General CBS

Hold on...if there's no rule that says I can't split my deck into two parts, then surely there's no rule which says I can't split my deck into parts equal to the number of cards left....and Melek reveals them all?!
 

Eric Chan

Hyalopterous Lemure
Staff member
An old article, but it has some great stats about the size of the CCG market, both paper and online.

http://venturebeat.com/2015/08/11/h...becoming-a-dominant-category-superdata-finds/

We probably all knew that MTGO isn't close to being the #1 online CCG... but did you know it takes in less than Injustice: Gods Among Us?!
market-leaders.jpg


The audience for paper is nearly as big as for online in the West, whereas for other regions, online dominates.
global-market.jpg


Also, take this last stat from the article with a grain of salt, but it probably still has more merit than Wizards' repeated stance that their playerbase is 38% female.

CCG players are overwhelmingly male, the study showed (80 percent), and the average age is 31. That makes them one of the most male-dominated gaming categories.
 
Grognards have to believe in strict, definitive categories of people because otherwise they might have to come to terms with the fact that being a grognard is entirely within their control

so whenever someone from some other category (as defined by the grognard) wanders into their territory they feel like they have to maintain the status quo

also girls make grognards nervous because they're afraid the girls will be able to read their thoughts using girl magic, and the grognard will then be revealed to be the creep he is. Feel free to replace "girl" with literally any other word, it'll still be true
 

Aoret

Developer
I'm starting to notice a pattern here. I've seen a couple of women now quickly get out of Magic while they were getting in because everyone at the game stores trolls them away. Disappointing, not surprising.
While everything you said is true, I think we should probably be careful that we don't apply this stereotype to every instance of an awkward nerd doing something dumb while a woman is present. From what I remember of the video, everyone in the playgroup is silent, except for one of the two women present and the offending player. In no way does she seem like she's being driven off by this idiot, rather, she's attempting to eject him from her playgroup (as she should).

Just to reiterate, I'm not saying what you describe doesn't happen Tzen, because it does (all the time). I'm just saying we should be careful about raising this flag every time someone behaves badly in the presence of a female player; that's doing us all a disservice as well.
 
While everything you said is true, I think we should probably be careful that we don't apply this stereotype to every instance of an awkward nerd doing something dumb while a woman is present. From what I remember of the video, everyone in the playgroup is silent, except for one of the two women present and the offending player. In no way does she seem like she's being driven off by this idiot, rather, she's attempting to eject him from her playgroup (as she should).

Just to reiterate, I'm not saying what you describe doesn't happen Tzen, because it does (all the time). I'm just saying we should be careful about raising this flag every time someone behaves badly in the presence of a female player; that's doing us all a disservice as well.

To clarify, its not that the women necessarily get driven out, but that they usually end up leaving the MtG scene out of disgust because they have to regularly put up with this kind of thing. This really isn't something that "awkwardness" excuses either. This guy knows damn well how the game is played and how a deck works. He obviously played far enough to get out a six drop. This is just toxic behavior. There's a huge gap between being an awkward nerd and being a dumpsterfuck. Making up rules to a game as you go to alienate members of a playgroup while blatantly ignoring them is well beyond that gap. Sure, this guy is probably also awkward and a nerd, but at this point he's gone well out of his way to shit all over his opponent.

I do agree to not stereotype awkward nerds, hell I'm the apotheosis of awkward nerds, but that really doesn't apply to this case of a person being genuinely shitty.
 

Grillo_Parlante

Contributor
I think this specific guy is just an idiot; there is nothing really from the video to support that he is a misogynist. Certainly the entire group appears irritated with him, and the dialogue from the group is directed at him as an outsider that no one invited who is ruining their gaming session, rather than a regular trying to promote an exclusive environment.
 
Casual tables can be a real shitfest- have had many experiences ranging from awful to just fine, in no particular order:
  • Player insists Koth's + ability 'doesn't give haste so the mountain can't attack' and crosses their arms/won't speak to anyone when proven wrong.
  • Player repeatedly asks for free mulligans 'I'm seeing literally no lands' and just says 'enough' when we ask how many lands they're playing- they eventually ended up mulling into a dark rit/entomb/reanimate combo hand and immediately quit when someone STPd whatever his absurd bomb was.
  • Player insists people 'forgot' to untap if they draw before untapping, physically reaching over and tapping their lands again, wagging their finger in faces etc.
  • Player openly mana weaves and won't let anyone cut
  • Player looks at the top card of their library constantly
  • Player puts exiled cards face-down under their graveyard, won't reveal the exile pile 'because you should remember
  • Player uses foreign cards, blatantly 'misremembers' text so cards are better (Dragonlord Ojutai always has hexproof tier)
  • Player insists all planeswalkers start with 1 loyalty, and the bottom-right corner is to show their "lore power level" (wat)
  • Player stacks all their lands together and all their other permanents together- just a big pile of creatures and stuff. (also wat)
  • Player referencing the beginning player's guide like the dude in the video- 'well it doesn't say you CAN'T x or y" etc.
Luckily the younger folks I oversee know to look up or ask about any rules they aren't 100% sure on, but the older crowd can be really set in their ways.
 

Onderzeeboot

Ecstatic Orb
Casual tables can be a real shitfest- have had many experiences ranging from awful to just fine, in no particular order:
  • Player insists Koth's + ability 'doesn't give haste so the mountain can't attack' and crosses their arms/won't speak to anyone when proven wrong.
  • Player repeatedly asks for free mulligans 'I'm seeing literally no lands' and just says 'enough' when we ask how many lands they're playing- they eventually ended up mulling into a dark rit/entomb/reanimate combo hand and immediately quit when someone STPd whatever his absurd bomb was.
  • Player insists people 'forgot' to untap if they draw before untapping, physically reaching over and tapping their lands again, wagging their finger in faces etc.
  • Player openly mana weaves and won't let anyone cut
  • Player looks at the top card of their library constantly
  • Player puts exiled cards face-down under their graveyard, won't reveal the exile pile 'because you should remember
  • Player uses foreign cards, blatantly 'misremembers' text so cards are better (Dragonlord Ojutai always has hexproof tier)
  • Player insists all planeswalkers start with 1 loyalty, and the bottom-right corner is to show their "lore power level" (wat)
  • Player stacks all their lands together and all their other permanents together- just a big pile of creatures and stuff. (also wat)
  • Player referencing the beginning player's guide like the dude in the video- 'well it doesn't say you CAN'T x or y" etc.
Luckily the younger folks I oversee know to look up or ask about any rules they aren't 100% sure on, but the older crowd can be really set in their ways.
I have played a metric ton of multiplayer, and I never encountered anything as cross as this. Players know the rules, accept corrections (or look it up) if an interpretation of the rules is called into question, and generally are nice to each other. The only "weird" things I can remember are a player insisting to play with his lands in front of his other permanents, and another tapping stuff by rotating it 180 degrees. That was years ago, but now that I think about it, both are playstyles that make cheating easier. Don't know if they did though. Anyway, most altercations were because of bad beats and stuff like selective mass land destruction (Global Ruin and Ruination, I'm looking at you!).
 
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