Magic 2099

"Hello and welcome!" as Mr. Buehler would say, to my new blog exclusively about Magic: the Gathering. Previously I have posted a tournament report on my other blog, but I have moved it here. There is no overarching theme to my other blog which veers wildly from intellectual politics to personal anecdotes, but very few of my readers would be willing to parse my various deck lists and those outside of the Magic's insular world do not care even to know about its general aspects for the most part.

However, I eagerly await the day when such is not the case. In fact, though I have no personal stake in the matter, I have long been interested in Magic's future as an enduring, classic game. This, then, will be the blog's "overarching theme," inspired partly by the recent announcement about the new base set and partly by my own renewed fervor for the game over the past year.

You see, I have played a great deal of Magic in the past year (I learned how in 1995). Draft, Sealed, Standard, Legacy, Classic, Extended, Shandalar; anything one-on-one and more or less competitive I will play it. The only format left for me is Cube (check out cubedrafting.com if you don't know it already), which sadly I have only been able to get a first taste of with the 'Drafting' simulator at ccgdecks.com.

While waiting to accumulate and trade for enough cards for a legitimate version of Cube draft, I started wondering about something. This game is clearly awesome, and I am obviously not alone in my fascination. My friend and mentor John has never even forgotten to check a spoiler on the internet since probably Mirage block. And yet even though my roommates have even more free time than I do and can barely fill it up with Command Conquer, Final Fantasy, GTA, and other games, they don't even seem slightly intrigued by the card game that I keep trying to sneakily mention. One even played a deck for a couple months in high school while into Warhammer 40K. So yes, they are geeks, and if there is any target audience for Magic over the age of 20, my roommates are in it. So what's the problem?

I can't remember whether the collecting or the gameplay itself attracted me to Magic originally, but over time I know that the gameplay has been much more interesting. It's also much less time- and resource-consuming, so why not have an alternative for those that just love the game and don't necessarily want to collect? Why not Magic: the Board Game--a version of Magic that can be simply opened up and played with by the "entire family" any given night, or more likely a bunch of guys drinking beers and hanging out.

Since I was enamored of draft lately, and Cube in particular, I began concocting an idea that some form of Cube--sealed or draft--could be the ideal entry point for a new or returning player. The latter is extremely relevant as many of my friends (and I believe this is a common phenomenon) quit the game and might be up for a "pick-up" game if it was possible. Limited half solves this, I thought: the deck-building is only with what you have on hand, but what about the complexity of tons of new cards? Won't it be annoying to read a bunch of cards in each booster?

Limited also "denies the denier" by negating the biggest critique everyone always has of the game--"It's all about who has the most money to buy the best cards." Denying the denier is a phrase fast-food businesses use to justify salads being on their menu no matter what the profit. A kid begging mommy for McDonald's can always say "You can get a salad, see?" to any protest for health reasons. That example actually works better if it's a couple, hmm. Regardless, the equivalent for Magic is cost, and it's just as legitimate as with McDonald's. But if the cost can be spread out and equalized, or made to last a bit longer, that would negate it. People spend lots of money on poker, but everyone buys in for the same fixed amount (barring rebuys) so it's OK. People don't mind spending on hundreds on a video game system because the system's cost will be amortized with each different game they try on it, and the object will last a long time (though shorter and shorter with each iteration...)

So we come back to the biggest issue with the game: rules complexity. This game is just amazingly deep and complex. I am not sure if any other game can go as deep, even though many are more confusing to begin with. I've played for well over a decade and still forgot the Reveillark interaction with Wrath of God in the final minutes of the last round when tired (I am not proud). The cute little rulebooks that used to come with starters have long since been done away with, which pretty much says it all. You can't sum up the rules in their entirety on a two-ply piece of paper in a box. And yet you can explain it easily in five minutes, as we all know. Because there are a wide variety of levels in how one can appreciate and understand the game. At the same tournament as my shameful mistake, I met a girl who told me she had played with buddies for as long as I had, and she was cute too! She had played that long, and yet thought I could not attack with a creature I had flashed into play at the end of her turn because it had summoning sickness. This made me realize, though--the complexity is the strategy. It's not a barrier to entry, it just makes you a better player. So why should it keep Magic from lasting as a game that becomes traditional and 'classic'?

Plus, I began to realize, if it's just simple cards in a box isn't it just a base set? What would be the difference between this Cube For Everyone and a box of the latest base set? Moreover, I remember another episode when I successfully converted a friend to the game when he had expressed interest in its art. I went out and bought a bunch of Time Spiral packs and decided we'd have a mini-sealed tournament. A third friend got in on the action and was also interested. However, it gradually danwed on me that I had probably the chosen the absolute worst set to any beginning player. To me it was all familiar territory done in an interesting way since there were no new mechanics, but for them there were dozens of new concepts and fifteen years of the game's history in their face. It may not have helped that I played against them and of course won using rules that they could not have known about. Nevertheless, the first friend was a quick study and actually said the complexity made it more interesting than his first glimpse at base set cards that was quickly stale. But the third friend couldn't handle more than a couple games before zoning out and giving up. What was really interesting was my friend that said the complex interactions were what really got him more than simply curious about the game.

So maybe the core set idea is just going about it all wrong. There could be an even smaller "set" that would be more like a board game you could just buy and it would be closer to a Cube than anything else, and eventually it could be the legacy of Magic for generations: its own card game that everyone knows about and could play just like Tarot, Bridge, or Gin Rummy, consisting of all the greatest most fun cards from all sets whittled down into a tiny box. But what would be tying them together if not simplicity, cost, or format?

Then the aforementioned announcement came out on magicthegathering.com -- flavor! Yes, that is what originally intrigued me, not the game mechanics or the fact that you can collect cards, but the concept of "countering" a "spell" and the art on its card. The guys at Wizards are smart people, I must say, and I tip my hat

But M2010 is not M2099....