4 ms·

I remember playing the game in the late 90s, and trying again in the early 2000's. The strategy and game-play dynamics were awesome. Not so awesome: the fact

by JPKab 10y ago

I remember playing the game in the late 90s, and trying again in the early 2000's. The strategy and game-play dynamics were awesome. Not so awesome: the fact that the amount of money a player spends acquiring rarer cards and assembling a deck dictates their success. It's a pay-to-win game and I fucking hate games like that. Not unlike paintball, he who spends the most on gear wins.

brianwawok 10y ago
You can buy the vest type2 deck for maybe $400 a year. If you want a level playing field, you can have it... Not free but neither are most addictions.
- Symbiote 10y ago
  $400 is about $350 more than I would have thought reasonable to spend on a card game when I was a teenager (15-16), and my parents would have thought $50 too much. I spent about £25 on cards, and was probably given another £25 or so by a wealthy friend. The game was fine when played against others who had a similar investment, but the group stopped playing because of eBay: our friends with real money could buy what they wanted, and the rest of us could never beat them. I think it was the first thing we did which showed who had money and who hadn't. We could take cheap plastic Warhammer figures, paint stars on them, and declare them to be powerful wizard-mages. Computer games were easily copied, it didn't matter who owned a board game. M:tG ruined the equality... I looked into the game again about a year ago, but there were so many new rules (new abilities, new card types) -- I decided I didn't want to spend that much time on one game.
- hajile 10y ago
  The last time I played Standard seriously was RTR/Theros and all the top decks were 1K+. I looked to buy in a few months ago, but 4 Jace's alone were over $400 (a new person would also be looking at several hundred for fetch lands). The only reason current standard is "cheap" is because everyone knows that most of the cards won't hold their value post rotation. I think I'll be sticking with the eternal formats where cards don't lose 90% of their value in 2 years.
endemic 10y ago
> It's a pay-to-win game After selling my collection of cards, I find that I can still enjoy playing the game using the "draft" format: invest $9 or so for three packs, then have a pleasant evening of play. No more expensive than seeing a movie, and the playing field is more or less level.
rkho 10y ago
It's a pay-to-be-competitive game. Nobody is spending absurd amounts of cash for a deck and expecting to win a competitive event strictly because of it.
sqeaky 10y ago
I play EDH/commander. There a $50 budget deck can readily beat a $2000 deck. I have won and lost on both sides of that equation. EDH started as a community driven format with no official support. The community decided that your deck must be exactly 100 cards with no duplicates except basic land. This slows the came down and forces more board interaction. On top of that 1 of your hundred cards must be a Legendary creature. Everything in your deck can be of a color from that creature and you will always have access to that creature throughout the game. This constrains deck construction and makes it really hard to splash a color for one $50 that would be perfect. Always having access to commander is a comfort to new players and opens new strategies to veterans. To further combat this I have a pool of 30 or decks that I build with my friends and we play mostly from this pool. No paying to win if we are paying together.
- quink 10y ago
  > There a $50 budget deck can readily beat a $2000 deck. For more info on that, including what percentage each archetype makes up of the total Commander metagame and what each costs: https://www.mtggoldfish.com/metagame/commander/full#paper https://www.mtggoldfish.com/metagame/commander/full#paper
- TheDauthi 10y ago
  In so far as there's a "right answer" for the pay-to-win parts of the game, this is it. EDH, in general, is much gentler on using cards that aren't the best and most expensive thing around. I have a tourney-competitive EDH deck that, according to current prices, costs about $400. That's a good bit... but replacing 4 cards with cheaper counterparts brings it down to $63. And I have recently seen at 2 other good EDH decks under $40 from someone who decided he wasn't going to spend more than $50 on any deck. Definitely doable.
  - sqeaky 10y ago
    So mister Dauthi, playing some mono black shadow?
overcast 10y ago
Played paintball for fifteen years, competitively, traveling all over the country, also ran a large online forum. That is not true at all. Especially today, the differences between the high end, and low end guns are at this point, just looks, and luxuries.
ubernostrum 10y ago
It's a pay-to-win game Except that it's not. If you and I played a round of golf, where I used a standard set of golf clubs (not cheap) and you used a hand-whittled tree branch, it's highly likely that I would beat you regardless of our relative skill level. This does not mean golf is "pay-to-win", though; if you and I both played with the standard clubs, skill would determine the outcome. And even if you played with an average but acceptable set of clubs while I splurged on super-fancy clubs, you'd still beat me reliably if you were the more skilled player. Magic is much the same way. There is certainly a financial barrier to entry, which must be cleared if you want to succeed in competitive play. And if you pit someone who has cleared that barrier against someone who has not, skill is much reduced as a factor in determining the outcome. But competitive Magic is like everyone having at least a basic decent set of golf clubs: everyone playing competitively has made the up-front investment in the game, and now they are distinguished by skill rather than further spending.

by JPKab 10y ago

brianwawok 10y ago

You can buy the vest type2 deck for maybe $400 a year. If you want a level playing field, you can have it... Not free but neither are most addictions.

Symbiote 10y ago
$400 is about $350 more than I would have thought reasonable to spend on a card game when I was a teenager (15-16), and my parents would have thought $50 too much. I spent about £25 on cards, and was probably given another £25 or so by a wealthy friend. The game was fine when played against others who had a similar investment, but the group stopped playing because of eBay: our friends with real money could buy what they wanted, and the rest of us could never beat them. I think it was the first thing we did which showed who had money and who hadn't. We could take cheap plastic Warhammer figures, paint stars on them, and declare them to be powerful wizard-mages. Computer games were easily copied, it didn't matter who owned a board game. M:tG ruined the equality... I looked into the game again about a year ago, but there were so many new rules (new abilities, new card types) -- I decided I didn't want to spend that much time on one game.
hajile 10y ago
The last time I played Standard seriously was RTR/Theros and all the top decks were 1K+. I looked to buy in a few months ago, but 4 Jace's alone were over $400 (a new person would also be looking at several hundred for fetch lands). The only reason current standard is "cheap" is because everyone knows that most of the cards won't hold their value post rotation. I think I'll be sticking with the eternal formats where cards don't lose 90% of their value in 2 years.

endemic 10y ago

> It's a pay-to-win game After selling my collection of cards, I find that I can still enjoy playing the game using the "draft" format: invest $9 or so for three packs, then have a pleasant evening of play. No more expensive than seeing a movie, and the playing field is more or less level.

rkho 10y ago

It's a pay-to-be-competitive game. Nobody is spending absurd amounts of cash for a deck and expecting to win a competitive event strictly because of it.

sqeaky 10y ago

I play EDH/commander. There a $50 budget deck can readily beat a $2000 deck. I have won and lost on both sides of that equation. EDH started as a community driven format with no official support. The community decided that your deck must be exactly 100 cards with no duplicates except basic land. This slows the came down and forces more board interaction. On top of that 1 of your hundred cards must be a Legendary creature. Everything in your deck can be of a color from that creature and you will always have access to that creature throughout the game. This constrains deck construction and makes it really hard to splash a color for one $50 that would be perfect. Always having access to commander is a comfort to new players and opens new strategies to veterans. To further combat this I have a pool of 30 or decks that I build with my friends and we play mostly from this pool. No paying to win if we are paying together.

quink 10y ago
> There a $50 budget deck can readily beat a $2000 deck. For more info on that, including what percentage each archetype makes up of the total Commander metagame and what each costs: https://www.mtggoldfish.com/metagame/commander/full#paper https://www.mtggoldfish.com/metagame/commander/full#paper
TheDauthi 10y ago
In so far as there's a "right answer" for the pay-to-win parts of the game, this is it. EDH, in general, is much gentler on using cards that aren't the best and most expensive thing around. I have a tourney-competitive EDH deck that, according to current prices, costs about $400. That's a good bit... but replacing 4 cards with cheaper counterparts brings it down to $63. And I have recently seen at 2 other good EDH decks under $40 from someone who decided he wasn't going to spend more than $50 on any deck. Definitely doable.
- sqeaky 10y ago
  So mister Dauthi, playing some mono black shadow?

overcast 10y ago

Played paintball for fifteen years, competitively, traveling all over the country, also ran a large online forum. That is not true at all. Especially today, the differences between the high end, and low end guns are at this point, just looks, and luxuries.

ubernostrum 10y ago

It's a pay-to-win game Except that it's not. If you and I played a round of golf, where I used a standard set of golf clubs (not cheap) and you used a hand-whittled tree branch, it's highly likely that I would beat you regardless of our relative skill level. This does not mean golf is "pay-to-win", though; if you and I both played with the standard clubs, skill would determine the outcome. And even if you played with an average but acceptable set of clubs while I splurged on super-fancy clubs, you'd still beat me reliably if you were the more skilled player. Magic is much the same way. There is certainly a financial barrier to entry, which must be cleared if you want to succeed in competitive play. And if you pit someone who has cleared that barrier against someone who has not, skill is much reduced as a factor in determining the outcome. But competitive Magic is like everyone having at least a basic decent set of golf clubs: everyone playing competitively has made the up-front investment in the game, and now they are distinguished by skill rather than further spending.