M/tg/
M/tg/ is a casual league that occasionally emerges on /tg/ for the purpose of playing Magic: The Gathering. In lieu of describing it from an outside perspective, it's own self-explanation is presented below.
Introduction
Balanced, friendly, and creative online Magic.
Talk to any Magic: The Gathering player long enough and there's a good chance that eventually they'll wax nostalgic about the days of their youth, before they had even heard of things like "netdecking" or the "metagame." Whether it was fostered through the happy ignorance or poverty of childhood, or because their "good old days" actually did pre-date competitive Magic, consistently we seem to miss a certain low-powered playing evironment where deckbuilding wasn't about making an established archetype or single combo as efficient as possible. Rather, it was about working with what you personally had, not the total of what's available, and the results were often surprising and fresh. Perhaps best of all, these quirky decks didn't get stomped consistently, because our friends were all in the same place.
M/tg/ is an attempt to recreate that sort of play environement, and we'd love to have you play with us.
How it Works
First, we collectively decide on several blocks (that is, a time period of M:TG's development) to play. Keeping the games within these ensures that the strength of everyone's cards and the special mechanics printed on them generally "match up." Each player is given a personal collection randomly generated from a certain number of booster packs, from which they can build decks to play against others.
The Collections are just small enough to be distinct from one-another and to reward creative deckbuilding over attempting to just build whatever won tournaments. Since everyone's is the same size and generated the same way, it's more or less a level playing field.
When playing within the given blocks begins to feel stale, or people start feeling like they've exhausted the potential of their collection, we choose a new set of blocks to play and send out new collections. We call the entire cycle a Season.
We are currently in Season 3, which was decided to be Lorwyn/Shadowmoor. Season three collections are constructed thusly:
- 6 Tenth Edition boosters
- 6 Lorwyn boosters
- 3 Morningtide boosters
- 6 Shadowmoor boosters
- 3 Eventide boosters
...for a total of 360 cards, not counting basic lands.
How to Get Started
First, find or start an M/tg/ thread. If you start one, it's suggested that you open with the material on this page, so new people can figure out what's going on.
Make a post with "dice 1d42" in the email field to see which collections you'll use! If you like, use a name/tripcode in the same post (put a user name followed by ## and then a secret password you can remember in the name field), and you will be entered in the player registry.
(The advantage of using the registry is that anyone you challenge to a game while using the same name and tripcode can verify that you didn't cherry-pick your collection, as well as comparing your play against their own copy of your collection so they know you aren't cheating by using cards from outside it. Ultimately, it's not a replacement for good sportsmanship and it's not required to play, but it's a good idea.)
Your roll result is you Collection ID, and it determines which Collections you will use across all seasons. You do not need to re-roll when we start a new season; simply keep using the same number. That way we don't have to re-build the registry.
Once that's done, it's just a matter of setting up your client so you can start building decks and playing with us. Further instructions and everything else you need to start playing is bundled here: FORTHCOMING
Links
- The Player Registry, where you can see who is using what collections
- Installation instructions and the collections themselves FORTHCOMING