THE SIMPSONS’ NEWS

Nothing exciting to report.  Been working on storyboard revisions this last week.  We’ve been given a good amount of time to get the show ready.

If there is one annoyance, it’s that I don’t have the other program I need to do my job installed in my computer.  It’s pretty darn ridiculous.  I have to go to another cubicle if I want to use the program.  We’ve already asked to get this taken care of, but as of the time of this writing, it hasn’t been.

ROLE PLAYING GAMES

Kids are great.  They just ooze imagination.  The other day, Munchkin discovered the teddy bear I keep by my bed. She immediately took a liking to it and gave it to me to “puppeteer”  The little guy, came to life for her and she started adventures with it, right away.  It was amazing.  I was blown away.

When we were kids, my brother and I did something similar (I’d control a toy and he pretended it was real) but it just seemed natural to do back then. Now that I’m older, I’m much more aware of what’s going on. Still, I found myself getting into the “role” of the teddy. Munchkin made it so easy.  It was fun.

When you’ve got young kids around, who needs complicated Roleplaying game books.

BOARD GAMES

So I was going to write about non mainstream games.  In other words, games that can’t be found at regular stores. Then I realized that some of the “hobby board games” I play CAN be found in some of these stores, they just tend to be overlooked, looked down upon or just thought to be too weird and  generally avoided. This week I’m going to be writing about one of those games.  Today I’m going to be writing about Magic: The Gathering.

I’m pretty sure, at some point, you must have seen a set of Magic cards somewhere, either in booster pack form or in Starter Deck form.  They tend to be sold in most of the American “Mart” stores (Walmart, Target, K-mart) as well as many Pharmacies and  toy stores. The last time I visited my relatives in El Salvador, I saw the game being sold (in Spanish) in liquor stores.  The game has been translated to many different languages by now.

What is Magic: The Gathering?

Magic: The Gathering is a collectible card game where in you take the role of a wizard who is partaking in a magical duel against another wizard by summoning Creatures to fight for you.

It borrow a small element from the game, Cosmic Encounter. As can be seen from the following quote:

‘Though there are about a dozen games that have directly influenced Magic in one way or another, the game’s most influential ancestor is a game for which I have no end of respect: Cosmic Encounter.”

Richard Garfield, designer of Magic: The Gathering 

But it’s a unique game all it’s own (well…sort of.  It’s been copied so many times that it might not be so unique anymore.  It became so popular, it created it’s own genre of games). Magic: The Gathering is to Collectible Card Games/Trading Card Games (CCG/TCG) what Lord of the Rings is to Fantasy Novels.

It even has a Pro Tournament. Gran Prize for first place in the Pro Tournament, $40,000.00.

How do you play Magic: The Gathering?

Each player needs to have their own deck of Magic cards.  You can either build a customized deck yourself by buying a Starter Pack and a few booster packs or you can buy pre-built themed decks.  Your deck  is your repertoire of Magic spells. Your Spell Book, if you will. Officially called, your Library. Your Library consists of a minimum of sixty cards.

Each player has twenty points of life.  The object of the game is to reduce your opponents points, down to zero. You do this, mainly, by “summoning” (playing) Creatures onto the table which you use to “attack” (reduce the points of) your opponent. Creatures you summon can also be use to defend you from you opponent’s Creatures. You also have other magic spells in your deck that  can be used to do damage to your opponent or to his Creatures. As well as cards that add benefits to your Creatures and/or generally break the rules of the game.  It’s pretty simple. In fact, you can make the argument that Magic is, in essence, a very elaborate game of trumps. All you’re essentially doing in the game is trying to put cards on the table that can’t be trumped or that can trump your opponent’s cards.

There are three types of cards in a Magic Deck:

Land,

Creatures,

Instants,

Sorceries,

Enchantments,

Planeswalkers

and Artifacts

Each has it’s use within the game. For example: some Enchantment cards can be played on your Creature cards to strengthen them or benefit them in some way, while other Enchantment cards can be used to cause an opponent’s Creature cards some ill.  Meanwhile, Instant cards can be played at anytime during the game. The effect of Instant cards vary greatly from countering opponent’s spell cards to…well…many other things.

The theme and flavor of the game goes something like this: You (the wizard) tap into the magic of the land you are affiliated with and soak up that land’s “Mana” (magical energy).  By doing so you can bring forth your Creatures or spells.  The more powerful the spell or Creature you attempt to bring forth, the more Mana from Lands you have to tap into.

In game play terms: both players start off with a hand of seven cards. On your turn you “Untap” (see below) any Lands and Creatures you have tapped and then draw a card from your deck.

After that you check to see if you have any Land cards in your hand. If you do, you place one down.  You may only place one Land card per turn.

Next, you can play any of your spell cards in your hand that you can “pay” for.  You see, every Magic card costs “Mana”. The cost of the card is on the card itself (on the right top corner).  Some cards cost Mana from certain types of Land. These Lands are forests, swamps, mountains, islands, and plains. If you can pay for the card you wish to play, you “Tap” the Land card, which is to say, you turn the cards sideways to show that you are using the Land or Lands’ Mana this turn. Once you pay the cost of the card you put it in play. Tapped Land stays Tapped until the beginning of your next turn. Depending on which type of card or cards you put down this turn, or have put down in previous turns, different things will happen.  You can put down as many cards as you can pay for. Meanwhile, your opponent can cast certain cards that he has, by Tapping into his Lands, to try to interrupt some of your spells, which in turn you can counter, if you have enough Lands left to Tap with the right card to counter it with.

Now, you can attack with any summoned Creature that you have summoned on previous turns. The ones you have summoned THIS turn can’t attack because they are suffering from “summoning sickness”. Your opponent can then decide to use his Creatures (if any) to defend, take the blow, or cast some other spell to try to prevent you from taking points away. If your opponent decides to block with his Creature or Creatures, your Creatures  battle it out. Strongest Creature wins. Losing creature goes to the discard pile. If the Creatures are equally strong, they both go to the discard pile. If both creatures have good defense but low attacks, the battle is a draw and nothing happens.  During a battle, players often try to use spells and counter spells to insure victory for their side.

Then, that’s it. Your turn is over and your opponent does the same thing. Rinse and repeat until one player loses twenty points. Below is short video showing you what I’m talking about:

I’ve left out a ton, but this is the essence of the game.  What makes the game unique, of course, is the variety of cards in the game, and the plethora of card combination players can put together.

To download the official rule book, Click Here.

A little personal history about me and this game.

So up until a few weeks ago, it had been some 13 to 14 years since I had played Magic. I had completely forgotten how much fun it was. I first got into Magic when the game first officially came out in 1993. I was wandering around a store that sold novelties and I saw a Starter Deck there. I think perhaps I saw some kids at that same store looking at the cards or perhaps playing the game.  I got curious, read the back of the box, got really intrigued by the fantasy feel it invoked, but I didn’t buy it. For the next couple of days, I couldn’t stop thinking about it. I began to romanticize about what the game might be like.  It’s silly to think about now.   In any case, I finally caved in and bought the deck.  I fell in love with it before I had even read the rules.  I’d never played anything like it.  I realized then that I’d always wanted card games to feel like this when you played them. This was the card game I had always wanted.

I got many of my friends into it and we used to play quite a bit.  It was an expensive game for a teenager to get into, especially since I was still in high school and didn’t have any money (I graduated that year and began an unpaid internship on The Simpsons). Still, I managed to get enough cards to play the game and have fun but not nearly as many cards as my friends did.  I found out, real quick, that if you didn’t buy as many cards as your friend did, you would always lose. I stopped after that. I felt cheated.

About three years after, the Pro Tournaments began.

Now a days, I can play the game without having the “feeling cheated” problem. Mainly because the friends I play with don’t have every card ever made. They just have some cards and I have some cards so the playing field is fairly even. Magic is a blast to play  again.

Why do I like it?

First of all, Magic is a deep game.  There is tons of things to think about and tons of ways to play this game. It’s also a game which is infinitely customizable.  If you want to play a game that keeps on giving, this is it.  It’s officially on it’s tenth edition, which is really crazy for me to think about. Playing Magic can be a very personal thing.  The way you set up your deck is very much a reflection of the type of game you want to play.  Aggressive, defensive, chaotic, quick, it’s all up to you.  The game gives you the rules and you get to decide what it will feel like.

Like with Dreamblade, part of the fun is building up a combination of cards that will work well together. The other part of the fun is trying it out to see if what you built was any good.  In this way, the game is very creative.  It’s also very satisfying when you build a deck that works well.

The game itself has a bit of luck in it, but since your deck is meant to be optimized to mitigate that, it’s not too big of an issue.

Magic is both an expensive and inexpensive game.  On the one hand, you can buy a fifteen dollar pre-built deck and play with it all you want, without having to buy anymore cards. On the other hand, if you really like the game, you  may start buying a three dollar booster or two just for the heck of it. This wouldn’t be too big a deal, except that you had so much fun opening up the booster you bought and seeing the new cards and thinking about the possibilities of those cards, that you can’t wait to buy another…and another…and yet another. Pretty soon you’ve spent tons of money and you have no idea how that happened.

Still, isn’t this a sign of how creative the game is? How each booster gives you more ideas for possible combination of cards? How it makes the game new, over and over and over again?  It’s debatable whether the collectible aspect of Magic is a good thing or a bad thing.  It doesn’t take away from the fact that the game is just really fun to play in spite of this.

I highly recommend it (in moderation).

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