The reason I quit is more out of my own stupidity than anything else. Back in the nineties you could hop into magic in one of several ways. You could buy preconstructed theme decks (which weren't very inspired back then), you could dive into random booster packs, or you could buy starter packs. Having little knowledge of just how the rarity of cards worked I assumed that everything you bought outside of preconstructed decks was totally random, including starter packs. So a friend and I bought some starters, opened them up and had a blast. Well, a few months later I had sunk a pretty significant amount of my allowance on starter packs since they gave you the highest quantity of cards for your money. The problem was that they included no rares. So when I sat down at the table with a different group of Magic players who had been buying up boosters I got hosed over and over again. I got rid of my cards and didn't play again until a couple of years ago.
A lot of gamers have an issue with products that randomly dole out content like Magic does, and understandably so. For a long time it really was a matter of who spent the most money on the game being the "best" (or at least most winningest) player. I would argue that there are so many ways to collect and play, that Magic isn't the money pit it used to be. And besides that, it has by far the greatest quality control and research and design of any card game on the market today. That may be an opinion, but seriously, if you don't believe me go and read the blogs of the R&D guys. If you can be as open and candid about the mistakes you've made in your job, it means you're doing so many other things so, so right that you've achieved professional baller status in your bosses eyes.
Ball so hard.
Recently I was able to wrangle a couple of classmates into a game of Magic on a slow workday. Both had fun, but one was really into it and has since gone on to begin his own collection. Not only that, but he's roped two more friends into it as well, and plays regularly. That makes me happy to have turned somebody on to something I have a passion for, and that he was able to spread that around too. How I was able to do this though is the point of this article.
Magic is played in a wide variety of ways. It's been around so long, and has such a wide fan base that tons of cool ways to play have been invented. One which intrigued me was the Cube. The concept behind the cube is you build booster packs out your favorite cards and draft them, exactly as if you were opening new packs of cards and drafting those (open a pack, take your first pick, pass the rest on to the next drafter, continue till no cards are left, open another). After you've drafted, you build a deck out of the cards you've kept and play with them. It's great because you use only your favorite cards from your collection and you can fine tune your cube indefinitely. The only downside is that drafting is an advanced concept, and new players will be totally lost if thrown into it. It's no way to teach the game.
So I tried to simplify it by making a stripped down pauper cube. Pauper is another mode of play wherein only common and uncommon cards are allowed for play, no rares or mythic rares, which tend to be more complicated and powerful. I made a collection of cards that where all the most simple and useful cards and grouped them by color. That way new players could just peruse the cards available and take thirteen creatures they found interesting, ten other spells which looked or sounded cool and then seventeen lands. That way players each had a forty card deck of a single color which was easy to understand and play. This is what we played that afternoon that got my buddy hooked. But still there had to be a way to make it even easier for everyone involved.
Some people still feel overwhelmed when asked to just go through a stack of cards and pick out which cards they think are cool. Some start second guessing and lock up because they aren't sure what's a good pick and what will help them win. Magic is a deep game, with so many moving parts that even in a stripped down mode like this it's still daunting. So with all that in mind, I revised my pauper cube into the form it takes now:
I decided to make modular decks. Each of the above stacks of cards contains 18 spell cards and 12 land cards, for a total of 30 cards. Each of those sets is a mono colored strategy that when combined with a second stack of cards makes you a complete 60 card deck. Now players simply look at the strategy each stack offers and simply picks two separate colored stacks that they find interesting and shuffles them into a single deck (nobody gets to pick the same color twice because it's too difficult to separate the stacks back when they are all the same color). It seems to work well and I tried to offer two completely different facets to each color so that new players really get a sense of not only what each color is about, but how diverse the strategies can be within each color and when mixed with a second color.
Some examples of the strategies in a color are the green "Rample" deck, which mana ramps with cards like Llanowar Elves and Abundant Growth until it can get the biggest, baddest creature onto the field, meanwhile tossing out buff spells to keep the enemy guessing. The flip side of green is the "Snackrifice" deck which makes use of small creatures with Deathtouch. You don't mind throwing these little guys at larger monsters because Deathtouch means they'll take them to the graveyard with them, meanwhile buffing your larger creatures who profit from a large graveyard.
The best part is that they all fit perfectly into a fat-pack box. I used card stock to make dividers between the deck components with the name of the strategy and a brief summary of what it wants to accomplish so newbies can get a quick grasp of what they should be looking out for. I can pop this into a book bag or just about anything and have an easy way to bust open a game of magic on the fly. No reorganizing and reshuffling massive amounts of cards. Just separate by color and toss it in the box. End of story.
For those of you who are on the fence about Magic, there are several ways to hop in without busting your bank. Every new set of Magic that is released has Event Decks which are pretty badass ways of hopping into competitive play. They are a complete 60 card deck that will generally hold it's own at your local Friday Night Magic tournaments (with a bit of practice). They retail at $24.99.
If you don't have a collection of cards but are looking to do something more along the lines of what I've described in this article I strongly recommend a product to really launch you into the game at a very reasonable price. That's the Deck Builder's Toolkit, which contains 125 semi-random cards, 100 basic lands(which you will sorely need as a beginner) and a 4 booster packs of 15 cards each from some of the newest sets. This is a damn steal at $20, especially considering that most places will charge you that much for just 5 boosters. You could even buy two if you don't mind multiples of cards and you've pretty much got all the pieces of a pauper's cube.
Well, that's my two bits for Magic on a budget. Whether you love it or hate it, with a fan base as broad as this game has you are almost guaranteed to find opponents to get some mileage out of your cards.
