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?
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.
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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?