The sticker price: sixteen thousand dollars.

August 28, 2018 9:19 AM

The New Yorker on 25 years of Magic: the Gathering.
posted by Chrysostom (40 comments total)

Worth it for the drawings alone.
posted by ODiV at 10:07 AM on August 28, 2018 [7 favorites]

I knew there were a lot of cards, but nearly 20k of them!

Interesting all the efforts they've tried to make it diverse, unlike a lot of other nerd stuff.

I've never played in the real world, though I have played a computer version of it - it's a good game and I can see why it could get addicting.
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 10:23 AM on August 28, 2018

Speaking as someone who's been a very active player for around 10 years (and also played waaay back in the old days), this is a very good, very accurate article.

The claims of nearly 20K cards is accurate in one sense, but slightly overblown in another. An Elf named "Elvish Visionary" printed in two different sets isn't double-counted, but otherwise identical elves with different names ("Llanowar Elves," "Fyndhorn Elves," "Elvish Mystic") count as different cards. Additionally, there are cards that are functionally the same but for a minor cosmetic difference that matters only in corner cases, like creatures with identical cost and stats, except one's a boar and one's a bear.

That said, even if we eliminated these "repeats," there are probably still well over 5000 "unique" cards, which is a LOT.
posted by explosion at 10:28 AM on August 28, 2018 [3 favorites]

Collectible card games have never appealed to me, because it seems like a pay-to-win system. You have to keep buying better and better cards (either paying big bucks aftermarket or gambling on mostly dreck in packs) to stay competitive. I have lots of friends who play and they say that's not entirely true, but it's clear that it's not entirely false either.

I did briefly dabble in a collectible miniatures game (Star Wars X-Wing) and there's a real rush in building up a fleet (and I imagine it's the same for a Magic deck), but it's really easy to spend a ridiculous amount of money. It's built to be addictive from the ground up, in a way that's at least as mercenary as it is fun. I guess part of the appeal is the game and the metagame (of deckbuilding), but the metagame is designed to be costly.

There's a new-ish class of deck-building games (Dominion, Harry Potter Hogwarts Battle, Clank, etc) that allow some of the same sort of gameplay without the continual treadmill of new cards, and I find those fun.
posted by rikschell at 10:47 AM on August 28, 2018 [3 favorites]

I wonder how much of an impact Magic had on the infiltration of Euro board games (which I remember starting with Catan) into the US. I certainty thing the fog from decades of awful American board games had started to lift at that point.

Meanwhile, as a man nearing forty it's very strange to see my friend's kids playing Magic. Something isn't supposed to stay cool for this long.
posted by selfnoise at 10:53 AM on August 28, 2018 [1 favorite]

My kid plays D&D. That dates from 1974.
posted by Chrysostom at 10:56 AM on August 28, 2018 [1 favorite]

seems like a pay-to-win system.

It is, and it isn't. If you and your friends agree on what scale to play, and one of you breaks that trust and buys better cards, then sure, it is. But if you decide you want to play Standard (the format that is the past 2 years' cards), then there's a limit to what money can get you, because the old, powerful cards that cost a lot aren't allowed.

It's pay-to-win in the same way that a rich kid with new athletic gear might have a bit of an edge on a poor kid with hand-me-downs. But once every kid has the same shoes, gloves, whatever, the only edge is in play skill.
posted by explosion at 11:05 AM on August 28, 2018 [2 favorites]

"In a Tumblr post recently resurfaced by two Magic players, Rosewater told fans dismayed by these gender disparities that, although Wizards wanted its player base to change, Magic was male-dominated, and the art simply followed “the current natural gender skew of the game.”"

Damn that attitude really pisses me off. Straight white males are perfectly capable of playing as and identifying with... anything else, especially in a fantasy world. I get many players really do gravitate towards things that more closely resemble them physically or their physical-fantasy, World of Warcraft is mostly human and blood elf (literally just thin white humans) players, but there are also millions of people who flock to things that aren't so boring. How little respect do they have for their playerbase to insinuate making non-white dude planeswalkers means players wouldn't want them. For fuck's sake, a good enough card could have picture of a the goatse man's gaping maw and be covered in actual shit would still be played and sought after. Good to know the person who originally made that statement regrets it and is seeking to do better, but that attitude isn't just an isolated thing.
posted by GoblinHoney at 11:17 AM on August 28, 2018 [3 favorites]

http://markrosewater.tumblr.com/post/176604921433/constructive-criticism-i-as-well-as-others-i

His later blog post as a reply to a bigot fan is great, good to see him grow professionally and personally in that regard.

"Another thing that can happen as you open yourself up to diversity is an expanding of what “beauty” can mean. Everyone needs some beauty in their life and holding tight to such a narrow definition can actually restrict your ability to be happy and enjoy the world around you."

This is sage advice for many things. You can't make the world always be the way you'd like it to be, but you can always expand what is you find likeable so that you can more easily like the way the world is being.
posted by GoblinHoney at 11:27 AM on August 28, 2018 [4 favorites]

I have vivid memories of opening my first packs. Fireball, Shivan Dragon, other cards. I know the smell of them deep in my bones. Going through a box of Fallen Empires with friends, working out the weird vibes of Ice Age. Connecting with a bunch of Drew Tucker’s art in The Dark.

I always want to play “role play” decks with one of this and two of that so I’m not even a little competitive, but there’s so much in the worlds that’s great fun to dig into. (And endless respect for going with snake-people in Kamigawa rather than more dumb elfs)
posted by curious nu at 11:39 AM on August 28, 2018

I got into M:tG during the "Revised Edition" era, when you could still find Legends and The Dark in stores, just before Fallen Empires was released (so, late 1994). I stopped after the release of 6th Edition, between the Urza Block and Masques Block releases (mid-1999) and hadn't bought any cards since (although I did play most of the various "Duel of the Planeswalkers" releases because they were REALLY GOOD).

Last month, I was visiting my 7 year old, and he *DESPERATELY* wanted to learn to play Magic (apparently, some of the kids at summer camp had some cards), so we went to the game store and bought a couple of starter decks. It's amazing how the smell of the cards and feel of them in my hand took me right back, almost 20 years.

Yes, I did kick his ass in the three games we played. Why do you ask?
posted by hanov3r at 12:01 PM on August 28, 2018 [2 favorites]

I can never read about Magic (particularly an article mentions the price of some cards) without thinking of a guy I knew in the 90s who quite plausibly claimed to be selling forged magic cards out of his comic book shop. The least plausible thing about it was that he told me when I didn't know him that well at all, but the crime itself was easy to believe in: he had access to the actual cards for hi resolution scans, the likelihood of getting caught was small, not a federal crime, not likely to draw police attention, and he could always claim to have been fleeced by someone else.

A quick google search turns up a bunch of articles on how not to get swindled, and a 2017 Cracked article by someone who claims to be a current card forger. That makes me pretty sure it's still a thing. Sixteen thousand for a single card!

I dunno. The artificial scarcity of cards and my lack of interest in tournaments would make me very tempted to just print out my own cards for casual play, copyright be damned (turns out that is also a thing). If the game is good enough, it should be able to withstand that. Chess, for instance, is as interesting and almost as enjoyable played with paper counters as it is with a beautiful antique chess set.
posted by surlyben at 12:51 PM on August 28, 2018 [1 favorite]

God i wish all my cards didn't get stolen in '97
posted by ejoey at 12:58 PM on August 28, 2018 [2 favorites]

Yep, counterfeiting is definitely a thing, surlyben, and going on all the time. Legacy and Vintage, two expensive, competitive formats pretty much require cards that Wizards of the Coast has agreed never to reprint. In less expensive formats, cards can still reach over a hundred dollars each, so the demand is definitely there. Just recently a Magic grinder was given a game loss at a Pro Tour Qualifier for having fake cards in his deck. The fakes have gotten really quite good.

I'd like to think that the counterfeiting is all being done to make Magic more affordable for everyone and that no one is being ripped off on purpose, but that would be pretty naive.
posted by ODiV at 1:25 PM on August 28, 2018 [1 favorite]

Collectible card games have never appealed to me, because it seems like a pay-to-win system. You have to keep buying better and better cards (either paying big bucks aftermarket or gambling on mostly dreck in packs) to stay competitive.

If that's all that's keeping you from trying the game, you should know that this need not be true! In my penniless high school days, some of the most fun I had was assembling decks out of penny-ante common cards, and sidling up to the table with the big boys with their decks featuring hundred-dollar marquee cards, and then unleashing whatever the latest balance-problem was. The gap between the release of Black Vise, and its restriction in tournaments, was a good day for cheapo land-destruction decks. I had a similar field day with Channel-powered Fireballs hitting the table before counterspells were in play. This was before the internet was really a thing, so you probably can't leverage it nearly as well as you could twenty years ago, but I assure you there is no sweeter victory than the one you manage with $3 worth of Dark Rituals and Fireballs against a thousand-dollar Mox gem empire.
posted by Mayor West at 1:30 PM on August 28, 2018 [3 favorites]

If you and your friends agree on what scale to play, and one of you breaks that trust and buys better cards, then sure, it is. But if you decide you want to play Standard (the format that is the past 2 years' cards), then there's a limit to what money can get you, because the old, powerful cards that cost a lot aren't allowed.

It still seems like an infinite spending spree. Because if you want to keep up with Standard, your old cards expire, so you have to keep buying new ones to compete. And it still favors players who buy more cards: even if there's an upper limit, there's always an incentive to buy more cards if old ones expire.
posted by rikschell at 1:31 PM on August 28, 2018 [1 favorite]

Yeah, that's why I usually stick to booster draft or cube draft.

Booster draft still costs money, but the price is the same for everyone and it's relatively low (about the same as going to see a movie in theatres, for me). Then you get to play two different sorts of games. The draft and deckbuilding part and then the games of Magic themselves.

Cube draft is nominally free, but if it's your cube there's really no upper limit on what you can spend. It really is the most expensive free Magic you can play. :)

Other people in the local community really enjoy Commander and seem to do so no matter how much they spend on their decks though. Kind of like if I were to play StarCraft or golf with a friend. There's no way we'd be playing remotely competitively on a serious level, but it's a game we enjoy nevertheless.
posted by ODiV at 1:38 PM on August 28, 2018 [1 favorite]

I always want to play “role play” decks with one of this and two of that so I’m not even a little competitive, but there’s so much in the worlds that’s great fun to dig into.

You might be interested in the Commander (aka EDH) format, in which you make a 100-card singleton deck (no duplicates of cards other than basic lands), led by a legendary creature chosen as your commander, whose colors your deck must match and who isn't shuffled into your deck so you always have access to them. You can build a deck full of snakes and snake-people, led by Seshiro the Anointed, and reliably cast it as soon as you hit six mana (which is probably like turn four if you're playing mono-green). It's explicitly a casual, social format, geared toward multiplayer (in my experience, the ideal game size is four players) and players start at 40 life, instead of 20, to give the game more time to get to the big exciting splashy plays that make for memorable moments in a game. A lot of heavyweight spells that might be too mana-intensive to fit neatly into an aggressive playstyle, like Insurrection, Terastodon, and Rite of Replication with kicker, are staples of the format.

If you want to jump right in, you can grab one of the pre-built Commander 2018 decks that just came out for around $35-$40, each of which comes with three brand-new foil commanders to lead the deck (alongside some other exciting new cards, as well as format staples like Sol Ring and Command Tower) and all the token cards you need to represent the tokens the cards in the deck can make. They're all very solid and well-built, and tuned to play against each other right out of the box (and should fare just fine "in the wild" too, unless you find yourself an unusually competitive playgroup). The format never rotates, so if you buy or build a deck you can keep playing it for as long as you want; no need to worry about an "infinite spending spree" being required.

There's lots of fun nods to the lore in the new cards, too, both famous and obscure. The artifact deck features Tawnos, who you might have heard of before, as well as Brudiclad, who you might have heard of if you've read the flavor text of some random common from Future Sight.
posted by NMcCoy at 1:49 PM on August 28, 2018 [5 favorites]

I love when The New Yorker does an ethnography of an American subculture as if it were a remote and farflung civilization.
posted by painquale at 2:30 PM on August 28, 2018 [8 favorites]

Worth it for the drawings alone.

✏️ Illustrations by Ed Steed.
posted by D.Billy at 2:31 PM on August 28, 2018 [3 favorites]

There's this little game called Epic by I think White Wizard Games (they do Star Realms as well) that positions itself as "high-level Magic in a single box". It isn't a CCG, it's a standalone thing (though there are mini-expansions, but you don't need 'em), with four different "schools" of cards in the box, so you can either pick a school, or do a draft, or whatever.

I bought three copies when it was going super-cheap locally and then promptly didn't do anything with any of them because the rulebook was shitty and I couldn't figure out how to play, but people in certain circles do bang on about it a bit, so it might be worth looking into for old hands at Magic who maybe want to recapture the thrill of the game without all the admin. Or maybe not!
posted by turbid dahlia at 3:44 PM on August 28, 2018

And it still favors players who buy more cards: even if there's an upper limit, there's always an incentive to buy more cards if old ones expire.

Pay-to-win is always going to be a matter of perspective. It's a turn of phrase that turns a barrier to entry into a pejorative, because the speaker believes the barrier is too high. Which is not to say it's ideal to have high barriers to entry, but people should be more honest about what they want.

Even running, that humblest of competitive endeavors, has a barrier to entry as shoes can get pretty expensive and are quite likely necessary.

I'll wholly grant that Magic is not a cheap game, but lots of people have had scores of hours of fun with the game while never spending much more than $10. The whales of the game ensure that there are millions and millions of copies of cards worth a penny.
posted by explosion at 4:16 PM on August 28, 2018 [1 favorite]

Many are also fans of Netrunner, if you want a CCG without the first C. They do come out with new sets periodically, but you buy the box and you get the whole set, with none of this rarity nonsense. I could never get anyone to play with me and mine have been sitting mournfully in their boxes for the past three years.
posted by Scattercat at 4:17 PM on August 28, 2018 [4 favorites]

I was a beta tester who was taught the game by Peter at the former Lake-something Tavern, now Woody's on Aurora in Shoreline. We were all given first-run beta decks in cello and a number of booster packs, and it was immediately clear that the game was great and going to be huge hit. We all followed the playing-for-a-card rule, something I deeply regret as one of the cards I eventually lost was a Black Lotus.

I still have the majority of the deck, which was well-played for about a year and so is worn. I have sleeved them and done an inventory. No single remaining card approaches the theoretical valuation of that lost rectangle of cardboard, but altogether they may be valued in the mid four figures, to my best guesstimate.

At the time my primary interest in the game and in WoC was to place some art in one of the early decks, as the early artists were both paid up front for the illo work and granted points or some sort of royalty on the subsequent use of their work, I can't recall the details. I believe I recall when it became clear that the game was going to be a record-shattering success, those contract terms were changed going forward and I believe eventually retroactively as well. I had heard but do not know for certain that some of the inital artists were able to effectively retire, much like an early-stage employee in one of our later-arriving technology giants. I haven't ever sought to confirm this and look forward to reading the article very much.
posted by mwhybark at 4:30 PM on August 28, 2018 [2 favorites]

I only played MtG for a year or so, way back at the beginning, but I'll always think of it fondly because in the early 2000s tech recession I pulled my cards out from storage and sold them on Ebay, which helped pay my rent for something like a year. I had a lot of moxes and other restricted cards.
posted by tavella at 5:54 PM on August 28, 2018 [5 favorites]

God i wish all my cards didn't get stolen in '97

While i have never played even one game of MTG, I have similar regets about giving away a shoe box full of cards a friend gave me (somewhere in 1995-96). He said he was spending too much time playing it, and instead of giving his cards to his Corvallis MTG crew, he gave them to me, noting that there were some valuable cards in the box, including a Black Lotus. I looked at them a few times, but never played them, eventually giving them away to a kid who was into it. He was pretty stoked.
posted by klausman at 11:02 PM on August 28, 2018

I've been carefully saving my cards for when the scatterkitten is old enough to successfully play a game. He sort of learned the moves for chess the other day, so maybe soon.
posted by Scattercat at 11:47 PM on August 28, 2018

I was delighted by the professional answers to yesterday's question in Ask about how to store cards. One person even recommends the same case mentioned in the FPP article.

Surprised this didn't even passingly mention Keyforge, Garfield's new card game with unique, non-divisible decks. Everyone I know who plays MTG is debating how that will possibly work and whether it's even possible for it to be both balanced and fun.
posted by heatvision at 3:42 AM on August 29, 2018 [1 favorite]

The final paragraph so succinctly summarizes my love of Magic, RPGs, Computer games that 'stick',

> “At the heart of it, it’s just a fun little game,” he said. “You can walk in and go as deep as you want—it will get deep if you want to go deep—but you can also just go up to your ankles.”

Discoverable Complexity is the term I always fall back on... it has to be 'fun' on its surface, but when you peel back a layer or two, there *has* to be more.
posted by DigDoug at 6:45 AM on August 29, 2018 [2 favorites]

I was 33 when M:tG was first released, so I was a bit outside their demographic.
Having said that, I wish that I'd learned how to play at least ONE CCG, because there are so many wonderful and cool little universes out there, from Star Trek to Lovecraft to Babylon 5 to Dune to Middle Earth.
I wish I'd grabbed someone and made them teach me how to play.

I'm glad this game is still out there and still drawing in new players every year.
posted by Major Matt Mason Dixon at 7:21 AM on August 29, 2018

It's not too late!
posted by ODiV at 7:32 AM on August 29, 2018 [2 favorites]

Reid Duke, "The gentleman of the Magic world"

I got to play versus Reid Duke at a recent sealed tournament, and I can confirm he was a very nice person. I actually beat him in Game 1, but then he crushed me in the next two. Later I texted an employee that I had played versus him and he told me Duke was his favorite pro, so I bought a Walking Ballista and Reid signed it with a personalized autograph ("Hi John, keep turning cards sideways! Reid Duke"). That made John very happy.
posted by M-x shell at 7:53 AM on August 29, 2018 [3 favorites]

NMcCoy: "you can grab one of the pre-built Commander 2018 decks that just came out for around $35-$40"

Or, you can listen to an excited 15yo and pay a lot more. We bought two of those for US$49 when we were on holiday in WA, and then found out they were going for US$35 in Canada. Was it worth the 20+ dollars to go to the mall and meet the overly friendly, garrulous game store manager? No, but we went next door to REI and got one of those Powerball hand exercisers, which kept us entertained all the way home. Now I can crush a watermelon with one hand.
posted by sneebler at 8:25 AM on August 29, 2018

For those who haven't experienced the game itself, the complexity and modularity of the game mechanics is truly impressive and I would argue makes MtG the greatest game ever designed.

It's at least good often enough, so that the fantasy 'world' you feel from the cards is inviting and some of the art is as good as it comes. A few examples.

It's amazing how the smell of the cards and feel of them in my hand took me right back, almost 20 years.

This is definitely a thing, but I've also had a different experience recently. I get together once a year with old MtG friends and when we drafted this time, I was shocked at how flimsy and cheap the card stock is with the new cards.

There are market realities to the costs of production, but more I think this is just a pragmatism on Hasbro's part because (1) the newer cards just aren't going to be collectibles in the same way the old ones were (because of volume) and (2) most serious players, even Limited players, immediately take the cards and put them in plastic sleeves to play. So it really doesn't matter what the tactile experience of the cardboard is anymore.

In terms of the economics of the game I wanted to offer my opinion, which differs substantially from some of the above comments.

It's pay-to-win in the same way that a rich kid with new athletic gear might have a bit of an edge on a poor kid with hand-me-downs

I don't think this adequately values the role of 'expensive' cards in competitive play. *If you're not worried about competitive play, fine, but that's not what we're talking about here.*

There are relatively few factors involved in competitive (Constructed, see also Limited) play:
- Variance (it is after all, a game of chance)
- Deck building (which cards you choose before you sit down)
- Quality of play (how well you maneuver the interactions during game play)

Both #2 and #3 are big topics, but #2 essentially is defined by whatever format's rules say you can play for cards, which cards you have available and how you decide to build your 75 (or 100) card deck.

When I re-entered the game around 2002 to start playing Vintage I was working a professional job and could afford the 'goodies' in what is the most expensive format. I'd played MtG before and had been 'training' online before I went to my first IRL event, but it was striking to me how quickly I was able to find success against seasoned opponents. It was very obvious to me the advantage that superior cards (re, the "broken" ones) had compared to people who either couldn't afford the top cards or chose more 'pet' cards that they thought were fun.

There're certainly arbitrage opportunities if you understand game mechanics and you can try to win with niche or '2nd level' strategies. This is more true early in a new set release when cards and deck strategies aren't as 'discovered'. Back in the '90s when both internet and MtG were young, getting 'tech' was harder and the arbitrage was easier for a good player to exploit. But now events happen often and the results are thoroughly cataloged. It's easier to 'netdeck' than ever and if you can afford the cards, you can access the best strategies.

In-game play is more important in the lower variance formats (Standard, Modern) compared to where I was in Vintage. But often times the best cards played by a mediocre pilot will still win out. I would say from the quote above that the canny arbitrage of finding niche cards/combos is more like the 'used sports equipment' and the larger role of paying for the right cards to be competitive is like off-season training and paying for access to gym memberships or playing for travel clubs. It's a much bigger factor.

counterfeiting is definitely a thing

Yes and even this is understated. Counterfeiting is a huge problem for Hasbro/MtG and it's basically just been 'accepted' in formats with older cards, akin to the way steroid/rehab drugs are accepted in competitive sport.

The reasons are obvious too. The older the format, the more expensive it is to play. The Standard format above often have average deck costs in the hundreds to low thousands. But a Vintage deck or a pimped out EDH deck will easily be 5 figures, sometimes 6. Don't get me started on 93/94.

Vintage solved this by having competitive events where 'proxy' cards were legal. There's a healthy debate over whether this was a good thing or not, but the way it enabled better access was clear and I think it was a good policy. Either way, it was booming business for opportunistic printers, especially once printing technology improved and became cheaper.

I only played MtG for a year or so, way back at the beginning, but I'll always think of it fondly because in the early 2000s tech recession I pulled my cards out from storage and sold them on Ebay, which helped pay my rent for something like a year. I had a lot of moxes and other restricted cards.

I've heard lots of stories like this. And (sorry) if you had held onto your collection til now, instead of renting free, you might be able to buy a house. This isn't hyperbole. While most investments look great when you add in a big time factor, the first generation cards in this game are just nuts in terms of ROI. To take the biggest example, a Beta Black Lotus has gone from around $500 in the late 90's to about $15k today. That's a 20% annual return...on a 5 inch piece of card board.

Cube draft is nominally free

Cube is a really beautiful format. That and Commander are really two of the great grass-roots developments in the game. Cubes also show the silver lining in counterfeit printing; many of my friends order quality prints of a cube set from China and pay a fraction of the costs of real cards. This lets them have the art and feel of regular mtg cards, but cheap and reusable product to play in perpetuity.

You can take this to it's logical conclusion and just go to a Limited event and snarf up left behind commons and make your own Cube for free.

scores of hours of fun with the game while never spending much more than $10

Right, this is still very true. I just don't want people thinking that price isn't the defining part of competitive play, because it is.

I wonder how much of an impact Magic had on the infiltration of Euro board games (which I remember starting with Catan) into the US. I certainty thing the fog from decades of awful American board games had started to lift at that point.

This is a great question. My take is that MtG played a key role within the network of 'serious' gaming(tm) by being a touch point. I think the internet and video/pc games have been bigger forces ushering in a golden era of gaming. But I think MtG did a few things that helped increase/maintain the momentum.

- It's small, so it could be taken/played a lot of places.
- It's cheap to start and also not uniform, so many people could dip a toe in the water and you were always curious what 'version' of Magic others were playing
- It had stability, so that eventually it became it's own sphere of gravity with lots of other people coming in to add value to the gaming community...all the way up to where it started being seen on ESPN channels.
- The community of players was diverse enough so you could find a niche within it and once in that niche the people you knew would also probably be interested in other (board) games.

All of these things were galvanized by stuff like gaming cons and stores that fostered their community of players around MtG into other gaming types. Lots of emergent/network effects could build on what was a unique and robust foundation.
posted by Reasonably Everything Happens at 8:57 AM on August 29, 2018 [3 favorites]

I started around Ice Age when people were still trading dual lands from Revised for new rares they'd never seen.

A few years ago some friends wanted to learn and the running joke became that I was the one to beat. My artifact land Affinity deck would have been thrown out of any hobby store and even a cursory check online would have warned them it was highly illegal but I was totally Kyle Riker anbo-jyutsu'ing them.
posted by Molesome at 9:36 AM on August 29, 2018 [1 favorite]

I love when The New Yorker does an ethnography of an American subculture as if it were a remote and farflung civilization.

For me it might as well be.
posted by srboisvert at 11:36 AM on August 29, 2018

I never got into MtG, but I am addicted to MtG:PQ on my phone. All the amazing artwork is there, and I can sit and play alone on my back porch. Despite decks being frequently hamstrung, it's amazing that this game is as balanced as it is.
posted by Brocktoon at 1:15 PM on August 29, 2018 [1 favorite]

Best way to play online is Cockatrice.
posted by M-x shell at 2:07 PM on August 30, 2018

Cockatrice

2nd'd. MTGO is an ambitious attempt, but fatally flawed and much more expensive (whereas Cockatrice is free).
posted by Reasonably Everything Happens at 6:10 AM on August 31, 2018

XMage has rules enforcement if you're looking to go the online free route.

Though if you're looking for free and online maybe give something like Eternal a try.
posted by ODiV at 7:16 AM on August 31, 2018