The forum actually hides instructions for all bbcodes here: http://forums.empiresmod.com/misc.php?do=bbcode#youtube
Pfff, in my day, we knew how to strikethrough and superscript just by testing. We didn't need to icons or instructions. Kids have it so easy these days.
As a former long time magic player (still play, but no longer do events)... this is basically how you feel whenever somebody raises their hand like that for a judge ruling at an event like that. And I mean the people that just shoot their hand up, and don't say anything to you, but just flip through their cards all game. Also the assholes that will, on the second round after determining they can't beat your deck, purposefully bend a corner on one of your sleeves then call for a ruling to get you DQ'd. People who are in it for serious will do anything to get you DQ'd.
Hearthstone doesn't have bent corners, so, uh, get bent! We do have reddit though, I'm not sure which is worse.
MtG is srs bzns, you're far more likely to get your shit fucked over at an MtG tourny than a poker tourny. I've played MtG thrice in my life with a deck that one of my friends threw together from some spare cards because he wanted me to play with everyone else in the dorm lobby (there were four of us there). With zero prior experience and having to constantly reference the rules, I handedly beat all of them, including the person who was considered unbeatable in our group (*****' would spend hundreds of dollars a month on cards). This taught me that it's a shitty game that is faaaaar too luck based for a game people call strategical.
I'm fine with a game being highly luck based if it's sold as being luck based. Which is why I'm okay with poker and blackjack. But too many people sell MtG as being a lot less luck-based than it actually is.
To be fair, in other games without that land constraint like yugioh you can build your deck around ideas that work depending on what you pick up, like say constantly drawing more cards every turn so you can plop down some cards that literately say "I win". MtG can have a similar idea, you can put in tons of magic cards for direct damage or monster cards to soak up damage/dish it out or whatever. It's just it has that very crappy land requirement that's pretty hard to work around and incredibly luck based. The only thing that can really be done about that is the amount of cards to change the odds of what you end up getting, but of course basic luck is needed to even get those cards to make it work. All that said I have a feeling that while those cards your friend threw together weren't the best of cards I do think he made it so they worked together in some fashion, or they had a lot of general use to them. It is possible to make a decks that will make you lose every time, which is something you can't really say about poker.
it starts its luck-basedness with buying cards already, but creating decks also makes it more strategical then poker or blackjack - if you are free to choose, like in the old videogame, you can skew the odds a lot more (60 cards, about 1/3rd should be lands and a max of 4 per non land card - so you can have only 10 individual cards aswell to increase the chance to pull of a certain strategy). yet you draw cards so you may always win or lose by pure luck, no matter how good your deck, if you constantly lack this one mana its gg sooner or later.
MtG is partially luck based, but a lot of it is deck building skill (followed by the amount of money you have). I was a deck builder, or 'brewer', that always brought new decks made from cheaper cards to events. I generally did pretty well. When you make a deck you have to watch your land/color distribution, creature and spell counts etc. so it's a very fun challenge to me. The only problem is that luck is still a factor, you can easily get mana screwed/mana flooded as per flasche's point. Also, I too have decks that I just threw together that do consistently well. If you know what you are doing and you have the cards lying around it becomes pretty easy to do. There are also instances I've seen where it depends on the person steering the deck. I played a friend once and beat him consecutively, told him to switch decks with me, and then beat him consecutively again. No luck of the draw was really involved (they were legacy decks if that means anything to anybody), it was all about the play strategy. I guess what I'm trying to say is, it's more skill based than you might think, but that certainly doesn't mean that luck doesn't come into it.
