Magic: The Gardening

[Nai_Calus]

Why the fuck do I have like 500 cards for this game when I don't even play it? WHY.

Someone learn me this shit so I can at least pretend to do something useful with it.

[Dhylec]

use them to cultivate magical pumpkinz & such
i heard cinderella needing one for her ball

[HAYABUSA-FMW-]

Activate Trap card, I suppose.

[SpikeOtacon]

Gotta brush up with the proper literature, as all nerds must.

http://sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-snc3/hs234.snc3/22149_272312394668_522274668_4408201_3518838_n.jpg

[SStrikerR]

Why the fuck do I have like 500 cards for this game when I don't even play it? WHY.

My thoughts exactly...

[Kyrith_Ranger_Pso]

well, i play this game pretty darn often so.... basically you have lands, you can play one of those a turn, and then basic lands can be tapped (turned sideways) for their corresponing color of mana, the mana is used to play spells which is everything else, you can play creatures enchantments or artifacts which stay permanently while a sorcery or instant is not, instants can be played whenever, sorceries can only be played during your turn, but not during combat. combat damage is dealt from one creatures power to the others toughness, having 0 toughness kills a creature, or taking damage equal to the toughness of the creature also kills it. each player starts with 20 life in a basic game, get them to zero and you win.

theres a lot more to it then that, but those are the basics of the basics

[Sayara]

PLAINWALKERS

[Palle]

Planewalkers were cool too, but that was a different game.

Game balance started to erode in Ice Age, that's when I stopped collecting. Still have around 1100 cards packed away. Sad, really.

[Randomness]

Planewalkers were cool too, but that was a different game.

Game balance started to erode in Ice Age, that's when I stopped collecting. Still have around 1100 cards packed away. Sad, really.

Dunno, but I wouldn't call the early game balanced, what with Serra Angel cut once for being too strong of a creature, and things like Ancestral Recall, Timetwister, Time Walk, and "Blue gets to do everything".

[Palle]

True, those are the recollections of a 15-year old 17 years later, just seemed like overpowered creatures got cheaper and cheaper.

...and funny you should mention blue/serra, they were the foundation of my holy water deck which made me pretty unpopular for a while there. 4x Icy Manipulator + 4x Counterspell + 4x Magical Hack. Friendships were ended.

[Randomness]

Blue was broken to hell and back for the first several years from what I've heard.

[Palle]

Could be, but I've been manhandled by straight red and zerg-rush green/black too. Goddam lawnmower elves.

[Randomness]

Could be, but I've been manhandled by straight red and zerg-rush green/black too. Goddam lawnmower elves.

I'm talking about the early years, before they seriously stuck to dividing abilities between colors. Blue could, quite literally, do everything. I mean, look at Prodigal sorcerer. Repeatable. Cheap. Efficient. DIRECT DAMAGE. (Which, currently, is almost exclusively a red ability, with green getting stuff like Arena and flyer-shooting and black life loss)

[Tetsaru]

One of my friends recently got back into Magic. I still have some cards, but most of them reside with another friend of mine. Basically, we all put our cards into one large collection, and everyone just looked through them and made decks as they needed.

I also still have most of my old Pokemon cards (recently gave a bunch to ANOTHER friend who started collecting the old ones again out of nostalgia) and my 10+ year collection of Yu-gi-oh! cards, to which I should have pictures of in one of the older FKL threads, I think. It's just that no one I know really plays much anymore these days, or else they've moved away. :(

Also, a Magic: The Gathering game recently got on PSN, though I think Xbox Live had it a lot earlier. I really need to fix my PS3 soon so I can get it...

And yeah, blue cards were broken way back in the day. I remember playing a game against this one guy at a convention who had a really old blue deck; he was drawing extra turn cards out the ass and was eventually able to lock me down to where I couldn't do anything. I still play blue/white most of the time, though. :p

And LOL and "Lawnmower Elves." Reminds me of how my friends and I would make up goofy names for Yugioh cards, like "Pot of Weed" (Pot of Greed) or "Busted Bladder" (Buster Blader). :D

[Palle]

I'm talking about the early years, before they seriously stuck to dividing abilities between colors.

This has actually got me curious enough to want to read through those cards again, since I haven't really laid eyes on them since 1996. I wonder what I'd think of the balance today as opposed to back then.

Next time I head back East and dig through my parents' attic...

[Nai_Calus]

I need to hunt down some 7th Edition Llanowar Elves, the art didn't suck as much as the current art(Or the old even uglier art for them).

I still only have one deck. Unsurprisingly, it's elves.

Here, have a list:

19x Forest
1x Turntimber Grove
1x Nissa Revane
3x Nissa's Chosen
2x Imperious Perfect
1x Immaculate Magistrate
4x Priest of Titania
1x Fauna Shaman
1x Lys Alana Huntmaster
1x Heedless One
1x Drove of Elves
1x Jagged-Scar Archers
4x Llanowar Elves
1x Fyndhorn Elves
2x Elvish Hunter
3x Elvish Visionary
1x Quirion Ranger
1x Elvish Skysweeper
1x Wirewood Herald
1x Taunting Elf
1x Viridian Shaman
1x Wellwisher
1x Elvish Lookout
1x Elvish Promenade
1x Naturalize
1x Elvish Guidance
1x Nature's Spiral
1x Asceticism
1x Coat of Arms
1x Whispersilk Cloak

Yes, I should be running 4 or at least 2 or 3 of some of those cards and losing some of the more random shit, and it'd probably be a good idea to have more than one Nissa in there and some better way to protect her(Doubling Season so she'd start with 4 loyalty counters to get her out of range of shit like Lightning Bolt would be good, not to mention lulz with my elf tokengen, but fuck $20 cards), but it took me too damned long to track one of the bitch down, screw two or four. Also screw ebay, I'd rather support my FLGS.

I've used it as it currently is(It used to be far worse) for casual a few times and it's done fairly well. Done a decent job of winning, though I haven't played anyone running mass removal with it yet, which will do a great job of eating it alive. Which is fine, since I have fun simply sitting there creating ridiculous amounts of mana, gaining ridiculous amounts of life if I get the right cards out, and throwing ridiculous amounts of elves out, even if I lose. :P

I'm thinking mono white or maybe white/red for my next deck. Possibly white/blue since I *wanted* to do a blue deck but don't have enough good blue cards. I don't like black much. I can do something vaguely useful with White, I think. Work it out, figure out what cards would be best, throw them together. I play with my D&D group who is frequently hardcore casual and has a few decks thrown together almost entirely from the nickel box. (Also I'm sad, I went through the entire Forest section of the basic land box and they only had two Ravnica forests. I love Ravnica forests. Though Zendikar is spiffy too.)

[Kyrith_Ranger_Pso]

about balance, the old cards were very very unbalanced, there is a reason for "standard" being only 2 blocks, the cards of today are probably better on average, but there are less totally OP cards. and things that are just worthless.

[Fox2Tails]

I started playing [read: when I fully knew how to play lol] during Zendikar [I'm such a newbie compared to most :(] and I have 5 decks. White Angels[Legacy], White Knights [Type 2], White/Blue Allies [Type 2], Blue/White/Black Master Transmuter abuse [Legacy] and Black/Blue Infect [Type 2]

[Abashi76]

Anybody here play the online game?

[Mustache]

Yes, there is a power creep with creatures and more recently with burn, which was intentional. As well as a creep in the opposite direction for artifact mana generation and counterspells, which where too cheaply costed for aggro to have a fair chance. Ice age and earlier a combination of good counters, Zuran Orb, and what ever way you want to run you donates gave the field an absolutely uneven playing ground. With years of Wizards doing power creeps on cards to slowly mold a balance field we have this wonderful triangle of Control, Aggro, Combo that plays like a rock, paper, scissors game. We haven't printed anything nearly as powerful as Mishra's Factory in years and years.

So while creatures creeped up it's only to put them on par with non-creature spells. I've been playing the game for....10ish years, my collection is easily 50k strong, and I play in every PTQ and GP that comes my way.

[Kaziel]

Anybody here play the online game?

Yeah, I got it for XBL. A note to the hardcore Green Thumb Gardeners out there though: *don't get the video game*

It's lots of fun if you play casual, but if you like deck customization or building, the game has ZERO. Other than that, it's pretty good. Deck balance is ok.

[Tetsaru]

Yeah, I got the Duels of the Planeswalkers game for PS3... it's fun, but the lack of deck customization nearly killed it for me. I guess they were trying to keep things balanced in some way... :confused:

If you guys like playing card games online though, I'd suggest looking into OCTGN2. It allows you to install rules and card sets for different games like Magic, Yugioh, etc., provided you can find all the proper files for each game you want to play, and keep them updated regularly.

[Kaziel]

There was a really good "homebrew" game that I remember I played on my friend's PSP. It had all the magic cards up to date, and you could add expansion packs by copying folders to the flash card. Looked really nice, but was kinda small for me. It kept freezing after 3 consecutive matches, but featured full AI and I think player vs player. It's out there somewhere.

Pretty good for freeware.

[Sord]

Over 3k cards last I counted (admittedly a quarter or less is just land) but that was a year or two ago. I've tacked on a few fat packs, intro decks, and maybe a booster box since then.

I don't get to play others outside of family and a couple friends that much though, not a very big following in my area. Yu-Gi-Oh dominates card shops around here for whatever reason (possibly because it has a half-hour long commercial.) The one shop I used to go to closed down ages ago.