Another important piece in my MTG playing experience these days is Magic Online (MTGO). Magic Online has been around for a number of years, but I just started playing it a few months ago. I had some trouble with the interface at first, but I’m getting used to. (From what I’ve heard, it’s a lot better than it used to be.) An account costs $10, and comes with a starter kit of cards and some new player event tokens. You can build a deck from the cards, and enter into constructed or limited events held many times daily on MTGO.
Playing Magic online has advantages and disadvantages. One advantage is that now you I can play magic whenever I like. I don’t have to arrange a meeting with friends, working out scheduling and location in order to get in a few games. I can hop on, play a game against a random opponent, and leave, if I so choose. It’s also rather interesting to play against random people. And I certainly find it much easier to do so than it would be to play in person, at my local game store (LGS). There is a chat window, which is not necessary to play games. But when I have chatted with my opponents, I’ve only encountered courteous people. Part of the advantage of being online is that I can spew all of my taunts and swear words at the screen, which makes me feel better, but my opponent never has to hear it. It really is quite nice.
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| This is what magic online looks like |
In contrast, the loss of the social aspect is significant. I like playing magic with my friends because I also get to hang out with them, shoot the shit, taunt one another and generally have a good time. Perhaps it is for this reason my friends and I haven’t made any effort to move our collective magic game to Online.
A different advantage of Magic Online is that it helps to clarify some of the rules. Because the computer does a lot of the work, the rules are no longer open to interpretation. This has positively impacted my real-world experience of magic playing. We’ve gotten better at turn-taking, which is a highly complex matter where magic is concerned. Of course, the disadvantage to this is that it is very easy to make a simple error, and have no way to take it back. In a friendly game, you can usually catch an error right after you make it, and the game can continue with minimal impact. But in Magic online, the moment you click your mouse button wrong – too late! You made the move and you can’t take it back. I’ve lost games, or nearly lost games based on these sorts of errors-- it can be pretty frustrating. So while it sharpens my playing to be held to such an unforgiving standard, it also increases the stress level when playing.
Another fun element of Magic Online is the number of tournaments that are available. I never played a real magic tournament before MTGO (except one time when I was like 13, and I got my butt kicked). Now I enjoy playing tournaments a great deal. It’s fun to draft live, and it’s fun to win prizes. Of course, the opposite side of this is that it costs money to enter tournaments, and the competition is pretty fierce. While I have won prizes here and there, overall, I’ve lost more than I’ve won. It is possible to win enough to break even, but it is very rare. They call it ‘going infinite.’ And that is a topic for another day.
All in all, I think that MTGO has been a positive development in my magic playing life. It’s given me convenient access, and allowed me to try different styles of play against an unlimited number of competitors. I don’t recommend it to beginners, but to veterans who are interested in giving it a try, I definitely think it’s worth the initial $10 investment. Just watch out for the tournaments, they are habit-forming and expensive!
-D
Pros: Convenience, Huge pool of players, Tournaments, Sharpens the game, low start-up cost, cards are cheap and reusable
Cons: Tough interface, Less Social, Habit Forming, Can become expensive- especially if you enjoy limited format
P.S. if you're into constructed the best thing ever is that you can re-use cards in multiple decks. Like, if you have just one of a card, you can use it in all of your decks simultaneously.
Another fun element of Magic Online is the number of tournaments that are available. I never played a real magic tournament before MTGO (except one time when I was like 13, and I got my butt kicked). Now I enjoy playing tournaments a great deal. It’s fun to draft live, and it’s fun to win prizes. Of course, the opposite side of this is that it costs money to enter tournaments, and the competition is pretty fierce. While I have won prizes here and there, overall, I’ve lost more than I’ve won. It is possible to win enough to break even, but it is very rare. They call it ‘going infinite.’ And that is a topic for another day.
All in all, I think that MTGO has been a positive development in my magic playing life. It’s given me convenient access, and allowed me to try different styles of play against an unlimited number of competitors. I don’t recommend it to beginners, but to veterans who are interested in giving it a try, I definitely think it’s worth the initial $10 investment. Just watch out for the tournaments, they are habit-forming and expensive!
-D
Pros: Convenience, Huge pool of players, Tournaments, Sharpens the game, low start-up cost, cards are cheap and reusable
Cons: Tough interface, Less Social, Habit Forming, Can become expensive- especially if you enjoy limited format
P.S. if you're into constructed the best thing ever is that you can re-use cards in multiple decks. Like, if you have just one of a card, you can use it in all of your decks simultaneously.
Technically you could do this in real life, but it would require you removing these cards after each play, and putting them back into a different deck. This is very cumbersome and I've never heard of anyone actually doing this.
Read my previous posts about Magic The Gathering, why not?
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