Magic Online

[Simmo]

Not sure the best place to post this....

Just started playing this online again and had a lot of fun last night. Got me thinking if anyone would be intersted in a knockout ClanUK Tournament one night? Best of 5, through to next round etc...

The Magic Online client, starter decks and access to a game server are a free download from Magic - Online

We could even start a Clan ladder or enter teams in some of the events if it takes off with little time commitment from anyone?

Simmo

 

[McHoff H. McChrist]

Apprentice is a much superior M:tG client if you ask me. Mainly because it's free.
As long as I can wear a trench-coat, sunglasses, and no-one calls me by name, I could be persuaded to have a couple of games.

 

[Gottaa]

Wasn't the other one free as well ?

Anyway I'd be well up for this, maybe if we can get 5 have a rainbow game ? I built a deck for that ages ago and had it all planned out when the 5th player couldn't make it at the last minute and so we had to fall back on a more normal game.

Would be a good laugh and make up for me not being about to find my NWN CD to join in that

 

[Gottaa]

Question : How does deck management work in both of them, is basically any card available (within the rules), if so don't games just become flooded with the rarer, more powerful cards ?

 

[Byzah]

I'd definitely be up for playing 5 colour. Can just use the free version for that, as it's best played with basic cards anyway.

Need the "no colour/land-specific cards" rule, though, or it can become a bit unplayable.

Does the game support 5 colour games?

Can we trade before hand? (if they only give you a starter deck, it'll be kind of hard to build a single colour deck from it).

Getting exactly 5 people online together for any length of time may be impossible though (I expect your average "pick up" player would insist on playing "teh d3ck of d00m", which wouldn't work out much fun).

With < 5 could just play a free for all competitive game, I guess until the 5th shows up.

 

[Gottaa]

Apprecentice I think means you could make your own desk from any cards you wanted and didn't need to pay for it, although on the downside the GUI of it isn't as nice as the wizards version.

 

[aleatoryuk]

I have never played online but used to play with cards, could be interested in this if it is free

 

[Gottaa]

Well in theory that is 5 people, I'll try and hook up with Byzah maybe over the weekend and give the various clients a try out and see which one (I'd much much much prefer the free one as well even if it isn't as pretty) comes out on top.

 

[Treebeard]

MWS is the best client, but it takes a bit more effort to use than Apprentice.

http://www.magic-league.com/download/magic_workstation.php

Apprentice is fully up to date with 9th Ed I think now.

 

[Gottaa]

Ohhh that does look nicer than my brief look at Apprentice, Will have to give that one a spin first, and yep Apprentice is up to date with the 9th edition, but I'm not too fussed about that as I haven't played in erm .. 10 or so years anyway

 

[aleatoryuk]

Same here, I played roughly from 4th edition through to Weatherlight

 

[Gottaa]

For some reason the last expansion deck I remember was "Artifacts" or something like that, which doesn't make any sense but there you go. I'm pretty sure I remember seeing what was my first dual land card and being amazed at how cool that was. Oh and the sheer joy of walking into the shop and buying a normal starter deck along with the expansion packs I wanted (I never got into the idea of buying singular cards to make a killer deck) and finding a card which a friend almost wet themselves about, then with there money I went back and brough a pile more cards

Great game, I only really stopped playing because just couldn't find anyone else who really wanted to play.

If this MWS supports multi-play (i.e more than 2 players) and we could get a 5 person rainbow game going I'd be well chuffed

 

[Flight]

I luff teh Magic. Would love a game.

Wouldnt like to try the client where you buy cards online as I would be afraid I'd end up selling the kids and a kidney, maybe a lung, to fund more cards.


I played from launch for about three or four years, so not too up to date on later card abilities. Still have masses of cards Ive not used in years.

 

[Treebeard]

I am t3h l33t WotC Co-Ordinator for Magic tournaments in my small area of Kent.

Played on and off now since release. Would be up for some games. Did you have any format type in mind?

I remember being at the gen-con when the game first appeared and seeing peoples folders with pages of Mox's and Lotus'. You could queue up at the WotC stand and by a single booster. Most people spent the day going to the back of the queue and starting again.

 

[Darakor]

I used to play that, too. Started with Unlimited and played until Ice Age, I think... If there is a free version about, I would definitely consider playing every now and then, too. I still fondly remember my red/blue deck and my black/white deck. Blue/black was pretty good, too.

Ah, good times.

Darakor

 

[Byzah]

Well, we'd definitely be talking very simple free games here. Either we get our free cards and trade away to assemble single colour decks (for 5 colour & the odd duel) or go with something totally free.

9th Ed? hehe Never really got my head round the 4th Ed changes.

I was a member of a big rp club in London (Guild of Melee and Magic) at the time Magic came out, which got kind of taken over by Magic. People came from all over to our meetings just to trade. Twas fantastic.

I played from Revised / Legends up to Mirage (ish). Quit when I was still up at 4am one night just trying to sort my cards out. That was in '96 & the cards are still unsorted in carrier bags somewhere

My favourite decks were theme decks (so called "army" decks). Dwarves (red single colour) and Elves (green single colour) were particular favourites.

My strong deck was a single blue "permission" deck, but few people actually enjoyed playing against it (esp. after Jesters Cap!) so it mainly gathered dust while the dwarves did their thing

 

[Gottaa]

I was thinking from maybe a little ladder CUK tournament or league to casual group games (assuming online clients allow that) and I'd love to try a rainbow game. The one where eveeryone gets on color and you can only attack I believe the person on your left (which makes some very tactical decks or so I've heard, as I've never played rainbow before )

If we set maybe some basic rules, along the lines of say 10 starter decks (assuming it works like that) with some additional booster decks of choice ? I'd rather we had some kind of limitation to avoid power deck vs. power deck as I at least always had much more fun playing with casual player as opposed to those where huge amounts of cash meant they had killer decks.

I hope that makes at least a little sense ?

With the number of players maybe a kinda squash league (could be others but squash I know) where 5 people per league, play everyone in that league, once everyone has played one person is demoted, the second to last person plays off against the second to last winner of the second league, and then the league starts again ... That probably makes no sense but that kinda thing, or a plain ladder ?

 

[Byzah]

That's all sounding a bit like hard work

Ladder makes much more sense than league. The big advantage of a ladder is that you can play as much or as little as you please - you just need to find someone above you to challenge, or get someone below you to challenge you.

The chances of getting everyone to play everyone else x times is basically 0. Let's be honest

For one thing, there are probably some people who's play times will never overlap.

Most people (me included) won't play if they have to pay to buy cards online. I might consider it for a strictly limited league arrangement (the old "limited league" was 1 starter + 2 boosters each with or without trading allowed & usually then playing for ante).

5 colour magic rules are:

+ 5 players, each with a deck constructed of a single colour (usually including artifacts & excluding colour-specific cards such as Tsunami or Circles of Protection)
+ You sit in the order shown on the back of the card (clockwise: black, red, green, white, blue...black)
+ Your 2 allies are on either side of you, your 2 enemies are opposite. You can't target allies with spells or effects that only target opponents (or cards an opponent controls) - but can interfere with them: for example, I once won a game by casting Fog to end an attempt by an ally to win before me by defeating my other ally (his enemy).
+ The winner is the first to see both enemies eliminated

It's really important to exclude things like Circles of Protection from these games as they just spoil them. Colour specific stuff is kind of boring even in ordinary play. I used to just carry those types of card in my sideboard & then show them to opponents as a way of discouraging them from playing their own. Although my blue deck had 2xmagical hack & 2xcolor shift to have some fun with them. You never get tired of hacking Tsumani from "destroys all islands" to "destroys all forests"

 

[Gottaa]

Ohhh different than I'd heard but having never actually played I could well have got the wrong end of the stick. Limited League with a ladder system can work (I"d say including trading), but then you'd need a different deck library for a rainbow game, and I kinda liked the idea of having a few deck options available. So with the one library you could make a few different decks, but that said I don't remember the name of the cards (could well have been circle of protection) that made games rather boring.

 

[Treebeard]

I don't think any of the clients mentioned let you play what is effectively a sealed deck tournament. You just contruct decks from all of the Magic cards available and away you go. Magic Online does but it probably costs.

A couple of things on the format. I think taking out things like CoPs is like asking blue to not play counters. White is very heavy in the protection department, a lot of cards are very specific on the colour but there are many that generalise as well. You are asking white to lose a lot of its effectiveness, especially in this format. Magic has also accelerated to a point now where if you are playing contructed, the first 3 or 4 turns decide the game and cards like CoPs are much less effective. In Type 2 now they have actually removed the Blue, Green and White CoPs and just left the Black and Red.