Magic: The Gathering

[Yellow Mage]

Perhaps more famously, however . . .

[Taskmage]

I built a Commander deck for S&G. Zero guesses who I picked as my commander because you shouldn't need any.

[Taskmage]

TIL Goblin Recruiter and Strip Mine are actually banned in Legacy <_<;

Legacy Format Deck Construction : Daily MTG : Magic: The Gathering

[cidbahamut]

And restricted in Vintage, which is why I only run one of each.

[Taskmage]

I think I'll stick to Standard/Modern after all. If we're talking about Vintage then that opens up all kinds of turn 2 kills and infinite loops. If I built a good Vintage deck I wouldn't consider it fun, and if I built a fun deck in Vintage then it wouldn't be very good by format standards.

[Firewind]

Well I put together a deck that works for Vintage (I think, it has a couple of cards from Kamigawa and a few from sets before that that I have no idea if are in modern sets or not) but since I've not played magic properly since 2004 (the video games just use prebuilt decks) I have no idea at all what is actually usable for Standard/Modern (other than it being a ruleset made purely to keep you buying more and more cards every 6 months).

[Taskmage]

(other than it being a ruleset made purely to keep you buying more and more cards every 6 months)

You mean the entire game of Magic? Even Duels of the Planeswalkers makes you buy a new game every year with obnoxious amounts of DLC released inbetween.

Standard contains 5 sets atm: Innistrad, Dark Ascension, Avacyn Restored, Magic 2013, and Return to Ravnica. I have not played since 2003/2004 myself, so I started building in only Standard so I'd have to learn a smaller card pool. The Modern format contains all the cards that have come out since we stopped playing, starting with 8th Edition and Mirrodin. Vintage contains everything but ante/dexterity cards, including the power nine. Legacy contains all the same sets as Vintage, but maintains a banned list to keep things more balanced.

[Firewind]

Yeah I wasn't saying the video games were any better or worse, I was just making fun of WotC. The decks I made are fine for Legacy anyway and are more of a "stick with what you know" thing so I'm honestly not going to be surprised if I get destroyed even if I did research the deck builds to get them to work in Legacy today XD.

As for Standard I'll probably stick with that myself for now purely for the smaller card pool.

[Taskmage]

Personally, I think it would be preferable if everyone was working from the same pool of cards because that puts us on a level playing field, and tournament formats are just a convenient way of referencing different card pools. Unfortunately, the cards that everyone except YM is used to playing with are ten years old or more, and only legal in the same formats as Alpha. So I get the resistance to Modern/Standard as it takes away most of the cards everyone is familiar and comfortable with, but if we play in Vintage then that opens cans of cans of worms. Even if we arbitrarily ban the Power Nine, that still leaves all kinds of degeneracy in Tinker, infinite mana with Tolarian Academy, infinite turns with Time Vault, etc, etc. These things make Magic not fun (or at best, only fun for one person), and I think we can agree that's not the game we want to play.

I don't really care what format or house rules or whatever are settled upon, but again, I'd prefer if we were all on the same page about what cards are fair game. Until then, I'll be making do with a more limited card pool.

P.S. Yes, I am still butthurt about the double ritual Hymns to Tourach on turn one, and the zero mana game. To be fair, I can only think of one butt in internet history that would not be hurt after getting such a huge shaft. These posts having been taking twice as long to write as I try to edit out as much passive-aggressive venom as possible.

[cidbahamut]

I've never really followed the formats since I was always playing in a kitchen table format, so it all boiled down to what we could afford and what would or would not get someone punched in the face for ruining all the fun. I'd generally keep a wide variety of decks on hand and they were all pretty even with what I was facing back in college, but I totally understand your concerns.

To that end I'm going to try and hammer out a deck that at least fits into the Modern format next.

[Taskmage]

Thanks for understanding. Gatherer is invaluable for browsing through the format without getting buried by spoiler lists.

[cidbahamut]

Yes, yes it is. But now I'm simply buried under a list of everything.

I forgot how tough it is to build a deck from scratch without a really well defined theme.

"Everything from these two colors" takes a lot longer to look through than "everything that lets me flip coins".

[Firewind]

Same here cid XD

I think my mono green deck does fit into Modern. I think my W/R deck does too.

I don't have any FFA decks yet but I can quite easily make a Green deck for it (I think)

[Taskmage]

FFA decks are easy to build.

1. Find a) an effect that scales with the number of players, or b) a huge global effect. Easily done by searching for the word "each" in Gatherer.
2. If b, break symmetry. Build around result.
3. Drop in 1-3 cards that would make Timmy squee.

That's my method, anyway. XD

[Yygdrasil]

I completely agree with sticking to a Standard format as long as we're playing together. I've been screwing around with the Ravnica set and 2013 to see what I can make. Avacyn and Innestrad have some neat things in there but I'm having a hard time finding good combos I want to use.

I don't want hints or help (YM), I want to do this on my own. This might take a little more time to get done lol.