It's true. It's a hard line to find the right balance. It's hard because you can ask those two groups of people to meet midway. We can't say "Competitive players be slightly less competitive and you casual players be more competitive." It's awkward because it usually ends up being the "spikes" being asked to scale back.

That's why Game Grid changed it's prize distribution a few months back. We polled a Magic community asking for advice and suggestions on how to handle the wide spectrum of play levels we experienced. After taking their suggestions and feedback, we ended up cutting the the prizes for the top players slightly but then offered a free booster pack to every person who finished FNM with a 50% record or better. It doesn't matter if you started out 0-2 and finished 2-2, you still got a booster. We have found this has really encouraged players to show up for FNM. They know that even if they get paired against the awesome Julians of the world, the next round the probably won't and getting prizes from free FNM is much more of a reality now. And since FNM is free, there is little incentive not to participate if they have any desire.

A couple years ago we had a great crowd for WoW TCG. We easily had 14-16 people for Battlegrounds each week. One week, after losing, a couple of them complained. They were upset that some people came each week with competitive decks. To them, it was undermining their ability to have fun as they made "fun" decks and our decks didn't allow them to have the fun they desired.

It was a rough situation because the rest of us liked building competitive decks because to us, winning was fun. It was an awkward situation between two groups of people with different lines of thinking. Who was right and who was wrong? The truth of the matter is that neither group was wrong as we cannot dictate how people have fun.

Alternatively I have friends who know quite well that if you show up to a competitive event (this includes FNM because it is a tournament with prizes on the line) ill-prepared for the competition you will probably lose. A lot of this swings back to the old article about the 3 types of Magic players.

In your scenario with the 14 year old, I think being nice about it, encouraging them, and offering helpful advice and suggestions (and even being forgiving of possible bad decisions) will go a long way in encouraging players rather than forcing yourself to play a bad deck.

I think Terminus is going to be very strong as long as the early popularity of zombies remains a thing. With the power of recurring Gravecrawlers, the regeneration of Lotleth Troll, and the obnoxious Geralf's Messenger, Terminus might be more important than ever.

I think what he means is that he plays Jace, and then on his opponent's next turn, they play Rakdos's Return, redirecting damage to Jace and making him pitch his hand, including any card advantage he might have tried to get by using Jace's ability.

Hey hey, glad you liked it. :)

I believe it was just standard paper mache (spelling?) using newspaper and generic paint.

I will ask my sister-in-law if she still has the patterns lying around.

Of course I remember you Namron. I remember all of the old school RCW people. :D And thanks. :D

Exactly. As a developer coming into an extremely competitive market it would be silly to ignore any of your competition, especially the most successful competitor the genre has ever seen.

But why can't we? They are competing for my money and as such they do not have the luxury of competing against 2004 WoW. Right now their game launches against 2012 WoW. And no matter how you feel about how Blizzard rolling out updates, their leveling process is smooth, super new-user friendly, and streamlined like nothing else. There have been so many quality-of-life features added to the game it would be hard to list them all without referencing patch notes. Bioware needs to look at these features very quickly and realize the benefit in them.

I don't see myself resubscribing to WoW, but I know what I liked about the game and what I feel other MMOs should have, not because I want another WoW, but because there are things that every modern MMO should have.