"While there are certain play patterns, the space of potential actions is extremely large and there is a great number of synergistic interactions between cards

"While there are certain play patterns, the space of potential actions is extremely large and there is a great number of synergistic interactions between cards that needs to be taken into account." Yes, that's certainly the promise of MTG - and is the reason why I was drawn to it originally and continue to be, at least passively, interested in it. The idea is that there are so many different cards and so many potential interactions that every deck could be fantastically unique and every game could produce very unique outcomes. I have found, in 25 years of playing MTG that this is not the case. The reality is that in every release, or set of "legal" cards, there are a few overwhelmingly advantageous cards and card combinations that must either be adhered to or prepared against. Further, "classes" of decks (counter decks, control decks, blast decks, etc.) need to be fairly simple and anti-fragile to work effectively given the random draw, etc. My opinion, circa 1998 or 1999, was that to really open up the playing space, WOTC needed to produce sets of very complex cards that had abilities and interactions that in themselves were as complicated as the game was. Cards whose abilities and interactions we would still be discovering years later. Perhaps even random attributes/abilities For obvious reasons this is not the direction they went and would be a big hurdle for new players. And so every set has, effectively, its own channel+fireball and we all play that or prepare for it and for all the turing-completeness, there's not that many surprises at the game store on Friday night ...