Magic: The Gathering: Help a Clueless Dad

I have not played Magic in years, and even then it was basically a "yea, I'll put together a cheapo deck because I have friends that like to get together and play" thing, not something I was passionate about.

But as far as any appropriateness concerns, I don't think the content is any more or less appropriate than your typical fantasy genre products. What I'd be more worried about in terms of her enjoyment would be: is she going to have people at her age and intensity-level to play the game with?

1) think it's still THE most popular card game still. The only comparable thing still around is Yugioh, but bleeeech

2) Gamer-gate types threw a hissy fit over Wizards making the cards more diverse, so you know it's good.
www.forbes.com/sites/laurenorsini/2016/03/18/for-magic-the-gathering-diversity-is-the-marketing-strategy/#ec3a41822168

3) There's the videogame version, and I've seen multiple starter kits in Target
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magic_Duels



I think get the VG, get her to learn the rules, and then she could have a slumber party where she gives out starter kits. Which at about $25 a pop would be the same price as movies or laser tag.

I haven't played much Magic, but a friend got me into it in a very casual sense about 3 - 5 years ago, as he's played it on and off since his adolescent years. I remember seeing it on the playground as a kid and being kinda enamored by the art but not thinking much of it, since my parents weren't inclined to spend money on that sort of thing, so I just ignored it at the time.

him and his then girlfriend got me a starter pack of some sort for the current "block" at the time which they were also playing (Thanos, IIRC). I don't really understand all the minutiae of how the tournament format works, beyond that it's a so-called "living card game" which is another way of saying that they release new sets every year or whatever and it can be fairly expensive if you want a "tournament ready" deck.

it doesn't have to be a super expensive hobby, as your local game shop will likely have binders full of various cards that can cost anywhere from a few cents to a few bucks. presumably the really expensive ones are kept behind the counter or whatever, and I think some of the expense has to do with if it's a fancy foil edge one and not just the rarity of the card itself.

the coolest draft format we did once was a so-called "blind box" tournament with some friends where we each chipped in ~$15 or so towards a case of the current block of cards. (I think a case is ~25 - 40 packs of the cards you buy at the shop, with the same distribution as a standard pack.)

instead of having a pre-constructed deck, I guess the rationale is that you have to make it up on the fly by passing cards from player to player based on what you want to keep and what you don't want. I think you need a pretty good understanding of the game mechanics and a sense of the probability for it to work well, but it was neat.

I don't play very often and haven't invested anything in cards beyond whatever I was given as starters, but periodically I pop onto a very technically legal website called Untap.in where you can play pickup games. I only ever play against my buddy since he's the only friend I have that is pretty into it, but it's fun to talk about the mechanics and come up with specific decks that match his preferred "era" of Magic. I think he leans towards the one that he got into when he first started playing.

the beauty of a website like that is that you can sorta "playtest" a deck against a friend (or other person on the site?) to see how it holds up before spending any money on cards, as it can be pricey. the website gets around legal stuff by claiming that all they do is create the framework of the website and users upload all the content and such. it just so happens that it works with a handful of popular card game formats! hmmm. not suspicious at all.

plus if she wants to play with friends, lots of people print off so-called "proxy" cards  (I think that's what they're called?) for the really expensive ones they don't have. sometimes this can be as simple as a written description of what the card does with some homemade art, but people have been scanning and printing cards off for personal use for ages now. a pack of deck sleeves is pretty cheap and you can pick your colour, and it's a worthwhile investment to protect your regular cards and can be useful for tucking in the printed slips of paper too!

I think shops might frown upon this, since hosting the tournaments is as much a community thing as it is a revenue generation thing, but I've honestly never set foot in a shop to participate in an event of this sort, whether it be Magic or D&D or tabletop wargaming. lots of horror stories on shitty experiences that people have had at local games shops, which sucks. I hope it's another last gasp of shitty aspects of nerd culture, since local shops have to concede that they need to offer something different and meaningful, otherwise they'll just get swallowed up by the realities of losing customers and the pressures of e-commerce and the like. I think any reasonably smart shop owner recognizes that they ought to provide a welcoming atmosphere, but sometimes they skew towards the devil they know, not wanting to scare off their diehard customers who are inclined to spend many thousands of dollars there over the years?

there's a really handy database on the Wizards of the Coast website where you can filter down cards based on the specific format, colour types, multicolour, etc. to assist in the deckbuilding aspect.

10+ is about the age that I'd recommend, as the art can be mildly racy (depending on setting, as Rainbow Rosa pointed out) and the mechanics make me scratch my head sometimes, but having an experienced player explain stuff or reading the errata sorts things out pretty well for me. I really enjoy playing it casually and hell, maybe I will seek out one of their fairly heavily promoted "Friday Night Magic" events at a local shop if I can find one that's amenable. it's cheaper than two pints and I do enjoy playing, even if I'm a novice and might get wiped by almost anyone before I tweak a deck a bunch!

Depends what they gave you-- if you got this then there's built-in instructions

Well, then, it's simple! The offensive team, upon receiving the Pritz, has five Snivels in which to advance to the enemy goal If they do it on the ground, it's a Woomik and counts 17 points. If they hit it across with their Frullips, it's a Durmish which only counts 11 points. Only the offensive Niblings and Overblats are allowed to score in the first 6 Ogres.

If that's too much, here's the rulebook. I haven't played since college, but I remember picking it up pretty quickly.

(ETA: Also, if it's not too late, the Pokémon Trading Card Game seems to still be running almost 20 years later, and is a little easier to pick up than Magic; plus, she already loves Pokémon, you said.)

We stuck with the two freebie decks we got from the game shop. She had no idea what they were. "I've never heard of this. Nobody I know plays this." She remarked. At first I though this was a whiff.
When my wife went to tuck her in, though, she said she had all the cards laid out in bed in front of her. At breakfast this morning, she was carefully studying each card and learning its features. Need to get her online to watch the instructional videos.

pairesta Any magical updates?