h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Great concise write up on Magic. Pleased to see it make it into the guide.

Neil.
(former Operations Manager, Wizards of the Coast UK)

As an (ex) player of Magic, I love the fact that the wizard is named 'Tim'.

It does however seem a bit too much like a rulebook.

More than just rules... some stuff about the environment as well... not enough of the stuff that I'd really like to see though which is the inevitable amusing anecdotes about that time you Mishras Groundbreakered a plains into a 3/3 creature, made if fly, giant growthed it and killed the other guys Shivan dragon with it

And only a passing reference to the infinite recursion deck!

which one?
I had a great deck that used Aluren, Soul Keeper(?) and Shrieking Drake to gain infinite life and then killed the other guys deck by using Jesters Cap on it again and again and again
Kind of infinite recursion I guess.

For those interested the combo was:
Play an aluren so that creatures which cost less than 3 mana can be played for free.
Play a soul keeper which gives you an extra hit point whenever a creature is played.
Play a shrieking drake which forces you to return a creature to your hand when it is played.

So you play the shrieking drake and return it to your hand and point out diplomatically to your opponent that you are happy to repeat this until you have 50000000000 life or he can just acknowledge that he is not going to do enough damage to kill you

I beat Chris Manners with this deck! He was number 1 in the UK at the time! (I think)

Is it really legal to return the Drake itself to your hand? Seems to me it isn't technically a creature until _after_ it comes into play.

But then if you had two Drakes, you could get around that anyway.

You didn't mention artifact creatures or colorless (sic) mana. BTW, what colour decks do you guys use? I use green/white with a couple of other coloured cards.

3

JOTD: I used to be indecisive, but now I'm not so sure.

Infinite recursion deck:
Swords to plowshares: removes an opponents card from game, gives him life.
Some card I can't remember: all cards in graveyard come back to library
Shed loads of counter spells (et al)

The other player gains 10000s life, but loses cards. It comes under 'getting the other player so p***ed of that they give up crying'

Felmets staff or something?
you wave it and your graveyard goes "BOING" back into your library
lots of fun while it was legal

No, it did both players... ans it was tornament legal

Feldon's Cane, though there are others (Thran Foundry springs to mind)

Neil
(DCI Level III Judge (retired))

"If Magic is your crutch, cast it aside and learn to walk without it!"
(actual Magic card flavour text

Me and Ben and Jack used to play a game where you had to say the flavour text whenever you played a card and if any of the other players didn't name the card before the flavour text was finished they took five damage

made cards like goblin bomb a bit more playable anyway

we printed our own cards as well... like Mishras Tuckshop
It was a land that you could tap to produce 1 colourless mana or tap and sacrifice to make target player go and buy chocolate and crisps for you

We had Tragic: The gathering.

Including 'The Sheep of Doom'

Mishras Tuckshop reminds me of a real card - 2, Tap: Target player buys you target drink.
Errata: you pay any costs incurred.

Why isn't it tournament legal?

Thats an unglued card isn't it?

our version was waaaay before that came out

Unglued? Yes.

Definity 'glued' was Chaos Confetti. A 'house' (or school) rule was that another, Chaos confetti shaped piece of paper could -not- be used. But, if the player had an entire (albeit glued together) chaos confetti, it could be played.

Oooooh! I'm all interested and stuff now...just a few quick q's though (for anyone who deigns to answer....)
Is it really expensive to get started?
How long do 'normal' games take?
How many ppl can play at once?
Ta muchly!
Cafram

It's not expensive to get started but it is very expensive to keep playing
Normal games take from 10 minutes to 2 hours depending on the "blueness" of the decks involved.
Most TCGs have variations where any number of people can play, there are usually lots of different fun ways to try.

Hope this helps

ta muchly!