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Returning to Magic the Gathering
July 11, 2012 by dracs
During the early days of my high school years I was talked into picking up a White Magic the Gathering deck. At the time I didn't really understand the rules. All I knew were the pictures were awesome. Eventually I drifted away from Magic... until now!
After seeing some games at my local gaming club I went scurrying back through the debris of history for those old cards. Now, with the release of Magic the Gathering 2013, it's time to get myself back into this great game and set myself up with a deck to take on the world.
But where to start? Wizards of the Coast provide a wide variety of products to help the prospective gamer get started with MtG.
First up we have the standard intro decks. These generally provide you with 60 cards, one of which will be a foil. They are ready made decks to let you get out there and start dueling as soon as possible. Intro Decks are usually based around a single tactic and can help you get a good idea of what works and what doesn't. You can then work towards modifying the deck to make up for these short comings. For instance, you might find that your Green deck is weak against Flyers, so you might want to throw in a few spiders who's Reach ability allows them to block such annoyances.
Any of you who have played the 2013 Duels of the Planeswalkers computer game may be familiar with some of the intro decks which could be appearing.
However, while these decks are a good way to get to grips with the game right away, they can later prove to be a bit limited. A good way to expand out into MtG is of course the Deck Builder's Toolkit.
This Magic 2012 Toolkit, comprising of 225 semi-randomised cards and 4 booster packs, is a great way to get started building your own deck and become the mightiest Planeswalker of your gaming group!
It also comes with a strategy insert providing some tips on how to go about making your first deck out of the cards provided. The cards in the tool kit cover each of the different colours, allowing you to see which style of play you like the most and to try your hand at mixing various decks together.
Once you have got the hang of deck building it's time to start expanding that collection and where better to start than with the Fat Pack?
The Fat Pack comes with a whole range of options to help you get building your own deck and modify existing ones. For example, in the 2013 Core Set Fat Pack shown above there is:
- 9 Magic 2013 15-card booster packs
- Player's guide with complete visual encyclopedia
- 1 Magic 2013 card box
- 80-card basic land pack
- Special edition Spindown life counter (from the image this looks suspiciously like a D20)
- Two deck boxes
Boosters are of course where the real joy of Magic the Gathering comes in, for hidden inside these seemingly innocuous little packages may be that one card around which your whole play could revolve. It is in boosters that the true treasures lie, the mythic rares (rarity is shown by the colour of the card's Expansion Symbol, in the case below this would be the M13 symbol).
The 80 basic land cards in the Fat Pack are also very useful, allowing you to build whatever deck you want out of the cards you find in the boosters. After all, a mythic rare isn't much use if you haven't got the mana to cast it.
After this it's time to just go hunting through as many boosters as you can get your hands on.
I must admit that the boosters are one of my favourite parts of MtG. The thrill of not knowing whether you could be holding that mythic rare you've been needing or the fifth common Suntail Hawk you've found this month is one of the best bits. Sure you could just go and buy the mythic rare on its own, but where's the fun in that? Unless of course it's this guy.
What's that army of White flyers? You're going to kill me this turn? Well now you can't take my life below 7! Haha! Now its time for me to trample your feathered hides into the dust!
As you may have gathered I prefer Green decks myself. I love the way in which they can take something small and grow it up until it becomes a true monster. I have already pre-ordered some of the M13 booster packs, which will be released this week, in preparation. I already have a Green / Blue deck which I have modified from one of the intro packs. I really hope I can draw a Planeswalker, as I would be interested to see how different they make my games.
Do you guys have any tips to help us in the office get started? What decks do you play? Are there any cards in the MtG 2013 Core Set which you think could be useful?
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ok lets go , just now flickered through the card gallery of M13, and again i would go for red and blue.
Blue gives you an incredible amount of boardcontrol and a lot of shenanigans
Jace only costs 2U so your not to comitted to the colour and he is pure awesomesauce …adding chandra to the mix with just R gives you a reasonable way to deal with most things your opponent throws at you in the early stages of the game, giving you the opportunity to pump out small creatures on your own … I can see some good things going on with Krenko the Boss + Krenkos Order + Duplicate ….and an 8/8 flyer for 1R (that snoozing dragon anyone? ^^ ) ? Yes please ! ^^ and dont forget Clone that is still one of the most powerful cards in the entire game.
But thats just if you just think about getting into M13 ….if you think about the game as a whole, there is simply to much possibilities to give any advice, at least I am not capable to do so .
If youre interetsted in getting into it I may recommend to check out :
http://www.channelfireball.com/ (youll get setreviews by Luis Scott Vargas , who is the worlds leading player ATM )
and if you want to dive even deeper into it …check for “The professors” on youtube, but this is really deep.
and last check out the official Magic the Gathering channel from Wizards ( http://www.youtube.com/user/wizardsmtg?feature=watch ) youll get GP and Pro Tour coverage …and watching these you stay up to date of the metagame that is played at a time and the standard-deck types that are currently working and played + youll learn some thing or two how to think in advance in some situations and what to consider when you are in certain board/game situations + they are simply fun to watch ^^
And in general I would recommend to buy displays as they are the most fun to deal with , you get 36 boosters to rip open , which simply is AWESOME because every booster is a little present on its own and you get to enjoy to flicker through 15-17 cards every time, dicovering what you get . If some friends buy some displays as well your good to go for some trading . Plus in addition you can play some rounds of draft with the boosters.
Preconstructed decks sometimes ARE good but most of the time they arent very competitive nor fun to play with and deckbuilding is half of the fun in Magic so …again Displays are the best way to go I would say.
so long
Seb
You are underselling the intro decks.
Previously, they were trash. The event decks are excellent – a solid, payable deck, often filled with play sets of useful cards. They’re also worth more than they cost, but I digress.
The M13 playsets are finally worth buying. Each one had an excellent legendary card and the rest of the deck gives a decent set of support cards for the legend. You will need more cards to upgrade this selection, but it’s a solid player to begin with. You also get also boosters on the box. Decent value for money and easy access for the new legends.
As for the M13 set as a whole, this is the best core set to date. Sure, we will be saying goodbye to Birds of Paradise, Llanowar Elves, Rampant Growth, the titans and many others, but the sets are always evolving. The changes in M13 drop a few hints as to the land structure we’ll be seeing in Ravnica. There’s a lot of basic land names scattered through M13, but not a fat lot of the words ‘basic land’.
If you are playing M13 on its own, exalted should take you a long way.
Some typos in there, but BoW doesn’t seem to want to provide an edit button.
Dude, should have seen the number of times I had to rewrite the article.
Personaly I would wait for possible M13 Event Decks. Event Decks are basically full 60 card decks with several copies of cards (including for some rares) and has also 15 card side deck that can be used to modify them.
The new design of the Core Set of 2013 (box and pack design) is jizzy!!! Looks awesome and very retro!
First time poster, longtime lurker around BoW. I dabble in war gaming, but I haven’t been involved more than the odd game of 40K every couple of months for a couple of years now. I am, however, totally immersed in MtG. Magic is a great game that lets players really customize their experience in tons of different formats. Those formats, however, can also set up some traps. I’d recommend that new plays don’t get heavily involved in the game until this fall.
One of the greatest things about MtG is the deck building. like army-lists in 40K there are all kinds of MtG decks that range from brutal and nigh-unbeatable professional tourney decks like the not missed at all “Caw Blade” and “Jund”, to decks that exist only as a joke, like “battle of wits”*. Even if your deck is part of a larger archetype, the little tweaks you make can really make it your own. Someone’s magic deck is their baby, and you can tell a lot about a player by looking at their favorite deck.
I for one like to go all in for whatever I’m doing, so all of my decks tend to be combo decks that are built around one incredibly powerful card interaction. Right now I’ve been building “Raisin’ ‘Brand” a deck that uses reanimation cards to “raise” This guy:
http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?multiverseid=239995
From the graveyard after I’ve discarded him for some ability, usually, this gal:
http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?multiverseid=235597
or this guy:
http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?multiverseid=270454
It’s interactions like these that make the game shine for me, for others, its casting “Delver of Secrets” on turn one out of a control deck and watching their opponent squirm as it transforms into an “Insectile Abomination” and kills them slowly while every spell they cast gets countered by “Snapcaster Mage”. For others still, it’s playing high power agro decks, and dropping a “Primeval Titan” on turn 4 to pull a “Kessig Wolf Run” out of their deck and watch their opponent surrender on the spot (I know I’ve lost plenty of games to a 12/6 titan with trample.)
Of course, I’m only talking about standard. Although the vast majority of games are played in the standard format, the incredible thing about magic is how many different games it really is. Standard allows you to build your own decks with cards from the past two years, and sets rotate out at regular intervals, while being replaced with new sets that are printed four times a year. (a thematic block of three, and a standalone core set)
Speaking of standard, I’d like to throw my 2 cents in regarding when to start playing the game, and standard rotations. In the fall, a new set comes out starting a new block. This fall will be “Return to Ravnica” and at the same time, the entire “Scars of Mirridon” block will rotate out of standard and no longer be legal. Because of this, I recommend waiting for Return to Ravnica to come out before getting into the game, as at that time cards won’t be leaving standard for another year, so you can count on being able to use them. If you build a deck with even one or two cards from Scars of Mirridon, you will have to entirely re-think it this fall, and if your deck relies heavily on it, you will have lost your investment in a matter of months.
Going farther back, we have “Modern” which allows players to use any card printed since 8th edition came out in 2003. Cards don’t rotate out of modern, but they are banned more often because the larger card pool opens up more exploration space for degenerate combos. (It is my life goal to get a card banned in modern because of a deck I invented.)
Father back still, and with an even bigger banned list, is Legacy, where you can use cards from any part of the history of Magic, as long as you don’t abuse a laundry list of overpowered cards, mostly from early in the games history before the developers knew what they were doing. (A free card that gives you three manna? Yes please.)
And then there is vintage, which is legacy, without the banned list. Needless to say, that format appeals to me greatly. There are few decks in Vintage that don’t win on turn one. There is even one that’s very inconstant, but can win before the game actually starts!
Of course, the bigger the format is, the more expensive it is to get in. The “shock lands” necessary to make any multi-color modern deck viable cost up to $50 each! And they’re just utility! It only gets worse into legacy and vintage, where single cards can cost thousands of dollars. This is the reason that I and many others have yet to expand our horizons outside of standard.
But wait, there’s more! Sealed evens are one of the best ways for new players to get introduced to the game, as you build your deck on the spot. In “sealed deck” tournaments, players are given 6 booster packs and build a deck out of the contents. Doing things like this means you don’t have to spend tons of money on single cards, and if done with a recent deck will almost never cost more than $30 for the whole event.
Draft, my personal favorite, is less forgiving to new players, but even cheaper than sealed. In draft, each player is given three booster packs. They open the first, pick only one card from it, and pass it to the next player. Each pack is passed around the table like this until every pack has been opened and picked apart, then the players build decks from their draft picks. Needless to say, new players with little knowledge of the good cards in the set, or of synergistic themes will get flattened, but once you’ve got the hang of a set, draft is a blast!
And then there was EDH. Elder Dragon Highlander, or as Wizards of the coast has started calling it in their official products “Commander.”
A fan invented format where each player picks a legendary creature to be their general, and then builds a 100 card deck with no duplicates around that general. They start the game with their general set aside to be cast any time they have the manna for him, and hilarity ensues. Probably the slowest of all the formats, EDH is where the joke decks make their appearances, but sometimes, the jokes are deadlier than they look!
I think I’ve written enough… probably too much for a comment, but what the hell! I’m sure anyone that hasn’t given up from TLDR by now can tell I’m really passionate about this game. Hopefully I’ll see some people from the BoW community at casual Friday Night Magic tournaments held at any game store worth its salt in the coming months and years!
*(That said, Louis Scott-Vargas, one of the best players in the world, LOVES Battle of Wits and I would not be surprised at all if he managed a top-8 at a grand prix with it.)