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View Full Version : Finding My Personality in Magic



Spellchucker
02-07-2015, 08:57 PM
First of all, greeting to everyone who may post. I hope some of you out there can help me get back into the game, and do so in a correct manner. I open my first pack of Magic back in college in 2003 and played more or less casual games with the occasional FNM. I left the game when I graduated a few years later, then picked it up again about four years ago. I was so lost that I tried to build all kinds of decks just to keep up and stay in the game. Again, I dropped the game out of lack of time and the frustration of never quite keeping up. I played standard mostly. This brings me to today.

I uncovered my boxes of cards, about to sell them all away and just realized how much a part of me enjoyed the game and friendships I made throughout those years. I want to play again, but I had to first realize my frustrations came as a result of blindly approaching the game and just plain being a bad player. This is a good, liberating thing because it means I can start all over and move forward. So many bad players make excuses or don't overvalue their "knowledge" about the game which creates baggage. Although it took years, I dropped mine and realized the real problem was that I chased too much cardboard without ever finding out what type of player I am. So here comes the first of what is sure to be many questions to the community.

How can I determine what play-style and deck configuration would be right for me to get back into the game? Is there a way I can find an archetype that's right for me? The easiest answer would be to get them all and pick and choose, but that mentality got me into a lot of trouble in the past. I'd rather go for quality over quantity and just build one or two.

At this point, it's not an issue of budget but rather finding the right fit. Any help is appreciated and I hope I can get a bit of a discussion going here. Thanks again for reading and helping me get reset.

Also, my current goal is to become a better competitive player so any tip there would help too. As low as it may seem, my current goal is to become a good FNM player and then move up from there.

death
02-07-2015, 09:40 PM
Deathrite Shaman. There I said it, and just like that I shaped your future.

Nevermind, Modern.

Valtrix
02-08-2015, 12:07 AM
Download Cockatrice and play some games with different decks before you invest in paper. It's very easy to think you'll like a deck a bunch before testing with it, then turn out you don't like it that much. It's happened to me with paper. Alas fair Geist of Saint Traft... Also, I assume Modern is the format you want to get into?

Spellchucker
02-08-2015, 12:29 PM
Thanks for the responses. I do want to get into Modern, but also Legacy. At first glance I was looking into the following:

Modern:

Robots-I started playing around the time affinity rocked the Magic world. I know a lot of these cards and they seemed to work really well. All that being said, seeing 1000 broken ravager affinity decks at FNM back in the day made me want to stick the the casual tables.

The Rock- I think I remember an extended version of this back in the day with spirit mongers, spike weavers, eternal witness, etc. It didn't seem particularly fast but had a lot of answers. My only issue is that I would think you need to really know the format well and be a pretty good player to utilized all these "answers."

Legacy:

Tin Fins-I have a love/hate relationship with combo decks. It's either a complete bust or you just win most of time. The reason I looked at this deck is that it seem like there is more than one option. Not sure if GY hate makes this a bad choice.

Punishing Mavericks-I used to enjoy GW because there was something just seemed up front and direct about it. I got to swing with creatures and still had some piece of mind from white's protection abilities. I didn't have to keep blue mana open for countering or get to Rockfish with Black. I actually thought I was going to land on this choice, but people kind of scrunch their noses or give me a blank stare when I mention this deck so maybe I missed something here? Is it that terrible in this format?

Anyways, maybe this will kind of help you all help me by seeing where I am at. I will definitely check out that program. Thanks and hope to hear from you all soon.

Quizzlemanizzle
02-10-2015, 09:08 AM
Legacy Robots is not that much different from Modern Robots. You would not have to invest much.

Timber
02-13-2015, 09:19 PM
Cockatrice is a good one, and if you can make some friends at FNM, see if any of them have decks you can borrow. I found that you just have to play stuff until you find a deck or archetype that clicks. I brewed some RG aggro decks, tribal crap, and junk midrange, but once I played a friend's Esper Control deck I was hooked. Same thing happened the first time I played Remand into a Geist of Saint Traft.