The set seems to be particularly sensitive to issues like timing, the order you play cards in, and the little choices you make. The cards don't have obvious drawbacks like Juzam Djinn or Jackal Pups, but they have lots of tradeoffs with the other cards in your deck. Choices like "what do I spend my energy on?" or "how should I fabricate?" or "do I hold on to the Cataclysmic Gearhulk to try and get more card advantage?" So many cards in the set force you to make little choices that add up to quite a bit of mental work.

That said, I'm only playing a sealed league so I know nothing about the state of the game in other formats.

Also it's generally a very bad idea to try to build your own decks from scratch if you want to be competitive. Although things shift far more often (due to new sets and rotating formats), competitive Magic is similar to chess in that you're better off studying and mastering known-good decks, since very few people can reliably outperform the ruthlessly honed decks produced by the worldwide competitive community.

And yes, we spent our fair share reading up and talking to other players about their meta decks, that in itself is great fun also, just of a different kind.

Compare to, say, Hearthstone, where the digital cards have zero resale value, but the up front cost is substantially lower.

Standard is the most popular format, and has the lowest power level of the major constructed formats. Cards are only legal in standard for about 1 year. Most cards that are played in standard aren't powerful enough for Modern, Legacy, or Vintage, so once they rotate out of standard, their value drops.

Siege Rhino, for instance, lost 80% of its peak value by the time it rotated out in April.

https://www.mtggoldfish.com/price/Khans+of+Tarkir/Siege+Rhin...

Modern is funny. It's non-rotating, but has a fairly aggressive ban list. No big deal if you play casually, but it's possible to drop $1-2k on a T1 deck, only to have a key card banned a year or two later, or for the meta to shift and your deck to be hated out of the format.

Legacy, Vintage, and EDH are generally more stable.

By the time I've opened all the product I generally have copies of most of the set's staple rares and I can trade or sell anything I do not need.

It is a sizeable chunk of cash upfront if you specifically want to play constructed you can acquire 'singles' in pieces and build towards a deck over the season that way. I do not play standard at all. I'm a big eternal format fan (especially Legacy). Once you acquire those cards you can play with them forever.

One thing I have noticed is a lot of eternal format cards are getting thrown into supplemental sets (i.e True Name Nemesis, Shardless Agent, Council's Judgement, Containment Priest, Dack Fayden) stuff like that. Which tends to spike the price.

I think I might start trying to be the organizer more, it might just be that everyone is waiting to be asked :)

I like to do this too

I also agree with your parent comment that they have dumbed down constructed.

The strategy and game-play dynamics were awesome. Not so awesome: the fact that the amount of money a player spends acquiring rarer cards and assembling a deck dictates their success. It's a pay-to-win game and I fucking hate games like that. Not unlike paintball, he who spends the most on gear wins.

Except that it's not.

If you and I played a round of golf, where I used a standard set of golf clubs (not cheap) and you used a hand-whittled tree branch, it's highly likely that I would beat you regardless of our relative skill level. This does not mean golf is "pay-to-win", though; if you and I both played with the standard clubs, skill would determine the outcome. And even if you played with an average but acceptable set of clubs while I splurged on super-fancy clubs, you'd still beat me reliably if you were the more skilled player.

Magic is much the same way. There is certainly a financial barrier to entry, which must be cleared if you want to succeed in competitive play. And if you pit someone who has cleared that barrier against someone who has not, skill is much reduced as a factor in determining the outcome. But competitive Magic is like everyone having at least a basic decent set of golf clubs: everyone playing competitively has made the up-front investment in the game, and now they are distinguished by skill rather than further spending.

After selling my collection of cards, I find that I can still enjoy playing the game using the "draft" format: invest $9 or so for three packs, then have a pleasant evening of play. No more expensive than seeing a movie, and the playing field is more or less level.

EDH started as a community driven format with no official support. The community decided that your deck must be exactly 100 cards with no duplicates except basic land. This slows the came down and forces more board interaction.

On top of that 1 of your hundred cards must be a Legendary creature. Everything in your deck can be of a color from that creature and you will always have access to that creature throughout the game. This constrains deck construction and makes it really hard to splash a color for one $50 that would be perfect. Always having access to commander is a comfort to new players and opens new strategies to veterans.

To further combat this I have a pool of 30 or decks that I build with my friends and we play mostly from this pool. No paying to win if we are paying together.

I have a tourney-competitive EDH deck that, according to current prices, costs about $400. That's a good bit... but replacing 4 cards with cheaper counterparts brings it down to $63. And I have recently seen at 2 other good EDH decks under $40 from someone who decided he wasn't going to spend more than $50 on any deck.

Definitely doable.

For more info on that, including what percentage each archetype makes up of the total Commander metagame and what each costs: https://www.mtggoldfish.com/metagame/commander/full#paper

I spent about £25 on cards, and was probably given another £25 or so by a wealthy friend. The game was fine when played against others who had a similar investment, but the group stopped playing because of eBay: our friends with real money could buy what they wanted, and the rest of us could never beat them.

I think it was the first thing we did which showed who had money and who hadn't. We could take cheap plastic Warhammer figures, paint stars on them, and declare them to be powerful wizard-mages. Computer games were easily copied, it didn't matter who owned a board game. M:tG ruined the equality...

I looked into the game again about a year ago, but there were so many new rules (new abilities, new card types) -- I decided I didn't want to spend that much time on one game.

I think I'll be sticking with the eternal formats where cards don't lose 90% of their value in 2 years.

It's more fun in person, but there's also a free community-made site where you can play online, and most players are happy to teach: http://jinteki.net

Fun fact, jinteki.net is written in Clojurescript.

I like Netrunner because I feel you're less constrained by your draws. You can run aggressively with an empty board, forcing the corp to spend money on their defenses. You can spend actions digging for cards you need.

Draws still matter, of course, but it's less common for me to feel like I'm trying to top-deck answers in Netrunner.

While teaching my children to play m:tg I had the same impression as you describe, but I wasn't exactly sure what aspects I was missing ...

That's not to say that all cheap decks are boring, or all tournament decks are interesting, but cards like, say, Duskwatch Recruiter, Dromoka's Command, or Despise, for example, just offer more choices than Craw Wurms or Grizzly Bears.

Regarding what others have said:

Damage not going on the stack was a good change IMO. Sacrificing Mogg Fanatic was always the right play; now it's less obvious. I agree with akud on detention sphere vs. O-ring.

Hexproof over Shroud was a mistake; with that said, they seem to have figured that out, and we're getting cards like Pristine Skywise or Dragonlord Ojutai instead.

I'm sad to see Protection be replaced by Indestructible. Morph/Manifest and DFCs show that they're not entirely shying away from complex mechanics.

Or is it still the same ?

Also, the cards printed these days tend to not allow you to hose yourself. Take things like detention sphere, that say "exile a non land permanent you don't control." It used to be that those types of cards would exile any non land permanent, do a skilled opponent could, in certain situations, exile something you controlled by bouncing their only non land permanent in response.

Now you actually have to choose. Do I want this creature to deal damage or do I want to get the benefit of some effect due to sacrificing it or whatever. Sakura-Tribe Elder got worse but it got much more strategically interesting.