I usually do not post about Magic the Gathering. Mainly because Aki posts about it. A Lot. And I rarely have anything interesting or worthwhile to say. This week however was a bit different. I had a small vacation (since my son was with his grandparents and my wife was working). So what could I do? Turns out – nothing much but play through various different types of MtG. So this will be my random rambling about different formats.
Hearthstone: The Heroes of Warcraft is a collectible “card game” played on computer or tablet. I just installed it on my iPad and tried it out. And by saying “tried it out” I started fours hours ago and are still playing. As advertised it is insanely addictive. At least for someone who has been playing Magic: the Gathering for several years.
I started just to get the feeling for it and quite possibly try it out against fellow Guild members. Weirdly it didn’t let me search for familiar opponents from the beginning but guided me through the simple enough tutorials. The tutorials while informing took quite long to finish and even after that I had to challenge all possible “heroes” to get the whole thing open. But once I did that I got the hang of the game and opened all the options for the game. Continue reading
Even if they seemingly have more experience then you, sometimes they are just wrong. Sometimes they are actively trying to cheat you if they think you’re not as familiar with the rules as they are.
There’s an old article from last millenium by Mike Flores called Who’s the Beatdown?, which is still available on SCG.com. Its about assignment of who is the beatdown and who is the control and what can result from not understanding this.
What I’m talking about today, are the decks that want to be the beatdown in most situations.
If you haven’t read MaRo’s article for today, you should probably before proceeding here.
The core of the issue: In the future, there will be two blocks of two sets each year, and they are dropping the Core Set. This also means there will be changes to rotation.
Last Sunday I was at the Helsinki WMCQ (World Magic Cup Qualifier). I didn’t do very well, but I did come up with something to write about, which is a small bonus.
One of my opponents, who was generally played much more precisely than is even necessary for a competitive tournament and asked stopped the game a couple of times to ask judges very involved questions on pretty simple situations, and didn’t want me to hear those questions.
There’s nothing wrong with that. Just felt a bit too much, as I am trying to have fun in these events, despite their competitive nature.
What actually gave me something to write about was that when it was time to sideboard, he pulled out a folder with pages upon pages of notes on different matchups.
I’m going to be playing next weekend in the GP Utrecht. I don’t have any clue on what I’m going to be playing, and I’m leaving for Netherlands on Sunday, so I don’t have a lot of time to decide what to play. However, M15 did bring me something I think would make my monoblack deck stronger. It might be surprising, but its [scryfall]Crippling Blight[/scryfall].
There’s plenty of daily strategy content on the Mothership, Star City Games, Channel Fireball, and other places. However, those are targeted at people, who are generally not that interested in deckbuilding, and who are fairly familiar with the game. Here I’m going for the beginner audience.
Updated on 2015-11-02
Updated on 2017-05-17 with more names for the psychographics
This question was brought up in our forums recently. It was pretty off-handed and the ensueing discussion wasn’t really indepth, but it made me think. What do I have for the starting player?
First, I’m not going to talk about the rules. I’m sure there’s plenty of places for that. The Mothership (DailyMtG) has its own material. I’m going to emphasize your approach to games in general.
The thing about Magic is that it can be daunting to start. Not only is the game pretty complex (although a lot of work has been done to make it more beginner friendly and your usual games don’t necessarily delve that deeply into the finer points of the rules), but there’s also so many different products and formats, they will discourage many. And then there’s the question of money… Which we’ll get into later.