The thing about Magic is that as near as I can tell, Richard Garfield pretty much invented the modern collectible card game. All the other card games we play, whether Lord of the Rings, Game of Thrones or Arkham Horror, use mechanics that are functionally almost identical to those in Magic. So you might even go so far as to say that this is also a project of historical interest.
This summer, I happened to find what I think is a Revised Edition Mountain card hanging around our summer cottage. I used it as a bookmark, which is probably what made the idea of playing again start to grow on me.
So eventually the inevitable happened. If I remember my university classes correctly, Islamic theology maintains that everyone is born a Muslim, but not everyone manages to stick with it. Therefore, one does not convert to Islam but rather returns to it. Something similar seems to be true about Magic; at any rate, I, too, returned.
Our friendly local gaming store had some 7th edition starter sets hanging around, and we grabbed one. The starter set gives you one blue-white deck and one red-green one, with a booklet explaining the rules. Ours was a Finnish edition, and I have to say that the translation was very well done! The rulebook gives a reasonably good walkthrough to a sort of pre-scripted game; once it leaves you on your own, though, my blue-white deck had the edge in some surprisingly powerful creatures, and my partner ended up being overrun by bunnies.
We were also given a pair of 2016 Welcome Decks for free, so our FLGS really treats us pretty well. Admittedly this already added up to a reasonable total of cards to get started with, but I figured we could do better. Duel Decks seemed the best way to get stuck in with more contemporary Magic, and I picked the Mind vs. Might Decks to kind of go with our Lord of the Rings decks; since my partner plays mono-Tactics, the red-green Might deck seemed like the best match, while the red-blue Mind deck was close enough to my favorite sphere, Spirit.
In our first game - the first time I played Magic with real cards this millenium - I got off to a decent start before being destroyed by Rubblebelt Raiders. Knew I should've kept that Rift Bolt in reserve...
The second time around, it was my turn. First I got Young Pyromancer out, which meant a pile of Fire Elementals, and then I set up a combo of several spells next turn followed by Empty the Warrens; at the end of the turn, I controlled seven Fire Elemental tokens and eight Goblins, which promptly overran my opponent.
Next time, I lost in fairly short order, but I did get to drop a meteor on a tree, so it wasn't all bad.
So far, then, our limited testing bears out what I'd read about the Mind vs Might duel decks online: especially the Might deck is accessible to new players, and most of the time Mind will lose, unless it can pull off a spectacular combo and win by miles. Most importantly, especially if you know the above going in, it's damn good fun.
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I also quite enjoyed Magic Duels on the Xbox, until about a month before Hour of Destruction came out, it was abruptly announced that it would no longer be supported. This is just a weird decision; they had no replacement to announce, but suddenly decided to pull the plug on the previous project anyway. Like the community, I too was surprised and disappointed, as I'd been looking forward to Hour of Destruction on Duels. Admittedly I hadn't spent any money on it, but frankly, if support for their video games is liable to just vanish into thin air with no warning, why would I? Surely the point of a free-to-play Magic video game is to advertise the physical product. Duels was doing pretty well at that.
Now, though, with no new cards coming and the AI opponent endlessly stuck playing the same Amonkhet staples, Duels feels pointless. Instead, I went and got Elder Scrolls: Legends, also a free-to-play collectible card game.
Legends is like Magic, except your mana increases each turn instead of having lands (which is like Hearthstone?), you can't play cards in the other player's turn (which is boring) and creatures are played into one of two lanes. It's not bad, actually!
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Thanks to Magic: Duels, though, my partner fell in love with Filigree Familiar, so we now also own a Kaladesh bundle.
I have no objections to this: I used a number of Kaladesh cards in Magic: Duels, and I also quite like the art. For example, Kaladesh includes what I think is my favorite Mountain, an almost Roerichesque piece by Eytan Zana.
Because co-op games are our real passion and neither of us has any real interest in competitive play of any kind, our Magic hobby will mostly be a collecting one, which puts a premium on pretty cards.
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So, reviews. The 7th edition starter decks were all right. My main complaints are that the card choices really aren't very inspired, especially if the aim is to use these sets to introduce people to Magic. Also, the way our decks were stacked, the Silver deck won overwhelmingly and the Gold player just had nothing they could really do about it. So not ideal. However, I do have to mention the translation again, because it's just very good compared to the kind of thing you usually find in products like these. So that, at least, was a pleasant surprise. Basically the starter set did a pretty good job of walking a new player through the basics of Magic, but with surprisingly boring cards.
Magic: Duels was actually pretty good, but then it was discontinued in such a callous way that it's kind of hard to see the point any more. The Elder Scrolls: Legends is better, and I guess we can expect it to be around for a while? Maybe? Anyway if you're into things like Magic I'd give it a shot; the story mode is an enjoyable enough experience. Also, by the way, several of the Legends cards are pretty enough that I'd be quite happy to buy actual physical copies.
Finally, the Mind vs Might duel decks were good fun, and at least for us, an entirely reasonable way for a new player and a very rusty one to get stuck in again. I'm pretty sure you could do a lot worse for a first or returning purchase to contemporary Magic.
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