Magic: the Gathering Club

[Aisling]

Magic: the Gathering

is the first collectible card game, created by Richard Garfield and introduced in 1993 by Wizards of the Coast. Magic continues to thrive, with approximately twelve million players as of 2011.

In Magic, you play the role of a planeswalker—a powerful wizard who fights other planeswalkers for glory, knowledge, and conquest.
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Hey, guys! As you may well be aware, I play Magic: the Gathering. A lot. Not really at a professional level or anything, but I enjoy it quite a bit and love discussing it. I know a couple other members who also play- a couple people on #tcod as well as a couple members who frequent the forums. I figured it was high time to start a club so we can begin to organize ourselves a little!

If you somehow don't know, Magic: the Gathering is a trading card game. As stated above, you take the role of a powerful wizard having magical duels with other wizards. Your deck of cards, or "library", represents all the weapons in your arsenal. It contains the spells you know and the creatures you can summon to fight for you. It's well-developed and very flavorful. Whether you like working out the most efficient winning strategies, coming up with crazy infinite combos or just controlling the biggest monsters, Magic has it all!

If you do know Magic but don't play, that's likely because it's admittedly a relatively expensive hobby with rules that look a bit complex. But it's definitely accessible! There are tutorials online, as well as ways to play online! Free! So if you don't know anyone else who plays, have a local Friday Night Magic venue, or have the money to shell out on the cards, I hope this will be the place for you if you want to try it!

If you already know how to play or do play and just can't get enough, I also hope to start a community of players here! With enough participation we can possibly have our own events, whether they be standard, draft, sealed, EDH, you name it!
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Resources
MagictheGathering.com
Official website. News, downloads, interesting articles. All that jazz.
Learn to play
Includes videos and a downloadable interactive demo
Official Rules
Includes downloadable rulebook, FAQs, and lists of banned/restricted cards
Formats
Overviews of sanctioned (standard, constructed, limited, drafting, etc) to casual (Commander/EDH, and others) formats
Gatherer
Searchable database of all cards. Includes up-to-date rulings of cards and updated versions of outdated cards' text

MTG Salvation
Articles and spoilers for forthcoming sets. Yay!
their wiki
If you want to read up on the history of the game, IRL or lore, this wiki has a lot of info!

mtgfan.tumblr
One of the biggest Magic-centric tumblogs, if you're the tumblr type. Covers many topics, from rules to art to the fan community and even the occasional spoiler.

Tales from the Pit
Maro's tumblog. Insight into in research & development, if you're interested in that.

Forge
A program that lets you play against an AI opponent using most of the rules of a real game. You can construct decks for you and the computer to play with, and you can also play in a sealed deck format against the computer. No multiplayer currently available, though.

Cockatrice
An open-source multiplatform software for playing Magic! Club-sanctioned games will be played using this.
Linux version compiled by sreservoir

Spoiler: Quick Guide to Using Cockatrice

Keyboard Shortcuts
ctrl+i roll die
ctrl+s shuffle library
ctrl+m draw starting hand/mulligan
ctrl+d draw a card
ctrl+shift+d undo last draw
ctrl+w look at top cards of library
ctrl+u untap all permanents
ctrl+t create token
ctrl+j copy highlighted permanent
ctrl+p set power/toughness of highlighted creature
ctrl+L set life total
Left click your life to increase by 1. Right click to decrease by 1.
To highlight multiple cards, left click and drag your cursor to draw a box over them. They can be moved together and tapped/untapped together. Click anything besides/outside them to unhighlight.
Double-clicking your library also draws a card. Double-clicking a card in your hand plays it automatically to its appropriate location (the stack, battlefield, or land zone). Most cards that enter play tapped automatically tap themselves if you play them this way.​

CCGDecks
Multiplayer, real-time drafting simulator, and sealed pool generator. If we do sealed events, we'll go here first to get the cards and then build decks with them using Cockatrice. Requires registration, but it's short.

TappedOut
Online deck builder, if you want to browse or share decklists. Also has a drafting simulator with more sets than CCGDecks', so for draft events we'll use this. You also have to register, but you can also connect it via Facebook.
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Members
Alraune
Gym Leader Shizui
Blastoise Fortooate
Zero Moment
Negrek
Ven
ultraviolet
nyuu
Coloursfall
Sunflower
sreservoir
Adrian Malacoda
Birdy
Storm, Earth, and Fire
Lirris

Event/Project Ideas
Starter decks
Unglued/Unhinged game night
Regularly scheduled club fun-deck night
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[Zexion]

Count me in! I love the game. (learned it at Nerd Camp)

 

[Blastoise Fortooate]

I'm interested in Magic but I don't play it! I downloaded Cockatrice recently but if a beginning player is a baby, then I am a somewhat-formed fetus. THE LORE IS SO COOL THOUGH and I have a very very tentative knowledge of how the game itself is played.

 

[Zero Moment]

Man this game is pretty cool
Even though I haven't actually played it.

 

[Aisling]

I'mma go ahead and count you in Blastoise since lore discussion is encouraged as well :D I'm only just now brushing up on it... it's a lot more in-depth than I would've thought. There's like, novels an comics and everything *_*

Glad we already have a couple of interested people! :3

edit: woah ninja'd! Well hopefully we'll remedy that Zero >:o

 

[Blastoise Fortooate]

To be clear, I intend on playing the game eventually. Just not quite at the moment, since I need to have a better grasp on gameplay first.

 

[Negrek]

yes all of the MtG all of it

I'm very, very up on the lore from about Invasion through Mirrodin, since in middle/high school I totally bought and read all the associated books. (They are so, so terrible. I loved them to pieces. :P Also, if you want any I'll totally give you some for free, since they're mostly just taking up space these days.)

 

[Aisling]

One of the local game shops has a couple of Magic novels, prerevisionist ones I think. I've seen some graphic novels at the bookstore too. I'd kinda like a copy of Planeswalker's Guide to Alara because it apparently has lots of pretty arts in it... And after working on my EDH deck and reading the lore of the creatures and planeswalkers I'm putting in it I'm pretty interested in Alara in general.

By Mirrodin do you mean Mirrodin or Mirrodin Beseiged? Around here people call Mirrodin Beseiged just Mirrodin for short because the original Mirrodin block isn't topical anymore...

 

[Zero Moment]

For my decks I have Sliver Evolution, Simic Mutology, Aurochs Stampede, and Rituals of Rebirth. (and some others?)

What about you guys?

 

[Ven]

I would love to join. Just started playing a few months ago. Vampires and Sorin all the way.

 

[Aisling]

I have a couple decks that I bring to FNM usually. One is a red/green deck that prominently features creatures with Haste and/or Undying, especially Strangleroot Geist and Hellrider.

The other is a black/red vampire deck that used to focus on the vampires that get +1/+1 counters for doing combat damage to your opponent and Proliferating them, but since the Proliferate mechanic is rotating out soon I've taken out Curse of the Stalked Prey and the Proliferate spells and replaced them with Blood Artists and Killing Wave. It's a pretty sick combo. Oh, and of course Vampire Nighthawk is in it now too. He's one of my favorite vampires ever and is super mean with Rakish Heir.

Also, I've been working on an EDH deck with Karrthus as my commander. I'm only 16 cards away from finishing it, unfortunately those cards I'm missing add up to almost forty bucks :/

After I finish my EDH deck I want to start working on a black/green deck featuring Vampire Nighthawk, Rancor and Wolfir Silverheart. Either that, or white/blue with Delver of Secrets, Invisible Stalker and stuff with Exalted. I'm still playtesting that one trying to get it to work consistently.

And welcome to the fold, Ven! High-five for vampires

 

[Ven]

Cool, another Vampire user. I usually use a black/red EDH deck with Olivia as general. So far, no real idea behind the deck other then get a large amount of creatures on the field and power Olivia up as much as possible before utterly destroying whomever I'm facing. And Vampire Nighthawk will forever be my favourite. He helped me win my first match after all.

 

[ultraviolet]

I am interested I suppose! All my friends play it and I'd like to get into it but I can't really justify buying cards right now because money. :/ almost all of the illustrations are amazing so I'm automatically into it I guess. It does look really fun to play.

 

[Aisling]

Cool, another Vampire user. I usually use a black/red EDH deck with Olivia as general. So far, no real idea behind the deck other then get a large amount of creatures on the field and power Olivia up as much as possible before utterly destroying whomever I'm facing. And Vampire Nighthawk will forever be my favourite. He helped me win my first match after all.

I just find myself attracted to tribal decks for some reason. My very first standard-legal deck I built was all Myrs. I don't think I ever took it to FNM because it was a bit slow, but I'm never going to dismantle it, because when it works it's fucking hilarious. It abuses the hell out of Unwinding Clock, Myr Turbine and Myr Battlesphere. Once in a multiplayer game, thanks to Unwinding Clock, I pulled out all four of my Myr Battlespheres before it was my turn again. Once the turn did come back to me it was game over. :D It also has the infinite mana combo of Myr Galvinizer and Palladium Myr, which used to be an infinite token-spawning combo with Myr Propagator thrown into the mix, but Propogator ended up being too slow and it ran a lot more smoothly with Hovermyr and the like instead.

OH MAN SPEAKING OF TRIBAL DECKS I forgot all about my precious bby Legacy Elves deck. It's not technically complete, as I still need a couple more Priest of Titania and three more Wirewood Lodge (I'm using printed proxies slipped into sleeves with basic lands so the thickness is the same), but anybody who wants to play Legacy with me generally doesn't care. :B It gets hella crazy hella fast. One FNM between rounds I played it with another guy's elf deck and totally stomped him. He had a couple of life-gaining elves that counted for every elf in play whose name I forgot (whereas I had Priest of Titania, who also does that but instead of life she generates green mana). It looked like he was going to overwhelm me by sheer amount of life (we were building creatures at the same rate but he was gonna take a lot of effort to take down), but then I topdecked Genesis Wave and cast it for, like, 30 mana or something. I pulled out the rest of my Archdruids, my Elvish Champion, two Coat of Arms, Nissa Revane, Eldrazi Monument and Emrakul. Along with like 20something more elves. It was great

 

[Negrek]

By Mirrodin do you mean Mirrodin or Mirrodin Beseiged? Around here people call Mirrodin Beseiged just Mirrodin for short because the original Mirrodin block isn't topical anymore...

Mirrodin-Mirrodin. It was the last block I played in to any significant degree.

He had a couple of life-gaining elves that counted for every elf in play whose name I forgot...

Well Wisher! Used to give my friends no end of trouble.

The only decks I have left are the remains of my white/black cleric deck, which was my first successful deck, and a blue affinity deck.

 

[Aisling]

I've edited in a list of important shortcuts and handy tips for Cockatrice into the OP, for those who haven't used Cockatrice before. I hope they'll come in handy.

Even though I left the list of resources, I still want to make some kind of fun thing for the people who don't know how to play so it's not completely up to them to teach themselves on their own time. Any ideas? I think a good place to start might be something, like, designing a deck of each color/major archetype that is simple, not too tricky, friendly to new players but properly conveys what those colors are about. The Johnny in me likes sitting around and designing decks

 

[Ven]

Ok so, Cockatrice will allow you to build any deck you want for any format with any card you wish (barring restricted of course) correct?

 

[Aisling]

Yep. You can have access to every card in the Deck Builder (even the weird Vanguard stuff if you check those in the Oracle when you're downloading the sets), but if you try to load a deck with a card that's banned/restricted in that format it'll tell you, and not let you use it. Except for, like, Standard I guess. One time my boyfriend accidentally put Ajani Goldmane (M11) instead of Ajani, Caller of the Pride (M13) in one of the Standard decks he was playtesting and it didn't say anything about it. He didn't notice until he actually played it and it had the wrong abilities :B

 

[Coloursfall]

MOOGIC.

I mainly run a Jund deck, so Red/Black/Green, focusing on Red and the Devour keyword, naturally. I also have a pure White, and a really fun Blue/White deck for online. I play on Cockatrice! my username is, naturally, Coloursfall.

 

[see ya]

Welp. Colours got me into Magic, and now I've really gotten into it.

I think you can tell just by looking at my sig and avi what colour I specialize in. Secondary colour tends to be black, but also some red or to a much, much lesser extent blue. Have yet to try white I'm still just a beginning player so I've yet to experiment with much else. I've had a fair bit of success with green decks and they fit my playstyle to a T.

Cockatrice name is shiny sunflower (no caps)