{"id":758,"date":"2023-10-06T08:23:03","date_gmt":"2023-10-06T08:23:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mrraow.com\/?page_id=758"},"modified":"2024-06-17T06:41:20","modified_gmt":"2024-06-17T06:41:20","slug":"magic-the-gathering","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"http:\/\/mrraow.com\/index.php\/magic-the-gathering\/","title":{"rendered":"Magic: the Gathering"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Magic: the Gathering has been around for over 30 years now. I first heard about it back in 1994, a few months after its release; back then there was a games convention called Furrycon, which was held annually in Brighton at the Old Ship hotel. The upcoming con had a Magic: the Gathering tournament, so I figured I should find out about the game, in case I wanted to play. I found a friend who could teach me, and was instantly hooked. I scoured the London shops, and managed to get half a box of unlimited cards. I still have some of them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">&#8230; and that&#8217;s it. I&#8217;ve been playing off and on ever since. These days I play mostly: <\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/oldschool-mtg.blogspot.com\/p\/banrestriction.html\" data-type=\"link\" data-id=\"http:\/\/oldschool-mtg.blogspot.com\/p\/banrestriction.html\">Oldschool magic<\/a> (which uses cards only from 1993-1994); there&#8217;s a lot of nostalgia involved, and it&#8217;s a chance to play with my old cards which would be stuck in folders otherwise and Commander. You are also free from Wizards&#8217; ever-accelerating release schedule. Living in London, there are regular Oldschool events organised by the <a href=\"https:\/\/brothersoffire.home.blog\/\">Brothers of Fire<\/a>. Despite the limited number of sets, there&#8217;s still room for innovation. I try not to play the same deck twice.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/mrraow.com\/uploads\/playground\/PlaygroundMagic.html\">Playground magic<\/a> &#8211; another nostalgic format crossed with a little performance art, and somewhat lower powered than Oldschool. All cards are played unsleeved just like the good old days so it&#8217;s self-limiting in that you don&#8217;t tend to see people playing expensive cards like Moxes, and probably my favourite oldschool format.  You also get to inflict psychic damage on any onlookers.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Commander &#8211; the most popular magic format these days. I play a couple of times a week at a local pub. As a multiplayer format, I play more for fun than to win.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Apart from playing, I love the art &#8211; particularly the early cards, which were designed to   be recognisable at a distance and have a much more diverse range of art styles than modern cards. That&#8217;s not to say that the art quality has decreased, but it&#8217;s much more uniform&#8230; and a lot of it is too busy for such a small area.  I&#8217;ve spent some time building artist commander decks, where every card is by the same artist.  These are usually super-weak, but beautiful.  I&#8217;ve also written some tools to mine the Scryfall data feeds and make this kind of deckbuilding easier. A few useful pages follow:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/mrraow.com\/uploads\/mtgartists\/artist_uk.html\">UK MtG Artists<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/mrraow.com\/uploads\/mtgartists\/artist_commander.html\">Artist Commander Resource<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/mrraow.com\/uploads\/mtgartists\/kindred_commander.html\">Kindred Commander Resource<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/mrraow.com\/uploads\/mtgartists\/mtg_stats.html\">MtG Statistics<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/mrraow.com\/uploads\/mtgartists\/stats_index.html\" data-type=\"link\" data-id=\"http:\/\/mrraow.com\/uploads\/mtgartists\/stats_index.html\">Stats Index Page<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I have<a href=\"http:\/\/mrraow.com\/uploads\/mtgartists\/stephen2.html\" data-type=\"link\" data-id=\"http:\/\/mrraow.com\/uploads\/mtgartists\/stephen2.html\"> a page here<\/a> listing a lot of my decks, along with links to their <a href=\"https:\/\/www.moxfield.com\/users\/mrraow\">Moxfield pages<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Magic: the Gathering has been around for over 30 years now. I first heard about it back in 1994, a few months after its release; back then there was a games convention called Furrycon, which was held annually in Brighton at the Old Ship hotel. The upcoming con had a Magic: the Gathering tournament, so &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/mrraow.com\/index.php\/magic-the-gathering\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Magic: the Gathering<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-758","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/mrraow.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/758","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/mrraow.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/mrraow.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/mrraow.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/mrraow.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=758"}],"version-history":[{"count":15,"href":"http:\/\/mrraow.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/758\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":805,"href":"http:\/\/mrraow.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/758\/revisions\/805"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/mrraow.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=758"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}