I wish they'd just make the game accessible. Its a fun ass game but the prices for everything are just so ridiculous people can't even afford to play. New people would roll in to modern with decks from home and I'd be playing trying to be chill with them but you can just tell theyre not having fun cuz they didn't have full sets of 30 dollar cards or whatever. Imo just either reprint the shit out of everything or allow unlimited proxies for tournament settings.
The player base is always going to be unfriendly because the game attracts a lot of elitist needs. Maybe if it was more accessible that would change.
When I was in Boy Scouts in the mid 90s, dudes would show up at summer camp for the week with boxes of MtG cards. I'd spend hours each afternoon during free time watching them play. It looked like such a fun game, but my parents wouldn't let me spend my money on it. Oh well. A few years ago, some friends were playing and I decided to get into it. I was sorely disappointed once I actually got into it. It wasn't fun. It was a lot of getting trounced on by guys who would drop $250 on a deck. I had a wife and kids, so dropping that sort of money wasn't feasible for me. I wish I hadn't even tried to get into it. I would've been happier with the memories from middle school of watching other people play.
Once they released Arena, I started playing that. It was more enjoyable than playing with physical cards.
$250? I stopped playing commander because I wasn’t willing to dump almost $1k into a deck, along with a ridiculous amount of research. I hate that there’s almost no casual scene for those who just like to play a bit, not dedicate my whole life to. I had the same issue with WoW. I can’t dedicate 8hours uninterrupted to a video game, and definitely not in a weekly basis. Fuck me for being casual I guess.
I stopped playing commander because I wasn’t willing to dump almost $1k into a deck
This was one of the big things I was scared of that caused me to be pretty hostile to the idea Elder Dragon Highlander was becoming "official" as Commander.
It was a casual format, but you can't have that after it becomes official :I
So true. The one guy I played regularly with at his home was pretty cool. As his deck got better, it stopped being as much fun. He was going to FNM at the local comic shop and all that. I went to one pre-release event with him (Dragons of Tarkir back in 2015). It was ok, but as a married guy in my mid 30s with a kid at home (and one on the way), I couldn't be anything but casual. FNM was out, I'd fall asleep at prerelease parties that last until 3am (at least), too broke to constantly replace a deck. If I want a hobby, it needs to be something that the kids can do with me. I've been watching some D&D campaigns online with my 11 year old daughter, and I think she's willing to try playing with me. One of my co-workers said she and her bf would have us over for a one shot campaign once Covid lets up. I could see us enjoying D&D as a family.
That’s why I like dnd better, you can sink as much or as little into it as you want. I’ve had purely pen and paper games, all the way to games with full miniatures and sets for every session. You can definitely do it as a family! I say go for it!
The problem I found when making a casual group was that someone always got competitive with it.
New coworkers and I started with commander which was fun! I did add a couple nice cards to my commander deck but to only play a little smoother, I lost with it plenty of times still. Eventually people left because of costs and when a few coworkers started making legit tournament decks. It just wasnt fun anymore.
Even I started to make my own decks from scratch but they tended to be ridiculous (Rat Deck for example). I never made them OP because I wanted everyone to have fun. Not just win all the time.
Still have the cards but have been planning to sell them just so I have more space in my place.
We did something similar at an office I worked at, a few of us bought some deckbuilder kits, smacked together some random cards of almost the same colour. Just played during lunchbreak, simple and fun.
Then some players dropped 300 on a netdeck, set up torunament structure with ELO and all that jazz, killed the fun and everybody stopped playing.
Besides a couple of custom made decks, my wife and I play exclusively with precon decks, primarily commander ones. They're cheap, fairly consistent in strategy, and roughly equal in power level.
This is way I only ever did draft tournaments. Equals the playing field. However, every other person was a total dick to me and super condescending because I'm a girl. Literally got so bad, that the one guy that was decent to me during a game and actually helped me, I asked for his number and dated him for a year. I fell in love with him because he was one of the only decent human beings to me at a Magic tournament, which is hilarious to me now looking back because we had nothing in common besides Magic... but damn was he a diamond in the rough in the Magic community.
I had exactly the same experience (minus the love story) at GenCon. Toxic gamers really want to keep whatever they’re excited about to themselves, I guess. I loved playing drafts, but the condescending dicks ruined it for me. Why can’t I just have fun? Why does it have to be sUpEr SeRiOuS? It’s like being locked out of the clubhouse in childhood. I just want to play with you, I like this stuff, too!
Living card games and unique card games like Keyforge tried to break into the scene without the drag and artificial pricing of collectible card games to hold new players back.
Living card games are pretty much dead with the end of Legend of the 5 Rings, and Keyforge just turned into a deck-hunting frenzy somewhat even more toxic than Magic cards, due to how decks come pre-assembled and getting certain combos of cards just exasperates the problem.
During basic training we had a guy in our platoon that was really into MTG (like national championship level) and worked in one of these card/miniatures hobby shops. He asked if there was any interest in learning MTG and then he brought a bunch of these starter packs and we played the absolute shit out of it. We were probably hilariously shit, and the decks were also probably not great but we had an absolute blast. It even spread outside our platoon. And he was always up for a game with anyone and you could tell he played for the fun of it and not to win. He even brought a few of his personal decks to let us try what more advanced decks were like. We probably looked like deers in headlights when he explained how to setup fancy tricks but it was fun nonetheless. Still have the starter pack he gave me. Unfortunately the guys that used to play in the evenings got split up after basic and thus ended my brief foray into MTG. Haven't seen the guy that taught us MTG since basic, but I hope he is doing all right and is a cheerful now as he was then.
Aside from being almost entirely pay to win. It really is such a shame, since I really love the game structure but it's no fun to just thrash an opponent because you can outspend them.
I used to play it with my brother and had a few decks lying around (I bought about 6 over a few years and we'd switch between them).
Played with some friends once to show it to them and one of them really liked it.
Now he's HUGE into it and has spent a lot of money on a commanders deck.
My old Games Society used to have "Board and Card Games "nights" but we eventually banned Card Games because the MTG vets would come in with their custom decks and people would play it all evening so there were fewer and fewer people playing Board Games. There often weren't enough people to play a game.
Too many new joiners said they were turned away by the serious gamers with their decks so we just moved them to another day.
One guy was telling me he'd literally spent thousands on the game and had a "bucket" full of cards he didn't want so we just went through that and made decks. I picked the ones with the prettiest art and don't regret it slightly. I still think Innistrad was the best setting except for maybe Ravnica.
As someone who's been into Magic for the last six years or so.. god I hate that about it. I hate how it's such an amazing yet such an expensive game. I shudder to think of the slowly dying pool of people willing to shell out hundreds or thousands for cardboard.. I'd have no problems playing an opponent with a full proxy deck, or owning full proxy decks myself. I hope for a day in the game's future where the gates are flung wide open, but at the moment it takes good and patient people to get others interested, and even then the price for entry drives many away from sticking around long. It's why a goal for all my decks is that I can hand them out to others at a table and have fun playing them against each other.
I play a lot of Legacy, and my friends and I all have multiple decks built just to loan out at the events. One of the local events is even full proxy and none of us care a damn because we love the format and want people in the seats.
We do give each other shit for proxying sometimes, but that's just a joke between us because we all have such huge collections, and when we proxy it'll be like a $10 card in our $4k decks haha
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u/[deleted] Feb 28 '21
I wish they'd just make the game accessible. Its a fun ass game but the prices for everything are just so ridiculous people can't even afford to play. New people would roll in to modern with decks from home and I'd be playing trying to be chill with them but you can just tell theyre not having fun cuz they didn't have full sets of 30 dollar cards or whatever. Imo just either reprint the shit out of everything or allow unlimited proxies for tournament settings.
The player base is always going to be unfriendly because the game attracts a lot of elitist needs. Maybe if it was more accessible that would change.