Enter the Nyx- Or How I Learned to Love Magic The Gathering Again

New block releases have taken more lunchmoney from nerds and geeks than any schoolyard bully.

As Stan Lee is known for saying, "Hello true believers" and welcome to my first official blog post about Magic the Gathering.  Magic the Gathering has always been a part of life in one aspect or another, whether it was being introduced to it during the Alpha/Beta/Unlimited Stage as a child or when I started taking the game more seriously during the Invasion and Odyssey blocks during high school, I have always considered the game to be one of the most sophisticated trading card games I have ever had the pleasure to play.

It's alright, we all know somebody out there just wants to shout: "NEEEEEEERDS!"

I was a freshman in High School when I first started collecting cards seriously.  The Invasion block was running its end course and Odyssey had just released.  We spent most of our time crowded around a lunchroom table, dropping crude smack-talk and destroying friendships, but all would be forgiven until the cycle continued the next day. Some of the most memorable points were the rise of blue control decks, squirrel decks and finally the dreaded Sliver deck that would rear its ugly head every blue moon.  We spent a solid four years playing with the same set of cards and periodically purchasing a deck to supplement our aging collections.  Magic became more expensive after high school and I just gave up with purchasing cards altogether.  It wasn't until March 2014 that I decided to get back into the game and re-live the nostalgia.

You will always have that one friend, no matter what, who will crap on your parade and then make you eat it.  Seriously, Sliver decks are that bad.  They ruin relationships faster than foreign lipstick stains.

I was never interested in playing in tournaments as a teenager.  I enjoyed kitchen table games over the professional leagues and our Friday Night Magic was fought over pizza and the glow of aging CRT televisions. Usually it would divulge into war, where eventually someone would quit and then we'd move on to the standard Friday/Saturday night gambit of LAN Parties.  The reason I started getting back into the card game was due to my brother and a friend who decided that we should spend Friday or Saturday night playing Pokemon: The Trading Card Game.  That led down a slippery slope where now we are pulling money together and buying booster boxes to expand our collections.

Rush also helps the situation. Sometimes.

The goal for this blog is simple, while my friends and I are goofing around with the new sets, we are currently playing with Theros and eagerly awaiting Magic 2015, I wanted to have an outlet to post decks that I have built for Standard Play and hopefully have debates and constructive criticism based on the decks.  Some decks will be built out of nonsensical elements, I feel that competitive play/tournament play detracts from casuals or even players of Friday Night Magic to experiment with their cards and abilities.  Does that mean I won't look at the mainstream decks and talk about how they work? Of course not, they are there for a reason, they work extremely well.  The problem comes down the cost to build these decks.  Some decks range anywhere from $200 upwards to $3000, one of the most popular decks: "BANT Superfriends" currently runs anywhere from $400 to $1100 depending on the quality of the cards.  So stick with me and find out how you can have fun with the new sets and not have to spend hundreds of dollars to be super successful.

Check in next time as I write about my new deck: Midas and the Minotaur, a Black and Red sensation.