When I first started playing this game with my buddies, we didn't really know how the game mechanics worked. I had a reanimator deck where I would attempt to cast a beefy creature, choose not to tap mana - sending it to the graveyard - then cast animate dead on it. Spirit of the night was one of my favorite targets for that, despite being pro-black. The stack was not last in first out, it was about how fast you talked - we would rush to shout out our spells so they'd resolve faster. Banned/restricted rules did not exist for us. It was pathetic. I recall someone saying their house rule was that you could lay as many lands as you want and every time you lay a land you draw a card - this went on until he made a deck with one fireball and 59 mountains.

So what idiotic rules have you guys played by?

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#2 in posts from British Columbia!

The house rules for us was summoning sickness was done when you pass the turn. Conspire was be able to used as many times you wanted to. Recursion combos that never would stop would just be ok lets just act like we never played it and remove it from game. Everyone played with you can draw 7 cards when you toss your hand away.

We also didn't understand the "tap" symbol. If it had a mana cost, and then the tap symbol, we thought you could pay that amount of mana, as many times as you wanted, and THEN tap it. I got braingeyered for over 200 cards (and I almost had enough to survive, and this was AFTER we cut our decks down, lol) because of a blue mana battery that my opponent had been tapping 20 or so mana into it a turn. Conservator was an awesome card too. "Ok, I pay 9 mana, tap and prevent 18 damage."

Ahhh the good ol' days.

Thanks,
Jazaray

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A Plastered Dragon Original Limerick:
There was a nice lassie named Jaz
Many wished to have what she has,
A delicate face,
A soft warm embrace,
And a whole lot of bedroom pizzazz.

WeedIan: Jazaray is like MOTL's Mom.

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Originally posted by choco man:
First cards I bought were Shivan Dragon for $10 ea and Serra Angels for $6 ea. My cousin convinced me that they were awesome and sold me his playsets. I was 11 yrs old.

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Especially one day when I went to the head during a game and came back to it, I could not draw land for anything.

My deck was a black deck with one Spirit of the Night and one of each of the 3 creatures that summon him.

It worked but everyone laughed. It was also my very first multi player game of 12 people and I won out of no where with Carnophages and Lord of the Pit.

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Originally posted by Volcanon:
You HAD $64 when you were 11? Lucky duck.

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It took a long time to save that money. Two years, maybe? I only got money during Birthdays and Christmas. Looking back, I sure was dumb enough to waste $64.

quote:

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Originally posted by Timmyhill:
I get really protective of my cards so when I first started playing I trade use top loaders as deck protectors...

It worked but everyone laughed. It was also my very first multi player game of 12 people and I won out of no where with Carnophages and Lord of the Pit.

This was also the last game we were ever allowed to play in the Libary in High School because magic was "demonic and other worldly." Acording to the Libarian.

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~MM

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I am MeddlingMage...YOUR Motl Survivor 11 Champion, 2007 Captain N award winner, 2010 Marlboro award winner, and 2011 Champion Tournament Pick'em
MOTL NCAA Bracket Challenge winner!

CM Punk "OMG Kevin Nash WTF, thought he was dead, LOL"

I think all of us played with my friend's brother's extra cards, but it was always a lot of fun. I don't remember any of the rules we would regularly break, except this one dude used to tell us he could tap his Llanowar Elves the turn he played them. I guess it used to work that way though, so we let him do it.

But yeah, when my friends and I started playing magic we were all absolutely consummate Timmys. We assumed Scaled Wurm HAD to be rare, I mean 7/6? That's AMAZING! I remember trading probably 18 dollars worth of rares into the LGS to get a Colossus of Sardia sure that it would absolutely win me every game (despite dying to Shatter)

Also the best card in the entire world was the revised Winter Orb. It said "A Player" may not untap more than one land per turn. We took that to mean it targeted a player, and got into this huge argument about it when we finally attended a real tournament with our 100+ card decks.

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Originally posted by Devonin:
So many of these stories make me feel incredibly old. Magic was Demonic because Harry Potter was causing the same problem? Conspire was an early mechanic when you were starting? Good heavens! Conspire wasn't a mechanic until I'd already quit magic twice!

But yeah, when my friends and I started playing magic we were all absolutely consummate Timmys. We assumed Scaled Wurm HAD to be rare, I mean 7/6? That's AMAZING! I remember trading probably 18 dollars worth of rares into the LGS to get a Colossus of Sardia sure that it would absolutely win me every game (despite dying to Shatter)

I was also taught that Dark Rit let you search your library for 3 swamps and put them into play. We routinely had decks that were basically "every card I owned" and we had massive combats of like, 30-40 creatures each all the time.

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Originally posted by mattw:
I hear this, back when Alliances was new I had no idea what made a card good. I would trade away force of wills, lakes of the dead and balduvian hordes for stuff like a colossus of sardia or mahatomi djinn. Icy Manipulator was a house!

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My dad and I had tons of Alliances. We gave Force of Wills to everybody we played with so they could have some fun too. Yeah.

~MM

__________________
I am MeddlingMage...YOUR Motl Survivor 11 Champion, 2007 Captain N award winner, 2010 Marlboro award winner, and 2011 Champion Tournament Pick'em
MOTL NCAA Bracket Challenge winner!

CM Punk "OMG Kevin Nash WTF, thought he was dead, LOL"

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Originally posted by -PoX-:
There's also stories of that guy using mana short as a counterspell that would cause mana burn for all your mana.

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Yeah, I forgot about that one. We thought Mana Short worked like that too.

When I started college, back in '94, I found out that people played Magic at the 4th floor student lounge. So, I went and joined them Well, there was this campus ministry lady that would come by and lecture us on how the cards were "evil" and we would turn evil as well. That we would set each other on fire or some crap. She would stop to lecture us all the time. It got REALLY annoying. This probably sounds kind of mean, but she was in a wheelchair, so we started calling her the "Holy Roller". And every time she passed us, all of us at the table would call out the most demonic cards we could think of. "Wrath of God!" "Demonic Tutor!".

This has nothing to do with Magic, but we quit playing Magic for a bit, and started playing Star Trek. One day, I went to a used bookstore and found some first edition D&D books. I was so excited! I only payed $21 for the three of them! (DMG, Players Manual, and.. I think the last one was one of the monster manuals but I'm not sure) Yeah, well, my friend Tom (Yes, my boyfriend now, but he was my friend's boyfriend at the time) wanted them. So I traded them for Deanna Troi. Because she was worth $21 at the time, and Tom said that's what was fair. What a jerk.

Tom ripped me off of tons of cards, because I sucked at trading and was too nice to say no to the extremely bad trades he offered. Men.

Thanks,
Jazaray

__________________
A Plastered Dragon Original Limerick:
There was a nice lassie named Jaz
Many wished to have what she has,
A delicate face,
A soft warm embrace,
And a whole lot of bedroom pizzazz.

WeedIan: Jazaray is like MOTL's Mom.

There was no restricted/banned list we knew of so even when we started constructing decks (as opposed to tossing in every card in the colors we played) we'd get crazy deck combos. One guy had a deck with 10 COP White, 8 Karmas and 9 Magical Hacks. He'd hack the karma to whatever his opponent played and use the COPs to protect himself if it wound up being islands or plains.

Legends set was hugely popular where I was. There was not a lot of it floating around so cards like The Wretched and many of the Legends like Dakkon Blackblade were coveted by almost every player in the area. I can remember trading like a fiend to put together a set of Legends...of course packs were avaiable at the FLGS for $20 which I bought a lot of. Antiquities packs were $7 and Arabian Nights were $25 at that time as well. I traded huge amounts for Hell's Caretakers and Rukh Eggs to create a deck around that combo at one point. Island of Wak Wak didn't specifically state that the effect ended so we had one person who would use that to permanently reduce all the flying creatures power to 0.

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Originally posted by -PoX-:
There's also stories of that guy using mana short as a counterspell that would cause mana burn for all your mana.

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We had a 45 minute argument over Mana Short's ability to counter a spell one day.

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Originally posted by Jazaray:
Let's see. When we first started playing, we thought the more cards in your deck, the better. We played with three tier decks. As in we had to split our decks into three piles so they wouldn't fall over.

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Yep, I remember this too. Decks consisted of every card you had in the colors you played in for the most part. Goblin Spy(?) - the red creature that allowed you to look at the top of your library - was really powerful when you had 4-6 stacks of 'deck' to choose from. I can remmeber everyone used those to pick which stack they wanted to draw their next card from.

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Originally posted by Heresy19:
Heh... saying to the clerk of the store that 6$ for a Savannah was too much for a land that ''ONLY produce 2 colors'' :P

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Been there as well. I can remember being angry at pulling a land for my rare when I opend duals in packs.

quote:

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Originally posted by mattw:
I hear this, back when Alliances was new I had no idea what made a card good. I would trade away force of wills, lakes of the dead and balduvian hordes for stuff like a colossus of sardia or mahatomi djinn. Icy Manipulator was a house!

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This too...I've traded at least 3 Mishra's Workshops for under $20 (back before all the new artifact sets) and a Bazaar of Baghdad for $15, FoWs and dual lands were also traded away a lot for well under $5 in value - usually for things like Serra Angels and Shivan Dragons. On the flip side, I can remember when Shivan Dragons were the best rares from the Revised set and when the Dark came out everyone was in awe of Leviathan (11/11!! WOW!!!). Icy Manipulator, Craw Giant, Killer Bees and Carrion Ants were all hugely popular cards at one point until being reprinted and people would eagerly trade just about anything to get one...that is IF you could even find someone who was willing to trade theirs away!

I also can remember trying to buy a NM Unlimited Black Lotus for $50. When payday came the guy told me that he had learned it was worth $100. I offered $75 and he turned it down so I told him that $100 was too much for a Magic card and walked away.

I remember having a playset of legends hell's caretakers in a deck with beefy creatures and comes into play ability creatures, and when stronghold came out with intruder alarm I was pretty sure that infinite hell's caretaker was the best combo ever made and that I deserved a nobel prize or something for thinking it up.

Also at my first tournament, i nearly traded my two ravnica shocklands for next to nothing because i thought i had no use for them since they were worse than basic lands. thankfully i was trading with someone who was nice (and who now is a good friend) threw in a stuff to even it out to my pleasant surprise