Is It Worth It To Buy Game Night 2019 Edition for Magic: The Gathering? 

I bought this Game Night for my family and I because we literally were just starting into Magic. Amazon delivered it just a few days after my husband and I first walked into our local game store and inquired about learning Magic. (We were in a date night and looking for an adventure) The only other cards we had were the starter decks. For us, this was our best investment. As a family, we would take this into our local game store, sit at their tables and play. The staff would assist us when we had questions. Now, six months later, we are buying our own decks (from our local game store) and using our Game Night to teach other family and friends. In fact, just last weekend, my best friend and I sat with Game Night at her kitchen table and I taught her. She’s getting her own mono-blue deck from me for her birthday. Game Night is not meant for the serious player who has been collecting cards since they were 11 and has three Commander decks built. Game Night is for the families with kids, just like mine, who want to learn. Dull? Maybe. But that slow game play is necessary to learn the intricate vocabulary lessons and understanding how to strategically use a sorcery card. #AnotherPointofView

Product with 3 Planeswalkers on the cover, but none of the featured characters are in any deck? 0/10 flavor fail

When the professor casually reminds you that he was an English teacher at one point.

Ah yes, Christmas time approaches when the Prof starts to rhyme more and more

This is a good review for most magic players. However, when I showed 2018 to my friends who had never played before, they had a lot of fun with it. I think the pace of the game is actually great for new players.

Me: watches Magic The Gathering video RU-vid: Oh you like magic do ya? *shows ad for Penn and Teller's Masterclass*

I would love to see a product similar to this one with pauper decks. They don’t even need to be optimized just include some new art here and there. Mono red burn Mono white heroic Mono green elves Mono blue fairies Mono black control Great gameplay at a fraction of the cost. Make it happen for us WOTC!

This product reminds me of the 5 mono color decks I built out of bulk commons to teach my kids how to play...

I disagree that these decks would be "better" if they were more consistent and contained more 3-4 copies of cards. If you think of this as a board game rather than a normal magic experience, that would be terrible for the replayability of the decks. What the decks are missing is interesting synergies.

I bought it to play with my friends, none of us had ever played before and we really liked it. I know it's quite stripped down but it's got me wanting to play more magic

You touched on it yourself in this video. When me and 4 other friends of mine each bought a Bi-Colored Ravnica deck back in 2003 (or whenever that block first came out) we played for weeks without any major alterations to the decks, and had plenty of fun doing so. Out-of-the-box decks can be fun if there are cool things in the decks such as: -interesting win conditions -interesting tribal themes -effect synergy etc

I have never played Magic but I was curious and came across this video while looking for a basic Magic the Gathering video and I really like the idea of a game night concept for this game. Since I've never played and I would love to do a game night with my family I think this sounds like a really cool thing for someone like me who's never played before.

I almost bought this partly because I like the idea, but now I'm glad I didn't. The few good cards aren't worth getting boring bulk. Thank you for the review!

I started magic when wanting to teach Yugioh to a friend and convinced him to try if I tried magic. I bought the duel decks Nissa vs Ob Nixilis and tried it with my friend out ouf the box . I got really disappointed, and I didn't want to keep going on learning it as it seemed so less complex and fun than yugioh. Then, I bought the commander precon with Arahbo. I didn't got everything that was going on, but out of the box.. Geez it was fun. I am a magic player since then and brew many commander deck and still enjoy the precon. For me, the facters were that I could sens the complexity of the game, where it could lead me to, even if right then, I didn't understand everything. I knew, the game has more to offer, than what the duel decks gave me. Without the commander precons, I would have stayed on my convictions that magic wasn't a game for me, and that is the product, that made me change my mind. So yeah, for me, casual doesn't rhymes with lack of complexity.

Dear Professor, first I really love your content, second I think you missed something in this product review. In the last year's game night, the instructions says that you easily make the decks two coloured, by dividing the mono coloured by set symbol and mix them in a new way together. I think this year's is doing it the same way. Greetings from Germany. 😊

Why am I addicted to your videos I don’t even play magic.

The 3 things that works for "casual" players (thinking back to when I started): 1 - Does the deck reward me for playing to a theme/synergy? Playing cards is fine, playing cards that does extra stuff if I play it at the right time/with certain cards. This is one of the main advantages to the guild decks. Because the guild identities allow for strong themes and in some cases strong synergies too. 2 - Does what I do matter? Put in strong cards. They don't have to be format changing ones, but having cards that make people remember their plays (and especially "outplaying the opponent") is what makes them consider continue playing magic 3 - Can I do it consistently enough? This ties into your comment about there rarely being more than 2 of the same card. It should be possible to include at least functionaly similar cards so the things the deck wants to do the most (see the previous points) happen on a regular basis.

I really liked planechase as a fun casual out of the box experience.

This was a great way to teach a few friends how to play magic without being overly complicated.

who else loves when the professor rhymes?

A friend showed me how to play Magic with last year's Game Night Box. Dull gameplay is completely fine if you are still struggling with basic rules. I have since then participated in 3 PreReleases and right now have 11 Commander-Decks on my shelf. I don't think I would have gotten into Magic if I wouldn't have learned the basic rules of the game with this very basic/dull product. The fact that the decks are mono-colored is also a nice way to learn something about differences in the color pie. For me the Game Night Box is for teaching completely new players how to play Magic and it works very well in that regard. If you're not doing that I don't think you want it. The box I learned with hasn't been opened in a long time. Once you know about the basic rules you can (and you want to) move up to more exciting stuff.

I really enjoyed "Explorers of Ixalan" MTG box game! The island exploration was a fun experience and it made each game really unique.

Most fun I've had with a casual precon experience was when my college buddies first taught me Magic. We got the four commander precons from last year and had a blast.

Having not played Magic for quite a few years and only finding one Ravnica deck which I found a few months back (must have ditched the rest of my old collection at some point) I found that the Game Night set was a great way to get a bunch of cards right off the bat. I am teaching my daughter to play and she likes it. I have since purchased the 2021 Core Bundle, Kaldheim bundle and a few random theme boosters of differing colours from different sets. We are now learning to deck build. But Game Night was a great way to get back into Magic.

Me and three other friends each bought a challenger deck at a local convention to sit and play while waiting for a panel or some sort of thing to start. We had so much fun just playing and learning our decks that we have games as much as possible where we show off the new bling we have added in our decks and play. So much fun!

My most fun casual experience with a returning player was buying 2 planeswalker decks from war of the spark. It was a gideon orzhov deck and a jace simic deck. The decks came with an arena code for the decks, and the best part in my opinion was the inclusin of a few WotS booster packs. We cracked them open and added a few of the rares and uncommons like bolas' citadel and biomancer hydra to our deck and swapped out some of the really bad common card inclusions. We played like 10 games and it was insanely fun and my friend who hadn't played maguc in years thought it was really fun, and now had a deck for mtg arena to start with as well. And the products were only $15 each. Not bad.

That rant starting from 7:45 summarizes how I feel playing draft in Magic the arena.

0:00 Intro 1:10 Packaging and Extras 4:36 Value 7:25 Gameplay 11:28 Conclusions

I got last year's version, with the m19 cards instead of the m20. Interesting enough, the most valuable cards in the set are tokens, according tcg player, the double sided m19 goblin/thopter tokens have a mid market value of $15 each, with 3 in the set, selling those would more than pay for the set. If nothing else, that's a handful of spin down dice and as many basic lands as I'll ever need for free after selling those tokens. As a new player who can't get Arena to work, I found Game Night to be very useful for learning the basics of how to play MTG and in teaching my non gamer/non strategically minded partner how to play (which, is the only MTG practice I can get between FNM until Wizards fix Arena's compatibility & performance issues). With the majority of cards in the set being cheap, they're also expendable - it doesn't matter too much if any "accidents" occur while introducing MTG to some mates over a few bourbons. With decks ready to go, you can introduce you're friends without them needing to invest any cash in something before they know if they're going like it, without risking or disturbing your "valuable" collection, and without having to bother with building any decks. While building a deck can be half the fun, it's also quite a daunting task for a new player. Game Night lets you just pick it up and get your uninitiated friends playing the game with minimal fuss. My main complaint with the set would be that the swish looking inner packaging won't hold the cards once they're sleeved.

The best casual experience I've ever had is Archenemy. The Supervillain variant is still my all-time favorite way to do multiplayer free-for-alls.

Thank you for the honest review. I still like this as an option to always be able to teach people the game and each colors' respective play style.

Oh, it's that time of the year. The Game Night review...

my favorite casual decks i made myself were clunky but fun decks, mono-white lifegain featuring sunbond, minotaur tribal from theros block, detain fliers from return to ravnica. this is what i learned magic with, not watered down bulk, and until this product or products like it change for the better im going to keep my interesting and clunky casual decks to teach others not only how to play, but also to love the interactions between different cards and colors

The guild kit decks are honestly one of my favorite ways to play magic. I made some very minor changes to the decks as they all had way too much Mana often leading to flooding. But I then replaced those with ravnica cards to fit in theme. The Dinir deck also went through some more extensive changes. I wanted to make it more focused since imo it was the weakest deck because of it.

I really liked the intro decks from mirroden, new phrexia block. Had some crazy artifact shenanigans for every color choice.

The duel deck Elpseth vs Tezzeret is very special for me. I remember picking it up at Walmart for fun. I was a seasoned magic player and I taught my friend how to play magic with that duel deck at Starbucks. He had a great time with one thing lead to another and within one week he was playing FNM standard with my mono white deck. Then the rest of my friends started playing magic it was so awesome. then the commander products came out and they transitioned to EDH players. good times.

had so much fun with the graveborn and slivers premium decks. they were great out the box.

Playing With Power reference in the beginning! I love it! :)

Guild kits and duel decks have been my best experience playing mtg right out of box. I haven't been playing for a long time, and it's great to see decks with themes, gets me thinking.

Love the 2018 version...used it to teach some new players, plus the shiv in that reprint is just nostalgia incarnate. Thanks prof

I got it for my son (10yo) for Christmas, i am very excited to play this with him and my wife as well as his friends. this has a place in Magic i want more multiplayer not less. i miss two headed giant and 2v2 formats.

My favorite out of the box experience was Archenemy. The game was a blast if you were Bolas and a puzzle if you were the Gatewatch. My favorite casual experiences in card games are using my imagination to integrate WOTC's characters into my playstyle. You can create a narrative through a game and your favorite characters!

I got game night to try and get my kids into magic. Its very good if you treat it as a board game. It's never going to replace your main decks but great to throw in the holiday bag as an all in one

Excellent review, just what I needed ti know and more. Totally agree with The goal of this products, sad that know that was not achieved in this set. Thanks a lot for the hard work, you got a new suscriber

As always thank you for doing our homework for us professor!

As a primarily casual player, I agree with the professor...the Ravnica guild kits have been amazingly fun to play with over and over!

Professor is the only youtuber that I have seen consistently show good personality both on stream, and on every video he's in, and never breaking a positive and nice attitude (except against WoTC of course), appreciate you being a good guy, and not a piece of shit like the others bud, keep up the good work

Most fun I've had was opening a package, was me and friends opening a bunch of comander products and playing right out of the box, also cube is a absolute blast with the cube me and friends built

In response to the final question I would say that the best preconstructed product I ever played with were the exodus preconstructed decks that we brought with my brother in 99'(a 10 and a 12 year old) One was a mono blue with a bunch of counterspells and a red-black land destruction. Those decks were just so much fun to play, they had cool strategies and were balanced one with the other. The other cool thing was that they included cards from the entire block.

I agree with your analysis of this product. To add to the guild kit comparison; I bought kits because it also included a few alternate art cards, exclusive land art that i wanted in commander decks, and a guild pin. It feels like an exclusive land art or extra bling could have made this product appealing to more experienced players like myself and maintaining the intended purpose of “board game” for new players.

A colleague of mine bought me all 5 brawl decks for my birthday in April. She and another colleague of ours had never played mtg before. The 3 of us each picked a deck based on their name (this day got me back into magic again after a near 2 year break) and played after I briefly explained the basics and we looked up the brawl regulations. We each had a blast the first game was really tense and each subsequent game had some back and forths. Most games one of us would take the lead and we'd try to politics our way out out they picked up Suprisingly fast and really enjoyed it. We've come back to play the decks several times if we had some time of. I think it was because we all had something we liked about the decks and their themes and the fact that it looked fairly balanced even if someone got ahead the odds could be evened with teamwork or some sneaky politics. Also the top deck victories were amazing. And just as you mentioned thinking back the games never felt stale sometimes a few quite turns right after a board clear or when things got dire but ussually there was action and at least one of us was on the offense. :D

Recently I'm having a fun experience right out of the box. Not on Magic, but in Pokémon TCG. I've noticed that Theme Decks from November 2018 up to now are much better built than older ones. They have a clear strategy, 1 to 3 copies of each card, with the strongest Pokémon been 2 of. I've never liked Pokémon Theme Decks as they used to be a bunch of 1 to 2 of, with no consistency at all. But now they're a fun experience right out of the box. New and old players can enjoy it. And you can even have this experience online with the exclusive theme deck vs theme deck mode. Me and my friends are already planning upgrades, but we agreed to not use Ex, GX and all that bling stuff. As also to not use game changing staples as Lysandre, so we can have an old school Pokémon experience. It's fun, it's exciting. And everyone is creating their own unique strategies instead to follow a meta game. Cardfight Vanguard have a solid starting point too with their trial decks, full of 2 to 4 of. As is the case with Pokémon Theme decks, you can easily just buy two of the same and put them together to get a solid and fully functional deck. Nothing competitive, but extremely fun and perfect for a casual non-expensive experience. Magic lacks that. The Planeswalker Decks could be a little more like the Challenger Decks. Not necessarily focused on winning strategies for standard, but with that same solid build. Pokémon learned to do that. Now it's time Magic does the same.

The pre con commander decks were the best for my play group we have a blast playing those decks

Professor lookin sharp AF. Flexin that new cut!

I’m a returning Player, over the past 2 years I have built a modest collection. I would say I had the most fun with ToE, at the pre-release. Opening the Booster Box before it was released was great! Having only ever purchased 1 Booster Box before that (which was also a blast to open WotS) it was exciting to get surprised by all the new cards. So maybe it’s because I’m a once in a while kind of Player, my favourite product to open and play with so far has been the Pre Release Pack for Throne of Eldraine. And the Booster Box (with Box Topper) and Collector’s Pack was also a lot of fun. I intend to attend the next Pre Release in January.

2013 commander, so many cool back and forth games. Played with mainly cards in those recent formats, definitely on budget.

My favorite style of this product was something that came out during Kahn's. It was 2 decks that could be built in to one when you were ready for standard. Now, I didn't get this for a pathway to standard but I did get it to play magic with a friend I hadn't played with in years. The decks were dynamic and had interesting gameplay. Now a few years later I still have some of those cards which are playable in say, modern, or pioneer. I use the courser of kruphix from that product in my BG delirium pioneer deck and have a few other cards in my cube or "playables" box.

Most fun was sitting down with the group for the first time they got me in to Magic, popped open a box of Guilds of Ravnica, and building with what we had in our boxes.

My play group’s favourite casual release is picking up the new plainswalker sets and playing them out of the box with now changes. It’s something we look forward to every year now.

I think the gold standard of casual Magic products that we've seen recently is the Guild Kits. They're fun and semi-powerful right out of the box, (mostly) balanced well against each other, and offer plenty of clear paths to upgrade. If Wizards is looking to create a good casual product, they should look towards the thematic and mechanical richness of the Guild Kits rather than linear mono-colored decks.

Something my friends and I did with last year's Game Night products was draft them! We shuffled the however-many cards together, and drafted our own decks, cube-style! It was a far better experience than the original games!

Great review! Thanks for the content!

Honestly some of the most fun I've had with out of the box play were the commander and planeschase anthologies. I could pull them off the shelf and give one of the precontructed planeschase decks to someone learning to play magic, and they could start to grasp it. Throw in the planeschase deck or introduce them to commander from there and new magic players were born almost every time.

The ixxlan (sp) green box.. with the tiles! That was a good experience as a goofy type bundle I bought.

For me, it was the social aspect of playing a highly customisable game with your friends. Nothing beat the fun moments with friends around absurd/funny combos ❤

i've done a deck-building exercise with some of the recent blocks, going back to about kaladesh. basically i build a deck using only commons and uncommons, or less-than-50-cent rares, from only one block, usually in a 2-color combination, sometimes mono color if the block supports it. being mostly commons and uncommons, the decks generally lean into the draft archetypes from their block. So for kaladesh, i built boros vehicles, simic energy, selesnya fabricate, dimir improvise, etc. the synergy is built in thanks to the set design. so while applying this concept to just about any block you'll usually get some kind of boros aggro deck, an azorius tempo deck, a dimir control deck, you always get a flavorful version with specific synergies for that block that make it feel more interesting. just in green black alone from recent sets i've put together a saprolings deck from dominaria, +1/+1 counters from kaladesh, explore from ixalan, undergrowth from guilds of ravnica, -1/-1 counters from amonkhet. the decks are dirt cheap, usually about 5 to 10 bucks to build, and that's if you don't already have the commons and uncommons lying around. i have alot of fun with them and it's a good way to put draft chaff to good use and play pet cards/strategies that are not good in other formats

I remember when I bought my first commander deck (Prossh precon) and sit down to play it. It was really awesome and despite my opponent having custom deck that countered the built-in voltron strategy, I really enjoyed the game and do so ever since. I think I'll get this one for the few cards but I won't even bother playing it as is. I can't even imagine playing this against any constructed deck or as mentioned any duel deck or guild kit.

playing the commander product right out of the box with friend is my favorite way to enjoy magic. the decks are mostly balanced and a blast to play.

By far the best experience I had was with my little brother with a couple of the precons from original mirrodin. I grabbed the Megatog artifact sac deck and he grabbed the big green creature deck. They were incredible and were perfect opponents for each other.

are you ok prof, im not sure i’ve ever seen your tie off centre

The best fun I ever had in MTG was back in high school, we would purchase duel decks in teams of 2, so everyone had a deck to play. We'd go ham at each other during lunch and would even spice up the decks with cards we already owned. I purchased the Knights vs Dragon deck with a friend and I kept the Knight deck. Was alot of fun haha

I do only play casual magic, maybe not more than 20 ou 30 matches in the entire year. I usually sit down in the holidays season (xmas, new year's eve, etc) with my brothers and some friends from my home town and some matches. The last year (2018), after seeing Commander matches in YT, (game knights and others) I went to my LGS to buy the 4, but they only had 3. It was a blast do play those decks, even they are considered "bad" commander decks. So to me, until today, Commander pre-cons are the best experience I had in just sit down and play. The same I can say about the guild kits. I've bought all 10 kits, and played casual matches with my brother, no one even knowing what cards were in the decks, and we had some very fun matches, just out-of-the-box decks , shuffle and play. I did bought most of the Planeswalkers decks when coming back to MTG (after 10 years away) to start fresh and tried to do some "tournaments" using the decks...it was ok-ish. The core 2019 were the worst...Not really fun gameplay, at some point it was just top decking hoping for no vanilla or lands cards. At the end of it, I grabbed all the 10-ish decks and traded with a friend that is a collector for 2018 challenger decks...best decision ever in terms of fun, not so good in terms of investment, but still worth the trade. So I'd say Guild Kits > Commander pre-cons > Challenger Decks Next I want to try Brawl decks.

Well i started playing magic half a year ago and what brought me in was my English teacher landing me and my friends his box of the previous game night and i fell in love with the mechanics... because i feel like that's what it is for ... to introduce people to the basic rules and mechanics...

i enjoyed the onslaught block decks they released that had the themes presented from those sets. they weren't full of rares but they were fun to play against each other. i think my first deck was the one with a root elemental on the front. my cousin and i played for hours lol

The best Out of the box value I’ve gotten with friends are the guild kits and planechase anthology products. I can take them to any gathering of friends that play and get a ton of fun with them. The decks are interesting and exciting and planechase never disappoints to add so much variety to each game.

hi Prof, on a recommendation I decided to build a 10 deck battle box based on Strictly Better Mtg's $5 ravnica decklists. was dirt cheap and hugely fun. Would recommend!

Honestly, the all foil Slivers, Red Deck, and black deck were a ton of fun back in the day and their cards still see play to this day.

Cards are split perfectly into 30 M20 and 30 “reprint set symbol”, rule book said to mix them to make new decks. 35 total playable decks - $1.15 a deck. Definitely worth the price as long as you looked at the rule book. Had a lot of fun mixing just by splitting the decks by set. Also had a lot of fun doing a full deck building challenge with my buddy by taking turns choosing a color and then splitting the last color into sets and then make the best deck with the 2 or 3 colors. The 2018 game night was a great way for me to get back into MTG after selling my whole collection when I enlisted

The archenemy box that wotc released was really great, I've played it dozens of times and every time it was a blast.

I saw this box in Walmart glad you went over this before I bought it I don’t want no dull match I want something fun and exciting

loved the vid. Lackluster C was funny lol

oooooh! You got a bit of sass in there right at the start. I like it!

Its so fun to watch your hair grow back! Keep being great.

The best casual product I've ever experienced, and I experience it month after month, year after year, is the prerelease kit.

The Planeswalker Decks were a great way for me to get back into the game before I dug into standard once more. They are build well and are interesting with their own mechanics and strategies.

Honestly, a lack of arena code is a deal breaker for me. Even though I really love the idea and they look really cool, Arena is where I get to play most of my Magic

It was a bit pricey but I had SO much fun with the planschase anthology

I liked original planechase. The decks were synergistic with distinct gameplay, including some fun reprints, and the planar dice kept things moving because you always had something to do. I enjoy a unique twist on traditional magic, even if it's not totally balanced.

Thanks for saving me some money. Actually thought it might be fun to play round the table.

Heck, even core 2020's planeswalker decks were fun against each other right out the box. They had playsets of actually good cards used in standard, meaning the red's scorch spitter + chandra's spitfire, and the blue's brineborne cutthroat + unsummon stuff actually felt strategic and synergistic.

Love you prof your an inspiration to all Magic the Gathering playerd

the BFZ pre-cons, you could play those telling the story of the war as the turns went by

I haven't played the 2019 version of Game Night, but the 2018 version is what pushed my wife and I into getting interested in MtG. As two people who knew next to nothing about MtG, it introduced us into the world of Magic without overwhelming us. Sure, it got dull after a while, and we upgraded to decks from Card Kingdom, but I definitely feel like we got our money's worth, plus we got to support our semi-local game store. The real value in this product is "How well does this introduce players to the gameplay of MtG?"

Definitely like the old duel decks, they helped me teach people how to play with medium powered stuff, two different strategies and tempos sometimes, and if they were just starting out theyd get 2 full decks that were worth expanding into edh or even just editing into better 60 card. The guild kits and brawl decks are the best thing running to get the same feel other then the commander precons.

A good casual deck for me needs a plan. This is where most casual decks fail as they are not built with a plan in mind, or specifically a single mechanic in mind that would make it easy for the player to realize "oh, my deck is based around this, so I should use this ability to get ahead". Commander 2016's Atraxa deck and Card Kingdom's 1 damage tapping deck (I don't remember the name of it and I think it's no longer for sale) are good examples of this. The mechanics are simple. Atraxa places +1 counters on everything and push their way to victory through sheer overwhelming power. Card Kingdom's deck was based on tapping things for 1 damage with ways to augment that damage. They were designed around a single mechanic and it works well.

Good, relatively simple and cheap mono color decks: Green - Stompy White - Soul Sisters Red - Burn Black - Hand control Blue - Fairies

Oh, so this is like playing commander with friends, but not fun. Ok.

Guild kits! Great game play. Bought all of them when they came out and am still loathe to upgrade any.

I am thinking of getting this as much as for the mythics for commander as anything. I may tweak the decks to make them better.

I just picked this up and yes it's slow and it's a stall game but if let's say add a deckmaster (Planeswalker) and have it as your avatar or character that corresponds to the color it helps. Especially if u add a sixth player with a custom deck and boom!: MTG Challenger boardgame. Where it's 2-5 decks against 1.