yay.

R.I.P. "damage on stack, okay?"

I have a bunch of cards from many years ago, the first wide release. I tried playing with them, recently, but people freaked out. They barely work with the game now. That pretty much convinced me I'll never play it again, because I'm not going to shell out for a bunch of new cards.

now, games in the 1st category last only as long as the phenomenon they're tied with matters: lotr and wotc's star wars pretty much ended within months after last movie in each franchise came out; pokemon and yogioh still have somewhat strong following, but nowhere near as strong as when their cartoons wore the hottest shit around for kids (and, to be honest, yugioh has quite decent gameplay mechanics: they simplified magic and added tons of new stuff. if they were never tied to that idiotic cartoon... sure, they would never reach the popularity they had 4 years ago, but they would be enjoying permanent steady increase in player base. this way, once the interest for anime went out it took the players as well. also, compared to mtg their tournaments have INSANE prizes).

problem with games that were made for fans of x movie/comic/tv show/whatever is that 99% of their creators don't even try: they just trow together dumb mechanics and/or "borrow" them from other games and pay extra attention to get pretty pictures of characters on cards. and for all intents and purposes, it's enough: these games are generally never supposed to evolve or become popular at tournaments around the world. they are meant to be played in basement with your friends, while dressed up as obi-wan/spiderman.

notable exception would be versus system. it's very well designed, started right off with around-the-world tournament circle (à la magic's GPs and PTs), had excellent promotion... and died less then 5 years from it's launch.

m:tg has been around since 1993. I started playing in 2001. in these 8 years I never once got a feeling they're running out of ideas for cards or expansions (sure, couple of times I had the feeling they are going insane *COUGH skullclamp goyf COUGH*). and it's because the core concept of game isn't tied to anything. hell, it's not even fantasy anymore. when people grew tired of dominaria, they just said "fuck it", blew that world up and started creating new worlds/planes.

"people like this yugioh shit right? they also like ninjas and samurais? lets make kamigawa!"; "how about some eastern europe mythology? well, hello there ravnica."

by not being forced to go in pre-set direction, they are open to go in all of them (when 1st season of heroes was starting, I felt that it was their greatest advantage: by not doing jla or x-men show, producers were free to go in all and any direction they wanted to. too bad they settled on "direction: shit").

only other tcgs that tried doing their own thing are hecatomb (seemed equally insanely fun and crazy to play, survived for the whole 3 months before being put down) and vampire (crazy good game, around almost as long as magic, lived trough change of publisher. tons of my friends have been playing it for years, lately started becoming more and more popular. so, I guess that twilight was good for at least something.)

whoa, I think I got carried away a bit here, all I wanted to say was that magic was around for more then 15 years, and it's not going away anytime soon.

and by the time I wrote all of this, wotc probably released another expansion. ba-dum-ching!

might as well try some new books. having them as result of buying fat packs and all...

as for the lack of mana burn in new rules, I don't think it'll have that much of an impact one the game. although, check the current price of fire: that crap was 0.01$ two weeks ago.

mr.underwater: you should've had confiscated some of the cards they were playing with: these days alpha/beta basic lands go for about 15$. don't even get me started on how much you could get for power9.

Scorpio: dude... your post is still up there.

yeah. I know.

as for drunk magic... it frakkin' rules! a few years back we had this kind of major tournament. 8 towns with 8 players each, town vs. town. it was round robin, so 7 rounds played. the thing was, it was being held at the site that was basically a night club. and since it wasn't sanctioned, no pesky judges or organizers breathing behind your back if they spot a bottle. so, needless to say, by round 3 everyone was drunk. by round 5, plays being made started becoming quite epic.

the saddest thing is, in last round I lost to a guy who fell unconciousnes about 4 times during our match. and he still managed to get scion of darkness out twice in 2nd turn. which sucked.

Petty, I know, but I just found it too distracting...

Take your opponent's cards off him and give him a handful of shit in return.

Marvellous.