Not Collecting or Trading

So as I’ve referenced in a few previous posts I have an interest in Magic: The Gathering but that interest only extends to casual play which seems to be counter intuitive when you’re talking about a collectable card game…

I’m almost the perennial “starting out” player when it comes to Magic as I particularly enjoy playing core set decks with the exception of my blue/green deck that’s got a lot of Zendikar block cards in it.  Not least of all is the wonderful Scute Mob which so long as you can protect it is a simple but annoying card for your opponent when you add Enchantment after Enchantment onto it!

My toe dipping into the pool of Magic is usually through buying things like Deck Builder toolkits and the odd Intro/Fat Pack although of late it’s primarily been through the Deck Builder toolkits.

Another way to enjoy playing Magic without being dragged in to the world of collecting/trading of cards to build ze uber deck of uberness is to pick up Duel Decks.

There have been a fairly good variety of these over the past few years and the decks themselves are pretty good “starting out” player material.  The most recent of these is the Heroes vs Monsters Duel Deck which intro’d some of the cards from the now released Theros set.

You can compare these Duel Decks to many 2-player card games out there as they are complete out of the box with no additional cards required which for me is one of the attractions.  Of course you can buy more cards and customise the decks but that’s not what we’re talking about here.

The title of this post however should really be changed slightly to append “or Playing” as I’ve not played any Magic for a long time.  It’s not really that big a deal given the other gaming I am getting in but I’m pondering some options around fixing that whilst keeping it to a casual toe dipping level of involvement in the game.