🏅 Top traders

If you prefer a video explanation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mYuF3T7s7XY

I'm gobsmacked anyone asked this. Not a player myself, plenty of people I know make fun of it, but not having heard? Did not expect THAT. O brave new world that has such people in it! Toto we're not in Kansas any more! This ain't no party, this ain't no disco! Just when I thought it was safe to go back in the water! What is this Manifold place anyway. I seriously thought I might be beginning to figure it out. How wrong I was.

@ClubmasterTransparent Manifold was the sole place I had ever heard the phrase Magic the Gathering, mostly in comments or markets by Isaac King (as he is a judge for it) (I am subscribed to his blog too, and there the phrase is used as well).

My 2nd encounter with the phrase was when @Tumbles showed up, for it is in his discord profile that he puts a link to "Magic The Gathering".

Then I finally hear a fellow researcher speak the phrase in context of Machine learning, and my utter ignorance drove me to finally ask peoples of the Manifold to help me understand

As others have said, it's a trading card game. There are around 25,000 different cards total. (Billions of cards have been printed, but most are identical copies. There are ~25,000 distinct cards. Like how there are 6 different chess pieces.)

People play games with these cards, and there's a big tournament scene, often with thousands of dollars on the line. The cards themselves are also collectible, being released in limited quantities. The most expensive ones can fetch upwards of $100,000.

Judges are the people who run the tournaments, answer rules questions, arbitrate disputes, etc. It's a complicated game, so most players don't know the full rules, and there are a lot of potential edge cases and miscommunications that can occur.

MTG is a common typo. People meant to type TMG, which is short for The Mountain Goats. They're an American bad that puts out music faster than Ammon can put out markets.

@jskf No, that's actually quite rare. In most cases they were trying to type GMT, which is a timezone

@Tumbles You're both wrong, it's TNG. Patrick Stewart, Counselor Troi, beneficial Klingons, all that.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marjorie_Taylor_Greene

june pretty much covered "what is Magic: the Gathering" but I'd be happy to answer any more specific questions.

A bit more about 'judges': MTG has some complicated or confusing rules, though the confusion mostly only shows up in fringe cases. It also has (had?) an active IRL competitive scene. At competitive events (including weekly locals) rules confusion mid-match were handled by judges. Judges also handled things like enforcing time limits on games, adjudicating cheating allegations, etc. There is a whole judge program for becoming one, with different levels of attainment. It's changed for a bit over the years, and if you wanted to know the specifics Isaac would probably be the best to ask.

*i'm a ~very~ casual player covering the basics, anyone is welcome to fact check me*

mtg is:

a trading card game

to play it:

people take decks of usually 60 cards

and there are different types of cards, like the ones that are creatures which fight and have attack and defense stats, and spells which can be cast to do things like draw more cards, deal damage to the opponent, etc.

each player starts the game with seven cards in their hand and the remainder face down in their deck

they go back and forth taking turns that go like this

draw a card

play some cards

maybe attack with creatures

you want to hurt your opponent. attacks can do that. each player will have 20 health points at the start and you win when you get the opponent down to zero.

there are important cards called lands! these are called things like "FOREST" and "SWAMP"! (named after places!)

you play these and use them as resources. to "tap" the resource, you turn it sideways. cards cost a certain amount of "mana" to play. so if a creature costs 3 forest mana, you tap three forest cards by turning them sideways and then spend the mana you got from those forests to play the creature. at the start of each turn, your lands "untap" (physically turn back to no longer be sideways) so you can use them again.

judges are only in competitive play and are for rule disputes and such. most people who play mtg play it as a casual game, without judges.

for a more reliable source, if my manifold memory serves, @IsaacKing may be a mtg judge

i heard its like pokemon cards but scarier