Magic: The Gathering
Magic is the world's first and most successful trading card game. Players take the role of great wizards who battle each other with spells and creatures, represented by the cards in their decks. Very fun to play, a little sad to watch.
Just The Facts
- Magic essentially established the trading card game genre, and remains the most successful game of its kind after more than fifteen years.
- Magic's creator, Richard Garfield, is an actual mathematician. This may be why his game is still interesting and expanding, while most knock-offs fizzled and died.
- Magic is directly responsible for its publishers, Wizards of the Coast, becoming the world's leading company in hobby gaming.
- By targeting both gambling addicts and compulsive collectors, Magic has drained some people's savings faster than any drug habit.
- Magic tournaments have actually been shown on ESPN2. No shitting.
Cracked on Magic: The Gathering
Magic is essentially a wizards' duel, represented by the cards you play. Each player uses a deck built from their own collection to assemble their power base, then use that power to summon fantasy creatures to fight each other and blast away with spells. Unlike D&D, most players don't show up in costume or play in character, which is probably why nobody's accused it of endorsing witchcraft and corrupting the minds of the young. The Pokemon card game wouldn't be so fortunate.
A relatively simple game at its core, the over-twenty thousand cards that have been printed - almost all of which have some unique rule-bending quirk - have resulted in a set of comprehensive rules and errata that reads like a federal tax code. Yet somehow, thirteen-year olds can figure it out, making the rest of us feel bad and look bad.
The Colors of Magic
One of the better parts of Magic is the notion of dividing spells into five colors, each of which have their own general strengths and flaws. Figuring out which colors to use in your deck is pretty much the core of any strategy.
White: Professional armies team up to steamroll your enemies while making new rules for everyone to obey, but a lack of initiative can leave you twiddling your thumbs.
Blue: Use information and deception to avoid direct conflict and fuck up how your opponents' spells work. Screw up your countermoves though, and your soft face and belly are ripe for a beating.
Black: Sacrifice your soul, your sanity, and the lives of your minions for forbidden power. Let it get out of control, and it'll ruin you without anybody else having to do anything.
Red: Go balls to the wall, wrecking the other guy's shit before he knows what happened, preferably using cool exploding things. Red runs out of gas quick though, so it has to win either now or never.
Green: Whip out bigger things than the other guy and smack him around with them. Just don't be surprised if he manages to shame you with his superior finesse.
The Players of Magic
The stereotypical Magic player is a white American male, between the ages of 14-25. Like most stereotypes, this is firmly grounded in reality. In addition, they tend to be smelly and unhygenic, and some can be real dicks about their trading card game. While this last bit isn't universally true - plenty of players are good sports and have active lives with lucrative, honorable careers - there are still those grown adults who throw hissyfits when an opponent who's out of the running refuses to concede a match, or who cheat by "accidentally" dropping one or two of your cards under the table while cutting your deck.
But seriously, about the smell? More than one article on tournament preparation has strongly encouraged participants to shower prior to the event. Apparently, a good number of these people actually do need reminders.
While Magic has been produced worldwide, the professional scene was dominated by Americans and some western Europeans until recently, with Japanese players cutting a swath through white dominance of the game, proving once again that the Japanese are just plain better at everything we create.
Tempered steel FTW!!!!!!!
ReplyI play Black discard. You strategy players can't to ANYTHING if you've got no hand!!
ReplyHear, hear. I throw in a little blue and milling for good measure. Ever since '98 it's served me well.
Discard is generally too slow. I play a low-cost green elf deck that f*****g rolls over everything.
Screw with your opponent balls to the wall style! I'm a Red/Blue player, just recently (about 2 years ago) started playing this game. best card game ever. yugioh is pretty fun too. I've made a Dark/Light Deck that turns my graveyard into a deck in itself.
ReplyI play Yugioh. I don't like magic as much.
ReplyMaybe it's because yugioh was introduced to me first, or the whole mana energy thing, or complexity, but whatever.
I canouldn't play magic for the life of me without a rulebook, but when I played yugioh when I first played it, I played pretty accurately, give and take a few rules.
I've started playing Magic again. Yay for me!
Screw stereotypes, I play Yugioh and Magic, and I used to play pokemon. But I'm not one of those weirdos who spends too much money on it =)
ReplyGreat article, (Very funny) but you got one thing wrong- Card players, for the most part, are not dicks. Granted, some of them are dicks,(1 guy I faced in a tournament refused to let me take back a move, (Which wouldn't have made a difference) But he kept on making mistakes and not knowing how to use some of his cards) But most of them are great guys, with normal lives.
i'm a girl. im'm european. and i play magic. screw stereotypes XD
ReplyDavid Wong has/had an older article somewhat about magic i feel it deserves a link or somesuch at the bottom. i can't find the article i hope it exists.
Reply