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I am a recent college grad without many friends who play MTG, but I am interested in starting to play again. I am familiar with most of the rules, including things like turn phases and the stack.

I have only played casually and do not know where to find any of my old cards. I am looking for a place to play with other people, and the first two things that come to mind are online applications and local board game clubs.

One thing that I am not sure about is how to stay up to date on the "relevant" cards. I have always been a casual player, mixing cards from 10 years ago with cards I just found in the newest release. I have heard that many players nowadays prefer only making decks with a limited pool of cards to choose from, but I do not know the names of the sets or the methods by which cards are phased out/in.

In short, I have three questions:

  • What are the available online communities for MTG?
  • How can I stay up to date on the current set of cards that might be used to play in more serious games and tournaments?
  • Is there anything else that a casual Magic player looking to return to the game in a more serious way should know?
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    Definitely research your local game stores, see what events they run when, see which ones your schedule allows you to attend, then do research on the different formats of the events, to see which interest you the most. If you want to return in a serious way, also look up common deck lists of each format, so you know what to expect. If you have any niche questions, feel free to join the chat for this site, and I can hopefully help you in that way.
    – Waterseas
    May 13 '16 at 19:07
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Online Communities

There are a variety of online forums for discussing Magic, some more popular ones are:

There are many more out there, this is just a few from a search for 'mtg forums'

Staying up to date

Many of the above discussion forums have sections for MTG news, including spoilers for new sets (which officially start about 2-3 weeks before the set's pre-release), announcements of upcoming products, changes to banned lists, and various other Magic related info. You can also find most if not all of it from the official Magic website.

If you just want to know what is in Standard you can use the What is in Standard? site and it will tell you. Note that you can use any printing of a card as long as it was printed in one of the Standard legal sets (So you can currently use the Shards of Alara version of Knight of the White Orchid since it was also printed in Magic Origins which is legal in Standard).

Other useful info

To find the location of a store to play at you can use Wizard's Event Locator. To find lists of popular decks in a variety of formats you can use sites like Starcity games or TCGPlayer. Generally sites with decklists will also have various strategy articles and other information like that.

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This is an update to my original question with a couple extra resources. Wizards is releasing MTGA which should be a free to play magic platform. Super exciting!

https://magic.wizards.com/en/mtgarena

Another nice resource is Channel Fireball, which talks about the meta and has articles/ streams. I find their draft streams helpful for my own drafting ability.

https://www.channelfireball.com/all-strategy/

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Online communities:

Magic: the Gathering Online (don't bother; I've heard that the barrier to entry is quite high, and with MTG Arena coming out, I think that MTGO might eventually get phased out, plus it costs money)

MtG: Arena (in beta, so apply now)

Staying Current:

Just buy new sets as they come out. You are the only one that can decide how much money you want to spend on cards per week/month/day.

Anything else you should know:

Ummm...no? Other than there's always more to learn.

As a side note, I would highly recommend you look into the EDH/Commander format. It's where people who like to mix old cards with new cards go.

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For staying current there is plenty of magic content produced, from blogs to draft videos and everything good and bad between.

For playing don't forget Friday Night Magic at your local game store (LGS), wizards has an event locator on their site to find stores that hold FNM and other events.

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