20 years ago, I started collecting Magic The Gathering TCG cards. I remembered opening booster packs in the hopes of getting super rare cards and even rare foils. I didn’t actively play the game, as I am more of a collector. At one point, I managed to complete a series of cards, having completed the collection.
But it was an expensive hobby and soon after, it became unsustainable. By the end of my collection, I probably had thousands of bulk cards with little to no value. Most of the cards were eventually thrown away. I still have the album containing the complete set of cards from a series.
Last week, I went to Comic-Con Singapore and visited the MTG booth. There, they set up several tables with decks of cards for visitors to learn how to play the game. I went to the booth and they taught me how to play the game, going through the basic rules and the gameplay motions soon after.
After a while, I was hooked. It was so much fun! I had a lengthy conversation with one of the ‘tutors’ who introduced me to certain game formats that were casual and great for beginners. One of them is the Jumpstart format. All you need to do is buy two Jumpstart booster packs, each pack containing 20 cards, combine them together, shuffle them and boom, your deck is ready to play. It was that easy. Each pack has the required land cards needed to cast creatures, spells, instants and so on and each pair of booster pairs, however you combine them, will almost always be synergistic with one another. The Jumpstart booster 40-card format is great for beginners in the sense that you don’t have to go through the arduous deck construction stage which is usually the case with most TCG game formats. Combine and play. It is that simple and dynamic. Tired of your current deck? Open 2 more packs and more often than not, you will get a totally different theme and totally different playstyle.
One of the things I find most tiring is building my own deck and doing fairly extensive research to determine what cards suit my playstyle or strategies that I am aiming for in a deck. There are just so many cards out there and so many abilities to read through so see if it is a suitable card to add to my deck.
The second format that has become the most popular format for Magic The Gathering is the commander format. The commander format revolves around creating a commander deck with a legendary creature to serve as your commander. Your deck will center around the abilities of your commander. It is a 100 card deck, with 1 commander and 99 cards. No cards can be multiples of the same card, except basic land types. It can be played in a multiplayer format, with 4 or even 5 players.
It has become a very popular format that Wizards of The Coast, the creator of Magic The Gathering TCG has been releasing pre-constructed commander decks on almost all the series that have been released in the past decade. And because the decks are pre-constructed, you don’t have to build your own deck. Buy a pre-constructed deck, open up and boom you can immediately play with your friends. It is super casual and with a multiplayer element added to the mix, no two games session will ever be the same. The game is longer, more involved, and more social, with alliances formed and broken until the last person stands.
During the Shopee 12/12 sale, I think I spent close to $500. I bought 2 boxes of Jumpstart boosters, and multiple commander decks, with more on the way in the coming months. I am just that obsessed right now.
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