toctheyounger wrote: ↑3 years ago
How much of this is related to the whole pandemic/reduced socialisation/businesses closed I wonder? That might be a bit reductionist, but it's been a really unique year. Still, there's plenty of other reasons one might call it quits; increasing prices of playing, Hasbro and their (generally) capitalist management of WotC and the game, not enough spare time, and so on.
I started playing Magic around 15 years ago when I was still in highschool. I just don't nearly have the same amount of free time to through at it anymore. When my friends get together we only have time for 2-3 games as opposed to the 12 hour board game extravaganzas we used to have. That's time for a game of EDH and a different board game as opposed to 2-3 EDH games, a handful of different board games, some video games and a cube draft like we used to have. It has a lot more stringent competition for my time.
Magic the Gathering is great fun, but the enjoyment I get out of investing $50 on 1-5 cards is way lower than it would be if I spent that money on an
entire new board game.
The prices of a lot of my cards spiking only makes me more wary of using them in the presence of strangers. I just don't feel safe taking my cube anywhere outside of my house that isn't explicitly to another friend's house that I trust. I used to just drag it around with me to local game stores to throw down with folks. All the cards in it used to be $2-$10 range and it seems like a lot of them have climbed up to $20-$50. Having grown up and having to pay bills has made me much more wary of losing a huge chunk of money that I've invested into it compared to my younger self.
I'm pretty wary about using my EDH decks with other people for similar reasons because how much commander becoming mainstream has inflated the value of my cards. I scoop to
Scrambleverse because it's too easy for stuff to get lost when it resolves even if everyone is extremely trustworthy.