Agreed entirely on the last points. Playing online gets you an "I just wanted to play" fix, which is fine...but the perk of the game is the social aspect.

Meeting people in person, playing regularly at local shops, competing in tournaments with those same people you meet, trading with them, showing off your collection.

I used to play a bunch in high school and now that my son is older, he's getting into it so I'm toe-back-in-the-water seeing what's changed.

I'm kicking myself so hard for getting rid of my cards. I played from 93-97 and looking at current prices, the stuff I had in high school would be worth $30k+ now. I walked into a local shop and a guy came in who'd be playing forever, brought in all of his cards to sell because he's about to have his first child...and the cards are worth enough to significantly help. It's a cool aspect to the game that's taken for granted.

The game itself has great mechanics though. Obsessing about all of the possible combinations I could come up with was my mental outlet in high school. Translated well to software.

"I'm kicking myself so hard for getting rid of my cards. I played from 93-97 and looking at current prices, the stuff I had in high school would be worth $30k+ now. I walked into a local shop and a guy came in who'd be playing forever, brought in all of his cards to sell because he's about to have his first child...and the cards are worth enough to significantly help. It's a cool aspect to the game that's taken for granted."

Back when Magic first came out, or at least the first time I looked at it, I said, "But this is a pay-to-win game." Now that it seems to have shown up on the radar again, I have a question: Is it possible to be at least reasonably competitive with whatever is the "basic" set? If not, how much would it cost to buy the necessary booster packs or individual cards?

The cheapest competitive constructed format is Standard, with prices between $200-$400. https://www.mtggoldfish.com/metagame/standard#paper has the current decklists. However, standard rotation is happening in about 2 months, so if you were about to get back in, I'd wait until Throne of Eldraine comes out on October 4th. (or the prerelease, the weekend before, which is always great fun)

Limited formats, such as draft, are much cheaper, with a draft being only $18 for three rounds of play. Each player opens a booster, takes a card, passes left, repeat until the cards are gone, takes the second, passes right, etc. for three boosters. It's much cheaper, more repeatable, and doesn't require an up-front investment. (Plus you keep your cards.)

I'm not an expert, but I've played enough that I feel comfortable commenting.

The game is 1 part what's in the deck, 1 part in game strategy and 1 part luck of the draw each game.

Because of part 2 & 3, anybody has a chance in any game. I played for years and only did tournaments a couple of times because it was a lot more fun...just playing. Building fun decks, playing with friends at the house, playing with people at the local card shop.

There are so many types of games. I used to have a blast making decks just to see the looks on people's faces. You can do group games with 8 people in a single game, team games, two headed giant games. Depending on what type of format you're playing, entirely different strategies make sense.

If your only goal is to show up, figure out "the perfect deck" and win tournaments then getting cards out of the gate to make that possible is probably going to be expensive.

But it's a lot more fun to just get some cards with a little bit of everything to start with (they have starter kits and deck builder kits that speed up the process), and just try to see what are the best things you can come up with. Figure out what you have that's valuable, trade with people at a local shop to get things that you want to try, etc.

If you do that, you'll probably end up having a lot more fun.

There are also tournament formats that work well for people at all levels, called Drafts. Each player gets 3 booster packs, you open one, take a card and then pass the booster to your left. Repeat this process (and change direction) for the other 2 packs. When you're done, each player will have 45 cards to make a deck of at least 40. Lands are usually freely available to supplement whatever approach you took.

It levels the playing field for new players and you get to win more cards.

Don't let the competition get in the way of the fun with friends. The competition is fun, but much like programming there's a lot of fun to be had by just trying crazy things to see if it works.

> I play a fair bit of Magic, primarily at work.

Literally on the job? What did you do?

It's primarily over lunch, so at work but not on the job. We also hold drafts after work hours and used to have a magic league at work.

There's a fair number of magic players at work, which seems to be quite common at game studios.

That's awesome.

I've been interested in playing MTG, but sinking money into decks doesn't appeal to me.

In my experience, it's probably during lunch.