MTG thread

Genjiro said:

Also lastly, idk, I *hate* winning when my opponent gets mana hosed...I feel bad because I'd rather lose to someone who drafted a great deck or made a play I wasn't expecting, and on the flip side of course winning in the same fashion.

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You might prefer to lose to a good deck/player over winning by them getting mana screwed, but if you REALLY hated winning from opponent's mana screw.. then you'd just scoop to them every time it happened. However, I have a feeling that idea sounds just as horrible to you as it does to me. You still want to win the game, and while it might be the worst way to win, winning is still better than losing.

The vast majority of successful games give every random player a chance to win, no matter how big the skill disparity. Even twitch (not the website) based games such as Fortnite, where it's all about your reflexes and physical skill; still let the occasional player get lucky and get a victory royale. They hide in some bush till near the end of the game then get a lucky snipe shot off on the last guy. That player could play 100s of more games, always thinking 'maybe THIS is the one', and not win any of them. But, they keep trying because they got that win once before.

It's the same reason the lottery is so popular. Humans love rolling the dice, no matter how slim the odds. However, the more often you reward them for it, the longer they stick around.

When I changed my opinion on this subject, it was because I watched some videos of different game designers talking about this kind of stuff. i.e. Randomness in games as an equalizer. I once saw Richard Garfield, specifically, mention how the mana system was designed to occasionally screw over one person from the start. It wasn't an overlooked mechanic, it was intended to be that way.

Honestly, it sucks, because I want a strategy card game that's as skill based as chess, but that kind of setup is unlikely to ever be a successful card game. WoW was the closest, but the same players were winning most of the tournaments, and it trickled down to the local level. The best player at a shop won almost every tournament. fun fact: Guillame Wafo-Tapa, a well known control player in mtg, swapped over to WoW for a few years and was crushing it, but came back after the game started to die off. Think he won their Worlds equivalent a couple times.

I haven't played MTG in years. I got my DCI card in 1995 to be able to play in Pro Tour 2 on the Queen Mary and then played in a few more pro tours until I got a "real job" in 1997 and quit playing. In 2004 the national championship was a 3 hour drive away so I drove there and played in a qualifier, wound up winning and got to play in the national tournament. That got me re-interested for a little while and I started buying some booster boxes so that I could do some sealed or draft with some buddies but it didn't last long, most of the boxes wound up thrown in a closet.

I was on Youtube and stumbled on this guy Rudy from Alpha Investments, watched some of his videos, realized that some of this stuff is worth crazy money and then decided to dig through the closet to see just what I had in there and if it was worth anything. Pics below. Is there a way to get hold of this Rudy guy to sell him what I have got or is that the wrong approach? I could try going to some local stores here in town but I doubt they would pay much for this, maybe I'm wrong though.

I'd imagine you'd have enough value to be worth the time trying to find a buyer for there, yes.

Enzee said:

You might prefer to lose to a good deck/player over winning by them getting mana screwed, but if you REALLY hated winning from opponent's mana screw.. then you'd just scoop to them every time it happened.

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In casual with friends 100% I would never play it out in that situation, whats the point, and we would just call it a draw unless I actually paid something to be playing. "Hey that sucks, shuffle up and lets play." The point is to have fun, get better, have an enjoyable experience, especially if you were playing with friends and trying out different brews etc. Playing with dicks who gloat when that stuff happens is never fun.

I only had 2 guys who were good players near me, so those were the best times just late night chilling with a pizza and some beer and trying to break netdecks our create or own homebrews. If it was something I drove to like a ptq or something when I played competitively, sure, because you are there to win.....and recently getting in Arena when you pay rl cash for gems etc and lose to game bugs/landscrew....yea, that shit its infuriating.

Unfortunately moving to Orlando I lost my regular good group of friends who were similar age etc, so the most enjoyable part of the game (for me) has been missing.

Punko said:

The scars of mirrodin box should fetch 300$ if it has the factory wrap on it. The eventide box is slightly more expensive under the same conditions.

Individual boosters are worth a lot less, since those could be mapped. Still, time spiral boosters are at least 10$, zendikars 15$ each I am sure.

Selling this to someone that knows the prices for 650$ would be a steal for the buyer. Don't sell them unless you need the money to spend it, they are not getting cheaper.

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I just re-activated my old Starcitygames account and was able to log in and look at their buylist prices on this stuff, looks like they pay about 30 - 40% of what it is valued at, which makes sense because they have to do the work to sell it all, but makes it so little as to not be worth the time to deal with it.

Will likely chuck it all back in the closet and check prices in 10 more years.

Enzee said:

The vast majority of successful games give every random player a chance to win, no matter how big the skill disparity. Even twitch (not the website) based games such as Fortnite, where it's all about your reflexes and physical skill; still let the occasional player get lucky and get a victory royale. They hide in some bush till near the end of the game then get a lucky snipe shot off on the last guy. That player could play 100s of more games, always thinking 'maybe THIS is the one', and not win any of them. But, they keep trying because they got that win once before.

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Randomness as how the players interact with each other and all of the different ways that could play out isn't really randomness. It's a complex system in which all of the interactions between variables make predictions impossible and the final outcome opaque. That can create some really compelling gameplay and replayability as the players are also the content. That is nothing like rolling a d20 at the start of the game, seeing it come up a 1, 2, or 3 and instantly losing. Fortnite has the former. Magic has the later.

Enzee said:

I once saw Richard Garfield, specifically, mention how the mana system was designed to occasionally screw over one person from the start. It wasn't an overlooked mechanic, it was intended to be that way.

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There's no way that they designed the mana system to occasionally prevent one player from being able to play the game. Recognizing that as an emergent game play element of the system they created and seeing value in it, sure. Designing it to be that way? Ridiculous. Garfield also designed the game with ante and ante cards up to and including balancing cards around it while not realizing he was going to run into gambling laws and players generally hating the idea of losing their cards. He designed a game that was 100% solved provided a player spends sufficient money. He and the people that tested it just didn't think anyone would.

Let's not deify the man.

Attog said:

I just re-activated my old Starcitygames account and was able to log in and look at their buylist prices on this stuff, looks like they pay about 30 - 40% of what it is valued at, which makes sense because they have to do the work to sell it all, but makes it so little as to not be worth the time to deal with it.

Will likely chuck it all back in the closet and check prices in 10 more years.

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Nothing wrong with time capsuling it but I've always had good success with eBay. Just restrict the auctions to the United States + Japan.

So speaking of old cards in a closet, this prompted me to look up my only real big-ticket card - an Unlimited Chaos Orb, and I see that its on the SCG buylist for $400, even at Heavily Played. I remember I only paid $40 for it way back when, this seems pretty good to me. But this price is much higher than the last time I checked (~5 years ago), so I don't know if this is on the upswing for some reason.

My question is, whats the price ceiling on a card that's literally unplayable outside of some kitchen table lulz deck?

Chaos Orb's price has increased because of the birth of a format called 93/94, where it is legal (restricted, not banned), and where it is a colorless source of removal for any permanent, making it a valued card.

Ahh, didn't know about that, makes a lot more sense now.

Farewell small piece of cardboard, I'm overdue for a new monitor.

Arbitrary said:

There's no way that they designed the mana system to occasionally prevent one player from being able to play the game. Recognizing that as an emergent game play element of the system they created and seeing value in it, sure. Designing it to be that way? Ridiculous. Garfield also designed the game with ante and ante cards up to and including balancing cards around it while not realizing he was going to run into gambling laws and players generally hating the idea of losing their cards. He designed a game that was 100% solved provided a player spends sufficient money. He and the people that tested it just didn't think anyone would.

Let's not deify the man.

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I didn't say he was perfect, he made other mistakes in designing the game, of course. Did he think to himself 'I want a mechanic that specifically screws over one player 10-15% of the time' before inventing mana? No. Did he know that there needed to be random elements out of the players control that lets a weaker player win sometimes? Yes, and mana + random library filled that role. He toyed around with the idea of a resource system that was guaranteed and automatic, but it was discarded. He used that kind of mechanic in multiple other games he created later, I just don't know which ones exactly, maybe netrunner and vampire? He designed a lot of card games after mtg.

Genjiro said:

If it was something I drove to like a ptq or something when I played competitively, sure, because you are there to win.....

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yea.. exactly. If you are playtesting with a friend, who wins is irrelevant. You are trying to figure out which deck is better, and you learn nothing in a game where one player has mana issues. It's a bad use of your time to play those games out. With a casual friend, nothing on the line, winning is also irrelevant. It's more about creating a fun situation. Same with EDH/Commander (for most people). You can also create house rules that minimize mana problems in all those scenarios, too. I was referring to FNM, and higher, style events. Where normal rules enforcement happens and there's at least something on the line. No one is scooping to their opponent's mana screw, and those scenarios give every player at least a hope of winning the tournament. Otherwise, only the hardcore spikes would enter.

Feeling like you're got a chance whenever you sit down at the table opposite someone is a good thing and Magic the Gathering, for the most part, has that. Draw variance is a large component of that. Sometimes you've just got all the right cards or your opponent has all the wrong cards or make runner runner top decks to close out a match and it's all super exciting. One of the consequences of the system as it stands is that there's some amount of games where you are on the far end of the bell curve and rather than provide a random element to the outcome it instead 100% decides the outcome before the game has started. It doesn't happen very often but it does happen and it happens to players at the highest levels of the game. When I'm watching the finals of an event and someone just gets fucked in two of their three games it makes the whole thing look ridiculous.

I keep feeling like you're defending events that take place 3+ standard deviations to the left of the mean because you see, rightfully so, the other nine games out of ten where that variance didn't create a pre-turn one failure state. I'm on board with you for that. I don't think there's anything to be done to change the game either. As I said before there might be a little room to make the mulligans in Standard and in Limited a little less punishing. That's it. I'm just not going to pretend that those unlikely events do anything positive for the game. They don't.

They made mulligans less punishing by adding scry 1 to mulligans.

Sterling said:

They made mulligans less punishing by adding scry 1 to mulligans.

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I'm aware. For Standard and Limited it could be Scry X where X equals how many times you mulliganed.

I started digging through my singles last night to see if there was anything of value. 6x Mox diamond and 3x Lions eye diamond later and even though I sold off all my best cards twenty years ago, some of this stuff has really appreciated.

Mist said:

If you've got stuff from that era, Lotus Petals are like 7-9 dollars each depending on condition.

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Thanks, I noticed I had a stack of those last night, they were common so I didn't even consider them. Anything below rare was thrown into the bulk box.