Yo Fatti,
Kitty and I play and get drunk on saturdays some times with a group of friends.
If you've played it before, then you shouldn't have any trouble starting back up. The basic rules of play remain the same, but there are, of course, all sorts of new abilities.
They've been following this format for awhile now. Each year they release a "Core" set in the summer. These sets have a good balance of all 5 colors, and don't have any crazy non-standard card behaviors. They then release three side "expansions", usually around september, january and may. They tend to fall under a general theme.
Last years theme was based heavily around artifacts, and they just wrapped up their current, as I call it, "Twilight Block" of cards. It was midieval themed with lots of vampires, werewolf, ghost type monsters.
What they sell for starter decks now are basically specialty built decks that focus on 2 colors. They're not random, and you can look up the card lists online, I'm sure. They also offer these things called "Fat Packs" which I highly suggest.
Each new set that comes out (4 a year. Core + 3 side expansions) has a Fat Pack. They include like 8-9 booster packs (each with 15 cards) A separate package of 45 land cards (9 for each color), a 20-sided die, a booklet showing all the cards of the set, some information about the history of that set, and other information. It also contains two small deck boxes for holding a deck of ~60-80 cards, or whatever.
It runs 40 bucks, and aside from only getting one die, it comes with everything you need for two people to start playing. I generally pick up one of these each expansion, just to get a good feel of what cards they offer. Plus, variety is the spice of life. haha
So yah... That's basically that. New core expansion comes out this summer. I'd feel no worries at all with picking up the Core 2012 set right now, though (Think of car year modeling, where it's current year +1). The most recent set, Avacyn Restored, is also pretty neat, from what I saw in the fat pack.
A lot of the stuff in Core 2012 will probably show up in Core 2013, though, so if you're planning on getting the latest and greatest core set when it comes out in July, I'd maybe just buy some Avacyn Restored in the meantime.
Feel free to ask any more specific questions. I'm going to drag myself into the bathroom and beat myself up, since I just nerded it up pretty bad right there.
haha
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