Magic: the rekindling
Two weeks ago, a thought got stuck in my head: What if I dug out my Magic cards and tinkered with them? It's been probably 5 years since I played regularly, and more than a decade since I paid serious attention to my full collection.
I've realized I don't really have offline hobbies, unless you consider fixing & cleaning ICHQ a hobby. 
So when I found some random, idle things to do 2 weeks ago, it reminded me I actually really like staying the hell away from my laptop for days at a time if I have something to occupy me.
I gave in and started carrying the boxes down from the attic and stacked them in the hallway upstairs (and wiped off a layer of grime, blech). A week went by while I resolved the stalemate: back to the attic, or downstairs? Finally, down they came to the Pub and my work began.
My cards. Mortin's cards. Spencer's cards. All mish-mashed and packed separately. I probably spent 6 hours on Saturday sorting them, getting them ready to merge. When you have ~30,000 cards, it's no small task to put them all in findable order.
I bought a couple Duel Decks and @CannonFodder & I played last night. I separated my cards from 2010 on (about 2,500) for a "fair" set to make casual decks from. I bought a box for my Commander deck. I plotted a possible drafting event for Expo this year. And so on and so on.
I find that when I start talking about Magic, folks start coming out of the woodwork. Folks who don't want to spend a bunch of money on it or spend days building tournament-level decks, but who enjoy playing. So I'm gonna work on that a little bit: keeping some Duel decks available at ICHQ; having a few ready-made Commander decks on hand; saving the packs I buy to draft with anyone who wants to join; that sort of thing. And maybe those 30,000 cards can see some use as an Icrontic Card Library. 
Comments
I just started buying Magic cards again last month (saw the 2015 Core deckbuilder set at Target for a good price, impulse bought it, bought a handful of boosters since and some other odds and ends). Also pulled out my old cards from previous IC drafts and eBay purchases. I keep running into the same problem that I always have though.... my real life friends in this area are few and far between, plus the one or two that actually play MtG work very different schedules than I now do.
I put together what I think will be a fun little standard deck, but I have no one to test it against. Oh well.
Anyone have tips for organizing the cards to make them more easy to build with? I don't have a whole lot of them at this point, but I figure keeping them organized in a sane system from the start would be best in case I get really into MtG this time.
Obvisouly you want to split them by color, and if you can, by creatures /instants/ sorce/ enchant/ etc.
Have your rares sorted the same way but appart from the common.
And then for me, building deck is usually looking at rares and trying to find somthing to do with one of them. Or thinking of a combo or wtv theme i feel like doing for a deck (i love tribal decks. Like i made a spider deck, just cause i could)
Inspiration for drck building can come from anywhere!
Just dont be disapointed if the deck is not as good as you wish...
One thing that tipped the scales for me was reading the announcement that Magic's annual release schedule is changing.
This is really great, from my perspective.
So my overall impression is, "why did it take so long to do this?"
I've completely lost interest in it. I mean if there's a game at ICHQ I'll play and have a good time, but outside of that I just don't have the time, money, or desire to even pick up my binders.
My friend got me into magic a long time ago and we played often over the years. A year or so ago he really got into high end tournament level decks and it became no fun to play against him since I was still on the casual level.
So the
caught my interest. If I'm ever over there again (very likely) I'd like to play just to play. I'll try to remember to bring my decks if possible.
i used to play with my sister when i was a kid...it might be fun to try it out again...would it be possible to set up a skype game from time to time?
My thinking is that when you move to that level, if you want to maintain the social aspect, you need to keep casual decks around to bring you back down to earth. If I used a nearly Classic-caliber deck to teach someone to play, that would suck. Build a fucking goblin deck and screw around.
Online playing personally doesn't interest me (neither virtual decks nor "telecommute") but maybe some other folks would want to. This extends to board games too. The point (for me) is not being in front of a screen. My life is already like 80% telecommute / online.
@Etchin and I still play every once in a while with our duel decks. We also play with our 8 year old daughter. Game is still fun and engaging, I do wish that MTGO was better though, it seems like a huge turd of a game.
I used to play a lot, but these days I'm enjoying Hearthstone more than I ever enjoyed M:TG, but I'm still usually up for a draft. I wouldn't mind trying out some Magic variant games. @Colgere keeps saying that he's going to put together a deck for playing games in which everyone draws from the same library (I think there is a name for the variant but I can't remember it.) but it's been a long time coming.
However I may play again in the future, I would want to house-rule a separate deck for lands. The most frustrating thing about Magic is getting flooded or screwed with land (almost every game of Magic I've ever played, the loser feels that the loss is at least partly, if not mostly, the cause of poor land drawing), and Hearthstone fixes this problem. Magic could fix the problem also with only slight rules changes. Actually there are some other basic elements that make so much more sense in Hearthstone that it would be disappointing to go back to the way it's done in Magic....
Okay... Here's what I apparently want to do: Let's play Hearthstone with Magic cards
I think you are referring to any of the Cube formats as far as sharing a library. But I disagree with the whole idea of not having land in magic. I think the randomness of this mechanic actually makes magic what it is. I think learning how to play your deck the best you can no matter the circumstances is how you become a better player. It's amazing how one or two draws can turn any game around.
Land is one of my favorite Magic mechanics. The Zendikar block, which revolved around land mechanics, was possibly the most popular of the last decade, and my favorite of all time.
Have @mertesn bring The Spoils to EPIC. It's like Magic but better in every way. Also, it has a weiner collector card; a dude with a literal bucket of dicks.
Yeah...a friend who also played kept a tally on one of his copies to keep track of his weiner bucket finishes.
Inkmoth Nexus FTW.
speaking of lands, Zoetic Cavern + all this morph / manifest action in Tarkir Block? me likes.
I really only like playing drafts anymore. It's relatively inexpensive and provides the most fun in most cases.
That's my primary way I like to play, too, outside of super-casual games when folks don't want to spend any money. The revisions they made to the block schedule, in my opinion, make it easier to draft your way to a half-decent Standard deck tho, by focusing it on the blocks. I groaned every time the group at the card shop decided they wanted to draft core set. What a waste.
For those that do like MTG online you can get Magic 2015 - Duels of the Planeswalkers Special Edition (includes Garruk's Revenge Expansion) along with a bunch of other online card games in the current Humble Bundle. Deal is good for a couple more weeks and includes Mojang's Scrolls also.
Bought.
Ugh, I bought MtG:O when I bought the 2015 core set the other week. Is it just me, or is there no way to actually get cards in it except to actually buy them? As in... you have to buy the game and then buy electronic cards too? Dis sum bullshit.
It occurs to me that, with land management such a central theme of the game, this is kinda like saying "the loss is at least partly, if not mostly, to not drawing the cards they needed" or even "being dealt damage". No kidding?
I feel like this ultimately comes down to the same argument as whether to play Catan with dice or a deck of numbered cards with perfect numeric distribution. There's an element of chance in the single game that gets smoothed out over multiple games. That's the point of the best-of-3 match format. You can refactor out that chance, but now you're playing a different game.
I can agree with that. Also take look at all the pros. Some of the best people on the planet will have around 50% win/loss ratio. In magic you are going to lose, even if you play your cards to the best ability every time. It's kind of like hitting in baseball. You have to realize that every game is not going to be in your favor, and make the best from what you are dealt.
http://archive.wizards.com/Magic/magazine/halloffame.aspx?x=mtgevent/hofplayer/jfinkel
I can see that, but from a purely "Is this a fun game to play?" perspective, I'd rather lose from damage or poor spell and creature draws than from not drawing exactly the right number of lands.
Drawing and playing standard land is the most boring part of the game. It's mostly an automatic process, and I think it would increase the fun of the game if you just got one land per turn automagically played into your tableau from a separate stack instead, and let your hand concentrate on spells and creatures, the interesting stuff.
I'm not saying everyone should switch to this rule forever, but I think it would be a fun variant to try out and see how it works (and would be especially useful in a cube format).
Part of the issue is what you blame for losing, too. Just this past Sunday, @CannonFodder and I were playing a game where I could tell he was frustrated by drawing more lands than he wanted while I was pretty happy with mine. Then he won. Did he blame winning on too many lands?
But I bet if I'd manage to pull it off, imperfect land drawing woulda been the "reason" cited. In reality, the extra lands probably kept him alive because it made it harder to use some of my spells when he had that much mana available.
It's just Magic's ultimate fall guy. If you need a perfect land draw to win, you're doin' it wrong.
I would assume this is not the case. It should be the same as the physical game in that certain cards just aren't going to show up that often and you'll have to purchase or trade to get one or more.
I wasn't able to figure it out.... I went to build a deck but it told me I had no cards. Couldn't figure out how you GET any cards though except through in-game purchases.
Ah, I misunderstood your previous statement. Generally speaking, a real-world purchase does not provide virtual goods. I believe they are treated as two separate entities with an occasional cross-promotion.
Btw guys, Fate Reforge comes out today. It's full of dragons. Go buy it!
DRAGONS!
Ooh.... fellow Magicers (Magicians? What does one call someone who plays MtG?)... Could you post some suggestions for various items that are useful to have when playing? Ex: suggestions for good tokens (add +1/+1 token to creature), life counters (or is it best to just use a smartphone app for that?), token creatures, etc.
Also, anyone have suggestions for storing cards in a non-binder fashion? I generally find that binders take up too much space, and they tend to be rather pricey.