Yeah. You ought to try Magic. We’ve had tons of time to practice the old everything-is-complicated-and-fucked dance; we’ve been doing it since 1993.
The one “saving” grace you can consider (except to your wallet) is that official competitive play allows cards from sets only up to a certain age from the present, with the most restrictive being “standard” which at the time of writing doesn’t allow any cards older than a set released in 2021. It’s not even that the metagame makes old decks nonviable – you’re literally forced to buy new cards when expansions come out if you even want to be allowed at the table.
“Modern” is a little less restrictive with the time span, but still restricted. Because otherwise, there would be no way to contain the pileup of legacy unstoppable strategies and broken combos, plus the combinatorial explosion of interactions between old mechanics and the seemingly mandatory 2-3 new ones added per expansion set.
So casual players (myself included) just play with whatever damn fool old cards we have with a gentleman’s agreement not to be assholes with the game-breaking combos because fuck it, crack is cheaper.
Yeah. You ought to try Magic. We’ve had tons of time to practice the old everything-is-complicated-and-fucked dance; we’ve been doing it since 1993.
The one “saving” grace you can consider (except to your wallet) is that official competitive play allows cards from sets only up to a certain age from the present, with the most restrictive being “standard” which at the time of writing doesn’t allow any cards older than a set released in 2021. It’s not even that the metagame makes old decks nonviable – you’re literally forced to buy new cards when expansions come out if you even want to be allowed at the table.
“Modern” is a little less restrictive with the time span, but still restricted. Because otherwise, there would be no way to contain the pileup of legacy unstoppable strategies and broken combos, plus the combinatorial explosion of interactions between old mechanics and the seemingly mandatory 2-3 new ones added per expansion set.
So casual players (myself included) just play with whatever damn fool old cards we have with a gentleman’s agreement not to be assholes with the game-breaking combos because fuck it, crack is cheaper.