Magic the Gathering (1995)
About
The original collectible card game. Purchase cards in packs like you would baseball cards and then create a deck from them to battle another player in a head to head battling card game.
Thoughts
Tim:
4/5 Good
Still a fun game. Even with the limited cards we had access to we had a good time. Playing solid color decks against each other made it fun to try and balance them out. Each of the different color cards play differently enough to be interesting but are similar enough so you don't need to relearn everything. I'm unsure if I could ever recommend a collectible card game, but the sell multiple starter sets that should be fun and give you the opportunity to see what's it's all about without breaking the bank.
Laura:
3.5/5
It was fun learning the game, but we did have quite a time getting the decks balanced appropriately. After a while, we were normally getting within a few points of each other, and just a bad draw was the difference between winning and losing.
Expanded Thoughts
I had purchased my original cards in about 1997 and never really played much. I found the cost of purchasing card to be to expensive at the time, I really didn't like that you had to purchase so many cards just to find a good set of 60 that would work together, and it was difficult to find people to play with.
Also during that time a computer game "Magic the Gathering (1997)" was released the solved all of my problems. For a one time purchase you could play with every card in the game, and you had a computer opponent to play with any time you wanted. As an added bonus they incorporated a bit of RGP flavor to the game having you start with a basic set of cards and travel around the map of Shandalar defeating monsters to gain new cards which you could then add to your deck.
Note: Someone released an updated version that will play on Windows 10. Search online for "Shandalar 2012". It's still fun but man I forgot how brutal it was.
But it's now 2024 and I want to see what it will take to play some Magic the Gathering. I also want to use my old cards as much as I can. My cards are the white border set from 1995. After taking a look I quickly saw the issue. With only about 160 cards, you just can't build a reasonable deck much less two. The answer is Ebay. So $140 later, I'm now the owner of 700 more cards.
The thing is, you still can't build the exact deck you want even with this many cards as you just don't have enough duplicates of the cards you want. Just to get enough lands I had to find a person selling only lands on Ebay and forget about having 3 lightning bolt cards if you want a red deck.
That being said it was enough to build 4 single color decks, Red, Green, Black, and Blue. White, well I just couldn't figure out how to put a playable White deck together even with all of these cards.
In the end it's pretty fun. It's not worth the price, but it was fun to play. The issue other than the lack of cards to build the deck you want robs the game from one of the fun parts which is deck building and tweaking your deck just so.
If I was not predisposed to play with my existing cards it looks like they sell 2 Pack starter sets for about $15. This would definitely be the way to go if you have not played before and want to try it out.
Trivia
Magic: The Gathering is considered the first modern collectible card game (CCG). It was created by Richard Garfield and released in 1993 by Wizards of the Coast.
More Images
A few more images
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9-30-2024