I agree and assume it is from the very early days when they were less concerned with game balance etc.

I remember there being similar issues with a star trek card game my friends played. Something about the USS ENTERPRISE being so devastating it basically ended games.

I actually didnt enjoy the computer game much because the computer used so many banned cards. What is your favorite king of deck? Personally I found a well played green deck and a red burn deck to be my best. My method was to get out a ****load of little creatures with trample and flying then give them overrun or a similar card and destroy the person early on. If tht doesnt happen then you pretty much lose no matter what later on in the game.

I've been playing the latest (2014) version and it's awesome, you know why ?
Because of ... sealed deck! If you're unfamiliar with this format, basically you get 6 boosters wirth random cards, an unlimited number of lands and you have to create a 40 card deck and defeat 6 opponents in a row, all using similarly constructed decks. To add a twist, the 1st, 3rd and 5th opponent you beat give you an extra booster so you can fine tune your deck. Unfortunately it's very short and only uses a limited number of cards, but despite that it's very fun to play. I played a lot of Mtg back in high school and now I'm hooked again, though now I also earn my money and don't get any allowance, so I doubt I'll be spending just as much $ on it as I did back then ;)
Yac.

Back in the 90s, I mostly made my own decks. The best pre-made I played with was, like you describe, an all red burn deck which completely devastated my own custom decks :p: Since then, I've been somewhat fond of red burn decks and also have my own customized goblin / burn deck.

What I like to play the most in duels of the planeswalkers games are decks that give you a lot of control over the game and so I often lean towards blue. It's not that they're always powerful, but that I think they are fun. I just love countering spells for example or sending monsters back into their owners hand. The Jace deck from Planeswalker 2012 was great fun. In 2013, it was not as great (imo).

I also like Sealed Play :) I just tried it yesterday and it was a very nice addition to the series!

I played Magic as well when I was younger but I didn't get too deep into it. I didn't buy and make my own decks. I would play with whatever my friends gave me.

I was more into AD&D at the time.

Hehe, it was a mix for me :D I especially remember a week we had at my friends cabin, a place we were every summer. This particular week, it seemed like it was raining endlessly and so we just spent the days inside. We played Magic during the day and then AD&D in the late evenings.

Nerd-o-rama.

Humble Deep Silver Bundle (pay what you want and help charity)

The newest Humble Bundle is for Deep Silver owned games. Good way to get your hands on Saints Row 2 and 3, as well as a pirate action-RPG, and Dead Rising if you spend some money.

I think part of what I like so much about Magic is the fact it appears to be less about buying really rare cards (which are banned anyway) and way more about your play style and the way you build decks. Perhaps I am wrong about this since I am a new player, but it sure seems like an inferior deck with a better player will beat a **** player with good cards any day.

The cards I made a green and red deck were actually all from the Planeswalkers series. They had a super cheap deal on Amazon.com that contained like 24 booster packs or something. Do you or would you ever buy individual cards offline? They seem to be pretty cheap nowadays, even the rarer ones.

Back in my magic days, skill was often trumped by how much $ you had. I was in high school, didn't have too much cash on me at any one time so I had to get by, doing a ton of card trading and looking for good deals, only to have a chance to play against the local "elite". Type 2 decks (which back then meant iirc that you could only use the latest edition cards + 3 latest expansions) were around 300-400$ if you wanted to get them buying single cards. That was in Poland, 15 or so years ago, the average monthly income was around that ...
Still I managed to complete several kick ass decks, with a blue/artifact control deck called "Rising waters" as my favorite, but I played anything but black (which my friend played so I wanted something different).
Sealed play evens the battlefield, everybody gets a random but similar set of cards and only skill matters, with deck building being a part of it.
magic is one of those "easy to learn, hard to master" games, though not my favorite CCG as I played quite a few .. but that's something for a different topic I think ;)
Yac,