[hgibbs]

At the beginning of the most recent lockdown in my city I had been introduced by a friend to magic (specifically commander), and I had played enough with him to have started to be annoyed at how often I was losing - so I went out and bought a couple of decks. My girlfriend and I were immediately hooked, and have been playing every other day since then (2-3 months now). Now that the lockdown has lifted I am able to play with my friend, as well as introduce the game to other friends. It's a lot of fun and I've only scratched the surface of the game; as an example we have only been playing with preconstructed decks, while most people will design a deck and purchase the required cards. I think the game design really lends itself to being enjoyed by programmers: building a deck is about looking for combos/synergy between cards, high level play requires knowing the exact way that turns resolve and how/when you can respond to other players actions. I think there has been a lot of stigma around tcg for a while, but the truth is it is just fun.

As an aside, my gf has been collecting Pokemon cards. The high premium for a Charizard is known as 'the lizard tax' by the community, which I think is hilarious.

[monocasa]

> I think the game design really lends itself to being enjoyed by programmers

Interestingly, Magic is turing complete.

https://arxiv.org/abs/1904.09828

[tmm84]

Commander is very fun and really requires some brain power/strategy to win (I won once because the two remaining players accidentally took fatal damage, blocked creatures that died killed the attacker and the trample damage killed the defending player). Commander focused cards (not being reprinted anytime soon) have been going up in price during the "pandemic". I was playing commander at least several months before the "pandemic" began and I have been hot/cold with my enthusiasm for it because of price spikes and targeted buyouts. So, if you are getting into commander and want to buy into a custom deck it could be getting more expensive in the future.

I actually got out of Pokemon cards when the "pandemic" began. Almost every store was sold out of packs (I'm in Japan btw). This has been the case the whole time and I have a feeling that Pokemon cards produced during this time frame aren't going to hold value (a lot of product has been opened and when it floods the market it will be worth little).

[March_f6]

Same! Commander nights at my local LGS have quickly become the highlights of my week. Scryfall has also become my most frequented website next to hn.

[dimator]

Ah I wish I had a friend like you. I wanted badly to get into the game, and I tried to get people into it without success. My spouse tried once but it was most definitely not her thing.

I went to a little tcg bootstrapping event at my local game store (way before covid), and that was fun, but everyone else there was such a pro that I felt really intimidated and out of place.

Anyway now I have a little pile of cards in a drawer :(

[curryst]

It's not quite as fun, but you can play MTG: Arena on a phone or laptop to learn the game enough to keep up. It's free, and made by the same company. You only have to pay if you don't want to play enough to earn cards, or want to build decks with a lot of rare cards (which are not common to see in Quickplay).

There are also online platforms that let you use real cards to play online. It's like Zoom, but with health counters and you aim your webcam at your board.

Or, if you go to an event, tell people you're new and ask if they want to play a jank game. Jank decks are basically decks that people like for reasons other than it being effective, i.e. a deck of cards they just like the art on, or that uses an effect that's fun but not very good. That should bring the power level down to where you can actually compete.

Also, don't be afraid to ask people to break something down. I've never seen anyone be upset about that. The Magic rules are 400 something pages long, and most cards have had online rule clarifications added to them individually. No one is expecting you to just "know" how everything works.

It's a fun game, I wish you luck in finding a group! I think Reddit has an active MTG community, you could look there.