My friends preferred to play bizarrely limited but hilarious constructed formats, such as "no non-Timmy creatures" or "only sorceries and artifacts over 6cc" or "no commons" or my favourite, "only cards which have life pay as part of the cc or activation costs".

[Korto]

I had a friend, Geoff, and he had a couple of decks made up using Unhinged and Unglued cards. He was allowed to play one hand with those decks per Game Day and then "Right, you've had your fun. Now PUT IT AWAY!"

I also played magic a bit years ago, stopped, and then started up again recently. I bought a bunch of cards being sold on ebay and made up perhaps a dozen decks, but Geoff was the real "in the loop" enthusiast, who went to competitive games and so knew all the latest rules and shit. Now, the odds are I'll be dropping out again.

An old deck I made up long ago, probably the most worth mentioning, was my old White Castle deck. Possibly somewhere like 720 cards strong, the thing required a large box all of its own to travel. The 'professional' players Geoff would play against wouldn't believe it, and couldn't believe it could win--after all, there's no way you could ever depend on any combo, any card, to come out with that. The idea's ridiculous. And in one-on-one games, they're right, it never won, it was too slow, but in large multiplayer, it was fairly innocuous, and it was packed with just about every kind of white (and some artifact) defence. There were walls (Resistance, Swords, Spears, Caltrops, and more), 'Parapet', 'Castle', circles of protection, gossamer chains, bodyguards, guys with banding, healers, Holy Armour (lots of other similar enchantments whose names escape me), and so on and so on. On the attacking side there were mainly knights, who I could put Seeker on, or Protection from (colour), but there were also some angels and gargoyles who also provided air cover. So basically I would sit quiet, build and build my defences and allow the others to fight between themselves, anyone thinking of attacking me would decide to give it a miss because it would require an all-out effort to get any damage through and that would leave them hopelessly exposed and I only had some knights to attack with anyway, till it got to the stage when their great big huge monsters couldn't touch me, and my knights would just go 'poke poke poke poke' until they died.
When it worked. Which it sometimes did. Other times, not so much.

Now, while that deck is still in its box, I now have more 'gamey' decks, that do quite well one-on-one, thank you very much.

I normally make decks on a theme, not just what's most powerful. Like, that white deck was a Holy Citadel, a huge castle monastery, so everything fit in with that--knights, abbey matrons, temple guards, and a king.
A recent deck is a kind of brutal Sin City, ruled by a secretive sorcerer. It's got Slate St Ruffians, Royal Assassins, Servants of Nefarox, and a single (foil) Kiku, Night's Flower. It also has Murder, Sip of Hemlock, and Liturgy of Blood, along with Duress, Distress, and Mind Rot. It's a little slow on the attack, this deck, so the strategy is to start stripping the opponent of his hand from the start to slow him up, and then clamp down control with targeted kills and the assassins keeping the opponent's creatures scared to tap, finally finish him off with the Servants, preferably boosted with Dark Favor.

Similar, but different is another 'city', ruled by iron-fisted (but internally decadent) vampiric aristocracy. To keep order, there's Stromkirk Patrols led by Stromkirk Captains; there's Night Revellers enjoying their noble privilege, and Blood Crazed Neonates popping up a few days later, and in the mansions the Markov Patricians relax. The aristocracy keep a close eye on their human subjects--Shadow Alley Denizens prowl the night, and the Falkenrath Exterminators are ready to burn any nest of discontent. When an official message needs to be sent, there's Public Execution. Unfortunately, there's vicious internal fighting within the aristocracy, and Blood Feuds are common.
This deck is pretty fast when it co-operates, and if it gets a few early hits in, the way the vampires build in strength generally means they don't lose their advantage.

There's also green decks, white decks, blue-white, red decks (including a pure burn deck, no creatures), a green-black rot deck...

[LaCroix]

I have a deck called "The end of the world as you know it" which is pretty much a troll the fuck out of you deck.

Tons of land enchantments that make you loose life on taps, forced taps, propaganda, soul barrier, spreading plague. Each of their lands will become poisonous to them, and when they play a creature, they destroy all of same color. In a few turns, with enchantments stacking on the lands, they get to the point they can't play anything or they'll kill themselves and/or their creatures, but can't attack, because they need to pay mana to do so, and will kill themselves doing that. and then I force flip their cards time and time again.

It is a slow deck that can be wiped off the table if you have a deck that can deal with it and rush me before I can tie them down, but most decks simply aren't built against that kind of tactic. You lose a lot, but when you win, it's spectacular to watch.

I had people rage-quitting, and even one "flip table" meltdown.