Too late to get into MtG?

I vaguely remember playing a little MtG when the first sets were originally released in my high school days, but I don't remember the rules anymore. I thought about picking up some modern cards and trying to get back into the game, but I'm not sure if the hobby is still alive or if it's on a gradual decline. From what I've read, people are getting tired of rarity and balance issues with modern sets and inventing new formats (like pauper?) that might exclude more overpowered cards just so they can keep the game from being a moneysink. Do these kinds of formats keep the game fresh, or is MtG a lost cause at this point? I don't want to hop aboard a sinking ship.

Just play EDH. It's only as expensive as you want it to be, games are fun and amusing, it's relatively easy to get in to, and it's easy to find people to play with.

It's pretty late. Things are more expensive than they have ever been for no logical reason and the price-fixing scheme is only going to get worse as the years go on.

You can play it on tabletop simu!actor for free.

No matter what format you play, how much money you spend, or how good you get at interpreting the metagame, you need to find a group of people that you enjoy playing the game with.

One of the biggest mistakes people make with mtg is being an elitist tryhard whose only intention is to demolish scubs at FNM; when the meta shifts and they get stomped, they ragequit and spew "magic is dying".

Gather some friends or at least pleasant associates, draft some sets to flex your card evaluation, try out standard constructed, edh variants, build a singleton cube.
Discover the way you'd like to play the game and don't make yourself miserable by limiting yourself to a format you hate with people you don't like.

Magic is solid atm, play it if you have some friends to play with

>One of the biggest mistakes people make with mtg is being an elitist tryhard whose only intention is to demolish scubs at FNM; when the meta shifts and they get stomped, they ragequit and spew "magic is dying".

This is why I can't play MTG.

A friend of mine introduced me to the game, played a couple of matches online, I won the latest ones and he never asked to play again.

Now he only plays with his gf and I'm not even going to ask him again, neither I'm going to play online with strangers or at the store with tryhard sperglords.

Text him: Kind of bored... do you still suck at mtg?

i had a similar story with my friend
he started playing mtg when he was in like middle school or whatever and hadn't played for a while until we both got into it in the winter.
i am obsessive with everything i do so i started researching strategy and watching streams and stuff. i play him on xmage and am in the weird position of having to "go easy" on him. once he got emrakul off on me in an EMN sealed and saw the 4 removal spells i hadn't passed on playing.

>hadn't passed on playing
had passed on playing

It's very much alive and also a money sink.

As long as you have people to play with it is never too late.

That being said, you need to do two things.

The first is set a budget. Magic can get expensive FAST, even for casual play. Set a monthly budget and stick to it.

Second is slowly introduce "new" cards to yourself. It is impossible to learn every set out there all at once, but you can do something like "this week I'll look at set A, next week set B, etc". Most core ideas / templates are the same throughout the years so you actually learn new cards quickly once you have an understanding of the base. Don't overdo the learning - there are a TON of cards out there and you will just turn your brain into mush if you try to memorize them all. Not even the pros do that.

This entirely. It is casual MTG where your cards don't get kicked out every two years and the goal isn't always to win. Decks can be spendy, but there are lots of entry options.

You can always play Force of Will I guess.

>elitist tryhard

I don't think I said anything like that in my post. I was strictly interested in finding casual play groups, assuming they exist anymore.

I'm kind of worried that waltzing into a random gaming store and sitting down to play a game of MtG will only prove an embarrassing experience when all the guys there have hundreds in disposable income to blow on highly strategized mythic rare decks.

Check your local game store and ask which days certain groups show up. It's not uncommon for more casual groups to arrive on certain days depending on the game store schedule. Whether or not they exist also depends on your area.

>i am obsessive with everything i do so i started researching strategy

Same.

It didn't help that I played infect.

I would ease back into it with 10c bin constructed and work up to other formats like pauper and edh. pauper is the most affordable format (outside of gatherer-terrible which nobody plays) and definitely one of the best.

There are multiple ways to do this, OP

1. Find a casual group of friends to play shitty homebrew decks with. If you need a basic deck theme to go around, just use tribal

2. Draft at your local LGS. You will suck at it. That's perfectly fine, don't expect to get good at drafting for a while

3. Find a cheap tier-2 standard decklist and play against other scrubs at FNMs. Make sure the prize pool is 1 win = 1 pack so you don't get consistently ripped off

Christ that's some bad flavour text. Like they wanted to make a joke, couldn't think of one, and just settled for a completely bland statement.

I started in revised and quit after homelands
Started again in tempesy and quit again in urzas saga
Finally started again in theros played standard through to dragons and gave it up again

Now i play mainly edh and i have 1 pauper and 1 modern deck just incase but edh is fun enough where i can still play the game but my cards are not useless after a year

Buy an edh precon get the current deck(s) Meren (green/black) or ezuri (blue/green) or the 2013 evasive maneuvers deck (white/blue/green), right out of the box they dont suck ass and you can add to it slowly they are like $30-$35

Not everyone at an lgs is a sperglord, some are and you can just avoid them, sit down and watch some games, talk to the dudes playing share stories about old sets, join un a game and viola you got yourself a playgroup