...How is mana burn even that unintuitive? You give yourself mana, but don't spend it (at the end of the phase or whatever), you take damage equal to the mana you didn't spend.

End of phase, you have 1 unspent mana of any color, take one damage. Simple.

 

But here's my issue, Virail - through the fucking power creep and the addition of 'more excitement' to the game, they've effectively neutered the play styles that required a greater level of strategy and intelligence in favour of cheap Timmy/Spike playstyle, leaving the true Johnnys pissed off beyond belief. Where the hell has true black control gone, or sacrifice-control that ran Braids and Grave Pact? What about blue-lockdown, or milling, or even basic blue-white control? The strategies that required patience and a lot of careful play have gone out the window in the power creep acceleration, and the most recent sets have done NOTHING to combat this.

And to address nonjon about mana burn, it's elimination did a slew of damage to lockdown decks in the vein of Opposition, particularly with the reorganization of the stack. Now instead of having mana locked down, tapping in response becomes the rule with no consequence. Talk about fucking infuriating for an old player of that style (ie. me).

So between the gameplay shift and the disastrous advancement of the backstory (which nobody has explained adequately), I'm disgusted and hugely disappointed with MtG and most of Wizards' current properties.

EDIT: I just realized something, I forgot to mention Wizards' other main campaign setting when I was ranting.

But then again, regardless of what anyone's said to the contrary, Eberron has always sucked.

 

Well, as any geek can tell you, fresh blood sucks. My least favorite games of all time, for example, are Halo, Call of Duty, and ANYTHING on the Wii for that reason. They brought new blood into the formerly exclusive club known as "gamers" and it sucked. Now gamemakers are trying to make dumbed down controls and more multiplayer to appeal to the (retarded) masses. Just when computer games were transcending into true art, too.

 

"If they were worth bringing into our community, they'd already be a part of it, dagnabbit."

I don't want my hobbies to be mainstream, goddamnit. Mainstream means dumbing shit down to appeal to idiots and kids with their parents' money. It means catering to the new blood by screwing over the old. It means simplified, power-creeping Magic and the MMOification of D&D. What next, Slaanesh gets excised from Warhammer to make it more PG-13 friendly?

 

My one big regret in life was not cashing in my life savings (at the time) 10 years ago to buy a playset of Alpha/Beta Black Lotus that came across my path. Oh money, I could have had so much more of you.

The worst part? It's not even the nerd part of me that has this regret. It's the capitalist.

I started with 5th edition and played all the way up through 2006 when it became necessary to take time off for college. Now that I'm done with college I run a Valakut deck with four Primeval Titans - one of which is foil (all pulled from packs and, as I haven't spent enough on packs to make it above a 10% chance, I consider myself a lucky motherfucker.) I built it because it seems to do well in tournaments, I had the most expensive components already on hand (I'm a lucky motherfucker), and because I was too out of the game from a four year absence to go through and properly acquaint myself with all the cards currently in rotation in order to try to do better. I also built a really-shitty-but-oh-so-fucking-annoying Mass Polymorph deck for local tournaments. There's nothing like the satisfaction of having three creature tokens in play, casting Mass Polymorph, and declaring victory against a vastly superior (and eminently more expensive to build) deck constructed by someone who doesn't know how to use it.

With that said, the game is much less fun to play now than it used to be. The new set, Scars of Mirrodin, looks like it's going to be unbelievably fucking overpowered. It'll be good for the half-constructed white deck I have lying around (you can't not do something like this when you pull a Sun Titan, two Baneslayer Angels, and two Leylines of Sanctity), but Blue/Artifact are going to be imbalanced as fuck with this set.

All in all, I'm probably going to fuck around for another month or two, sell my collection for about what I put into it (right now it looks like a little more, but odds dictate that it will eventually swing toward a little less.)

 

Yeah I think your probably right, I'm trying to remain optimistic about it but I still remember how ridiculously fucking broken artifact decks from the original Mirrodin cycle were and they actually admit to trying to top themselves with this one. Im at the point where I've just long since said fuck it and am keeping my focus on my green Elf deck. I only investigate the new sets anymore to see if I can work in anything really good to my elf deck but I doubt Ill find anything with the Mirrodin, its 99.9% artifact focused.

 

With that said, if anyone is thinking of going to pre-release event (25th - 26th) for this broke-assed set, here are the fucking God charts for the shit that's been spoiled so far.

 

Sigh, damn you Giovanni, I just went and checked Wizards to see the preview cards and that optimism I mentioned earlier shot itself. They are all broken as fuck just like the old Mirrodin. I'm one of the few people who actually liked the last few sets because they gave me some truly damned ridiculous cards for my elves but this has got fuck all nothing.

 

This will probably be a long post... feel free to skip to the last paragraph to see how I discovered DLP through magic. Me, myself, was too lazy to read through 5 pages, so don't feel bad.

I started playing during Urza Block, although I did not know it at the time. I played and collected casually up until odyssey block where I got real big into competitive play. My DCI rating hit 1850 at my peak. My main deck was mon-red goblins (I was never a fan of the hybrid builds and patriarchs bidding, or sligh). I like that deck enough where I actually foiled the whole thing. I had a lot of quirky decks during Mirrodin block that were nasty when played properly.

My favorite was retracto-freeze which used the combo of retract, vedalkin archmage, and brainfreeze, along with a bunch of zero cost artifacts. Chrome mox made the deck very fast, even faster than ravager/affinity. senses divining top in kamagiwa just made the deck even nastier, but I think that card got restricted after I stopped playing.

Another deck I enjoyed played (I forget the nickname of the deck) was march of the machines and mycosynth lattice, along with a bunch of darksteel artifacts and talismans for mana boost. A few obliviates were included for overkill.

A third retarded combo deck I used to tote around is draco explosion. It revolves around Draco and erratic explosion, and it uses various tutors and deck manipulating cards to smack 16 damage to the dome when you reveal draco, and various burn cards to finish the fight

I had several other decks I played occasionally, but not in competition. I played a scion of darkness neck, as well as zombie reanimator. I ran a fires of yavimaya red/green deck during invasion block. thorn/thunderscape familiars, sparkcaster, 3/4 kavu guy, shivan wurm... fun times.

I guess I should state that I played pretty much every format. goblins was my primary during otj/ols standard and ols/md5 standard. extended was my favorite because I could play most of my decks. For T1 play I ran 8 land stompy with varying degrees of success. I don't own a black lotus, but I got a mox ruby and mox emerald, along with berserk and several old dual lands. I actually only own one arabian nights card and that is a desert, but I have several hundred alpha/beta/unlimited and most of the expensive cards from antiquities. All in all, my collection is over 100,000 physical cards, but I have not touched any of them since kamigawa came out.

The reason is mostly college, and other games. the last tournament I actually played was the week that halo 2 came out (not a coincidence). On that note, I did also play a lot of MTGO. I actually started playing that from release, and have at least 4x of every card from invasion block through mirrodin. There was a time when IPA cards were big money, but MTGO is pretty much nothing but bots nowadays. I built several decks online, as it was very easy to make a profit if you knew where to look (I was one of the original auctioneers in /auction) I never ran goblins like I did with physical cards, but I did have both the retracto-freeze and march decks built. infinite combo decks is very painful to play online. I also had a deck for emperor format, which is extremely fun. but for competitive play, I ran with tooth and nail for a long time, and my rating got to 1800 with it. I switched over to the extremely over powered and easy to use ravager affinity and ran my rating up to 1925. That rating dissapeared during kamigawa block though :/ my drafting/sealed rating is probably higher than it now (around 1750)

I pretty much stopped playing when I got an invite the the Saviors of Kamigawa beta testing. you pretty much had 4x of every card to play with and test, as well as infinite drafts. I couldn't handle going from infinite drafts, to the real world

when I do play nowadays, it is mostly core set drafts and sealed. my collection is probably worth over 5 grand, and I never spent more than $50 on it. Seems impressive, until you realize that it barely offsets the cost of all the physical cards I have purchased over the years :/

I do have a few stories to tell. Back in the day, IPA boosters packs used to be really hard to come by. This is before they started having occasional premeir events that would reintroduce more product back into the marketplace. Orims chants, pernicious deed, and spiritmongers used to dozens of tickets each. Chant was over 100 at one point. Cctually, the most expensive card was foil reya dawnbringer, which was ~300 at its peak. I dont think there are too many cards anywhere near that nowadays, foil force of the will is probably the closest at ~150. this was back when there was fixed price of any 3 crap rares was worth 1 ticket regardless (Except for vizzerdrix) and random foil rares were 1, foil uncommons were 4 for 1, now with all the bots you can get a dozen rares for 1.

Anyways, I digress. I miss the old MTGO economy, but that is besides the point. Back to the IPA draft sets...they were about 60 tickets each if you were lucky, and there were not too many to be had. In fact, it took nearly 3 days to locate enough packs to have what most of us at the time considered to be the last ever IPA draft. In my very first pack I had a foil fact or fiction, worth a ton at the time, and that was a very good start. That set the tone pretty much for the draft, everyone just taking the valuable cards. the FoF was worth more than the IPA draft set, so why not? anyways, we got to the the PS packs, and in mine I discover both a meddling mage and a foil flametongue kavu... WTF. that was a tough choice, I ended up taking the kavu (And it still sits in my binder :/ mage was probably worth more though). third pack was totally undramatic when I opened up foil vindicate. pernicious deed and monger were worth more at the time, but vindicate simply kicks ass. in the end, I lost first round due to not getting any land in my starting hands, but I made over 200 event tickets off it win in my book.

A less bragging story. I started playing again earlier this year (May have been end of last year.) I was doing a lot of M10 sealed events and drafting. I did fairly well in those, both rating wise and moneywise. baneslayer angel nonfoil was worth like 40 at the time... more than paid for the draft, and you usually do very good when you use them in the deck. anyways, the point is, I discovered DLP through ones of these sealed events. I was reading a Black Comedy at the time (Wwritten by nonjon). I was scrolling down the list of player, when guess what name I saw? nonjon. I was surprised to find that name, so I carefully asked if he happened to write fanfiction, and it turned out it was the same guy. we chatted a bit, and probably ended up in a half dozen of the same sealed events that week. That was one of the most coincidental things that has ever happened in my life. I hardly expected to find anyone else on MTGO that wrote HP fanfiction, let alone an author of nonjon's caliber, and the very author of the story Ii was currently reading. He casually mentioned DLP, and over here I came. I actually may have already been a member, and just forgot about it, but either way he reintroduced me to this site, so you can blame him for all my retarded posts. I wonder if MTGO is the reason nonjon hasn't posted anything new ... :/ ?

 

Damnit why can't you bastards be closer? I really want to play someone now. Also before I forget again if anyone here has the time and inclination to do it, I could use some advice on my Elf Deck and possible variations I could make to it.

 

New set has a 1/1 for 0 mana. Somewhere out there Ornithopter is raging.

 

Rofl xD, you wouldn't think so but those things were so fucking useful if you knew what you were doing with them.

 

Yeah. >_> Only one I know who still lives in this city and still plays has two kids, a near-4 year old and an under one. :| Its balls.

Figure if you get enough people online, OPT or MWS and a vent server can give you SOME level of emulation to the act, but still lacks a large part of the appeal.

Most enjoyable game I ever played was like ... 7 people all sitting in this dudes tiny ass trailer, smoking pot and playing till like 4 in the morning.

Pixels do not do it justice. :|

 

On the topic of power creep: it only seems a problem if you're playing new cards vs. old cards i.e. vintage. If you play standard, you're playing power creeped cards vs. power creeped cards, so their relative strengths and costs are still the same.

From reading the thread, as a new player, I'm not really sure if the game is worse today or not. I certainly had a lot of fun playing it as it is. It may be just that people dislike change, so old players don't like it when something familiar that they love is messed with. It seems conspicuous that only old players talk about the game being broken. "Broken" in this case, seems to mean "not like it was when I started playing" rather than "not playable" - if it wasn't fun to play any more, people wouldn't play it. For example, this mana burn idea. It doesn't seem better or worse to me (or requiring more or less intelligence to navigate), just different. I suppose I wouldn't be opposed to its inclusion, but neither do I read it and think "yeah that'd be cool". Sure, you'd have to adapt your playing style (very slightly, as it's rare you have unused mana anyway...) but I don't see why this is a bad thing. Just different.

 

I'm not too bothered by the loss of mana burn (seriously, how do you play MORE mana than you need to...? unless you're playing by rules where you HAVE to use all your mana every turn - in which case, wut?), but more worried about what new things they have done since I last played. For instance Shadow. I remember Fear was just gaining speed when I stopped playing, but never heard of Shadow.

Edit @Vash:

 

Oh I know. I used to have a deck that revolved around Phyrexian Walker and Ornithopter (also Endless Wurm and Rancor.) Do you know how annoying it is seeing a turn one 2-2 flying trample that continues to get boosted throughout the game? Watching my friends at lunch rage because they got beat by 0 mana cards and an Overrun was priceless.

Taure: The problem with the game today is that, in the good old days, a good deck could not kill you by turn three. These days, not only is that entirely possible, but it actually happens on a semi-regular basis. It turned the game into something much closer to black-jack than an actual strategy game.

 

Exactly my point. And that means that all the great slow-building strategy deck archetypes that MtG had, say, even five years ago (like Counterspell-control, milling, stall, Opposition-lock, Black-control in the Necrodeck variety, and any true Johnny-combo play) is now gone, replaced by cheap Spike combos and ridiculous Timmy acceleration.

Let me give you a little example of a fun tactic I ran back when I was playing Ravinca block Type 2 (that means Kamigawa block was included): Zubera-Greed. For those who don't know, the Zubera-Spirits were creatures that triggered greater effects when more of those types of creature hit the graveyard. They were also pretty much unplayable outside of a five colour deck, which most people hate playing (I'm a notable exception - I played Sunburst and Sliver decks).

Enter three cards that made Zuberas awesome: Shirei, Shizo's Caretaker, Hana Kami, and Devouring Greed.

For six mana and with a load of Zuberas on the field - not difficult to achieve, btw, I could deal obscene amounts of damage, draw a ton of cards, and gain ridiculous amounts of life. If I dropped a Grave Pact, you'd have no creatures in one turn. Using Sakura Tribe Elder and Kodama's Reach for mana fixing, Sensei's Divining Top for deck organization, and Privileged Position to protect Shirei, this deck was a Johnny's dream come true. I could get this engine up and running by turn six, and by that time, it was game over. But I always got an immense feeling of satisfaction when it all worked - a beautiful machine, finally coming together to lay waste to an opponent.

But here's the thing - today, this deck would be unplayable in Standard. Far too slow. Working by turn six is no longer an option for combo players right now - it's got to win by turn three or it's not worth playing. For me, that really damages the metagame, and from the looks of things, it's not getting any better.

 

Could you not just have a mutual agreement with fellow players not to use certain cards? And depending on how you feel, you could adjust the restricted card list.

Alternatively, just up your life.

 

More people need to play elder dragon highlander. It's a casual format where you create a deck around a legendary creature of your choice. The restrictions are that the deck has to be 100 cards total, your general plus 99 others, that you can't have multiple copies of a single card except for basic land, and that you can only include cards that are the same color(s) as your general. There is also a banned list, but it really depends on who you are playing with. Anyway, EDH can get truly outragous at times, and is a blast to play with the right group of people.

 

Two things, one Silens I would have to disagree with you to a point on run speeds for decks, in serious tournament matches maybe that applies but in most all casual matches that I've played with the exception of a single broken as a motherfucker red burn deck that I fought a six turn warm up is still perfectly viable. (Im still perfectly willing to stab people in the fucking eye socket if I see Wrath of God to this day >.>)

Two, on mana burn I'm of two minds on it, on the one hand I dislike the way it dumbed down the game as others have stated however on the other hand well to be honest it would fuck my Elf deck right up the ass if mana burn was used so I don't really give too much of a shit xD.

Also Vash yeah it really sucks, I used to go and play with some friends at this card shop that was right near my place on Thursdays and it was fun as shit but the place closed down so we can't do that anymore and it sucks ass.