The Shrine

Also, what sets is your collection primarily from?

I have tons from 4th edition, some antiquities, legends, dark, arabian nights one, unlimited, and I got out as ice age came in. They worth anything nowadays? I know they became useless once Magic decided to reinvent itself and essentially ban all of the previous sets. That really pissed me off

My cards are a little later than Zeus's. I have a bunch of Revised edition and beyond. E-mail me your address, I've been real busy with CPA exam studying, but soon i'll have sat for it and i'll have time to sift through my cards, send you some uncommons and crappy rares for free and tally up the good rares and give you a 'rip off myself' price.

Zeus wrote:I have tons from 4th edition, some antiquities, legends, dark, arabian nights one, unlimited, and I got out as ice age came in. They worth anything nowadays? I know they became useless once Magic decided to reinvent itself and essentially ban all of the previous sets. That really pissed me off

They may be "useless", but actually a lot of the "banned" cards you're talking about are quite valuable now. The old-school dual lands (Taiga, Scrubland, et cetera) are around $20 apiece...Cities of Brass from Arabians are probably around there too, since they've been reprinted. A lot of Legends are quite valuable and a lot of Magic players like old-school stuff. Most likely you have some stuff worth something to collectors.

Flip: Please do! You don't have to do a "rip yourself off" price but I am sort of broke these days and wouldn't be able to afford a huge bulk purchase. Let me know what you've got.

Not everybody plays Type II games. I loved to play Type I decks, because there's so many cards out there.

I played Type II when i did play because i could compete and do well in that format. There were like 2 guys in my area who would always win the Type I tournaments because they had all the Moxes, Black Lotuses, Timewalks, and all that other leet crap... sucked for players like me who didnt enter the game when it first began.

Well, I mostly play at a "competitive" level (yeah, right! ), so Type II is the format I like to play best (though I've been considering playing some Block as well).

Flip wrote:I played Type II when i did play because i could compete and do well in that format. There were like 2 guys in my area who would always win the Type I tournaments because they had all the Moxes, Black Lotuses, Timewalks, and all that other leet crap... sucked for players like me who didnt enter the game when it first began.

All you have to do with those guys is pull out Sherahazad and Fork it a couple of times. They'd quite in frustration :-)

Proxy cards, too. As long as the card exists in Magic's database, you could go for a proxy card. I didn't play tourneys anyway, so I wasn't losing anything. I have seen plenty of bullshit decks, but that's why I loved playing multi-player games. People's two player decks weren't as effective with more than one. I still have my Mana Flare/X deck, though I'd been trying to balance somethings with it to counter counters. (Getting a 25-point fireball countered sucks.)

Zeus wrote:All you have to do with those guys is pull out Sherahazad and Fork it a couple of times. They'd quite in frustration

That's Shahrazad. And yes, that's pretty evil. Sounds like a job for counters, definately. (Surprised it's not a banned card, though.) There were plenty of good two-hit combos, but I've forgot most of them.

Just for the hell of it, I created a possible Apocolypse deck:

4 Battlefield Forge
4 Caves of Koilos
4 Llanowar Wastes
4 Shivan Reef
4 Yavimaya Coast
4 Plains
4 Swamps
--
28

4 Death Grasp
2 Gerrard’s Verdict
4 Soul Link
2 Squee’s Embrace
4 Fervent Charge
--
18

4 Putrid Warrior
4 Spiritmonger
2 Jungle Barrier
2 Lightning Angel
2 Fungal Shambler
4 Cromat
--
18

SineSwiper wrote:Proxy cards, too. As long as the card exists in Magic's database, you could go for a proxy card. I didn't play tourneys anyway, so I wasn't losing anything. I have seen plenty of bullshit decks, but that's why I loved playing multi-player games. People's two player decks weren't as effective with more than one. I still have my Mana Flare/X deck, though I'd been trying to balance somethings with it to counter counters. (Getting a 25-point fireball countered sucks.)

Zeus wrote:All you have to do with those guys is pull out Sherahazad and Fork it a couple of times. They'd quite in frustration

That's Shahrazad. And yes, that's pretty evil. Sounds like a job for counters, definately. (Surprised it's not a banned card, though.) There were plenty of good two-hit combos, but I've forgot most of them.

Dude! I'm not positive, but I think Shahrazad was banned in every competitive format when I played Magic the <i>first</i> time, ten years ago.

It's not banned in Type I and 1.5 now according to Gatherer, but when you're talking about Type I and 1.5 these days (Vintage and Legacy respectively I think), Shahrazad just isn't that powerful a card. With the so-called "power nine" (or ten, depending on if one includes Library of Alexandria) playable - Black Lotus, Moxes, Ancestral Recall, Timewalk, and Timetwister - as well as access to almost every powerful card since then, I've heard (though not seen) that most competitive decks are trying to win on the first or second turn. Losing half your life just isn't really *that* serious a drawback in those formats...assuming you even did lose the subgame. Shahrazad is most definitely not legal in any modern format. Check the "Legal In:" section in Gatherer.

Lose in the first hand or two? This is why Magic has gotten insane. Back in the day, a good commons deck (a Pestilence deck was quite popular) could beat anything, if put together properly. There was actual strategy involved and anyone could win at any time. Now it's all about who has the coin to get the best cards. Different game types just means different cards to go after

I quit when the sets just got to be too frequent. I had a solid white tournament type II deck that worked great and when sets came out i might have replaced a few cards from it... eventually, though, Type II would change and replace the whole base set, thus forsing me to rework the whole thing. After a few cycles of having to replace whole decks i got tired of it.

Plus rule changes (Waylay was one i remember well) put a hurting on white weenie decks, every set has their own agenda so its hard to stick with one concept and have it win.

Zeus wrote:Lose in the first hand or two? This is why Magic has gotten insane. Back in the day, a good commons deck (a Pestilence deck was quite popular) could beat anything, if put together properly. There was actual strategy involved and anyone could win at any time. Now it's all about who has the coin to get the best cards. Different game types just means different cards to go after

Well, that's what the banned and restricted cards are supposed to offset. But, I don't think they keep up with them enough because they only care about Type II rules.

Mental wrote:With the so-called "power nine" (or ten, depending on if one includes Library of Alexandria) playable - Black Lotus, Moxes, Ancestral Recall, Timewalk, and Timetwister - as well as access to almost every powerful card since then, I've heard (though not seen) that most competitive decks are trying to win on the first or second turn.

Black Lotus is banned. All Moxes are restricted. Time Walk is banned. Timetwister is banned. Therefore, none of those decks are even Type I legal.

I don't think so. I don't know really what the difference between Type I and Type 1.5 is, but I really do think that in at least one of them the whole "power ten" are only restricted.

I actually do like the concept of Block rotation. I mean, you "have" to keep buying new product to stay competitive...but really you don't even have to do that - if you're an able trader, you can just trade your older block cards for newer and stay competitive that way.

There's not much of a way around the Type I overpower problem. As more cards are printed, the "net" of possibilities and interactions grows and the potential for decks to become more flexible and able grows with it, as the two are highly connected. The only way I could think of to stop that would be for Wizards to stop printing new cards, but honestly the Type II format, purely as a game, is a lot more balanced than the older formats ever were. I really like the revolving block concept. The game doesn't stagnate, because it's always evolving. It creates the possibility for new art and new kinds of gameplay. It does get expensive buying packs, especially as I really enjoy draft formats of play, but really, this is one game where I'm quite happy to be a "sucker".

Zeus wrote:Lose in the first hand or two? This is why Magic has gotten insane. Back in the day, a good commons deck (a Pestilence deck was quite popular) could beat anything, if put together properly. There was actual strategy involved and anyone could win at any time. Now it's all about who has the coin to get the best cards. Different game types just means different cards to go after

Also, Zeus, this is not true. Back in the day, a player with the "power nine" or other powerful rare cards had a very serious advantage over someone without one. Rare and more expensive cards have been part of the game since the very beginning. And players can still put together decks full of commons that are moderately competitive. The overall concepts of "power" and scarcity haven't really changed that significantly since the beginning of Magic.

Of only Magic hadn't gotten greedy with its last online PC game, people might actually be still playing it. (Buying virtual cards, are you fucking insane?!?) Hell, I would love to continue playing it, but I don't have the money nor the players who play it any more.

Mental wrote:

Zeus wrote:Lose in the first hand or two? This is why Magic has gotten insane. Back in the day, a good commons deck (a Pestilence deck was quite popular) could beat anything, if put together properly. There was actual strategy involved and anyone could win at any time. Now it's all about who has the coin to get the best cards. Different game types just means different cards to go after

Also, Zeus, this is not true. Back in the day, a player with the "power nine" or other powerful rare cards had a very serious advantage over someone without one. Rare and more expensive cards have been part of the game since the very beginning. And players can still put together decks full of commons that are moderately competitive. The overall concepts of "power" and scarcity haven't really changed that significantly since the beginning of Magic.

I disagree. Before they changed up the rules and started re-releasing the cards, I saw people get destroyed with commons decks. Yeah, if you had the Lotus, Timewalker, Moxes, and stuff like that, you were likely gonna win, but you still had to work for it against, say, a well-designed pestilence deck. Even someone with Forks and big creatures like the Shavon Dragon were amazing cards to have, but you still had to work at it. A commons/uncommon deck with a few rares still stood a chance. Nowadays, sure, you can be a little competitive, but there are SO many powerful cards in the uncommon/rare category that you just can't survive without a decent amount of them. So many require so little land to cast (this is talking a few years back now, after 4th and 5th and Ice Age) that it just shifted the balance of power and essentially forced you to go out and collect the cards to compete. That's when I got out.

SineSwiper wrote:Of only Magic hadn't gotten greedy with its last online PC game, people might actually be still playing it. (Buying virtual cards, are you fucking insane?!?) Hell, I would love to continue playing it, but I don't have the money nor the players who play it any more.

People *are* still playing it.

Zeus: Pestilence was an amazing card. You may have something there, actually...thinking about it, a card like that might be uncommon or rare if printed today. I don't know; you may be right, the balance may have shifted a little bit in favor of more powerful rare cards. Still though, to me, the game hasn't changed *that* much since it first came out, and I generally think the changes are for the better.