If you’ve played this game you understand the frustration that comes with it but also the joy you get from beating your opponents and creating decks. In this session I will be going over how to play the game, the duration of the typical game, the components of the game and the overall feel of the game. In this particular game of Magic the Gathering, I will be doing what is known as Winston Drafting with a set of cards that my friend made to resemble Game of Thrones.
Beginners to the game should look first at this link: http://media.wizards.com/images/magic/resources/rules/EN_MTGM14_PrintedRulebook_LR.pdf
The goal of the game is to reduce your opponents’ life total from 20 to 0, before they do the same to you or you run out of cards in your deck.
The game consists of 40 cards per deck or in some cases 60 cards, die to roll for first as well as use as counters and life totals, tokens for cards that summon cards that are not readily in the deck, and a playing surface.
Winston Drafting is a form of building a deck in which you place a stack of anywhere from 60-80 cards and then the top three in a line right beside it. The person who drafts first looks at the 1st card that was laid out and if they choose to take it must replace it with a card from the top of the stack. If they don’t take the card, a card is placed on top of the existing card and the player must go to th
e next card laid out. You can repeat this until the 3rd card is not taken. If that is the case then you must first place a card on top of it and then take the next card
off the top.
I would like to preface this by saying that I am in no way an expert of this game.
As you can see I have chosen to build a deck
that is centered around red, white, blue and green cards. I quickly decided after the drafting portion that I would no longer be in the color green, as I needed to cut t
he deck down to 40 cards and there were not enough playable green cards that I had drafted in that color.
Once the deck
s are built each player cuts the deck of their opponent and then they roll to be on the play or on the draw. My opponent won the dice roll and will be on the play.
His deck annihilated mine in the first round as he was able to get a 4/4 flyer that was could not be dealt with as it was also a land card and I did not draw any removal within the first 8 turns.
The second round was much more interesting as I started out on the play. I was able to get at most 6 creatures onto the field but it seemed that he always had the out
to whatever I played. There was plenty of back and forth as each of us were able to get one another down to a life total of 9. Once we were there, my opponent took over and unleashed an indestructible, double striking, deathtouch creature that I just couldn’t deal with.
In reviewing of the game, I ,of course,
found it fun and was happy that I got to play a themed playset, especially because it was Game of Thrones. As for difficulty, it is a fairly easy game to pick up but it is constantly changing and always in flux so if you want to become really good you must dedicate many hours to it and play opponents that are tournament ranked. The downside of playing this game is that it does require one to invest in cards and trade for money or other cards that are somehow worth more than the cardboard that they are printed on.