So I barely know anything about MTG but I want to get cards for myself and a couple friends. What's the easiest way to get into this? (I know there's the video game but I wanna go real cards). I see there are two deck starter kits which seem cool, maybe I get one of those for each of us and then some booster packs? Like $30 per person is what I'm going for. Are the starter decks balanced against each other? Is there other stuff I should know?
Hi! Thanks so much for being so approachable! The idea of finding a fun card in the same color as some other stuff and making a jank deck around it is extremely up my alley. My closest exposure to something like mtg is playing hearthstone a few years ago. I randomly got a gold hogger card in the first free pack i opened and built a deck around it that hilariously whooped many opponents.
I appreciate the tips about net decking and getting in touch with local game stores!
Two questions:
So are proxies just nonofficial copies of cards that are cheaper but allow you to play with them "for fun" outside of official tournaments?
I see you can buy commander decks on amazon, would you mind explaining a little about what the commander format is or how it's different from whatever the main format is?
Commander deck prices on amazon have been running high since last summer. Check https://www.tcgplayer.com/ just search commander decks, they'll have some older stuff still sitting around the $30-40 range. I see someone already explained how it works differently from standard, but Commander is great for multi-player. Just be aware it can lead to some pretty long drawn out games. Like for hours. Which is a lot of fun... until you die and the motherfucker that knocked you out can't close the deal so you gotta sit for an hour waiting for them to finish up when the next card you were gonna draw could've completely won the game for you! Ahem, yeah, fun stuff.
The idea of finding a fun card in the same color as some other stuff and making a jank deck around it is extremely up my alley. My closest exposure to something like mtg is playing hearthstone a few years ago. I randomly got a gold hogger card in the first free pack i opened and built a deck around it that hilariously whooped many opponents.
If I may reiterate my other comment, this is exactly the experience Keyforge is designed to facilitate. You draw a unique procedurally generated deck that you cannot alter in any way. The cards are designed around this expectation, and so your experience is about learning the ins and outs of that specific deck. You have to work with the strengths and weakness and unexpected synergies (and anti-synergies) of it, which is an extremely rewarding experience. You can try the game out with just a pair of decks that will cost you $25 together.
Another game, SolForge Fusion, has a similar premise, but instead you draw two half decks which you mix together. Both of these are designed by Richard Garfield, the creator of MTG, directly in response to what he saw as the flaws in his biggest creation.
Gosh this is incredibly helpful. Thanks again for this great explainer, it answered many questions I had and cleared up pretty much everything I was confused about. Proxies are rad, I'm relieved people are doing that hah. Definitely think I'm going to go with a few commander decks at this point. Seems like a great place to start and that it can be played with more than two players at a time is really ideal :gold-communist:
Oh yeah i don't think there's an interest in keeping up really, though gosh that would be hilarious if it turned into that. The rookie and battle decks seem interesting- are those kind of like the starter kit or commander decks in that they're a ready to go setup, but custom built by people that play the game instead of built by wizards of the coast employees?
I think i understand drafting (like to build your deck for the match you take turns picking from a shared central allotment of cards?) but would you mind explaining what cube and proxy mean?
If your group likes deckbuilding, best bet is to define a format around price limit or allow unlimited proxies.
There's a supported format called Pauper. It's commons only, and good decks in the format from what i've heard rarely go above $30 total
This shit is gambling. Opening packs is like crack. I pulled an Elesh Norn a few months ago and now I'm sucking dick in alleyways for cash to buy more packs. I used to just suck dick in alleyways for fun! :powercry-2:
Don't. Play Keyforge or something. MTG is worse now than it's ever been, and it's been a shameless money grab for a decade.
There are so many other good card games out there. I am begging you to try something else.
Did they ever fix the problem of Keyforge decks being wildly imbalanced?
No because who cares? Balance isn't really that bad the vast majority of the time, but if it is, just use the chain system to balance them. It's a game tuned much more for casual than competitive play anyways. Buy 3 decks, learn them really well, and you'll be able to handle anything but the far outliers.
Awesome! I love it. The best way to play is with a small number of decks that you grow slowly. Some people try and hoover up massive numbers of decks and understand their power by just reading the card list, but the real joy of the game is mastering the limited hand you're dealt. I've been playing since launch in 2018 and my most played deck by far is the very first one I opened. It has capacity for insane combos (though it's not really that strong) that I feel like only I can pull off because I know the whole thing like the back of my hand. The dynamism of the card design really drives high-impact, swingy plays that unfold more often the more you understand the tools at your disposal.
Entering my fifth year of play I only have 17 decks (which is really not that many compared to what I see people online or at tournaments, with 100+), and I've only spent about $250 on decks. It's a super affordable and accessible game and your experience is actually improved by not dumping a bunch into it.
Every deck also has a procedurally generated name that can vary from cool to weird to absurdly funny. The whole thing gives every deck an extremely strong sense of individual character. My friends and I know each other's decks by name and what to expect (as much as anything in this game can be predicted) when playing them.
I got a starter kit for my bf a while back, as an experienced player. It seemed like a good way to start - I could probably design decks that were more efficient or better at teaching the mechanics, but the intro decks were totally fine and fun to play against each other.
So yeah a starter set, maybe a couple boosters of a set that looks cool. You'll at least have enough to play with and tinker with your decks a little. You won't be terribly competitive at tournaments (and each format has their own rules, so your deck may or may not be legal), but you can play with your buddy and get a feel for how the game works.
Drafting is my preferred way to play because it's competitive and you don't need a collection, but it also has a much higher skill floor.
Thank you! It's a relief to know that going this route seems like it'd be totally fine for our situation.
Forgive me, but does drafting require buying new packs every time?
A normal booster draft usually does require new packs if you don't want the draft to get stale seeing the same cards that you already opened. There is a thing called Cubes, basically a player curated draft format. It's fun to make one once you get a bit of a collection of cards but I would stick to normal booster drafts for a bit before trying to make a Cube.
Yeah a starter kit with the pre-built decks is good to get a feel for things. Fairly similar price point to trying out any other board game.
Instead of buying boosters, what I did was buy a couple cheap bulk common/uncommon lots off of ebay. When it's all new to you anyway that's pretty much the same experience as boosters, except so so goddamn much cheaper lol. Even better if you can get a box of freebies from a shop like other people suggested. Then you just fuck around tweaking your starter decks and eventually cobbling stuff together from scratch.
I'm not a competitive gamer at all so I never did any tournament stuff, it was essentially just my friend group having a big communal crate of cards on the shelf to play with sometimes.
So after reading more about the various game formats, I've learned that I apparently invented "cube draft" from first principles lmao
a really fun way to get cards and practice playing is doing a draft booster box. booster boxes are $100 for 36 packs, so among 6 people you pay $17 each and you each get 6 booster packs. everyone takes a pack, opens it, selects one card to keep, and passes the pack to the next person, you rotate those 6 packs until there are no cards left, rinse and repeat with the entire box. then you make decks with the 90 new cards you got. you can play a bunch of matches with ur draft decks for a night of fun and you get a bunch of new cards!
i would not recommend getting into magic. i was for a lot of years and it's not worth your money.
I grew up with Magic, went to FNM as a teenager, it's a moneypit and the rules make it so you have to keep up with the most recent blocks. It's fun to play with friends though so if you know people and just wanna play with them have fun.
Yeah this seems consistent with what everyone is saying haha. But yeah just planning on playing with a couple friends to freshen up our game nights.
The Arena starter kits are pretty good at showing how the game works, but in order to make it cheaply they only include one copy each of the cards that are real game-changers.
If you want to have big games with your friends, the Commander starter decks run about $45 each last time I checked, and those will get them up to speed on the most popular casual format.
It looks like some of the commander decks are even cheaper now! I didn't realize there were different formats and degrees of casual popularity so this is helpful! Buying a single deck plus maybe boosters seems easier to wrap my mind around than buying multiple starter kits.
Yeah a starter kit is what you're looking for since you seem to not know very much to start. I've never played them but newbies seem to be happy with them.
If you know anyone who plays you could ask them to make you a pauper deck which can still be very fun to make and play but costs next to nothing.
If you have like done reading and think you understand the basic mechanics or whatever game stores that host tournaments often have like a ton of "commons" (cheap, basically worthless cards) that they're usually happy to just give away in bulk. When I was starting an MTG club at a school I told a game shop I was looking for commons for kids to use and they just gave me like a thousand cards for free lol. Kids loved them.
But yeah you're probably looking at one of those starter decks.
Appreciate it, I'll keep this in mind :inshallah:!
And yeah basically we all played hearthstone for a bit in like 2015 and understand that it's a simplified version of magic + we play this korean card game called go-stop with quarters once a week and want to switch it up.
im also curious, i played many years ago but it seems like stuff is different now
If you're physically in the same place, chip in for some booster packs and do a draft or sealed is fun. You get to see a lot of cards, pick the ones you want to play with, and the power level is not out of whack.
Then, if you want to get into constructed (pre-made decks) the pre-constructed decks are generally pretty okay. There's a format called Pauper in which no rare or expensive cards are legal, which is good fun. Commander is another fun form of constructed where you play with a legendary creature as your commander you can always cast, then you also have a 100 card deck of singletons (I.e. no more than one of each card) which keeps power gaming opportunities low. There are also prepackaged commander decks.
As a starter, stay away from buying random boosters and opening them just to get cards, also don't do standard or any of the historical formats unless you are willing to pay hundreds of dollars to be competitive.
We will be physically in the same place yeah. Pauper sounds cool and working class and I've just come across the prepackaged commander decks which seem like a pretty cool route. If i bought prepacked commander decks is there a particular type of booster i would want to get?
Like $30 per person is what I’m going for.
I would suggest looking up a bunch of pauper deck lists and buy the singles needed for those.
I just learned what pauper decks were and I'll look into this, thank you for the suggestion!
Pauper itself is actually from what i've heard and seen a supported format of MtG. It's all common rarity only, and rarely if ever decks hit or go above $30.
