What HOT TAKES are you taking?

Sure, that is how it's marketed. But that wasn't the complaint. The complaint was, Magic is expensive to play because you have to spend a lot to stay "competitive". And that's not true.

stormseeker75 wrote: I play a lot of Magic and have since I was 15, on and off.

Magic is a terrible game due to the mana situation. It's awful to have non-games where one side does nothing. It's not fun to be on either end of that.

There are two mana problems. Too much and not enough. Obviously a player is screwed at the start if they can't play any cards due to lack of mana. The other intrinsic mana problem with Magic is card flow. While there are individual Magic cards that let you draw extra cards, the default situation is that you draw one card per turn. If you already have a decent amount of mana in play and you draw a mana card instead of a creature, instant, enchantment, whatever, it's disappointing.

There are other CCGs that did a better job with both resources (like mana) and cardflow, but Magic was both the first CCG and the first one to go big, allowing it to dominate the CCG market.

You don't need to play competitively or even with current cards to have fun with Magic, but failure to do so may limit your number of available opponents. If you don't keep up with the newer cards, the deckbuilding aspect of the game may become stale. Keeping up with the new cards can be expensive, and your old cards become obsolete.

Legomancer wrote: Sure, that is how it's marketed. But that wasn't the complaint. The complaint was, Magic is expensive to play because you have to spend a lot to stay "competitive". And that's not true.

Yes, it absolutely is true if you want to play in the competitive scene. I don't know how any rational person could think otherwise. If all you want to do is play Pauper or with a cube or whatever, fine. Those are valid ways to play the game. But even getting to the point where you have a cube costs a lot of money and if you want to actually enjoy playing said cube with the idea of winning against other cubes, you're going to have to chase cards, which means more money. A cube is 360 cards. That's 24 boosters. That's $96 US dollars. Now there are a lot of games that cost around that and even more than that. But there are a lot more that cost a lot less that you can get just as much play out of. It's an expensive game. It always has been because that was the idea ("collectible.") People have found ways to get around that that are legit formats to play, but they're kitbashing in order to not be sucked into the bottomless money pit that is MTG. Saying that it isn't expensive because you can play Pauper is like saying that maintaining a 20-year-old car is a way to get around if you just learn how to do the maintenance and how to pick up parts on the cheap. The latter is a way to get around something that is otherwise really expensive.

I'm just glad my kid is happy with fake...er, sorry, "non-official" Pokémon cards so I can buy gold versions of all the good ones for like $20.

Roblox is the devil in my house.

The soundtrack to LOST BOYS (1987) is fantastic and holds up at 35 years on, including shirtless oily ponytail saxophone guy.

I just love that people are still arguing about "is MTG expensive?" and "is mana flood/screw the worst thing ever?" in 2022. It's like "Hot Takes: Greatest Hits Edition."

Some real Stockholm syndrome mtg takes in here. To say the game isn't designed to be, and also hugely successful at being, an infinite money pit is denial. You can enjoy the game without engaging in that aspect of it up to a point, but that doesn't change what the game fundamentally is.

My last post: I never said MTG is not a money pit and wasn't designed that way. I merely said it doesn't HAVE to be. The assumption is constantly made that the ONLY way to play it, or at least the only satisfying way to play it is to go 100% competitive against others. That's not true. There are PLENTY of ways to get a lot out of it without spending a ton, despite how it's intended and marketed. That's all I'm saying. If you like the gameplay of Magic you can enjoy it without a huge outlay. But the perception is that the only way to play is to rise up through the rankings against strangers. That's not how any other game is approached; I don't look at Power Grid as pointless unless I'm challenging The Power Grid Grandmasters.

That's my hot take. As should be the case with all hot takes, I'm dropping it and walking away.

Chess is pointless unless you join a club and move up the ranks to GrandMaster.

Heh, my original hot take here was that the people you play magic with and the decision to have fun even if you lose make it better. And that is also true of other games.

And debates on the internet for that matter.

The people I’ve found with the biggest regrets in CCGs, or the most annoying to be around, are the ones that are only happy if they are winning. Or have spent a lot and still lose. They’ll blame the game or whatever. Demand perfection from themselves. But ultimately we’re not perfect and that’s fine.

Also some people enjoy gambling. From the lotto to Diablo 2.

My club has had a lot of fun with limited formats of MTG

We each buy a pre made deck. We each put the two enclosed packs of cards in a community binder and when you lose a match you get to draft a card. (drafting cards that are unplayable to you is not allowed) Ideally your deck gets better and eventually the matches are even.

We are lucky we have had a solid group of 6-8 people who meet weekly for a long time , that allows this kind of thing to work.

It allowed people to play some MTG if they arrived early or between board games resolving or whatever and not have to spend lots of $$.

We had one long sucessful run, then we reset and tried another one, (When guild decks for all the guilds were widely available) but not all pre built decks are created equal, and some poorly skilled players just aren't good enough to make their deck better it turns out. They just couldnt stop losing no matter how many new cards they drafted.

Also: My oldest son (22 years old) plays pauper with his friends, and it is NOT cheap. Compettitive decks can be 60 dollars and above since pauper staple commons are highly sought after some are 8-10 dollars each (allegedly common cards) .

Also, everything in capitalism is now designed as an infinite money pit. From board games to iPhones to cars to what the fuck ever, so I say let people spend money on what they want.

Edit: this was not targeted at the last post in here. Playing with a set of limited decks that gradually get cards added to them sounds really cool.

fightcitymayor wrote: I just love that people are still arguing about "is MTG expensive?" and "is mana flood/screw the worst thing ever?" in 2022. It's like "Hot Takes: Greatest Hits Edition."

. . . and have none of y'all played any other card game? You can pull shit cards in every other card game, too. That's more or less what card games are, what makes them interesting. Every hand is different, and on occasion they suck and you get to wallow in your misfortune. Don't pass up that opportunity.

They call it playing cards for a reason. Slow down, take a sip, relax, and play. It's ok if you don't win a particular round.

Gary Sax wrote: "This Year" by the Mountain Goats is one of the greatest songs ever written.

Yeah man, this song rules. I am a big fan of certain eras of the Mountain Goats, I guess most of their stuff from the early-mid 2000s is pretty good...but yeah that's an incredible song.

Another single (that sounds nothing like the rest of the album) is "Rain in Soho" off the Goths album. Worth a listen.