There literally is nobody that knows "nobody" that already plays magic and starts playing magic in paper form.
I started playing Magic when I walked into my local comic book store to buy, I dunno, probably X-Men or something, saw the displays for a Magic release, decided to give it a try and bought a new Fourth edition starter deck. I had no one to play with so a few days later I bought another, invited a friend for a sleepover that weekend, handed him my second starter deck, and we spent an hour or two trying to suss it out.
There literally is nobody that knows "nobody" that already plays magic and starts playing magic in paper form.
I started playing Magic when I walked into my local comic book store to buy, I dunno, probably X-Men or something, saw the displays for a Magic release, decided to give it a try and bought a new Fourth edition starter deck. I had no one to play with so a few days later I bought another, invited a friend for a sleepover that weekend, handed him my second starter deck, and we spent an hour or two trying to suss it out.
WHERE IS YOUR GOD NOW
That's about how I started, except I was the friend. Back in the late 90s, my best friend, her brother, and I all got pre-gen decks and played against each other.
I started playing Magic when I walked into my local comic book store to buy, I dunno, probably X-Men or something, saw the displays for a Magic release, decided to give it a try and bought a new Fourth edition starter deck. I had no one to play with so a few days later I bought another, invited a friend for a sleepover that weekend, handed him my second starter deck, and we spent an hour or two trying to suss it out.
WHERE IS YOUR GOD NOW
I consider the store did a piss poor job introducing a "new" player to the game or players.
But for some reason you sticked to the game, so consider you special
I started playing Magic when I walked into my local comic book store to buy, I dunno, probably X-Men or something, saw the displays for a Magic release, decided to give it a try and bought a new Fourth edition starter deck. I had no one to play with so a few days later I bought another, invited a friend for a sleepover that weekend, handed him my second starter deck, and we spent an hour or two trying to suss it out.
WHERE IS YOUR GOD NOW
I consider the store did a piss poor job introducing a "new" player to the game or players.
It's a comic book store. What level of support for new players do you expect from an environment that specializes in a different product? One thing not to forget is that many venues that could sell Magic product are not corner shops that are dedicated to that product. There are comic shops that just add general fantasy game products. There are toy shops that have a sortiment that is 50% interlocking plastic bricks and fashion dolls and the other half is dominated by a lot of differently branded versions of a property trading board game and 12 different price categories of Poker card decks.
In such a place having a Standalone product is a great idea. I wouldn't expect Booster packs selling there, when people might just check for a new game. And I wouldn't expect clerks to serve as dedicated salesman of your specific product - really a qualification to use the cash register is probably what most interactions with customers require there.
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Planar Chaos was not a mistake neither was it random. You might want to look at it again.
[thread=239793][Game] Level Up - Creature[/thread]
It's a comic book store. What level of support for new players do you expect from an environment that specializes in a different product? One thing not to forget is that many venues that could sell Magic product are not corner shops that are dedicated to that product. There are comic shops that just add general fantasy game products. There are toy shops that have a sortiment that is 50% interlocking plastic bricks and fashion dolls and the other half is dominated by a lot of differently branded versions of a property trading board game and 12 different price categories of Poker card decks.
In such a place having a Standalone product is a great idea. I wouldn't expect Booster packs selling there, when people might just check for a new game. And I wouldn't expect clerks to serve as dedicated salesman of your specific product - really a qualification to use the cash register is probably what most interactions with customers require there.
This is what's up! Magic is a game for people ages 13+, but more often than not children much younger get introduced to it. Very often, a young kid wants a MtG product due to word of mouth at school, and it's up to parents to buy these products. A parent goes into a toystore (NOT LGS), or even a Barnes & nobles, and finds a MtG product, it says it's a set for beginners, Great! thinks the parent, this is what my young child needs to learn this game, and maybe I can even play it with them. They buy this beginner product, the kid is happy. The kid plays with the product and gets a hang of this game that otherwise would be over their head, and slowly they start to branch out and find more MtG products.
Long story short: this product IS necessary. You may think it's a waste of WotC's resources, and a waste of your ability to get a new product, but it's packages like this set that invite new players into the game. It's necessary. You're free to ignore it's existence. It's not for you.
In the place where I grew up, there was no LGS - you had to drive to the next "big city" in the region to get to one (which took about an hour by car). We only had a generic toy store that also happened to sell Pokemon, Yu-Gi-Oh and Magic boosters and Precons. That's where I picked up my first cards. The old theme decks were also underpowered most of the time - and yet I didn't care back then as long as I got to play some cool games. I guess I got "scammed", huh? Except things like that don't really matter in the long run. If there had been a "2-for-1 Starter Pack" back then, you bet I would've bought it. I know it grinds people's gears that there' not enough "value" in these decks, but you're thinking about it too narrowly. This product is about providing an introductory experience to new players without easy access to LGS. Could the decks be more powerful? Yes, they could. But when it comes down to it, what matters more is that the decks are balanced against each other. Also, as Maro recently said, excitement is a resource game companies use on purpose. In this case, Wizards is essentially "saving" the cool experience of tuning a starter deck to the limit for later. It's something the player has to figure out for their own, and ideally gets more attached to the product in the process. At least that's how it worked for me. Of course this also makes them money, they're a business after all. Yeah, they are being stingy with the "good cards" in products like this. But from a business perspective they can afford to do so, and there is some logic to it - it's not just "we want to f*ck newbs over lol".
This thread reminds me of when people tell you your first car should be something cheap and not in great condition so you can learn.
Or you could learn with something that is worth your money.
A cheap car can be worth your money, even be a steal. An expensively bought car can easily be crap you overpaid for. And recall that an example two posts above yours is about parents without any expertise buying that car for you. And remember that we are talking about a topic where disassembling the car for its parts to building yourself a new car out of it is the level of expertise from which some people argue.
People who complain this off-the-rack car doesn't have the kind of engine or transmission they'd use for their hobbies as diverse as amateur racing, off-road adventure safari or profitable resale of car parts etc.
This is also one of those rare car deals where you buy two cars specifically to be used in conjunction with each other where I strain to fit this metaphor. Maybe the fact that a car is primarily seen as a tool sold on easing everyday tasks and a major investment you don't want to do more than once a year, while the decks are more like toys sold on entertainment value and are a minor investment you can make multiple times a year adjusting and totally reorienting yourself.
Or to put it another way: If my deck breaks down I don't have to take the bus to work. Casual as I may be, I'll still pilot a 59-card deck while one of my uncommons is lost under the kitchen fridge and if I have no collection to replace the card.
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Planar Chaos was not a mistake neither was it random. You might want to look at it again.
[thread=239793][Game] Level Up - Creature[/thread]
I love when long-term MTG vets like (presumably) most of us cast aspersions on things like this, because we've lost perspective on how we've learned a little. Nothing to be ashamed of; most people do. The process of going between not knowing something and knowing it tends to be a bit of a blank.
I learned via the Portal starter set that someone mentioned way up the thread, and it did its job pretty well. You know, aside from the half of the game that wasn't there, which meant that acclimating to the real thing needed some more work. However, these decks have instants, enchantments and multicolored cards, so that's great. I think this will work at its intended purpose, but I'm not the right person to ask about that kind of thing. As far as complaints about "lack of value" -- in this case, the value is not meant to be in big singular cards, but in its use as a teaching tool. This is not designed for established players. It's too soon to tell if this product will have value as a teaching tool -- but card value has no direct effect on that. Besides, so what if Ghalta is the only valuable thing in a FIFTEEN DOLLAR package and it drops to five bucks, particularly if the person grabbing it and using the B/G deck decides to play Magic for a very long time -- by this point, I'd assume most of us "lost" $10 worth of card value over our years playing the game. I know I have.
(Besides, even aside from that, you know what would happen if they did print a good amount of value in the set? Other people, or possibly the same people as in this thread, would be complaining about how much it brought the price down on some things they traded for. I'm not saying they're right or wrong, just that that would happen. Although I suppose just bringing it up has a tone of its own.)
if existing forummers on here actually started talking about how great this product was, it would mean the product has failed. There'd be no stock left on any shelves because the products would be bought, usually in 4's, so the singles could be harvested for competitive use.
The decks are random piles because they have to be. It's funny, but it's true. The product is "bad" to protect itself from existing players. We wouldn't touch it with a ten foot pole - so it stays on the shelf until a new players decides to splash a small amount of money to just find out what magic is all about.
Sure, they'll learn later on that their purchase is mostly unusable and they don't have "market value", but we're talking about a $15 gateway ticket, not a $150 investment.
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BGW Elves BGW|BW Tokens BW|WBR Sword&ShieldWBR|BUG DelverBUG|UWR Kiki UWR | UR Storm UR
If when I started playing I learned the product I just bought was made because the company thinks I'm stupid and need to be sold a pile of cardboard designed to suck so I could durdle in my stupid kids containment zone where I won't bother the real players. I wouldn't have bought an apartment worth of cards these past 20 years.
Nowadays I kinda wish that was the case. The greatest surge in players I've ever seen in my city was at the time we were getting Verdant Catacombs and Stoneforge Mystic in Event Decks, but WotC insists giving people good cards and the ability to win is something we shouldn't want and we are wrong for wanting to treat new players like fellow gamers instead of the midnless consuming machines they want them to be.
They don't give enfranchised players ANYTHING. They took away the product that was keeping Modern sort-of-accessible, they toroughly destroyed Standard, they ruined GPs by giving Channel Fireball a monopoly and they keep harassing LGS by increasing demands to remain in WPN but reducing support. At this point it's almost like all they want us to do is open boosters to just look at the cards because the playability just isn't there, and even looking at the cards is hard because the art direction is in a chasm and the cardstock quality hasn't improved no matter how much they claim it has.
Magic is gonna have a hard dive by 2020 if they continue like this.
If when I started playing I learned the product I just bought was made because the company thinks I'm stupid and need to be sold a pile of cardboard designed to suck so I could durdle in my stupid kids containment zone where I won't bother the real players. I wouldn't have bought an apartment worth of cards these past 20 years.
Where were you back when theme decks existed? Introductory products have always been filled with trash cards (the one time Umezawa's Jitte was in Rat's Nest doesn't count), why are people acting like this is something new and the sky is falling because of itv
If when I started playing I learned the product I just bought was made because the company thinks I'm stupid and need to be sold a pile of cardboard designed to suck so I could durdle in my stupid kids containment zone where I won't bother the real players. I wouldn't have bought an apartment worth of cards these past 20 years.
Where were you back when theme decks existed? Introductory products have always been filled with trash cards (the one time Umezawa's Jitte was in Rat's Nest doesn't count), why are people acting like this is something new and the sky is falling because of itv
Maybe it's linked to the focus on monetary value I keep seeing? When I started playing in the late 90s, I bought a pre-gen deck from a gaming store that was ok, but not spectacular. That's how I figured most people started.
Where were you back when theme decks existed? Introductory products have always been filled with trash cards (the one time Umezawa's Jitte was in Rat's Nest doesn't count), why are people acting like this is something new and the sky is falling because of itv
I started playing with Tournament Packs, which at the time were called Starter Decks because WotC didn't think new players were too dumb to build their own decks yet. And even if Theme Decks were seldom valuable or powerful they were at least very often thematic and showed interactions you might have overlooked at first sight like the Avalanche Riders+Phyrexian Reclamation in Phyrexian Assault. Crusher had Defense of the Heart and exactly 2 Mother of Runes to keep your dumb tramplers alive. Heavy Duty was a good stepping stone into Naya Blitz, specially because nobody believed in Armadillo Cloak until they played it. Buying two copies of Grave Danger put you in the right track to a decent Psychatog deck. Sacrificial Bam was a class on Atog 101...
Theme decks taught you strategy, these decks look even more braindead than the Arena tutorial. And I wouldn't be surprised if anyone who starts Magic with this product but has already played Heartstone, Pokemon or Yu-Gi-Oh! ends up with the wrong first impression of Magic being a very dull and shallow game.
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I started playing Magic when I walked into my local comic book store to buy, I dunno, probably X-Men or something, saw the displays for a Magic release, decided to give it a try and bought a new Fourth edition starter deck. I had no one to play with so a few days later I bought another, invited a friend for a sleepover that weekend, handed him my second starter deck, and we spent an hour or two trying to suss it out.
WHERE IS YOUR GOD NOW
That's about how I started, except I was the friend. Back in the late 90s, my best friend, her brother, and I all got pre-gen decks and played against each other.
GENERATION 12: The first time you see this, copy and paste it into your signature and add 1 to the generation number. It's a social experiment.
I consider the store did a piss poor job introducing a "new" player to the game or players.
But for some reason you sticked to the game, so consider you special
WUBRG#BlackLotusMatterWUBRG
👮👮👮 #BlueLivesMatter 👮👮👮
It's a comic book store. What level of support for new players do you expect from an environment that specializes in a different product? One thing not to forget is that many venues that could sell Magic product are not corner shops that are dedicated to that product. There are comic shops that just add general fantasy game products. There are toy shops that have a sortiment that is 50% interlocking plastic bricks and fashion dolls and the other half is dominated by a lot of differently branded versions of a property trading board game and 12 different price categories of Poker card decks.
In such a place having a Standalone product is a great idea. I wouldn't expect Booster packs selling there, when people might just check for a new game. And I wouldn't expect clerks to serve as dedicated salesman of your specific product - really a qualification to use the cash register is probably what most interactions with customers require there.
Finally a good white villain quote: "So, do I ever re-evaluate my life choices? Never, because I know what I'm doing is a righteous cause."
Factions: Sleeping
Remnants: Valheim
Legendary Journey: Heroes & Planeswalkers
Saga: Shards of Rabiah
Legends: The Elder Dragons
Read up on Red Flags & NWO
This is what's up! Magic is a game for people ages 13+, but more often than not children much younger get introduced to it. Very often, a young kid wants a MtG product due to word of mouth at school, and it's up to parents to buy these products. A parent goes into a toystore (NOT LGS), or even a Barnes & nobles, and finds a MtG product, it says it's a set for beginners, Great! thinks the parent, this is what my young child needs to learn this game, and maybe I can even play it with them. They buy this beginner product, the kid is happy. The kid plays with the product and gets a hang of this game that otherwise would be over their head, and slowly they start to branch out and find more MtG products.
Long story short: this product IS necessary. You may think it's a waste of WotC's resources, and a waste of your ability to get a new product, but it's packages like this set that invite new players into the game. It's necessary. You're free to ignore it's existence. It's not for you.
GWUBRDraft my Old Border Nostalgia Cube! and/or The Little Pauper Cube That Could!RBUWG
Modern:WDeath & TaxesW | RUGRUG DelverRUG
Or you could learn with something that is worth your money.
A cheap car can be worth your money, even be a steal. An expensively bought car can easily be crap you overpaid for. And recall that an example two posts above yours is about parents without any expertise buying that car for you. And remember that we are talking about a topic where disassembling the car for its parts to building yourself a new car out of it is the level of expertise from which some people argue.
People who complain this off-the-rack car doesn't have the kind of engine or transmission they'd use for their hobbies as diverse as amateur racing, off-road adventure safari or profitable resale of car parts etc.
This is also one of those rare car deals where you buy two cars specifically to be used in conjunction with each other where I strain to fit this metaphor. Maybe the fact that a car is primarily seen as a tool sold on easing everyday tasks and a major investment you don't want to do more than once a year, while the decks are more like toys sold on entertainment value and are a minor investment you can make multiple times a year adjusting and totally reorienting yourself.
Or to put it another way: If my deck breaks down I don't have to take the bus to work. Casual as I may be, I'll still pilot a 59-card deck while one of my uncommons is lost under the kitchen fridge and if I have no collection to replace the card.
Finally a good white villain quote: "So, do I ever re-evaluate my life choices? Never, because I know what I'm doing is a righteous cause."
Factions: Sleeping
Remnants: Valheim
Legendary Journey: Heroes & Planeswalkers
Saga: Shards of Rabiah
Legends: The Elder Dragons
Read up on Red Flags & NWO
I learned via the Portal starter set that someone mentioned way up the thread, and it did its job pretty well. You know, aside from the half of the game that wasn't there, which meant that acclimating to the real thing needed some more work. However, these decks have instants, enchantments and multicolored cards, so that's great. I think this will work at its intended purpose, but I'm not the right person to ask about that kind of thing. As far as complaints about "lack of value" -- in this case, the value is not meant to be in big singular cards, but in its use as a teaching tool. This is not designed for established players. It's too soon to tell if this product will have value as a teaching tool -- but card value has no direct effect on that. Besides, so what if Ghalta is the only valuable thing in a FIFTEEN DOLLAR package and it drops to five bucks, particularly if the person grabbing it and using the B/G deck decides to play Magic for a very long time -- by this point, I'd assume most of us "lost" $10 worth of card value over our years playing the game. I know I have.
(Besides, even aside from that, you know what would happen if they did print a good amount of value in the set? Other people, or possibly the same people as in this thread, would be complaining about how much it brought the price down on some things they traded for. I'm not saying they're right or wrong, just that that would happen. Although I suppose just bringing it up has a tone of its own.)
The decks are random piles because they have to be. It's funny, but it's true. The product is "bad" to protect itself from existing players. We wouldn't touch it with a ten foot pole - so it stays on the shelf until a new players decides to splash a small amount of money to just find out what magic is all about.
Sure, they'll learn later on that their purchase is mostly unusable and they don't have "market value", but we're talking about a $15 gateway ticket, not a $150 investment.
BGW Elves BGW|BW Tokens BW|WBR Sword&ShieldWBR|BUG DelverBUG|UWR Kiki UWR | UR Storm UR
Nowadays I kinda wish that was the case. The greatest surge in players I've ever seen in my city was at the time we were getting Verdant Catacombs and Stoneforge Mystic in Event Decks, but WotC insists giving people good cards and the ability to win is something we shouldn't want and we are wrong for wanting to treat new players like fellow gamers instead of the midnless consuming machines they want them to be.
They don't give enfranchised players ANYTHING. They took away the product that was keeping Modern sort-of-accessible, they toroughly destroyed Standard, they ruined GPs by giving Channel Fireball a monopoly and they keep harassing LGS by increasing demands to remain in WPN but reducing support. At this point it's almost like all they want us to do is open boosters to just look at the cards because the playability just isn't there, and even looking at the cards is hard because the art direction is in a chasm and the cardstock quality hasn't improved no matter how much they claim it has.
Magic is gonna have a hard dive by 2020 if they continue like this.
Where were you back when theme decks existed? Introductory products have always been filled with trash cards (the one time Umezawa's Jitte was in Rat's Nest doesn't count), why are people acting like this is something new and the sky is falling because of itv
Maybe it's linked to the focus on monetary value I keep seeing? When I started playing in the late 90s, I bought a pre-gen deck from a gaming store that was ok, but not spectacular. That's how I figured most people started.
GENERATION 12: The first time you see this, copy and paste it into your signature and add 1 to the generation number. It's a social experiment.
Theme decks taught you strategy, these decks look even more braindead than the Arena tutorial. And I wouldn't be surprised if anyone who starts Magic with this product but has already played Heartstone, Pokemon or Yu-Gi-Oh! ends up with the wrong first impression of Magic being a very dull and shallow game.