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Wednesday, December 12, 2007

Magic at MTGO Traders site


I haven't made much of it on this site yet, but I'm a casual Magic: The Gathering player, mostly online these days. It's a fun game and a fun way to keep the logical part of my mind firing. I started playing years ago when I lived in Boston and went to Emerson College. Friday nights, party guy that I am, I'd head over to M.I.T. where a bunch of casual gamers got together weekly in some empty conference rooms and slung down cards into the wee hours.

I played quite a bit and kept buying cards and reading about the game long after that, even as my time to play and opportunities to get together with other players waned. A few years ago, I eventually dropped away from the game.

A tour of the Wizards of the Coast corporate headquarters about a year back (more on that another time--soon) reignited my interest in the game. Before long, I'd installed a copy of the online game on my computer and I've frittered away quite a few hours playing ever since.

Both for fun and as a way of supporting my habit, I've started writing an occasional column for the MTGO Traders web site. I've had eight articles published so far, and I'll plan to update you here when new ones go live.

Here are the first eight articles:

  1. Casual Play: Cry Havoc and Let Slip the Cats of War!
  2. Casual Play: 101 Uses for a Dead Cat
  3. Casual Play: Psst! Psst! Help Me Build a Deck. Psst!
  4. Casual Play: Departing Standard
  5. Casual Play: Endless Whispers Followup
  6. Casual Play: Their Stock Is Rising
  7. Casual Play: Desolation Alley
  8. Casual Play: Feeling Crabby?
Feel free to comment on the articles on that site or here. If you comment on an old article and want a reply, please let me know here--I don't get alerts when older articles on that site get updates.

3 comments:

Jeff Hebert said...

I always thought it would be neat if there were some sort of system where players could build their own custom cards (via a HeroMachine-like interface), and register them with the publisher. That way only a certain number of each possible combination could be registered and in use, making them more unique. For that to work, though, you'd have to play online and you'd have to be playing through their registered site to keep track of the decks and make sure no one was cheating.

I've never played Magic, but I'll read through your articles and see what I can learn. I'm still waiting for my copy of your novel, too -- it's sitting there in my Amazon queue so patiently!

Rob Rogers said...

That sounds cool, Jeff. I believe that there are some sites that allow players to build their own custom sets of cards and even play with them. They're not "official," but they seem to have some wide usage. Not something I've looked into too much, but it's out there. I think that this is one such site:

http://www.magic-league.com/download/apprentice.php

I'll post about the book here soon. Thanks for the faith--it comes out in April.

I miss Nerd Country big time.

Spork Boy said...

I have no idea what any of those articles mean. But congratulations on getting published!

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