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by Da Sarge Magic on a Saturday Night I was playing Magic last night with some friends, and we were talking about the new release Stronghold coming out this month, which will be out by the time you read this. Well, before I go on let me explain about my friends. All of us are in the Army; two of us play every day and the third plays only at lunch with us, and on occasion will play in an Arena league now and then. I have been playing since '94, one of my friends (Rick) has been playing since '95, and the other (Kevin) has been playing since around Sept of '97. I taught both of them to play (and I did it without Portals with no problem) and it is interesting how they feel about Magic. It also started me wondering about how many people think the same way. Thus, I ask you, the players, how you feel. The biggest difference between the three of us is that Rick loves to play but has more of the collector in him. He would get a card not just to play but for the value it may rise in the future. Kevin and I are players. We will get a card for the value it produces during the game more then the value it may have in the market. Anyway, we were playing and talking about Stronghold, and Kevin explained that he couldn't believe how many different sets have come out, and can't understand why he can't use Hymn to Tourach whenever he wants. So let's start this month's article here..... Let's say that you still could not use Moxes, Timewalk, Ancestral Recall, Mind Twist and a few other Power Cards in Type II. The question becomes: Does it really matter what cards you use to play in Type II? At first I thought it was a silly question, but then I looked at it from his perspective, and it started to make sense. He has traded and bought cards that he feels are great cards in a game, then he learned that there are things such as Type I, II, 1.5 etc. He quickly found out that you couldn't use certain cards in certain types of games. For example, he and I both love lightning bolts. But you can't use them in Type II; in fact, WOTC has said they will never reprint them. Kevin's question then becomes "Why make cards you can't use all the time?" I really think this is a valid question. He is a new player -- in his mind, he wants to know why you can't use certain cards all the time. I have some power cards -- two Moxes (Red and Black), a Timewalk, and an Ancestral Recall. I also have an Ali from Cairo. But would that be considered a power card? If not, why can't I use that in a Type II deck? This started an interesting debate -- what if I could use an Ali in Type II? Off the top of my head I would use Blue and White with the only Red being Ali. Thanks to the new types of lands that produce any mana, getting Red would be easy. Use counterspells, DD, shadows and maybe a millstone thrown in with Ali and a favorable destiny or something of that nature, and all of a sudden you have a pretty good deck. Would this be so wrong to play with in Type II? I don't think so. A counterspell would hurt that combo if I was tapped out or had no counters. A disenchant would knock out the favorable destiny. So would a few other cards. So why not use some of the cards from Type I. Let's be honest, other then tournaments, everyone plays with whatever cards they want anyway and just follow the Banned / Restricted list as a guideline. So where is the harm???? Rick then jumped in and said what he hates is that there are no cards that a collector can get now, that will go over twenty bucks on an average. That is to say if he bought a case of say Stronghold tomorrow, two years from now how much would that same case be worth? I'm not a collector of Magic for the money, but this to was an interesting question. If for example you collect baseball cards the value of the cards are based on the performance of the player. In Magic, the value of the card may only last a year or two at it's peak before new sets come out and the old set moves to Type I and it's card use would diminish to a certain extent. Add to the fact that WOTC keeps reprinting cards, and the value keeps going down. I agreed with both of there points, but my two biggest beefs were first the money involved in trying to stay competitive and the value of the card(s) in the game. For example, look at both phasing and flanking. They came with a lot of fanfare and yet in the last set, not one card had these effects. I like both of these abilities. They were different and changed the way the game could be played. Does this mean they are going to have the same end as rampage? I hope not. One thing that sorta bugs me is that it seems that the colors are locked into a certain trend of playing. For example, if you see a mountain the first thing you think of is DD, an island makes you think of counterspells and so on. I said it's great that WOTC is coming out with new kinds of abilities and effects. I really love flanking, phasing, and licids. But it would be even better if some of the colors started mixing with the others. For example what about a green type of fireball, or a blue type of drain life. That would be interesting. It seems the colors are locked into a certain way of playing and that's it.
Tell me how you feel. These are interesting questions and I would be curious to see how everyone feels about them. Next month I will do a review of Stronghold..................
Dem'd My Views and I'm.......
All commentaries are the opinions of the author, and do not necessarily reflect those of Beyond Dominia
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