Collectible Hard Game [MrLovenstein@mastodon.social]

Nyeh.

That's an expensive one turn kill. About 2.500€ going by cheapest listing on cardmarket. Of which Channel and Fireball contribute about 0,04€ to the grand total.
- It's certainly more than that. That lotus and mox are in great condition. I think 2500 euros for an unlimited lotus in that condition would be an absolute steal. I'd put this specific opener closer to the price of a new car
Look, if you had lotus, fireball, mox, and channel in your opener you deserve to win that game
- If you're even known to own a Lotus nobody will even come near you. It's been enough to keep me safely separated from the game for decades. It's kind of like having a nuke in your sidecar.
I played in an "illegal deck" tourney many years back, probably around Fallen Empires release, so the card pool was still relatively small and power cards weren't commanding the premium they do today. The rules called for a minimum 40-card deck but no limit or restrictions to any cards. I played decks that were literally just lotuses, mountains, channels, and fireballs and i frequently lost first turn. The deck i always think about from that tourney was composed of time walks, ancestrals, timetwisters, lotuses, sapphires, rubies, and ball lightnings. He would just keep gaining cards and playing more lotuses etc, take extra turns, throw a ball lightning at you, end turn, rinse and repeat. At least it took a minute to lose the game against him, lol!

I had a crappy deck loaded with Llanowar elves, giant growths, and the 1 berzerk i had. I only found out about the tourney after i got to the show, so it was just slapped together onsite with whatever i could find from vendors. It didn't matter in the end--the deck didn't stand a chance...but I'm glad i played--even if only to see some of these stacks of rare cards getting shuffled game after game without sleeves ಠ_ಠ
- My favorite version of the anything goes 40 card deck is a lot like the one you've described, but it swaps ball lightning for brainstorm and wins by making your opponent draw their entire deck into their hand and then passing the turn.
A 4-card combo sounds pretty difficult to pull off. Also, 3 of those cards are banned or restricted, depending upon what format you're playing.
- In the original rules there was no limit to how many of a card you could put in your deck.
- Those three cards are banned/restricted because of this combo.
  
  The point is to ensure you can pull it off by jiggering your deck specifically around having a high or guaranteed chance of having one each of these in your initial draw.

This happened to me last night. I know how to play MTG already but two of my friends are literally in another league. They bring their super expensive, mega curated, hyper optimized decks and laid waste to me and my other friend who is a lot better than me. It was basically just the other two playing each other and I honestly got pretty butthurt. I don't always get to have us all together, and we aren't always in the mood to play MTG, so when the planets aligned and we all did, they just came to obliterate us. Cool, glad you had fun I guess but I sure as fuck didn't. Yeah, it's great to hang out and talk etc, but a novice playing a grand master isn't very enjoyable. I asked them to bring chiller decks next time because otherwise I'd rather just watch a movie.

Anyway, comic: relatable.

Fuck pub stompers. I can only imagine their little brittle egos not being able to handle playing a weaker deck against a beginner.

I hope this hasn't ruined all the interest in the game for you
I know some really good MTG players but whenever I play with them they bring multiple of their good decks(and more casual ones also) and are always happy to share.
They probably didn't really have fun either, at that point you don't play to have fun, the fun stopped for them a long time ago. The only thing left is the hollow thrill of owning competitio to stoke your ego and not feel like a complete looser who spent thousands of dollars and countless hours you'll never get back taking a children's card game seriously. Real friends that actually care about other people know how to hold themselves back so everyone can have fun (until the shit talking starts from that one mf and you gotta take the gloves off)
Alternatively, allow everybody to use proxy decks. Then they can have their fun with their decks and you have enough forepowers to fight on fair footing

Unless the problems is also that you are not that experienced at MTG, but since you said you know how to play, this could be an alternative

But in any case, yeah, they should have taken into account everyone else's fun, for sure
I have some friends like that, and we play commander so pay to win is always a thing. My GF and I have a precon each and we talked with those friend and now all of us have a precon te be in an closer level than “rat infinite combo vs hobbits precon.”

With some time we have improved our main decks to be more capable of standing. But we are not close yet xd.

You did the right thing talking to them and saying that if they don't chill out it will be not funny for half the table.
- Do you allow proxies in your playgroup?
When I was a young lad my friends' brothers were regularly part of our matches and would absolutely stomp us every time because they actually had jobs to buy individual rares to complete their decks, or would constantly dupe us out of any good rares we'd come across with the booster packs we got from our weekly allowance by offering a whole bunch of shitty rares and making us think it was a good trade, or doing the same thing to get us to put them up as ante for a round before stomping us and collecting their winnings.

Absolutely predatory. There should be laws against the shenanigans they pulled on us.

Also, we'd all play these big "fast mana, fast draw" games sometimes where you always draw till you have 8 cards, and could play every land from your hand during your turn. Sometimes there's be like 6 people playing at the same time. They'd build these "suicide" decks with cards like hurricane that did X damage to all players, and pair them with protections to absolutely slaughter the entire playing field before we could even get anything good into play. Absolute psychopaths.

Still some of the best times of my life.
Just tell them you'll only play modern format and no legacy.

This, but cows

You beat me to it! Only thing I thought of when I read this.
A classic :)

~~Believe in the heart of the cards.~~ Minmax the fuck out of your deck.

Screw the rules, I have money!

This was me trying to learn MTG. I gave up with the quickness.

Played D&D back in the 80s, weird and complex rules aren't strange to me, but just couldn't get MTG.

Ignore the other person, and save your sanity. Just ignore MTG altogether.
MTG Arena has some lower power game modes that are nice.

"Jump in" where you get to pick two half decks and combine them to make a weird deck. They even have "Jump in" with lord of the ring cards. "Draft" Where you you make a deck by picking cards out of like 8 packs, so your deck is always going to be unique and janky and lower power, since it's not the best combo cards from 10 different packs. "Starter duel" Where players pick one of 10 decks to play against each other, and the decks change.

Recently started to get into MTG. Biggest problem I encountered is that you want to spend money sensibly, but you can't really grasp the idea of deck power before you play hundreds of games with different decks.

Because of it I can't build my own decks since I have no idea how to make them viable, and can't choose a strong deck online for the same reason. Precons are nice but even in casual setting they only get you so far

This is why so many people play drafts at local game shops. It achieves two things: 1) you get experience playing the game with a limited number of unique cards and everyone has similar chances of getting the cards they want and need and 2) you build your collection by keeping the cards you drafted and winning additional packs if you won any games. There are plenty of people at these shops that would be willing to help you with deck building too.
- I've been avoiding drafts right because it's not just building a deck but doing it in seconds on the go seems like much more stressful idea haha.
  
  I'm afraid I'm gonna pick something completely unplayable, with screwed manabase and will sit through the entire game with nothing to cast D:
- IMO drafts are by far one of the hardest formats, especially when it's standard draft. Not only do you need to have a good understanding of deck building (let's face it most players really don't) but you also need to understand the set you're about to play (or you won't know what to pick or what archetypes there are). And that's not even talking about actual drafting experience, because that also requires skill.
  
  I've played for years and I never got into draft because of those reasons. It was just too different to rest of MTG.
- I spent about 3 years trying to get into various tcg and drafts was easily the best. There are still try hards but they height is reading the release list so it's basically "dude, we got a Dinoraxis of the Tyberior" "Hell yeah, there's a rosaro here as well". And then they play similarly leveled decks. Thankfully MTG is way better at intermediate levels then Pokémon or YuGiOh. People who play those games actively don't want fresh blood the way they play.
When I played, back when I was a late teen, I didn't generally care about winning so much as pulling off cool combos or winning in a stupid way. I just found cards that worked together.

Depends what your goal is. Like most games, if it's to win you have to get sweaty.

I liked how mtg let you get real creative to pull off a semi viable deck with insane mechanics, even if it was strictly worse than "the correct" way to play
Draft or budget edh/commander - you can build a solid edh deck for $30-$50

I've never been able to get into TCG. I'm too reluctant to spend money like that, especially when you don't know what you're getting unless you spend a lot of money on a specific card. TTRPGs I get. Everyone is on an even playing field and you don't have to keep buying things for everyone to enjoy playing the game unless you want to buy expansion sets.

I'm not trying to put down anyone who enjoys them. Obviously they are fun games or people wouldn't spend the money or play them. But I just can't do it. Buying things blind hasn't been something I could bring myself to spend money on once I stopped buying Garbage Pail Kids.

Another thing that turned me off on the whole idea was when Steve Jackson Games turned Illuminati into a TCG. Taking a perfectly good game you could buy for $20 and turning it into a money machine where you potentially never stopped spending really irked me.

When I was a Pokémon Professor for our local meetup, I kept two sleeved decks that were just off-the-shelf, specifically for teaching new people. I’ll never understand bringing the same brutality to a teaching game that you would to a world championship..
- If the games are playable with an off-the-shelf deck, I'd give it a try, but the second you get even one card where it's something someone is unlikely to get unless they buy a lot of card packs? That turns me off. And that's what really turned me off about Illuminati. It was originally a game with a set number of cards in a box and it became something that your ability to win the game was highly dependent upon either spending lots of money to get lots of packs or getting really lucky.
  
  It just turned me off on the whole concept of TCG.
  
  You might think that's a little silly of me considering that game came out in 1994, but I've just never quite gotten over the idea. That and my wife's cousin spending something like $1000 on Yu-Gi-Oh cards and then giving them to my nephew after maybe 5 years because he got tired of playing the game. If I spent $1000 on TTRPGs, I'd have a bookshelf's worth of different games. I'd consider giving them away as a present, but not within 5 years after spending $1000 on them.
  
  I'm absolutely not judging anyone else if that's what they enjoy playing or spending their money on or whatever. If you want to spend $1000 on Yu-Gi-Oh cards or on baseball cards or on commemorative spoons, it's not my money to spend and people should do whatever makes them happy as long as no one gets hurt.
I think the big element you are missing is local shops and online resources. I started playing magic the gathering at the start of last year and one of the things I bought at the start was a box of 1000 cards of all varieties from eBay. It cost me $25 and was an excellent jumping off point to get started with creating decks. Especially when you compare it to the official blind packs that you are referencing that give you 15 cards for $8.

On a similar note there are dedicated platforms for buying specific cards online like TCGPlayer, Card Kingdom, and eBay of course. Your purchases aren't always blind even from MTG itself. When you buy a preconstructed deck it'll be a specific list of cards that are included in that.

There are also platforms specifically dedicated to building decks which admittedly takes some practice to be good at but is part of the fun. I personally use a free platform called Archidekt but there are others like Moxfield and Manabox. These platforms help with deck creation by providing suggestions and measuring cost as well as having an easy view of the overall cards chosen. Archidekt even allows you to import your collection of cards info it so you can specifically build decks only with the cards you already have. Using these websites I've very quickly managed to build competitive decks to play with.

Lastly the greatest element that has added significant value to Magic as a hobby has been comic book shops. These shops very often are more like nerd superstores. The ones local to me have plenty of comics and a huge catalog of cards and related accessories. You can buy the official Magic card packs but I prefer to go through their cataloged collection of loose individual cards. My local store has literally thousands of cards that are sold individually. You can go through the organized boxes for the cards you are interested in and at the end you pay for the exact cards you want. Very often the pricing for such cards is in the $0.01-$0.25 range unless it's a card that is very coveted in play. Yes there are cards in the hundred or even thousand dollar range but those generally are of the vintage variety and are that price because of their age not their usefulness in game. These comic shops also serve as hubs for local tournaments and play which makes them great places to meet new people.

After about a year of playing I've probably spent about $250 on cards but I now have a collection of over 4000 cards that Archidekt values at significantly more than what I've paid. But that's not the point of course. For my $250 I've built roughly 10 individual decks that I've played hundreds of games with. Long story short TCG doesn't have to be expensive to be fun.
- You can go through the organized boxes for the cards you are interested in and at the end you pay for the exact cards you want. Very often the pricing for such cards is in the $0.01-$0.25 range unless it’s a card that is very coveted in play.
  
  I realize that is cheap as hell, but I still personally have a problem with a game I have to keep paying for once I've already bought it if I want to remain competitive on principle.
  
  The rest of what you said makes sense to me though.
You're talking about two entirely different types of games, though. TCGs are typically quick. RPGs take hours per session, and a campaign covers multiple seasons. This means you need to have a dedicated group that's willing to meet regularly to complete the campaign. If you're playing Magic, you can find players anywhere there are game shops, as they're always holding events to draw in players, because it's so lucrative. To find a group for RPGs, you basically have to go headhunting. Put up ads. Interview people. None of that work is done for you.

That's not even getting into the inherent differences in the gameplay (cooperative vs. competitive, etc.)
- I did mention TTRPGs, but my main example was the SJG card game Illuminati, which was basically the same gameplay when it was turned into a TCG, it just expanded the deck in a way that required you to keep spending money if you wanted a remotely even playing field. Before it was a TCG, it (and the similar SJG game Hacker) were in regular gameplay rotation in my social circle. The gameplay of card games is fine. I have no issue there. And if, say, MTG had a standard deck everyone played from, I might even play it. It's the 'keep buying more' thing which I just can't justify spending my money on.
  
  As far as finding a group to play with, I've always gamed with at least one or two people in the group I already knew, so I guess that's not an issue I've personally had to face, but I can see why that could be an issue.

I was there three thousand years ago when MTG Alpha came out.

Makes sense about card games.

No offense to my family, that is.

this reminds me of Fluxx.

I was about to object, because objectively the vanilla Fluxx is considerably easier than MTG, but I must recognize that other thematic variants of Fluxx easily become this. It varies, but things can get complicated with special abilities in the Keepers, elaborate Rules, considerations about Creepers, weird Surprises, and very carefully worded Ungoals.
- I own a Cthulhu Fluxx edition and my friend won in the first round. Can't recall exactly what the cards were, but he matched the goal straight away.

This was cross-posted from a lemmy community (!tails@lemmon.website) that's sort-of bridging lemmy and mastodon. If you're on lemmy.world, they'll already be a post you can visit, to upvote and respond to the original author of the comic, if you wish. If you're not on an instance that's brought !tails@lemmon.website in yet, it can be done so in the usual way, of course.

(edit: just tried this on a different instance. lemmy being lemmy means you might have to refresh a couple of times after clicking the ! link, but that's nothing unusual)

That's really cool! Always thought it was a shame that Lemmy and Mastodon don't communicate more, and that a place like !microblogmemes@lemmy.world is just full of screenshots
Pro tip if you write !tails@lemmon.website without explicitly making it a hyperlink Lemmy will do it for you, and as a bonus the link it makes works on mobile
- not on mobile apps though

Must be playing legacy.

I've been playing Across the Obelisk with a friend recently; he plays exactly in the spirit of this 😂

Meanwhile, Cards Against Humanity:

"White cards. Black cards. Compose the shit that would get you banned and canceled the quickest"

Something like that happened to me with Kings in the Corners.

DnD?