Its true, it is a funny word.
What exactly is "fun"
well, my big friend Webster says fun is
1. pleasure or amusment,
to have fun || gaiety, playfulness, not for money
to play for fun.
I play magic twice a week, I'd play more if I could, and I always enjoy it. But what I enjoy may not be what someone else enjoys, because enjoyment and fun are purely opinion based states depending on the individual and their own mind set.
I greatly enjoy playing magic still, there are things I would change yes, I wish I had a larger card base, but overall I enjoy getting together with the rest of the magic playing guys here and having a few games.
Istanbul mentions how many players have the opinion that you either play "netdecks" or "garbage" and that cards are only tier 1 viable or trash, there is no inbetween.
On this I'd agree with him as I've met many players who are like that.
But then I've also met many who aren't. My local play group is a Type1 dedicated group, no tournies or anything, we just play and follow the Type1 B&R list to sorta keep a guide line for everyone. We've got people who use everything from Masticore and Scuta to Radiant Kavu and Avatar of Hope. Just today I've seen things like Scent of Jasmine and Planeswalkers Mirth cast to the wonderful staples like Dark Ritual and Fact of Fiction.
Perhaps my group is just a rarity in the world, in which case I am sad. But I don't think that it is.
Am I remenisent of the old days of magic (circa '94 - '95)? Sure I am, thats when I started and I loved the wonder of seeing new cards and getting cards I'd never heard of in a pack. When things were still "fresh" in a way. Regardless of how hard they try, WotC has been running out of amazing ground breaking ideas for a while now, at least without making them broken. As much as I liked the untap spells, they were nasty. But much of this wonder is lost to me simply because you can't escape magic info at times, I rekindled a bit of that wonder for myself by refussing to look at or even acknowledge the existence of a spoiler for Planeshift before opening my boxes and I was quite happy with it, but thats just me. I hate knowing whats gonna be in a set a month or two before it comes out, it drives me nuts which is why i try to avoid info like that if I can. Tourny players though have a different view on this cause spoilers are a tool of the avid tourny goer for things like drafts and the pre-releases.
Magic is fun not only cause as Gizmo says:
Magic is a laugh because you play it with your mates
but because it does hold a certain fantasy wonder for some of us.
When that wonder is lost, some of the fun is lost. I still love to play, but there are no more surprises really or questions to be asked.
You look on the net and its a wealth of info at times, no need for questions as its all there and it certainly isn't wonderous as it was at one time, now its just a well made multi-faceted strategy card game that you play with the guys over brew and pizza (pop for you youngins
) and get alot of time to BS with each other while flopping out the silly pieces of cardboard.
The filtering of the DCI or just tournies in general and the wealth of knowledge available for the game effects all levels of play whether we like it or not.
Ura - Still having "fun" after 7 years of bolting and blasting his way across the aether of war.