What were your beginning N00b mistakes?

R

Reverend Love

Guest
A post in the rules section got me remembering all the goofy n00b mistakes I made waaay back when.

One example was the group I played with had a very rough grasping of the rules...so when we played things such as Dark Ritual we'd play it as a permanent! Now ain't THAT a deal?

Force of Nature, Keldon Warlord and the almighty feared Gaea's Liege were stars of our games. Laying waste to our hordes of plague rats and Wooly Mammoths. "Stupid" cards like counterspell were unheard of...I mean counter target spell..thats gotta SUCK! Sea Serpent...ooh now were talking!

I remember opening packs and prizing my Craw Wurm as the rare....I mean he's a 6/4!! ULTIMATE POWER!

The bomb combo was banding some fatty creature..say the terror above, Craw Wurm with Mesa Pegasus so they BOTH flew over to whack my opponent :p

Flying Nettling Imps, Regenerating Creatures back from the graveyard, Instants and Interrupts all played as sorceries, White Knight taking no damage from Hill Giant because he was Unholy Strenght'd, aah great times!

What goofy stuff did you guys do when you were still green?
 
I

Istanbul

Guest
Back when the earth was young and Unlimited was the current basic set, Frozen Shade read: "B: +1/+1".

Not 'until end of turn'.

Oh, Frozen Shades were AMAZING back then. Super-powerful. We'd have dice just to track how big we made our Shades that turn.
 
S

Spiderman

Administrator
Staff member
Man, I know I have some but can't remember them right now... may somebody's other "newbie" mistakes will jog my memory...
 
T

train

Guest
Siren's call, and Festival - would have been a great combo... got all the cards for it, and never built the deck...:rolleyes: :D
 
M

Mikeymike

Guest
I did the Dark Ritual as a permanent thing as well. I mean, what else could Mana Source possibly mean?

And lifegain was the strongest thing since Fromunda cheese.
 
R

Reverend Love

Guest
The Stack, Reminder Text, Commons Uncommons Rares now easily distinguishable. WoTC has done a good job easing in new players.
 
N

Notepad

Guest
Since I covered a lot of silliness in "My Magic History" (and will continue to do so) but here's one...

We often did things like try to clone legends that this one guy played (he was the only guy we knew at the time who played with stuff as amazing as Lady of the Mountain and such). He'd tell us the Legend rule and we wouldn't belive him. We thought he was just making crap up to stop us from winning against him.

It was only months later we finally found out he was telling the truth. But to be honest, the guy was a jerk anyway, so we never felt bad about calling him a liar...

...yeah, sad story...
 
N

Nightstalkers

Guest
I periodically broke someone into a snively pile of wuss whenever I used my shadow deck...


And then I figured out that they could attack and only be blocked by creatures with shadow. :rolleyes:

—Nightstalker Exterra
 
N

Notepad

Guest
As is the usual circumstance: I have no idea what the hell you just tried to say there, Nightstalkers! :eek:
 
R

Reverend Love

Guest
Nightstalkers is a message board performance artist...your not so much to understand what he says as you are to experience what he says.....heee :D
 
N

Notepad

Guest
Oh, okay.

Glad to know I wasn't doing the wrong thing by trying to put the monitor in rolling papers and smoke it...
 
Killer Joe

Killer Joe

New member
One of my first drafts was Mirage. I opened up a Hammer of Bogarden and passed it, OY! The dude I past it to won the draft (Go Figure).
 
B

BigBlue

Guest
I think I posted this before...

We thought Hippie specter was cool because it was a 2/2 flier for 3... it wasn't until several weeks later that someone pointed out that there was a discard clause and it really rocked.

Atog: see shade above... We'd have them keep the counters...

Kird Apes were cool when you had 5 forests in play...

I remember lots of discussions about what it meant when your giant "kill"ed his victim - could you regenerate? That wasn't really a n00b problem as a wording problem by WotC.

One of the biggest early controversies we had was when a player was given a stack of about 1000 cards... we were all pissed at how unfair it was... they were all basic lands and we had to play 5 colors because we didn't have enough lands to make a deck with fewer colors... (Interesting that even in that stage most of us realized that we needed to pare down colors to get more consistency).

I can remember the degenerage 30 Lightning Bolt 10 Mountain decks and the 20 Plague Rat 10 Dark Rit 10 Swamp decks too...

And lastly we played for Ante one night - it was about two weeks after everyone else had started (my first night playing)... It was 6 player multiplayer and I won all 6 games (a free 30 cards for me - mostly lands). We never played for ante again.
 
N

Notepad

Guest
Originally posted by BigBlue
I think I posted this before...
I can remember the degenerage 30 Lightning Bolt 10 Mountain decks and the 20 Plague Rat 10 Dark Rit 10 Swamp decks too...
Click to expand...
Ah, the lovely Plague Rat deck. Was even a paragraph in an old Zakk Dolan article in The Duelist. I still have mine. Actually, three--of those decks. I keep them around if ever a time I enter into a Emperor game. I just wanna see what happens when one side plays with the Plague Rat decks.

Hey, only fair when the other side is playing Howling Mine-Weird Harvest-New Fronteirs-Kamahl's Summons-Coat of Arms and the radius is one on everything. Am I right?
 
S

Spiderman

Administrator
Staff member
Yeah, I remember Zak's deck. He used it for play-testing back then, to see whether his legal decks could beat a degenerate deck :)

Although it's sad that a Plague Rat deck is "degenerate", since that's actually what it's supposed to do... get out lots of Plague Rats as envisioned by Garfield when there weren't any restrictions. Of course, he also envisioned people collecting and playing with maybe 100 cards, tops :)
 
B

BigBlue

Guest
Yeah, his reasoning was simple - No one will pay for that many cards because they're so expensive...

And how many price increases have we seen?
 
R

Rooser

Guest
Well, my mentor never made it absolutely clear what the difference between sorceries and instants were, which was funny because it didn't matter very much at first anyway, because as a n00b I made the common mistake of playing instant as early as possible instead of as late as possible, soi I was casting everything on my turn anyway.

But as I played with people I began to notice people doing things, "in response," and began to see the value in waiting with some of my plays.

But, still, I did not know the difference between instants and sorceries, so one day, in a big multiplayer game, I cast Wrath of God in response to somebody attacking me for a lot.

And so we all had a good chuckle. and then the difference was explained.

"Ah," I said.

Now, in the case of Magic, I caught on real quick, partially because I was a bit older than some of us were when I started playing, (17), and partially because I had experience with another card game, so I alreday had a god grasp of some of the universal CCG mechanics and strategies. Also, I was "raised" by experienced players who devote a lot of time and money into the game, so I was always surrounded by rule mongers and what not, so I was never really able to make too many super n00b mistakes for very long anyway.

I think my n00b qualities tied mostly to my deck-building, not my ability to play the game well once a deck was put in my hands.

Things I used to do religiously:

Play with 4 and only 4 copies of everything I played with.
Play with exactly 20 lands.
etc.

Anyway, that's my five cents.
 
S

Spiderman

Administrator
Staff member
Originally posted by BigBlue
Yeah, his reasoning was simple - No one will pay for that many cards because they're so expensive...

And how many price increases have we seen?
Click to expand...
I don't remember that as the reasoning - it was simply that no one would go to great lengths to get that many of one card, and the why of that escapes me too... probably because he didn't expect it to catch on like wildfire.

I used to do the 20 lands thing until I started reading the Dojo :)
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top