Magic: The Gathering and other card-based RPGs

I love this game.

Magic the Gathering?

I know nothing about it. How do you play?

Very superficially: You have a deck, 20 life, shuffle it and then draw 7 cards. You draw a card at the beginning of each turn. You may play one land per turn, the lands provide mana for your other spells. Those spells are creatures, enchantments, artifacts, sorceries, instants and planeswalkers, and they all provide some help for you to defeat your opponent. Creatures can attack the defending player or block enemy creatures attacking you. When a player's life is 0, that player dies and the other player wins.

Oh right.

Just like gin rummy then.

(Actually, I understood everything you've written there right up to the word "deck".)

I'd actually love to play/teach you but you know, only its kinda not possible without an investment of time. There are some third party programs where you can play online but I think its funnest in paper and the second party program is kinda good but costs money.

I used to think card games like that were a very stupid idea, but I've been playing hearthstone for a couple months now and the concept finally appeals to me. It's very strategic. I think that's the main thing I like about it. It's also cool how every cards is a thing that can do other things. Regular cards are just numbers and suits. They don't do 2 fire damage to all enemy minions! Or turn into dragons.. and there aren't new cards you can get every once in a while, with new characters and new options and new ways to attack your enemy or defend against attacks.

Hearthstone is free, so if you ever want to try a game like that and see what it's about, that's one option. I found it very accessible. At times it was so good it made me want to eat pie.

Well on the off topic discussion, I didn't realize Heathstone was free so I'll have to remember to check it out. I bought a couple of older Mafic the Gathering PC games, but they are horribly coded and full of terrible bugs including not having your progress saved.

warpus said:

I used to think card games like that were a very stupid idea, but I've been playing hearthstone for a couple months now and the concept finally appeals to me. It's very strategic. I think that's the main thing I like about it. It's also cool how every cards is a thing that can do other things. Regular cards are just numbers and suits. They don't do 2 fire damage to all enemy minions! Or turn into dragons.. and there aren't new cards you can get every once in a while, with new characters and new options and new ways to attack your enemy or defend against attacks.

Hearthstone is free, so if you ever want to try a game like that and see what it's about, that's one option. I found it very accessible. At times it was so good it made me want to eat pie.

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Hearthstone is a really well-designed game even if it's not as well-designed as Magic: the Gathering. The only reason I don't really play it is because I don't feel like grinding up for yet another play suite.

Magic the gathering might be better designed as a card game on paper, but the PC games based on it are atrocious.

bhavv said:

Magic the gathering might be better designed as a card game on paper, but the PC games based on it are atrocious.

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I don't disagree.

The Duels of the Planeswalkers games are the best games, they look good and play good and have decent AI, but deck building is extremely limited in those games (and deck building is a huge part of Magic, so that has always felt awkward).

There is an old game which is an RPG based around deckbuilding, but it's ridiculously hard and everything is kind of awkwardly handled - you ante cards, start with ridiculously low life, and the enemies you face have low life as well. So you basically have to abuse the game's flaws in order to win; basically an exploit game. You basically can't play slower decks until very late in the game. The basic idea is good (have a basic deck, walk around to get more cards for your deck, defeat the evil bosses of each color) but the execution is horrible.

Then there's Magic Online, and that's just the card game in computer format. So this should work, right? No. The interface is abysmal, the graphics are horrible, and you have to pay for all the cards you use, which would be fine if not for the crappy engine. There's a sizable playerbase though, with online tournament results being very important in order to understand the paper metagame if you want to be a tournament player. If you don't mind the shoddy interface and crappy-looking graphics, it's as deep as the regular card game.

I've played all three computer game types, see.

I'd like to see a game with the RPG idea (start with a few cards; win cards when defeating opponents; enter dungeons and beat special monsters to gather especially powerful cards; race against time with evil masters of mana taking over the world) without its poor poor design fallacies (that enemies are the same difficulty throughout the game, being insurmountable at the beginning of the game and a cakewalk later, the low starting life for both you and your enemies, the harsh harsh punishment of losing your deck's best card when losing a match) with Duels of the Planeswalkers graphics. That'd definitely work.

MTG does have great potential, but the lack of the depth of the card game, and all the bugs ruin it too much.

I remember Battleforge now, too bad the servers got shut down, it was fun card based RTS.

Battleforge was cool yeah, but I found the grind unfun to be honest. I think I actually bought a few boosters for that.

If I played CCGs more often, I'd be a Netrunner guy. Does that make me a Richard Garfield Pepsi to your Richard Garfield Coke?

The people I know who play Netrunner usually like it for having more complex core mechanics than Magic does. It's more Fanta to Coke, if it makes sense

I played Magic the Gathering between 1995 and 2000. I probably have some valuable cards in my box somewhere... I'm glad table-top RPGs stole my attention away from the massive investment Magic the Gathering can incur hehe. I'm not very competitive so I was always kindda stressed when actually playing the game, and I don't know why but Magic the Gathering was always more stressful than any other game I played, somehow it was a bit too serious for me. it's like I had more fun looking at the cards and making decks than actually playing it. Table-top RPGs and boardgames were better for me.

For a while I got along fine with the old Magic the Gathering game. It's true the newer ones seem sucky but the old one was fun. Here is Projared talking about it. http://youtu.be/MObQrUc7eqI

I still like the "atmosphere" of Magic and sometimes the cards can be used to make up interesting table-top RPG ideas.

I did enjoy the old game but I have to say it had some issues, and some severe ones at that. :/

A remake with better design principles would be excellent.

I remembered to try hearthstone, and I'm enjoying it a lot more than I dis the MTG PC games. Its much more polished, has single player progression,and the progression is saved!

I first bought the full premium version of MTG 2012 on offer - all cards and many fancy foils unlocked. No purpose at all to the single player stuff as everything came unlocked.

Then MTG 2013 - Yay, now I can play single player and unlock my cards ... The next time I load the game all my single player progress is gone and unlocked cards removed. The solution was to download a save with all unlocks and copy it to your save directory, the producers never fixed it.

Wow, I've had so many Hearthstone games where I'm reduced to 2-3 life while the opponent is on 20+ ... and then I still win!

Those are sooo amazing.

The problem with Hearthstone is that it is quite hard to get a competetive deck as a beginner.

To be fair, it is not so much that legendaries are strictly better than normal cards (some are, but most are not). But depending on what you get first you might have to stick to certain deck types you won't like. I was incredibly lucky and got 2 early control legendaries, so that did fit my playstyle quite well. But my friend was (in the early days) forced to play rushlock although he really doesn't like that kind of deck.

Still, one can't argue that HS certainly shows what a good computer based card game can do. The whole presentation with voiceover, effects and all that is top notch.