Positive reflection after a bad week for MTG.

[CleanBelwas]

So, I think it's fair to say that MTG has had a pretty shitty week.

From insufficient handling of bans in a broken format to unprecedented money grabbing tie-ins, a lot of people are understandably feeling disenfranchised with Magic.

As someone who gives zero fucks about either of these things, I thought it'd be nice to give people a place to reminisce about what it is that made them fall in love with MTG in the first place.

I'm a flavour and lore man myself. I think it's wonderful to play a game and have those game pieces be indicative of a part in a corresponding, usually brilliant but sometimes a bit shit, story. I prime example of what I mean is Tragic Lesson. The last time I really loved the MTG story was Amonkhet block (I'm a bit of an ancient Egypt nerd anyway from loving it as a kid). I lapped up the story and thought it was brilliant world building. I loved playing Tragic Lesson and being taken back to the story, where Kefnet gets his dome opened up by the Scorpion God. I've always loved how a functional card that is playable in the game can have art and themes and motifs that are representative of a wider world. It's what sets MTG apart from a lot of other games in my opinion.

I also love jank combos. I've recently fallen in love with Time Sieve. Getting a Time Sieve lock in my Breya deck without using Thopter Assembly is my new favourite thing. Doing it the hard way. Having to create enough tokens or have enough recursion to have 5 new artifacts the next turn is so much fun. Bonus points for the game where I had Kurkesh, Onakke Ancient out too so I was getting TWO extra turns. So much janky fun.

So, I want to hear from you wonderful lot. Let's remember why we fell in love with this game in the first place.

Do you like playing hyper competitively, trying to find the most efficient way to kill your opponent in your preferred format?
Do you like the challenge of brewing decks using lesser known cards?
Was there a moment or a game that sticks out to you as your "I love this game" moment?
Are you like me and just like having an excuse to hang out with your friends, drink beer and eat pizza?

For all of its problems, there's a lot to love about this game, and I'd love to hear what it is that you love about it.

[Aetherium Slinky]

At first I was a very competitive player in the sense that I was a sore loser. Then I grew up some 5 years and I'm no longer salty about things. It's now been 12 years since Shadowmoor!

I have a variety of decks at different power levels and I just love seeing them pop off. That's my jam. See the deck do its thing. I'm a little salty if I get to play zero cards related to my game plan.

Nowadays I'm a combo player. I looooove the combination of combo and control. It feels like I'm in charge and I can tell other people how to play the game and it's such a power trip. I like playing against stax and control so I don't have double standards in that sense. I've yet to build a proper stax deck. That Xira Arien doesn't count. It was experimental and ended up performing less than ideally.

I often ask my friend to play his Tolaria themed bounce deck because I love the flavour and the challenge it poses. Also his Kozilek toolbox. And Sharuum toolbox. I don't really like creature based smash face decks that much.

I like brewing Esper. It's fun, forgiving and easy. Lots of ramp options, tutors, counterspells and a plethora of strategies to pick from. Few of them are creature based, though.

[WizardSpartan]

The reason I got into Magic was because of a friend. That friend had family members who played Magic and got him into it. Then, he turned around and proceeded to infect like 5 other people including me.

When we all started out, it was an absolute banger of a time. We were in middle school, and we were all just playing his casual 60 card decks. I bought a couple dual decks (the Merfolk vs. Goblins & Elves vs. Inventors) and we played those into the ground. In fact, the elf and merfolk halves were the reason I have elf and merfolk tribal commander decks now. Now that I'm thinking about it, I might be so drawn to tribal simply because of how fun and well matched those dual decks were (I would pretty much only play the Merfolk and Elf decks, not the other 2). Then, that same friend introduced us to our lord and savior, Commander. Pretty much immediately, I made a Tishana, Voice of Thunder merfolk deck (in hindsight, would not recommend) and a Marwyn, the Nurturer deck. I would like to say that a Marwyn deck (even one as horrible as my initial list) in a pod that wasn't aware about how important removal was in Commander was an absolute demon. She's probably the reason why I shy away from any deck below a 7. If I'm not doing stuff that scares my opponents, I'm not having fun.

So that's my autobiography!

[fishingbrick]

I started with Ravnica: City of Guilds. Much like Wizard, a friend got me into MTG. I'm glad he did. I used to play Pokemon at the time and I hated it. But when I got into MTG it was a whole lot better. I remember creating my first deck which was mono blue control, and I've been a blue player ever since. I loved this game with a passion and I'm glad I got into it. So far my favorite blocks are: Shadowmoor / Lorwyn, Ravnica: City of Guilds, and Alara (I'm pretty old school). I've had a lot of fun ever since. I got into EDH in about 2005, and I love it. I've created a casual format with friends, that being only cards from 8th Edition to Core 14. Affinity is still broken. Since Belwas wanted to know how we like to play; I guess I like creating janky, fun, and casual decks. I also like using lesser known cards, so when my opponent asks what does it do? I'll reply with oh nothing special, it's just you're screwed. But yeah I love this game, but hate what Hasbro is doing to it right now. One last thing, I'm personally a Timmy / Johnny or Johnny / Timmy (I hate playing competitively.)

[PickleLover]

I started playing magic in 2018 or 19. I was going to a sleepover and then everyone got the idea of MTG so we could play that night. I didn't have a. deck so I bought one of the precons (the one with the red vs white one that came with Drakuseth and Sephara). I liked it so I started making decks on my own, and I also found out that my history teacher also plays. So I ended up with a pretty jazzy infect deck and I made it for only 17 bucks. I am an eternal format player, and I love legacy/vintage/modern/etc. I usually only get budget decks because MTG can be an expensive hobby. I have also gotten MTGA where my main deck is a creature kill deck, but I'm sad that MTGA doesn't have all the old cards. Overall, I don't like the standard format these days and I find all the meta stuff dumb because people just copy someone's deck and how the only way to fix and OP card is banning instead of finding another solution (but it can't be helped ig). Let's just hope it gets better :>

[fishingbrick]

Overall, I don't like the standard format these days and I find all the meta stuff dumb because people just copy someone's deck and how the only way to fix and OP card is banning instead of finding another solution (but it can't be helped ig). Let's just hope it gets better :>

This is too true. I remember when standard was actually fun.

[twotontimmy]

Well, i guess positive things did come about from last week. My edh groups now adhere to a custom banlist we made in response to what occurred last week. So that was fun. The document is well made. It covers philosophies behind bannings and the playstyles, so everyone now tends to understand what is acceptable and what is not. It also creates a split between budget deck *(<$100) gameplay and expensive gameplay. There was effort to prevent reserved list card usage and get people to grab as much jank as possible. We aren't competing, so why not explore the other 85% of cards and other 90% of commanders? Also, if you're going to spend money on what would normally be a >$100 deck, why not proxy the expensive cards? Some of us have flipped our initially budget decks for profit since all the prices have gone so far up and we build new one's with the money or make cubes. It's almost like a penny dreadful kind of rotating ban list or philosophy to some extent. If anyone is interested in me sharing it to compare notes then let me know.

Really it's all centered around stopping people in our group from loosing too much money on this hobby. I get people spend big money on things like warhammer, but luxury cardboard rectangle? If you're not competing or going to shops, I don't recommend it tbh. I buy all my budget decks from local shops and will have a sell point for certain cards in it if they go to high up so I can break the expenses down.

As for OP's mention of lore, I have to say I was honestly a big fan of that and the art back in the first decade of magic's existence. I strongly recommend reading the artifact and ice age cycle books. The brother's war is actually an excellent novel in it's own right. The arena books are decent as well. Pretty much everything before kamigawa had mostly well-written lore and story telling. I can't speak for any novella or lore after that. The novella had low sales anyway I think, probably because of the lack of marketing for it. I would say the sales of the novella probably lead to its lack of quality later on. I think it kept the game's theme really grounded and connected to something bigger. Warhammer is the best example I can give of a game and novella creating a really enthusiastic player base. I want to be as enthusiastic as I am when I play with the older cards. I even make cubes for those older sets since I liked them so much. I did, however, do a cube just for dominaria because I felt it had a good power level of its cards and it did lead me back to that old enthusiasm I had for the game.

[Potato Chop]

Pretty much everything before kamigawa had mostly well-written lore and story telling. I can't speak for any novella or lore after that.

I agree on most of the stories being... not so good (WotS, The Wildered Quest) but have you read Children of the Nameless? It's amazing. Brandon Sanderson has always been one of my favorite authors, and I was inexplicably happy when I heard that he was writing an MTG book. By the way, it's used to be free to download from Wizard's website because Sanderson wanted it to be free, but then they took it down for some reason. Brandon was not happy, but I guess he wrote it for Wizards so they can do what they want with it.

However, I want to respect Brandon's wishes and so...

Sorry about this, but I have to remove the link. As this is the intellectual property of WotC, it falls under the rule of "don't post copyright infringing material".

-Morganator 2.0

If you haven't read it already, I really recommend that you do. This is Sanderson's gift to me to gift to you. Enjoy!

(P.S. The only reason I didn't just attach it myself was that the file was too large. I got it at the beginning, when it was still available from WotC.)

Edit: No problem Morg. My bad, should've known.

[twotontimmy]

Well I'm sure I can still find it elsewhere. Thank you very much for the recommendation.

[fishingbrick]

I might get into the lore again. But I was never really big on that kind of thing.

[BoBWiz]

Hi everybody,

my story starts in the early 90's when MTG was super new. It was the first time collectible cards are created, you actually can play with. I got pen&paper this time and always be interested in fantasy stuff at all. We bought this 60cards (20 basics included) boosters - there were nothing else in my memory - shuffle and start to play (yes 5C!!!).

May someone can imagine THERE WHERE NO INTERNET THAT TIME! YES IT IS TRUE! Even a telephone were rare.

I realized pritty quickly, that the guys invest more money always won. I was young and got no money at all and didn't know how to buy single cards - remember you couldn'd google it. Sometimes later I stopped MTG for the first time and played p&p cause it is much cheaper.

Later I started again around the first Zendikar block and found some people playing some casual games with me. As it goes - changing interests - mainly girls! - and still no money ... I stopped playing MTG again.

Since Dragons of Tarkir I'm in again, cause I got a stable relationship and the money to play. Now I'm married AND can play magic.

I love this serious fantasy card game, cause it is what it is. I like playing control, face-smash creatures. I like tribal, burn, combo or whatever I can do with the cards I got. I like to figure out the best combination of cards and I like playing it.

These days I don't spend that much money for the game and play with the cards I got with some friends and don't care about bannings and formats anymore (exept I play some standard showdown in my LGS - but there are that less poeple that nearly everyone got a prize, even with budget decks .

That's it.
(Sorry for my english.)
best
Stephan

edit says: Brandon Sanderson is the best!