The founding-father boogeyman of the TCG genre. MTG is much like man's original sin, in a biblical sense, as playing it feels like biting the forbidden fruit, leading you to give your entire soul to satan himself.
People who play this game, never leave and even when they do they come back. Like some twisted groundhog day, the game perfectly balances between being brilliant and unique, while simultaneously feeling like being subjected to chinese water torture with a vibrator in your ass.

A picture to summarise the average MTG player experience goes as follows:
You boot up the game. Find yourself enchanted and wonderfully lost in the blissful learning experience. Then, through countless hours of grinding swiping your credit card , you finally muster up the currency to craft a viable deck of your liking from the beautifully vast and expressive options, possible through the patented color pie it's all black, it's the only viable color .
Then, once you build your confidence enough, through trial and error, grappling with the multitude of minute interactions, you venture into the ranked ladder.
At this point, you are already too far in. Whether you choose BO1 or BO3 as your preferred playing field, satanic flowchart decks will molest you and do unspeakable things to your mental health.
You will wish death upon the entities that designed the infernal 'sHuFFleR".
You will lose countless games where you are fiending for even one card that actually lets you play the game against your opponent, who, on the contrary, seems to be manifesting three overlapping dimensions of reality to pull perfect card after perfect card just to ♥♥♥♥ you.
Until, like a ray of light through the clouds, you get THAT GAME . The game where you and your opponent meet chakras and intermix in harmony and balance. With equally playable draws and after a stimulating, cerebral exchange and countless, still-intensive stack interactions, after 20 minute battle of wits, you come out the victor. Your deck came together perfectly, making you actually feel like you not only got to play, but ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ live. At the end, you hit your valiant foe with one last gg as you deliver lethal.
That is when you feel true accomplishment. That is when you know, they have you.
The next 90 of your games are decided by coinflip and continuing playing through the coming expansions will cost you your house, leg and firstborn child.
Yet still, the feeling of that one game of cosmic alignment will keep you willingly spiraling down the rabbit hole of insanity.

Just as Richard Garfield intended.

TL:DR
Coming from hearthstone, this game was all I ever wanted from a TCG 9/10.
The game has a horrible company behind it and for every fun metagame there are 2 years of ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥. Playing standard with up to date decks is expensive unless you play almost daily, mostly due to the awful crafting and rewards systems. Still would recommend for anyone to try it just for the learning experience alone, it's a one of a kind experience I can't describe. The Wandering Emperor is my waifu.

The founding-father boogeyman of the TCG genre. MTG is much like man's original sin, in a biblical sense, as playing it feels like biting the forbidden fruit, leading you to give your entire soul to satan himself. People who play this game, never leave and even when they do they come back. Like some twisted groundhog day, the game perfectly balances between being brilliant and unique, while simultaneously feeling like being subjected to chinese water torture with a vibrator in your ass. A picture to summarise the average MTG player experience goes as follows: You boot up the game. Find yourself enchanted and wonderfully lost in the blissful learning experience. Then, through countless hours of grinding [spoiler] swiping your credit card [/spoiler], you finally muster up the currency to craft a viable deck of your liking from the beautifully vast and expressive options, possible through the patented color pie [spoiler] it's all black, it's the only viable color [/spoiler]. Then, once you build your confidence enough, through trial and error, grappling with the multitude of minute interactions, you venture into the ranked ladder. At this point, you are already too far in. Whether you choose BO1 or BO3 as your preferred playing field, satanic flowchart decks will molest you and do unspeakable things to your mental health. You will wish death upon the entities that designed the infernal 'sHuFFleR". You will lose countless games where you are fiending for even one card that actually lets you play the game against your opponent, who, on the contrary, seems to be manifesting three overlapping dimensions of reality to pull perfect card after perfect card just to fuck you. Until, like a ray of light through the clouds, you get [b] THAT GAME [/b]. The game where you and your opponent meet chakras and intermix in harmony and balance. With equally playable draws and after a stimulating, cerebral exchange and countless, still-intensive stack interactions, after 20 minute battle of wits, you come out the victor. Your deck came together perfectly, making you actually feel like you not only got to play, but fucking live. At the end, you hit your valiant foe with one last gg as you deliver lethal. That is when you feel true accomplishment. That is when you know, they have you. The next 90 of your games are decided by coinflip and continuing playing through the coming expansions will cost you your house, leg and firstborn child. Yet still, the feeling of that one game of cosmic alignment will keep you willingly spiraling down the rabbit hole of insanity. Just as Richard Garfield intended. TL:DR Coming from hearthstone, this game was all I ever wanted from a TCG 9/10. The game has a horrible company behind it and for every fun metagame there are 2 years of dogshit. Playing standard with up to date decks is expensive unless you play almost daily, mostly due to the awful crafting and rewards systems. Still would recommend for anyone to try it just for the learning experience alone, it's a one of a kind experience I can't describe. The Wandering Emperor is my waifu.