my worst was probably the last tournament i went to like 3 weeks ago, in the last game I played, I made a lot of mistakes and my opponent told me I belong in stupidville and stuff like that
If your opponent makes a snide remark, ignore it. If they make several, especially insulting ones, ESPECIALLY after you've asked them to stop, you need to let a judge know. You can call the judge over, and ask to speak to them away from the game table, and just let them know your opponent is being very rude, and you would like them to keep an eye on them/talk to the opponent. Matter of fact, that might even be classified as Unsporting Conduct - Major depending on what sort of insults are being thrown around.
You're at the tournament to have fun, and play a game, on your own dime. You shouldn't have to deal with crap like that. When I TO/Judge stuff at my local area, I flat out state "Any of you using language more vulgar than 'crap' or 'damn' is getting a game loss. If that doesn't teach you your lesson and you keep it up, I'm throwing you out of the venue". I also like to keep insults/taunts to a friendly minimum.
I'd have to say my worse MTG moment is when I caught a cheater switching cards in his hand with his library as he attempted to "search" for a creature after casting Eldamri's Call <.< It was frickin obvious, I mean, the table we were playing on was a clear glass table and he had the nerve to pull a fast one on me...
I know this is off topic, but I do have to say my best moment in MTG. It was during Ravnica/Time Spiral T2 legal, and I entered the a Tournament of 26 with a G/W beats deck. I made it all the way to the finals playing against Dragonstorm. I took the first game, he took the second, and the last came down to one of us top decking something. He top decks a dragonstorm But I didn't care, I made it with a deck out of my own original design, while 18 of the decks were all cookie cutter decks
my worst experience was being disqualified for stalling after i told my enemy that i wasn't emotionally ready to start game 2 after a pretty harsh game 1 loss.
my best was playing my black blue control to a top 4 at my local friday fnm match up.
Worst: Top 8'ing the release and prerelease only to be completely hosed by terrible draws. The worst part of it was losing to one of the less talented magic players there, and by that I mean: mull to 5 on the play, lose within a few minutes, 2nd game mull to 6 draw only islands and only white cards. I lost within 10 minutes because of how terrible my draws were. There was nothing more heartbreaking than thinking you've got a good deck then all of a sudden you basically don't even get to play it for more 10 minutes and you don't get to actually have a real match with it. It was the worst. I left within the minute after losing. At least when I called the shop owner after I got home and realized that I had forgotten to pay off my like $10 tab he was just like "Hey man, it's okay, just get it to me next time. I saw what you drew, and man I have got to say that is some of the worst draws I have seen in a long time.".
Best: Made a Jund-esque deck (before Zendikar came out/after M10 came out) 5 minutes before a tournament and won every match that night. In fact, I went on to tweak it a little between tournaments and I never lost a match with that deck. It was so awesome knowing that I made a deck that won something like 4 tournaments (well splitting in the finals) without ever losing a single match. I was saddened when Zendikar came out and my deck was never the same, losing Kitchen Finks and Flame Javelin was it's downfall (well, maybe just a downgrade). After that, I hated jund, it was just so much slower. Those were the days, those were the days...
Competitive worst: M11 prerelease, for a number of reasons. First, it's incredibly obvious that people at my LGS cheat hard at any kind of Limited event (I know it's my fault for still playing there, though I won prizes at ROE playing honestly, but anyway), so that made it stop being fun about the time I was facing a guy with two Titans and some other mythic I can't remember... in the 0-3 bracket—and you better believe the 3-0 bracket was even more obvious (I think one guy just "happened" to open like 6 mythics). The only match all day I came close to winning was against an opponent who tapped a Prodigal Pyromancer to ping me instead of my Royal Assassin (which killed it in response). Later, the Assassin goes to kill a Duskdale Wurm, and I have to explain at length that, no, my Assassin isn't "blocking" anything and thus wouldn't die even if it was blocking, and that I'm sorry you made that mistake but I'm not going to let you take it back. I had to call a judge to explain that I wasn't making rules up. The judge not only overruled me and said, "no, seriously, your opponent gets a takeback," but also seemed not to care about a three-mana Chandra's Outrage. All I got for both judge calls was to be told, "stop being such a rules lawyer."
Non-competitive worst: Being the player in EDH who has 2 lands on turn 7 and still getting attacked by everyone except my brother. While one guy cackles and blows up the few lands I do draw.
Competitive best: Toss-up between the Fifth Dawn and Betrayers of Kamigawa prereleases. The former saw me managing turn 4-5 kills in Sealed due to a hilariously broken deck (Grafted Wargear on a Blind Creeper swinging on turn 2 thanks to a Chrome Mox, then Spikeshot Goblin the next turn—twice), while in the latter I made a pretty great ogre+demon tribal deck (Yukora, the Prisoner dying and me not sacrificing the 4-5 other creatures I controlled, for instance). Or in the Time Spiral prerelease, having about 30 Citizen tokens and winning on turn 5 of extra turns with double Fortify and Reiterate. Basically my best Spike, Johnny, and Timmy experiences respectively.
Non-competitive best: Independently making the Japanese-style Standard RDW right after Zendikar comes out, before I'd ever read about the archetype actually being viable (I thought it was just cute virtual card advantage to run all those sac creatures). I only really used it for casual games, so I count it as non-competitive even though the deck itself isn't really "casual."
Competitive worst: M11 prerelease, for a number of reasons. First, it's incredibly obvious that people at my LGS cheat hard at any kind of Limited event (I know it's my fault for still playing there, though I won prizes at ROE playing honestly, but anyway), so that made it stop being fun about the time I was facing a guy with two Titans and some other mythic I can't remember... in the 0-3 bracket—and you better believe the 3-0 bracket was even more obvious (I think one guy just "happened" to open like 6 mythics). The only match all day I came close to winning was against an opponent who tapped a Prodigal Pyromancer to ping me instead of my Royal Assassin (which killed it in response). Later, the Assassin goes to kill a Duskdale Wurm, and I have to explain at length that, no, my Assassin isn't "blocking" anything and thus wouldn't die even if it was blocking, and that I'm sorry you made that mistake but I'm not going to let you take it back. I had to call a judge to explain that I wasn't making rules up. The judge not only overruled me and said, "no, seriously, your opponent gets a takeback," but also seemed not to care about a three-mana Chandra's Outrage. All I got for both judge calls was to be told, "stop being such a rules lawyer."
Non-competitive worst: Being the player in EDH who has 2 lands on turn 7 and still getting attacked by everyone except my brother. While one guy cackles and blows up the few lands I do draw.
Competitive best: Toss-up between the Fifth Dawn and Betrayers of Kamigawa prereleases. The former saw me managing turn 4-5 kills in Sealed due to a hilariously broken deck (Grafted Wargear on a Blind Creeper swinging on turn 2 thanks to a Chrome Mox, then Spikeshot Goblin the next turn—twice), while in the latter I made a pretty great ogre+demon tribal deck (Yukora, the Prisoner dying and me not sacrificing the 4-5 other creatures I controlled, for instance). Or in the Time Spiral prerelease, having about 30 Citizen tokens and winning on turn 5 of extra turns with double Fortify and Reiterate. Basically my best Spike, Johnny, and Timmy experiences respectively.
Non-competitive best: Independently making the Japanese-style Standard RDW right after Zendikar comes out, before I'd ever read about the archetype actually being viable (I thought it was just cute virtual card advantage to run all those sac creatures). I only really used it for casual games, so I count it as non-competitive even though the deck itself isn't really "casual."
Yiiiikes. I personally think the two worst things in competitive Magic are losing to your own deck hating you, and a judge who is a jerk/moron. When you lose a game because you were outplayed or made a mistake or whatever, that's one thing; losing because you didn't draw one of the 12 Islands in your deck across 5 turns is just depressing.
Also, exactly how are the cheaters getting these cards? Are they obtaining them from prior flights/friend's flights and using them in the next? I can't think of any other way to get ahold of any number of mythics for a prerelease. Also, I don't know if your judges/TOs know about it, but you should call the people out on it. In a typical Sealed pool, you should only have 6 rares/Mythics total, and you should only have more if you get a foil. I don't know about you, but if anyone I played against had THREE Mythics, let alone 3 mythics in the same colors, I'd be calling a judge to check their sideboard and see how many rares they've got.
The worst experience I ever had was long ago during a coldsnap draft where i had a ridiculous aurochs deck, I ended up playing the at the time 16th highest rated person in the world and after barely winning with Aurochs Herd into more herds my opponent started tableshuffling my deck, but with the way he he was dividing them struck me as funny, after i drew my hand i had no land at all, went to look through my deck and literally every single land was on the bottom.this isn't hyperbole, it was literally my 23 spells ontop of 17 land.
I was furious and called the judge/lgs owner to do something about my opponents obviously doing something, he then disqualifies because he said my lands were marked because they have been played with slightly, the lands that he puts out for deckbuilding
I was so angered by the obvious injustice that i stopped playing magic for a few monthes.
At least I learned to always use sleeves and watch my opponents like a hawk, I felt very vindicated a few weeks back when I caught that same opponent during a sealed with a mox jet as 1st prize (I won it, 2 mind control's are nutty to open up :)) with an extra card and got him disqualified, finally got vengeance
Worst: My son had made it to the top 8 of a JSS tourament, he was the youngest left in the tournament and playing a rouge deck. He was paired up against the highest rated player in the tournament the first round and he lost the 3 game due to a terrible misplay by him. I really felt for him.
Best: My son and me had traveled to a larger type 2 tournament (about 200 people) in a neighboring state. I was playing some 3 color rogue deck and my son was playing a zoo build. After I think 9 rounds of swiss we both had a chance to make the top 8. I did not due to tie breakers but, my son slipped in at 7th. Jump to the finals where he was playing the 2 highest rated player in the state who was being a real dick to him and in general. The other guy was playing one of the top net decks of the time and did nothing but talk trash about how zoo was a auto win. My son went on to beat him in the match ...badly. The guy didnt shake, didnt say good game, he just scopped up all his stuff and stormed off. I was so proud of how my son had played all day and how he handled that douche bag.
OT: I have a 7 month old boy and I cannot wait to teach him Magic and share it with him!
On topic: best- playing in a single elimination Vintage tourney at a local mall right after Mirrodin came out. I made a B/W ScepterChant deck and it KILLED! I only lost one match the whole day and I believe it was because the guy changed his sideboard. I mean why would you run 15 anti-artifact cards in the board? Everyone was going on and on about my deck so when this guy always had an answer for the Scepter... But I won a lot of packs that day.
Worst- playing in a single elimination non-sanctioned tourney and scrubbing out after drawing a grand total of 5 lands in the 2 games I got to play.
Also, exactly how are the cheaters getting these cards? Are they obtaining them from prior flights/friend's flights and using them in the next?
Sunday prerelease, so they're probably just bringing in cards from a Saturday prerelease at a different store.
My brother does a lot of drafts there and sees way more Baneslayers, Grave Titans, and Primeval Titans than you could ever imagine. Apparently nobody's ever opened, say, a Frost Titan.
This is basically the reason I'm moving all my Limited play to Magic Online. :T
theres a guy at local pre-releases here who i think goes to the ones at midnight the night before a town over and then brings a premade deck. he was sitting across from me at either zendikar or worldwake prerelease, and quickly opens his cards, and has them back in a cardbox before anyone else is even half done deck building. he then rolls to the finals of the tournament with a ridiculous mono black deck that theres no way he put together from the 6 packs he had just been given. im going to be watching that guy on saturday for sure.
Worst: Champions of Kamigawa prerelease. 145 players, I go 5-1-1 with an absolute garbage pool and get 9th for no prize.
Best: Time Spiral release party at the LGS. I go 4-0-1 in the Swiss with a garbage pool, then in the Top 8 draft, pack 1 Psionic Sliver, Watcher Sliver, a few other slivers, Watcher Sliver, 14th pick Mistform Ultimus. Pack two, more Sliver goodness, plus some Cancels and other control stuff. Pack 3, foil Akroma, get passed Teferi and a foil Psionic Blast and more sliver goodness. Didn't drop a game and won a box and a half.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Hey all... I'm retired, not dead. Check out what I'm doing these days (and beg me to come back if you want):
Worst was Nationals this year. I had just lost a couple of PTQ finals (and were up to 8 total PTQ final/Nationals quarterfinal losses, and never qualified), and I was coming into Nationals as one of the favorites, and was ready to get that monkey off my back. Started out well, with 7-1 and great tiebreaks, and I only had to win one of the next three to be a top 8 lock. I pulled out the worst bad beat streak in my playing career, averaging a double mulligan every game, and ended up losing all three matches. In game 3 of the penultimate round (win and in), I mulliganed to five again, but after a while I had 3 Vengevines in my graveyard with Sphinx of Lost Truths, Wall of Omens and Sea Gate Oracle in hand, and four lands in play, and he was at four. Had five turns, didn't get there. Felt like quitting Magic at the spot.
Best? Perhaps GP Paris '09. I was in day 2 with a 9-2 record, but lost the two last rounds of the first pod, which left me needing to 3-0 the last pod to even make money. My table had Sebastian Thaler, Marcio Carvalho, Christophe Gregoir, Lee Shi-Tian and some other names I recognized. I faced three straight pros, but got the 3-0 That was pretty sweet.
My worst experience right now is my Bant Countersliver deck just hating me. The deck checks out, and while it's a budget build it's got some great stuff in it, and when it works, it works! But it just hates me.... I think I'm just a bad shuffler or something, jeez. Or maybe the sleeves are cursed. Yeah, that's it.
My best experience I think is that since I started playing this summer, I haven't seen a single one of those jerk-types at a FNM or during any sanctioned or casual play. There's even a Magic club here on-campus full of a bunch of fun guys with huge collections even willing to trade with a guy like me who has only a little bit of standard jank. It's been a very nice way for me to get into the game.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Props to Theismisacrime for the sig! Click for Trade list!
Major EDH player! Current decks:UUBraids, Waifu | UGZegana | RGWEnchantress Uril, the Miststalker | WBTriad of Fates (new!) | RBGXira Arien Re-dredge-imator (unretired!)
Eladamri | Anowon | Sydri | Melek | Augustin IV | Thelon | Sliver Overlord | Ramirez DePietro
I am a pretty veteran MTG player, I began playing when Ice Age came out and played through Urza's Saga. I just recently (the last week) started playing again. Before I quit my MTG resume inclued 3 PTQ wins top 8 at 1st Annual Extended Nationals a whole bunch of wins in MTG tournies both in Virginia Beach and Roanoke at Star City Games. Along with 4 other PTQ Top 8's top 100 in PT DC top 32 in PT New York. So I have a bunch of good and bad experiences with this game.
The worst experience I had was at an extended PTQ in 2000 or so in Richmond VA, one of my good friends was playing a super aggressive mono red deck called Sligh and had went 6-0 along with my self and 3 other people from this area (VA Beach). Well he had an unlucky draw of playing Mike Long who was playing mono black necropotence drain life deck, which usually isn't a bad draw but for some god awful reason my friend wasn't paying attention till it was too late and didn't notice that Mike wasn't keeping his life correctly and add to his life total at times instead of subtracting or not adjusting his life total at all when he would draw a card. Mike got warned for incorrect life keeping but the damage had already been done and my friend ended up loosing the match, making stupid mistakes because of how flustered he was.
The best experience I had was when a group of us VA Beach players went to New York for 1st Annual Extended Nationals and the morning of the tourney about 4 hours before start I was down in the tournament room fine tuning my deck (Land Tax/Scroll Rack/RWBG Control) and I hear "Want to play?", I look up and it's John Finkle. So of course I say yes, admittedly a bit star struck and put up a fair fight (we were both playing VERY Similar Decks) but he won most of the games we played. Afterward he gave me advice on how to play the deck a little more efficiently and some improvements I could make to the deck to make it a little more stable. Well needless to say the changes worked and made top 8 loosing to John Finkle in the First Elimination Round in a 2 hour long 3 game match that was the Feature Match of that round.
All in all usually my "bad experiences" dealt with either getting screwed by a bad ruling or by my deck itself very rarely did I ever deal with rude or mean people, I don't tend to do a lot of talking during my matches and very rarely pay attention to my opponent minus what they are playing and to how they are handling their cards/shuffling their deck. I have never had cards stolen luckily I have been the victims of some bad trades but hey I got what I wanted and walked away pretty happy.
Almost all of my "good experiences" deal with me doing well or winning larger tournaments, or friends doing so. Another good story was when a group of under 18 year old guys from the comic shop we all played at went to a JSS Nationals Qualifier with very well tested and fine tuned decks that we helped them design/loan cards for and of course playtested. 4 of our 6 guys made top 8, all 6 made top 16 and 1 of our guys won the thing. Made us all proud to see them all do so well. They were even all sporting the comic shops shirts.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Currently Playing: Standard:RUGRUGRUGRAll In Goblins R Extended: BWG Doran Rock BWG Legacy: BWG Dark Horizons BWG
Worst:
While playing at a small tournament at my LGS (about the time that Visions was coming out), I had the misfortune of being selected of going against the assistant manager of the store. Throughout the two games I played against him (I lost both times), he never kept an accurate count of his life. Every time I called him on it, the manager sided with him and told me to stop being so difficult. I also found it highly suspicious that in both games I played against him, his deck played EXACTLY the same (same cards in just about the same order). After losing, I watched as he played everyone else, and the same things happened (bad life counting practices and his deck playing the same way). He ended up taking first place in the tournament and the manager stood by him.
It was later discovered by a friend that he [the asst. manager] bragged about how he could stack his deck almost perfectly. I never went back to that store after that tournament.
Best:
I was playing a casual game with a group of acquaintances and they were fairly certain I was running my (at the time) standard permission deck with unblockable creatures. I just smirked and nodded. When the game started, I threw down my Plains and started what could best be described as a massacre. What resulted was them being completely surprised by what I called my 'Holy War' deck. It was infested with Knights, Angels, and Clerics and was about anti-Creature as you could get in pre-Mirrodin. To this day I wish I had written down the recipe to that deck. It never lost.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Where are we going and why are we in this hand-basket??
The best and worst (because I lost) experience I've had playing MTG was today. I play with a small group of friends 5/7 days a week and my deck is extremely powerful. I had peaked at around 140 life, but was slowly dropping because I didn't have many creatures to defend with. When I got to around 40, I played Pain's Reward and bid 18 life as it was the highest health my opponents had. What I forgot was that an opponent had played a platinum angel, so he bid 2 billion life, and then played a card where any life he should have lost, he gains instead.
Needless to say, we all forfeited and he won on 2 billion life.
Worst: going to any competitive events, where the same old boys who grind endlessly but achieve practically nothing know nothing about basic politeness and normal human interactions, unless you're part of the said old boys gang.
Best: stopping to go to competitive tournaments and playing in the comfort of home with good friends, sometimes using proxy decks, around decent food and not caring about that misplay or take-back because we"re just there tyo thoroughly enjoy ourselves.
Worst: had a lovely Jerk opponent at the Kaladesh pre-release (small gaming store, maybe 40 players) who was not a very humble winner. I was running a pretty Aggro RW deck that was stomping the competition, until I ran into him. His 5 color, sealed deck punished my every play, and when I replied that I was impressed he stated "a good sealed pool doesn't mean much if you're a crappy player" had i not been in the running for a few prize boosters, I might've peaced out...
Best: Same day actually, my last opponent of the prerelease! We went into the round tied, and so he offered me a deal. We were in contention for 2 prize booster packs, and suggested that we play the round out, but regardless of who won, we split the prize! "No need for either of us to go home empty handed! And if we end up drawing, then neither of us get anything!" I agreed (I'm not a selfish person) and what ensued was one of the best 3 games of MTG I've ever played! We were neck in neck until I pulled ahead and won it! We both ended up with pretty decent foils from the packs, and a renewed love of the game!
Edit: this event is actually second best, first goes to hitting Phage the Untouchable with Mirror Strike at a big casual event with 20 friends looking on! Was the last round of this "tourney" and I was fighting for first place when I pulled that stunt :-D
-At this LGS, when I was around 10 years old, I took a few random common card always from the store at the leftover storage, the store want to charge me, I didn't pay.
So basically there are few jerks at the LGS notices of this, they keep spread out the news about me "stealing" items from the store, after few years later, there is a lot of players might know that I am kind of sketchy so they always warn other people to keep away from me for stealing.
Now this LGS is closed, some new LGS opened, I went to those LGS and it fews alright.
-The worst possible experience this game bought me is just some ridiculous players I have to deal with, like some people I can't even get rid off, they always stay inside my mind. I have made some really good friends out of this game, but sometimes there are just those few people that can get way too seriously out of hand.
Like there is one time I meet with this one friend who I played Magic for years, one day after the tournament, he went with a really bad record, I actually made some profit and return from the tournament. But there is one critical mistake I made was I told to him "which decks you lose to". And after that he immediately yelled, "stop ******* say this *****, mother*******" at me.
Another time is I was trying to sell some cards to this dude I recently met with, long story short, for 3 days I didn't come to his place and sell the cards to him, I said "Dude, I am having summer class exams so I will sell you the cards later on or eventually". But then there is one day I finally met him, I got yelled extremely hard again, he said I didn't set up a exact time with him.
I mean come on this is not something very serious, we can sort the trading and selling out, it is just a damn ******* game, and still, there is just those type of people take this goddamn game way too seriously.
Sometimes I might just need to meditate my self, but every time I think about the game there is few negative experience can react to my mind, I should just relax and try to avoid those negative experience as much as possible.
Best -
Won a lot of side events at GP's , PPTQ, GPT. Built a complete foiled out EDH deck before, the game gave me endless fun.
This thread got reanimated harder than a Living End deck
That said I'll reply! Worst experience is easy - there's an LGS I visit in a different city that's about an hour away. I don't spend much on sealed products but being an EDH player I tend to pick up some form of blingy foil every visit - I did my end-of-year finances recently and found I'd spent a few thousand dollars in 2016.
Anyways the owner of this card shop was always pretty flighty and I'd only ever bumped into him once or twice but I was on first name bases with the rest of the staff. I come in with my girlfriend and a friend of mine who's learning the game, and he's the only guy working. Today I was sort of shopping for something for her decks because it was an anniversary, so I decided I'd pick up the foil Tamiyo he had in the cabinet. This joint is known for flip-flopping when it comes to prices between SCG, TCG, F2F and their own pricing because they're in kinda bad shape financially, so I ask "How much for your foil Tamiyo?" Just wanting to find out which pricing method we'll be using for our shopping.
He takes a look at us, audibly laughs and says "It's more than ten bucks. Do you still even care?"
I guess because he hadn't bumped into me at his store much he didn't know I was a regular or a frequent spender, and just assumed we were skeezy casual players who'd scatter like rats if he told us the price. I was tempted to buy half his cabinet just to prove a point but I figured, giving this jerk money is the last thing I wanted to do so I just left. New guy wound up quitting the game a while later, said it "just seemed too intense". =/
Best memory was probably Origins pre-release - my girlfriend snatched second and I got first, and the owner gave us near a dozen spare FNM Path to Exile promos along with our prize pool. I even opened a foil flip Lilly for her collection! Coolest part was seeing how much better she had gotten at the game though.
I have many bad experiences and many good ones too.
Worst: The experience I'm the most salty about is my trip to Eternal Weekend this year. I went there with high hopes but was under a lot of stress the two weeks before so I knew my performance would be bad. I haven't slept much the last week and that resulted in a drop from Legacy Main Event after going 4-0. I gave my last opponent a win and just had to leave because I felt like crap and couldn't play. There was no way I could play 9+ rounds of a format I didn't actually regularly play. The day later I felt better and played the whole Vintage event but when fighting for a possible top 8 slot from table 3 I lost to one of the two players I definitely did not want to play. And I certainly did not want to lose against them since their understanding of the game and format is far from good but they think they know everything. And it was Skysovereign, Consul Flagship that killed me. I needed to deal with Trinisphere, Lodestone Golem and the Ship and I could if I just had drawn a Mox, Lotus or land. My opponent did not even realize that I could have actually won the game having that one more mana source. He just laughed at me that I could have never won that game. It felt so bad.
Best: I got invitation for the first PT of the season in July/August? Many strange things (mostly bad things) happened in the following months. I had to sell vast majority of my collection and I decided to stop playing Magic altogether (I was aware I would probably eventually come back to play the game, but did not expecting that to happen soon). I was disgusted by the local players. All this led to me not playing for few months but this changed when on 23rd of December I received an email from Scott Larabee asking for information. My heart jumped, because I totally forgot about the Pro Tour, I even sold my Standard deck! Fast forward. When I was there at the event I obviously had to play some Magic. One of the papers I signed even said something that I have to participate otherwise WotC won't pay for anything blablabla. So I played the game. I played both constructed and limited and when playing limited I realized how well the game is designed and why I started playing Magic in the first place. I like the challenge, I like to build decks, I like to play games that require interaction of minds between me and my opponent and I always liked to go to big events where I can meet new players and play against good players. The players there were treating me with respect, did not look down at me and were actually very nice. I played some of the strangest limited games ever, feeling like total noob, but it was totally worth it. I realized that all I just need to do is avoid my LGSs players and go play somewhere where people know how to behave. I blamed Magic, but the game had nothing to do with me wanting to stop playing it. It was the players. After the event I started to actively play Magic again. I started to look for decks and formats I liked and decided to let Standard go because the right place for me is Vintage. And all I want is to enjoy the game, with good people around. That sums up an experience that started as one of the worst but turned to be the best one.
runner up would probably be the day my parents realized after 15 years that I play Magic and won't give it up^_^ and even bought me a booster pack, yay.
Best: Casting Firemind's Foresight at the end of my opponent's turn 7, and killing my opponent on my turn with them at 20 life with no other cards besides lands in play. IN STANDARD!
Worst: Opponent casts golden wish looking for a COP: Green while I'm playing elves one turn from an overrun for the win. Pretty cheesy already Can't find anything in his whole collection but sees a card on the ground, picks it up.... It's an Engineered Plague a friend had dropped on the ground while leaving the game earlier. I went so far as to get them to admit that it wasn't their card and they stole it but they said now they own it. Apparently "cards you own" counts stolen cards that don't belong to you. I outright called him a cheater and we've never played magic together since.
If your opponent makes a snide remark, ignore it. If they make several, especially insulting ones, ESPECIALLY after you've asked them to stop, you need to let a judge know. You can call the judge over, and ask to speak to them away from the game table, and just let them know your opponent is being very rude, and you would like them to keep an eye on them/talk to the opponent. Matter of fact, that might even be classified as Unsporting Conduct - Major depending on what sort of insults are being thrown around.
You're at the tournament to have fun, and play a game, on your own dime. You shouldn't have to deal with crap like that. When I TO/Judge stuff at my local area, I flat out state "Any of you using language more vulgar than 'crap' or 'damn' is getting a game loss. If that doesn't teach you your lesson and you keep it up, I'm throwing you out of the venue". I also like to keep insults/taunts to a friendly minimum.
The latest Comprehensive Rules are also good, and can be found here.
I know this is off topic, but I do have to say my best moment in MTG. It was during Ravnica/Time Spiral T2 legal, and I entered the a Tournament of 26 with a G/W beats deck. I made it all the way to the finals playing against Dragonstorm. I took the first game, he took the second, and the last came down to one of us top decking something. He top decks a dragonstorm But I didn't care, I made it with a deck out of my own original design, while 18 of the decks were all cookie cutter decks
1) Couldn't play during Ravnica due to lack of people around.
2) Having no one to play with during the time.
Time Reversal, please?
my best was playing my black blue control to a top 4 at my local friday fnm match up.
Best: Made a Jund-esque deck (before Zendikar came out/after M10 came out) 5 minutes before a tournament and won every match that night. In fact, I went on to tweak it a little between tournaments and I never lost a match with that deck. It was so awesome knowing that I made a deck that won something like 4 tournaments (well splitting in the finals) without ever losing a single match. I was saddened when Zendikar came out and my deck was never the same, losing Kitchen Finks and Flame Javelin was it's downfall (well, maybe just a downgrade). After that, I hated jund, it was just so much slower. Those were the days, those were the days...
Non-competitive worst: Being the player in EDH who has 2 lands on turn 7 and still getting attacked by everyone except my brother. While one guy cackles and blows up the few lands I do draw.
Competitive best: Toss-up between the Fifth Dawn and Betrayers of Kamigawa prereleases. The former saw me managing turn 4-5 kills in Sealed due to a hilariously broken deck (Grafted Wargear on a Blind Creeper swinging on turn 2 thanks to a Chrome Mox, then Spikeshot Goblin the next turn—twice), while in the latter I made a pretty great ogre+demon tribal deck (Yukora, the Prisoner dying and me not sacrificing the 4-5 other creatures I controlled, for instance). Or in the Time Spiral prerelease, having about 30 Citizen tokens and winning on turn 5 of extra turns with double Fortify and Reiterate. Basically my best Spike, Johnny, and Timmy experiences respectively.
Non-competitive best: Independently making the Japanese-style Standard RDW right after Zendikar comes out, before I'd ever read about the archetype actually being viable (I thought it was just cute virtual card advantage to run all those sac creatures). I only really used it for casual games, so I count it as non-competitive even though the deck itself isn't really "casual."
Yiiiikes. I personally think the two worst things in competitive Magic are losing to your own deck hating you, and a judge who is a jerk/moron. When you lose a game because you were outplayed or made a mistake or whatever, that's one thing; losing because you didn't draw one of the 12 Islands in your deck across 5 turns is just depressing.
Also, exactly how are the cheaters getting these cards? Are they obtaining them from prior flights/friend's flights and using them in the next? I can't think of any other way to get ahold of any number of mythics for a prerelease. Also, I don't know if your judges/TOs know about it, but you should call the people out on it. In a typical Sealed pool, you should only have 6 rares/Mythics total, and you should only have more if you get a foil. I don't know about you, but if anyone I played against had THREE Mythics, let alone 3 mythics in the same colors, I'd be calling a judge to check their sideboard and see how many rares they've got.
The latest Comprehensive Rules are also good, and can be found here.
I was furious and called the judge/lgs owner to do something about my opponents obviously doing something, he then disqualifies because he said my lands were marked because they have been played with slightly, the lands that he puts out for deckbuilding
I was so angered by the obvious injustice that i stopped playing magic for a few monthes.
At least I learned to always use sleeves and watch my opponents like a hawk, I felt very vindicated a few weeks back when I caught that same opponent during a sealed with a mox jet as 1st prize (I won it, 2 mind control's are nutty to open up :)) with an extra card and got him disqualified, finally got vengeance
OT: I have a 7 month old boy and I cannot wait to teach him Magic and share it with him!
On topic: best- playing in a single elimination Vintage tourney at a local mall right after Mirrodin came out. I made a B/W ScepterChant deck and it KILLED! I only lost one match the whole day and I believe it was because the guy changed his sideboard. I mean why would you run 15 anti-artifact cards in the board? Everyone was going on and on about my deck so when this guy always had an answer for the Scepter... But I won a lot of packs that day.
Worst- playing in a single elimination non-sanctioned tourney and scrubbing out after drawing a grand total of 5 lands in the 2 games I got to play.
I collect pre-release Stone-Tongue Basilisk
Sunday prerelease, so they're probably just bringing in cards from a Saturday prerelease at a different store.
My brother does a lot of drafts there and sees way more Baneslayers, Grave Titans, and Primeval Titans than you could ever imagine. Apparently nobody's ever opened, say, a Frost Titan.
This is basically the reason I'm moving all my Limited play to Magic Online. :T
Best: Time Spiral release party at the LGS. I go 4-0-1 in the Swiss with a garbage pool, then in the Top 8 draft, pack 1 Psionic Sliver, Watcher Sliver, a few other slivers, Watcher Sliver, 14th pick Mistform Ultimus. Pack two, more Sliver goodness, plus some Cancels and other control stuff. Pack 3, foil Akroma, get passed Teferi and a foil Psionic Blast and more sliver goodness. Didn't drop a game and won a box and a half.
https://twitch.tv/annorax10 (classic retro speedruns & occasional MTGO/MTGA screwaround streams)
https://twitch.tv/SwiftorCasino (yes, my team and I run live dealer games for the baldman using his channel points as chips)
Best? Perhaps GP Paris '09. I was in day 2 with a 9-2 record, but lost the two last rounds of the first pod, which left me needing to 3-0 the last pod to even make money. My table had Sebastian Thaler, Marcio Carvalho, Christophe Gregoir, Lee Shi-Tian and some other names I recognized. I faced three straight pros, but got the 3-0 That was pretty sweet.
My best experience I think is that since I started playing this summer, I haven't seen a single one of those jerk-types at a FNM or during any sanctioned or casual play. There's even a Magic club here on-campus full of a bunch of fun guys with huge collections even willing to trade with a guy like me who has only a little bit of standard jank. It's been a very nice way for me to get into the game.
Props to Theismisacrime for the sig! Click for Trade list!
Major EDH player! Current decks: UUBraids, Waifu | UGZegana | RGWEnchantress Uril, the Miststalker | WBTriad of Fates (new!) | RBGXira Arien Re-dredge-imator (unretired!)
Eladamri | Anowon | Sydri | Melek | Augustin IV | Thelon | Sliver Overlord | Ramirez DePietro
Retired! Kangee | Kaalia
I am a pretty veteran MTG player, I began playing when Ice Age came out and played through Urza's Saga. I just recently (the last week) started playing again. Before I quit my MTG resume inclued 3 PTQ wins top 8 at 1st Annual Extended Nationals a whole bunch of wins in MTG tournies both in Virginia Beach and Roanoke at Star City Games. Along with 4 other PTQ Top 8's top 100 in PT DC top 32 in PT New York. So I have a bunch of good and bad experiences with this game.
The worst experience I had was at an extended PTQ in 2000 or so in Richmond VA, one of my good friends was playing a super aggressive mono red deck called Sligh and had went 6-0 along with my self and 3 other people from this area (VA Beach). Well he had an unlucky draw of playing Mike Long who was playing mono black necropotence drain life deck, which usually isn't a bad draw but for some god awful reason my friend wasn't paying attention till it was too late and didn't notice that Mike wasn't keeping his life correctly and add to his life total at times instead of subtracting or not adjusting his life total at all when he would draw a card. Mike got warned for incorrect life keeping but the damage had already been done and my friend ended up loosing the match, making stupid mistakes because of how flustered he was.
The best experience I had was when a group of us VA Beach players went to New York for 1st Annual Extended Nationals and the morning of the tourney about 4 hours before start I was down in the tournament room fine tuning my deck (Land Tax/Scroll Rack/RWBG Control) and I hear "Want to play?", I look up and it's John Finkle. So of course I say yes, admittedly a bit star struck and put up a fair fight (we were both playing VERY Similar Decks) but he won most of the games we played. Afterward he gave me advice on how to play the deck a little more efficiently and some improvements I could make to the deck to make it a little more stable. Well needless to say the changes worked and made top 8 loosing to John Finkle in the First Elimination Round in a 2 hour long 3 game match that was the Feature Match of that round.
All in all usually my "bad experiences" dealt with either getting screwed by a bad ruling or by my deck itself very rarely did I ever deal with rude or mean people, I don't tend to do a lot of talking during my matches and very rarely pay attention to my opponent minus what they are playing and to how they are handling their cards/shuffling their deck. I have never had cards stolen luckily I have been the victims of some bad trades but hey I got what I wanted and walked away pretty happy.
Almost all of my "good experiences" deal with me doing well or winning larger tournaments, or friends doing so. Another good story was when a group of under 18 year old guys from the comic shop we all played at went to a JSS Nationals Qualifier with very well tested and fine tuned decks that we helped them design/loan cards for and of course playtested. 4 of our 6 guys made top 8, all 6 made top 16 and 1 of our guys won the thing. Made us all proud to see them all do so well. They were even all sporting the comic shops shirts.
Standard: RUG RUG RUG R All In Goblins R
Extended: BWG Doran Rock BWG
Legacy: BWG Dark Horizons BWG
--Signature by Maelstrom Graphics!--
While playing at a small tournament at my LGS (about the time that Visions was coming out), I had the misfortune of being selected of going against the assistant manager of the store. Throughout the two games I played against him (I lost both times), he never kept an accurate count of his life. Every time I called him on it, the manager sided with him and told me to stop being so difficult. I also found it highly suspicious that in both games I played against him, his deck played EXACTLY the same (same cards in just about the same order). After losing, I watched as he played everyone else, and the same things happened (bad life counting practices and his deck playing the same way). He ended up taking first place in the tournament and the manager stood by him.
It was later discovered by a friend that he [the asst. manager] bragged about how he could stack his deck almost perfectly. I never went back to that store after that tournament.
Best:
I was playing a casual game with a group of acquaintances and they were fairly certain I was running my (at the time) standard permission deck with unblockable creatures. I just smirked and nodded. When the game started, I threw down my Plains and started what could best be described as a massacre. What resulted was them being completely surprised by what I called my 'Holy War' deck. It was infested with Knights, Angels, and Clerics and was about anti-Creature as you could get in pre-Mirrodin. To this day I wish I had written down the recipe to that deck. It never lost.
The best and worst (because I lost) experience I've had playing MTG was today. I play with a small group of friends 5/7 days a week and my deck is extremely powerful. I had peaked at around 140 life, but was slowly dropping because I didn't have many creatures to defend with. When I got to around 40, I played Pain's Reward and bid 18 life as it was the highest health my opponents had. What I forgot was that an opponent had played a platinum angel, so he bid 2 billion life, and then played a card where any life he should have lost, he gains instead.
Needless to say, we all forfeited and he won on 2 billion life.
Best: stopping to go to competitive tournaments and playing in the comfort of home with good friends, sometimes using proxy decks, around decent food and not caring about that misplay or take-back because we"re just there tyo thoroughly enjoy ourselves.
Best: Same day actually, my last opponent of the prerelease! We went into the round tied, and so he offered me a deal. We were in contention for 2 prize booster packs, and suggested that we play the round out, but regardless of who won, we split the prize! "No need for either of us to go home empty handed! And if we end up drawing, then neither of us get anything!" I agreed (I'm not a selfish person) and what ensued was one of the best 3 games of MTG I've ever played! We were neck in neck until I pulled ahead and won it! We both ended up with pretty decent foils from the packs, and a renewed love of the game!
Edit: this event is actually second best, first goes to hitting Phage the Untouchable with Mirror Strike at a big casual event with 20 friends looking on! Was the last round of this "tourney" and I was fighting for first place when I pulled that stunt :-D
-At this LGS, when I was around 10 years old, I took a few random common card always from the store at the leftover storage, the store want to charge me, I didn't pay.
So basically there are few jerks at the LGS notices of this, they keep spread out the news about me "stealing" items from the store, after few years later, there is a lot of players might know that I am kind of sketchy so they always warn other people to keep away from me for stealing.
Now this LGS is closed, some new LGS opened, I went to those LGS and it fews alright.
-The worst possible experience this game bought me is just some ridiculous players I have to deal with, like some people I can't even get rid off, they always stay inside my mind. I have made some really good friends out of this game, but sometimes there are just those few people that can get way too seriously out of hand.
Like there is one time I meet with this one friend who I played Magic for years, one day after the tournament, he went with a really bad record, I actually made some profit and return from the tournament. But there is one critical mistake I made was I told to him "which decks you lose to". And after that he immediately yelled, "stop ******* say this *****, mother*******" at me.
Another time is I was trying to sell some cards to this dude I recently met with, long story short, for 3 days I didn't come to his place and sell the cards to him, I said "Dude, I am having summer class exams so I will sell you the cards later on or eventually". But then there is one day I finally met him, I got yelled extremely hard again, he said I didn't set up a exact time with him.
I mean come on this is not something very serious, we can sort the trading and selling out, it is just a damn ******* game, and still, there is just those type of people take this goddamn game way too seriously.
Sometimes I might just need to meditate my self, but every time I think about the game there is few negative experience can react to my mind, I should just relax and try to avoid those negative experience as much as possible.
Best -
Won a lot of side events at GP's , PPTQ, GPT. Built a complete foiled out EDH deck before, the game gave me endless fun.
EDH: Xenagos, God of Revels.
That said I'll reply! Worst experience is easy - there's an LGS I visit in a different city that's about an hour away. I don't spend much on sealed products but being an EDH player I tend to pick up some form of blingy foil every visit - I did my end-of-year finances recently and found I'd spent a few thousand dollars in 2016.
Anyways the owner of this card shop was always pretty flighty and I'd only ever bumped into him once or twice but I was on first name bases with the rest of the staff. I come in with my girlfriend and a friend of mine who's learning the game, and he's the only guy working. Today I was sort of shopping for something for her decks because it was an anniversary, so I decided I'd pick up the foil Tamiyo he had in the cabinet. This joint is known for flip-flopping when it comes to prices between SCG, TCG, F2F and their own pricing because they're in kinda bad shape financially, so I ask "How much for your foil Tamiyo?" Just wanting to find out which pricing method we'll be using for our shopping.
He takes a look at us, audibly laughs and says "It's more than ten bucks. Do you still even care?"
I guess because he hadn't bumped into me at his store much he didn't know I was a regular or a frequent spender, and just assumed we were skeezy casual players who'd scatter like rats if he told us the price. I was tempted to buy half his cabinet just to prove a point but I figured, giving this jerk money is the last thing I wanted to do so I just left. New guy wound up quitting the game a while later, said it "just seemed too intense". =/
Best memory was probably Origins pre-release - my girlfriend snatched second and I got first, and the owner gave us near a dozen spare FNM Path to Exile promos along with our prize pool. I even opened a foil flip Lilly for her collection! Coolest part was seeing how much better she had gotten at the game though.
Skysovereign is played in Vintage?? o_O
Signature courtesy of Rivenor and Miraculous Recovery
EDH Altered Cards by Galspanic (Seriously, this guy's awesome.)
My Pauper Cube
Tapped-Out Simulator
My Trade Thread
-Decks-
Commander:
GWR Rith, the Awakener RWG
U Kami of the Crescent Moon U (Flagship Deck)
BW Teysa, Orzhov Scion WB
Under Construction:
UBR Crosis, the Purger RBU
Cube:
WUBRGX Pauper XGRBUW
Worst: Opponent casts golden wish looking for a COP: Green while I'm playing elves one turn from an overrun for the win. Pretty cheesy already Can't find anything in his whole collection but sees a card on the ground, picks it up.... It's an Engineered Plague a friend had dropped on the ground while leaving the game earlier. I went so far as to get them to admit that it wasn't their card and they stole it but they said now they own it. Apparently "cards you own" counts stolen cards that don't belong to you. I outright called him a cheater and we've never played magic together since.