magic: the gathering poll

lol, i meant this one. just because nobody ever had a good explanation as to what it was supposed to be

http://client-cdn.crystalcommerce.com/photo/ccghouse/file/80908/large/scan0010.jpg

omg I was all about stasis decks, but I am a pretty annoying person tbh

'how do we make this game as unbearable as possible...'

i have a MTG 'encyclopedia' book that was published in like 1995 or so that 's just full color images of every card up through Ice Age

it's pretty sweet

lol I had that as a kid

Yeah, I have that book too, smh! Beautiful stuff.

Voted red. Explosions! Pillaging hoardes!

White is obv the best smh indeed

lol i forgot i had a statis/burn deck

just in terms of power white is pretty weak in early era magic. I remember reading about it getting strong later, but if you had to make a single color deck w/ revised cards, I think white would prob be the weakest deck. tho serra angel <3.

white was weak offensively yea but had so many total board altering/reset cards at that time (wrath of god, armageddon) & swords to plowshares/disenchant that it would prob be my second choice after blue in this poll

Mono white beta/alpha owns p hard lots of crazy stalls and total board control

ya but it just doesn't have the power to back it up. blue has the same control aspect but can also kick your ass.

tho when you do get to kill somebody w/ serra angels it's very majestic

black because sangir vampires are just so sexy

white had Balance, arguably the greatest card ever printed

http://www.chuck-a-con.net/MTG-balance3ED.jpg

also Sword to Plowshares was probably the best creature removal ever

crusade is p rad as well tbh

idk alpha/beta/unlmtd white is def abt a slower victory and im sure it is underpowered but there are just so many cool cards

also its the most fun to tell stories in my head abt as i play

yeah I don't think the fact that it's slightly weaker means it shouldn't be anyone's favorite

I mean who can deny this card and the art:

http://www.mtgvault.com/images/cards/medium/2ED/Wrath_of_God.jpg

i have to say im p glad i didnt love this shit when i was kid cuz i wouldve spent all my money on it. like i kinda wrote it off as stupid but there really is a tonne of strategy in deck building. i mean it kinda sux now cuz lol game theory but it seems like everyone just finds optimal decks really quickly and essentially plays variations on them but then i have no desire to buy new cards so its probably for the best

this was always the coolest creature (was quite good too):

http://www.toplessrobot.com/1%29%20Juzam%20Djinn%20lg.jpg

ya that was me. in retrospect I'm mostly just glad I didn't have that much money to spend to begin w/, that was sorta an advantage in some ways cause it required me to use what I had pretty efficiently, but otoh this was definitely my introduction to class consciousness. xp

tho when you do get to kill somebody w/ serra angels it's very majestic

― iatee, Wednesday, December 7, 2011 7:35 PM (41 minutes ago) Bookmark Permalink

otmfm

I liked playing sealed/draft games better because the 'spend $500 = win' advantage didn't exist anymore and it really requires another level of critical thinking.

tho having massively polished and powerful decks is fun too.

i mean it kinda sux now cuz lol game theory but it seems like everyone just finds optimal decks really quickly and essentially plays variations on them but then i have no desire to buy new cards so its probably for the best

yeah this is where the internet kinda ruins things. last time I played one of my pals had this really cool utility control deck that I was really intruiged by, and he said "yeah, it took top 8 at Worlds in France" or something

its definitely frustrating going to a tournament and just running into the same decks over and over again, especially when those decks are full of $40-$50 cards that are stupidly overpowered. the whole "mythic rare" thing made me stop playing right away

haha he sounds like a mtg hipster

i just think deckbuilding is a lost art. i used to love those late night mountain dew sessions where you'd tweak a deck for two hours then get massacred when you actually played someone good. i don't think i could stand going to a tournament and have my opponent know every card in my deck within the first 2 turns

yeah i mostly play draft these days since it's more fun than constructed almost all the time. you get to actually play with all the cards sooner or later whereas in constructed you're playing with just the best 10-20%. plus there's a whole extra level of strategy in drafting and constructing a good deck and also figuring out interactions on the fly since you're playing a deck you've never played before against a deck you've never seen before.

i'm really bad at it tbqh

what I like w/ draft or sealed is that a lot of times a card that would have been totally out of consideration for a scientifically-made deck can often be very, very strong

yeah it seems like 60-80% of the commons and uncommons these days are designed to interact with each other, which is neat

one of my favorite moves in sealed/draft, is to just straight out bluff. like to just attack with a 2/2 even though your opponent clearly has an untapped 3/3 out there, prompting the opponent to think, "well, i'm probably gonna get fucked if I block, so I'll just take it". it especially works well in pre-releases because most players don't know what the hell type of cards are in the set.

haha how often do you balance yr range w/some kind of followthrough on the attack tho?

there is also a decent chance they will just think you are retarded

if there were a stronger culture of bluffing w/ magic it might work better

i never played nor even understood this game tbh!

yeah i'd only do that when i know i have very few outs against the blocker in my deck and i won't be able to win without getting the extra bit of damage through

in general it doesn't work on the same person twice if they actually "call your bluff". i don't do it often but it's a really fun move.

the point isn't just to deal them damage (though that helps), but to also them think you have some kind of "target creature gets +2/+2"-type card, which in turn makes them second-guess everything

if there was a culture of bluffing in magic it wouldn't work at all!

and even then it's always correct to block unless the blocker has a strong ability that you want to keep it around for, you're still trading 1 card for 1 if they have the combat trick

if there were a culture of bluffing they might think 'hmm is this a bluff or does he have a good card' instead it's like 'hmm this guy probably doesn't know the rules, but maybe he has a good card'

not really - a card in play is already "paid for", so to speak. you do it when your opponent has a creature out that he'd rather not lose. like if it's just some generic 3/3 he might just trade, but if it's like some bomb-ass creature that you can't deal with otherwise, it's worth a shot

if there were a culture of bluffing they might think 'hmm is this a bluff or does he have a good card' instead it's like 'hmm this guy probably doesn't know the rules, but maybe he has a good card'

ehhh, I would never think that. even people who just learned how to play don't just blindly send their creatures to death

yeah I mean it depends on the situation and creatures, I guess. ime even when someone is doing this and I think they prob have a card in their hand, I'm still gonna block it - that card in hand would prob be used eventually anyway.

kinda surprised no one is repping for artifacts either, feel like theyre p cool

ive been trying to work on a card pick up deck w/ivory tower and library of alexandria

what sets are you working w/?

cards from the first sets up to revised and then the early expansions like arabian nights, ice age, legends &c

are you playing w/ cards irl or online? I would so love to play w/ those old school cards irl even though I know that's just bizarre object fetishism and the game's the same regardless.

you guys ever try magic workstation? lets you play online with any card ever released, very cool program

ya like a year ago me, rev, gravel and sometimes a few others were playing fairly regularly online. I think we all got busy at the same time tho and my internet connection became too unreliable.

i'm just playing around with it now...so cool that you get to view the old world champion decks with cards like Llurgoyf and Man o' War

it's pretty dope, esp when you download the card art

are you playing w/ cards irl or online?

we play with my friends old cards. i think he stopped collecting in like 97 but he was p into it before that so has binders and binders of cards. i put my deck together online before we play tho

that's pretty cool, even his crappy cards are super rare at this point

http://www.cockatrice.de

Most folks I know have migrated from Magic Workstation to this very similar freeware program, since MWS hasn't been updated since 2005 and yet is still shareware w/ locked features etc.

i'm reading about recent vintage tournament decks now. these things are wacky.

it seems like it's badass power blue deck w/ every good card ever vs badass power blue deck w/ every good card ever vs. badass power blue deck w/ every good card ever

i'm down for some type 2 if anyones got it. i have a good deck built that's almost block but it has some m12 in it. otherwise i can just sub the cards out

there's also badass artifact deck with Mishra's Workshop but i think even those play the good blue cards

oh i guess not, no ancestral in here
http://www.wizards.com/magic/magazine/Article.aspx?x=mtg/daily/deck/773

seeing Slash Panther, a card which was ignored in every other format except draft, in a vintage deck is funny but i guess it's the most aggressive creature that's easy to cast off a workshop

hah i like that deck a lot

ok http://www.magicdraftsim.com/ has a sealed deck simulator, just set to 6 Innistrad packs and it should give you a cardpool and a little interface to deckbuild, and there's an export button that puts it in a text format that you can paste into cockatrice's deck editor

cooooool

thanks dude!

(i feel really dumb asking but who are you on reg ilx?)

ciderpress

oh! hey man. i don't remember you posting on the magic thread there but otherwise i was like "who is this guy who is posting on a lot of the threads i'm posting on?"

yeah i just got back into magic this past year mostly and the reg ilx version of this thread's been dead a while

yeah last time thread was active ppl were using mws which was a complete pain in the ass to get working (on mac at least). i'm loving cockatrice tho

cockatrice is pretty perfect outside the terrible deck construction options

ya mws had great deck construction options and a sealed deck generator but would crash all the time and would have the weirdest impossible to fix bugs

it's disappointing that they couldn't build a better deck construction side of this, you wouldn't even think that would be so difficult? it's mostly just organizing already-organized data....

yeah i agree it's just sorting a database

yeah hopefully it's in the works, cockatrice is fairly new still

iatee just got home if youre still around im up for a game or two

haha yeah I'm still around pm me

^^ had a fun time despite getting my ass handed to me :D

haha yeah it was def fun

I'm prob gonna be out of the game for a while cause my gf's on vacation and I have to spend time w/ her instead of playing a card game online w/ strangers. but luckily - her vacation isn't that long.

haha 'have to'... cant wait till im off for winter break tho ugh

(cough)

anyone want to play tonight

i have recently tried playing more mtg, after finding a stash of old cards in my game cabinet. they are all from 1997 or before; i played with a bunch of dudes who had all these new cards and i couldn't quite understand what any of them did.

that being said i remember being able to really fuck people up really quickly with black decks.

it and red seemed to be the ones most primarily decidated to damaging opponents.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.