Memories of an Old Magic Player: Training Day. - by Chris Newton

[Streetz]

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http://www.magicdeckvortex.com/mdvarticle0481.htm

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[DazBoot]

I have recently gotten into playing Shandalar and am still working to get up to the decks like you are talking about.

On a related note, I have begun to play a fair amount of Mental Magic with my room mate. There was a great play today when he felt so proud because he had a play of: Utopia, Fastbond, Utopia, Ancestral Recall, Utopia, Utopia, Utopia, Utopia, Utopia, Wheel of Fate, Played out a couple of beaters, some draw spells, a Library of Alexandra and passed the turn with no mana untapped and a smug smile on his face.

I proceeded to shrug, draw my first card of the game (excluding the wheel) play a pearl mox, a jet mox, and then Balance. I then played my land for the turn and just grinned. He was less than thrilled.

Good article Chris, it's nice to know that there are others out there who just get that thrill of building up to those decks as much as I do.

[Haggis]

I remember Shandalar! There is a cheat you know theres a way to turn off you opponents untap steps (I found out after completeing the game). But thats cheating and cheating is bad. If I remeber correctly teh final boss has 100 life.

[boobers]

where could i find this game? preferably a download like D2D or something? I'd like to try it out.

[FuDaWg45]

Eh, I disagree. Magic was fun in its early days, but that's because there weren't so many cards. Since all of these ridiculously broken combo cards exist now, you have to get rid of the old power cards since they enable the broken combo cards. It's a shame, but it's the way it is.

What I miss are the innocent days of Magic, where you attacked with your Mons's Goblin Raiders and thought they were awesome. Oh well.

Shandalar sounds like an interesting game. Never played it.

[DazBoot]

It's almost impossible to get a copy of. It was available to download from a bunch of site as the the development on it had stopped. However, people started cracking down on that and almost all of the links are gone now.

[Death_By_Beebles]

Magic is better as a game of resource management, not as a game of broken bullcrap.

Moxen, Loti, all those powerful cards might have been what started Magic, but they don't define it any longer. If you get caught up in the Power 9 mindset, you invariably lose the fun of the game.

[Tynion]

Relatively speaking, those mentioned cards are not broken bullcrap as you say, but offer further resources to manage. Beebs, you can be content to manage your land in nice stacks and then your six creatures in a row, but I need more to my game than attack and block!

[Azrael Subucni]

Ah, that was good. It's been a while since I sat down and really enjoyed an article, instead of just appreciating the insight it provides. I'd never even heard of Shandalar until now. It sounds like fun. I've never really had a chance to play with, and rarely against, the old cards that haven't been reprinted.

While I like my creatures very much, I can kind of sympathize with Tynion. I realize my decks have become increasingly mostly control, as I've played the game. I once played a single aggro deck, which I still have (in a very different form these days), but I also have 2 control decks, and a ninja aggro control. I've been spoiled by control. I'm rarely satisfied with simple attacking and blocking. Still, there's nothing more fun sometimes than just turning your field sideways, and saying "Good game".

[Tynion]

You can check out the game and its specs here.

[Drathro]

I have two comments about Shandalar:

1. When playing Black, pick up four Contract from Below. Fun fun fun!

2. The stupid Artificial Intelligence never lets me win at the end. This doesn't mean I lose, it means that part way through the final match against the Big Bad, the AI can't decide what its next move will be, and the game just sits and waits. Lame.

I have one comment about Tynion having to resort to playing Black:

[Tynion]

Oh no he didn't!!

[Tekkactus]

Playing Shandalar is how I learned to play Magic. This game was the shiznit.

[Tresserhorn]

I love this game. I didn't play it until about a year ago, but getting to use 4 of whatever I want, and abusing 4 Timetwisters and Swords to Plowshares is just to much fun against the PCs decks.

[Tynion]

The thing that I find too tempting always it just adding all the great cards. I am always torn between keeping the deck at 40 cards. I know I can abuse things more like this, but I just find it more fun to have bigger decks (60ish)