Old School, New School

I'm an old school Magic: the Gathering player.

I started out when 4th Edition came out, but only really got into collecting and playing sometime after 5th Edition. At the top of my game, the only color that I didn't have an effective mono-color deck of was blue. That was more out of my dislike for blue's overly passive nature than anything else. I didn't always have the rarest of the rare, or the most powerful possible combos, but I had decent enough cards and I won my fair share of games. No tournaments, though. I really hit my stride when the Tempest Block came out, which was when I built my two discarder decks (one of which I sold, and the other is somewhere in my house, lost) and my first (and currently only) black weenie deck. I quit the game sometime around the Urza Block, mainly because I lacked people to play with.

I would eventually sell off or lose my various decks, keeping I think only my pure-red goblin-blaster and a touchy, experimental black-white weenie deck around.

Then my brother picked up the game. This occurred around the time the Mirrodin Block (which I despise to no end) came about. He had more resources than I did, and the cards of his time were (and still are) more powerful than the typical cards one could find in my heyday, but I saw a problem. He (and by all accounts, most of the people he played with that weren't trained in the old school cards) had no idea how to develop any strategy more complex than "summon creature, attack with creature, hope he doesn't block" or how to build a deck capable of weathering common threats. I didn't pay much attention to that for a while, though I decided to finally pick up the game a second time (the same way I picked up anime a second time thanks to Love Hina) when the Kamigawa Block came around.

At the same time, I decided to take a closer look at the cards.

The first thing I noticed was the most unfair one-mana creature drop I'd ever seen.

Sure, I appreciated the increase in effective power behind the cards. I even liked the basic concept of the "Indestructible" mechanic. Some of the cards, despite being overtly more powerful than anything I can recall from my first run with the game, weren't that extreme, and usually came at a cost that justified their raw destructive power. Yet, I definitely got the vibe that, along with the adjustments made to the rules, the game was going in a direction that implied greater power.

I generally ignored the Ravnica Block's cards, but paid as much attention to the flavor of it as I did the Kamigawa Block. It looked fun, but like a few old school players I know, the insane amount of keywords to memorize just to effectively play (and understand) the game became annoying to me. However, I did notice that the delicate game balance was present in the older sets (and basically kept any single type of deck or strategy from completely dominating the game) was starting to erode. Sure, Ravnica had some truly sensible cards that were quite balanced, and some of them were downright unplayable in terms of casting cost, but some were just insanely powerful.

Then the Time Spiral Block dropped in.

Black suddenly gained the ability to counter spells, which has always been a blue thing.

Giant Growth suddenly turned red.

Black also gained the capacity for mass destruction, which was once a domain reserved for white and red.

Hell, even my favorite white card made a comeback!

And suddenly, the game felt completely different from what I used to play years ago. Suddenly, new players didn't require nearly as much thought put into their decks and strategies than we used to. Conveniently, this also explains why I am consistently capable of bringing an awful beatdown on my brother whenever we play. I know how to make better use of even inferior cards and decks than he does.

The alien nature of the game acts like a warning, telling me to stay away from the game, but the fun I have playing and the new cards that aren't too powerful (or echo older cards that I'll likely never be able to find or afford) feel like they'd be nice to put into a deck.

It makes me shudder, the idea of going back into the game at this stage. It makes me grin when I begin trying to build old school decks, but with enough new cards to keep up with the raw power new decks nowadays have. I wonder how many expansions I'll last before I get tired of Magic this time around?

On a side note, I despite the Lorwyn and Shadowmoor mini-blocks, and I don't know why.

At the moment, I intend to build either a Kamigawa Block-only white weenie deck, or a black weenie deck constructed from cheap weenies from the Ravnica Block, Kamigawa Block, and the Time Spiral Block. Just for kicks.

Late Edit:
Zessei Bijin (Unparalleled Beauty) by the Zetsubou Shoujo-tai. Enjoy.