22 years in, Magic: The Gathering is the brainiest it’s ever been (2015)

Now you actually have to choose. Do I want this creature to deal damage or do I want to get the benefit of some effect due to sacrificing it or whatever. Sakura-Tribe Elder got worse but it got much more strategically interesting.

Or is it still the same ?

I spent about £25 on cards, and was probably given another £25 or so by a wealthy friend. The game was fine when played against others who had a similar investment, but the group stopped playing because of eBay: our friends with real money could buy what they wanted, and the rest of us could never beat them.

I think it was the first thing we did which showed who had money and who hadn't. We could take cheap plastic Warhammer figures, paint stars on them, and declare them to be powerful wizard-mages. Computer games were easily copied, it didn't matter who owned a board game. M:tG ruined the equality...

I looked into the game again about a year ago, but there were so many new rules (new abilities, new card types) -- I decided I didn't want to spend that much time on one game.

I think I'll be sticking with the eternal formats where cards don't lose 90% of their value in 2 years.

For more info on that, including what percentage each archetype makes up of the total Commander metagame and what each costs: https://www.mtggoldfish.com/metagame/commander/full#paper

I have a tourney-competitive EDH deck that, according to current prices, costs about $400. That's a good bit... but replacing 4 cards with cheaper counterparts brings it down to $63. And I have recently seen at 2 other good EDH decks under $40 from someone who decided he wasn't going to spend more than $50 on any deck.

Definitely doable.

Compare to, say, Hearthstone, where the digital cards have zero resale value, but the up front cost is substantially lower.

Also it's generally a very bad idea to try to build your own decks from scratch if you want to be competitive. Although things shift far more often (due to new sets and rotating formats), competitive Magic is similar to chess in that you're better off studying and mastering known-good decks, since very few people can reliably outperform the ruthlessly honed decks produced by the worldwide competitive community.

I like to do this too

I like Netrunner because I feel you're less constrained by your draws. You can run aggressively with an empty board, forcing the corp to spend money on their defenses. You can spend actions digging for cards you need.

Draws still matter, of course, but it's less common for me to feel like I'm trying to top-deck answers in Netrunner.

You occasionally get Standard decks in your price range making top 8, but almost never in Modern. It's really stretching it to call the budget Modern decks "competitive".

Also, where's a good place to sell? Online or in-person?

Ha, I don't play with the Alpha stuff as much anymore, most of the cards I play with ate Unlimited and the expansions around that time.

I have a Shivan Dragon signed by Richard Garfield that he told me not to take out of my deck so I still play with that. He told me the value of these cards were in how much I enjoy them...

I do have a deck made entirely out of black border Nether Shadows that someone gave me as a joke during a tour of the WotC office years and years ago... most of them are Alphas.

Flying a plane is $500 an hour.

Golfing a good course is $100 an hour.

Waterskiing can be $50 an hour.

Skiing is $20?? An hour.

Recreation is serious stuff in the US.

(Lots of citations with a Google search.)

Another unlisted benefit of draft vs. pauper is that almost any store selling Magic cards will have a weekly draft.

Its fun crushing decks that have cards that are worth 4x my hole deck.

You can have fun with magic without spending that much money.

Two, over the course of two decades, there are a /lot/ of good cheap common cards so you're doing it wrong if you have a 3-cost 3/3 in there.

Don't be fooled.

But I can also just print 6 cards per page from my black and white laser printer at a cost of up to 8¢ per page, or about 1.3¢ per resulting card (plus cutting them out with scissors). And, this doesn't require an upfront payment of $150+.

So no, I would not say the cost of just buying the product is lower.

Infinite recursion until opponent stops acknowledging you and packs up his things and goes home.

In a typical Academy deck (pure combo) you just built a 56 card combo deck and slammed in 4 force of wills for protection. A game will another is only slightly harder to win than a game against a goldfish. If the metagame decisions around your control go beyond "How do I defeat the one thing that stops me" you probably weren't playing an optimal version of that deck. Academy decks should be winning before turn 3 100% of the time.

Someone mentioned Prosbloom, I was under the impression it won 3 or 4 with a city of solitude in play. Pretty much the only question you need to ask about that metagame is "How do deal with someone stopping my turn 2 squandered resources?". Versions dealt with that with copious use of 4x enlightened tutor and 4x vampiric tutor, not a real metagame choice.

In Illusions/Donate (combo/control) you build and play a blue/white control deck with a win condition that sometimes saves you the hassle of having to interact. You are still playing a two player game with removal and sometimes even creatures, but your wins come in fast from nowhere. There were several ways to interfere because the win could come well after control was seized or sometimes just before the aggro player attempts to win.

Try pulling off anything of that consistency when you cannot run duplicates of your combos and need to run 100 cards. This is what EDH looks like. Actual thought on deck design because you can't easily build a well oiled machine from cookie cutter parts. When running it feels like trying to win a race while building the racecar from secondhand parts. There is immense challenge and complex decisions.

The combo decks look totally different and barring an extreme outliers (Arcum Dagson and Narset) it is nearly impossible to build a deck that wins consistently without actual board interaction.