Magic the gathering

[Zanchief]

not cool enough for the actual magic community and too nerdy for the real world, but we downloaded the ps3 version a few weeks ago--highly addictive, but not sure I'd be any good at playing with my own deck. of course, so far as I can tell the PS version is going to have pretty obvious limitations in deck customization.

some of the little tidbits of lore that are offered up are pretty interesting, though--that was always my favorite part of any game was the lore. the PS version doesn't really offer enough to grasp the entire storyline though.

Each expansion has a novel that tells the entire story. They are, by all accounts, poorly written and bad. A friend of mine read them all for fun. I don't think that would be fun.

The Duel of the planeswalker is ok at simulating the MTG experience, but for me it's all about deck building, and you just don't get that with that game. Fun to kill a few hours though.

[Gypsiyee]

Jonathan and I picked up a few decks a couple years back, but it was a lot to learn and I ended up just getting frustrated because neither of us had ever played and we were trying to learn against each other.

The positive side of learning it on the PS, I guess, is that I'm getting a firmer grasp on it. I figure once I understand it better, it'd be easier to play and build a deck of my own without getting agitated. I just decided when we were learning back then that it just wasn't for me because I had no motivation to learn it, but having the PS version has piqued my interest again.

[Zanchief]

Yea the rules are tricky and have gone through a lot of iterations. I know them pretty well now, but even amongst people who have been playing for like more then a decade we argue about stuff.

Stacks, and triggered abilities vs constant effects, priority with multiple triggered abilities and things like that can get a bit confusing.

[Spazz]

Fierce debates on weather or not you can do something break out when playing magic all the time. Rules change or get modified or have ruling on them often as well. It is a hard game to teach someone to play. With online help and booklets that even retards can follow I think they have learning pretty user friendly.




In other magic related news I pulled a jace and the vampire guy out of an m12 box early this morning.

[Menelvir]

I used to play 'Middle-earth: The Wizards' from ICE in the early/mid 90s -- I remember going to casual games and tournaments alike carrying around a small notebook full of printings of card errata and rules clarifications.

I see that now there's iPhone apps for MTG that do everything but play the game: Life Counting apps, dice-rolling apps, judge ruling charts, and deck builder apps. The next great MTG iPhone app is probably just waiting to be written.