Does anyone know anything about Magic the Gathering?

Bundles of rare cards would be good. A competition deck are mostly made up of rare cards.

If you do buy cards at the store buy the booster packs. Never buy premade decks. They are a waste.

I used to play MtG back in the day and I would say just buy him booster packs. If you buy a bundle many of the cards amy be out-dated and/or illegal for tournament play. If you stick with the new then you know that your good. Also not all tourney decks are made of mostly rare cards just cards that work well in conjunction with each other. A booster pack includes 1 rare, 3 uncommon, and the rest common. I will agree that you should not buy pre-made decks, they usually suck.

You might want to look for sellers among people who have given up play after amassing a collection. Perhaps you could negotiate for more “rare” cards as long as they are still current.

My son and his friends were huge fans of MTG a few years back and amassed large collections of cards so they could build different kinds of decks with different colors. They went to quite a few tournaments. They gave it up when they said it had become more of a business than a game and that the winners were always going to be those who could afford to buy the special powerful cards singly. My son gave away thousands of cards, maybe even those he kept protected in plastic sleeves and in binders.

Whoa. If your boyfriend wants to start playing Magic competitively, and if you want to help him (which seems like a potentially bad idea, since competitive Magic is addictive and time-consuming)... here’s what to do.

1. Card bundles aren’t generally useful for competitive Magic.
2. If your boyfriend wants to play “standard” competitive Magic, there are a bunch of decks that are good at any given time, using cards that have come out in the past 2 years.
3. You could buy him the cards for a particular competitive deck from a decklist on Starcitygames. That’s one option. This list is a bunch of competitive decks.
4. Or you could get him a bunch of standard cards in boosters, but if you know what cards you’re looking for, it’s cheaper to buy them individually than in random boosters.
5. One final option would be to buy him some expensive card that he might not have, but that will be useful in tournament play, such as Wrath of God.

I would avoid buying him any of the above cards unless you’re sure he wants to get back into playing Magic competitively. One relatively cheap way to play competitively is to play “limited” tournaments, where you buy cards at the tournament and build a deck on the spot. But that’s hard to give as a gift.

But you could give him attendance at a tournament as a gift…

…if, as bob says, you really don’t want to see him for long stretches of time, want him to pull all-nighters with a bunch of guys with ten o’clock shadows, want him to be constantly broke because he’s buying rare cards, want to listen to him tell stories about his games as if they were real events…

…or, come to think of it, maybe you should consider getting him a cool shirt and a couple of CDs instead.

Hahah, thanks for all of the helpful answers and suggestions! My boyfriend and I are actually in a long distance relationship, so I’m not too worried about becoming a Magic-widow so to speak since I only see him once or twice a month.

Based on all of your help, I’m planning on just getting him 5 or so booster packs.

Thanks again!

On that note, does it matter what booster packs I get? I don’t have any individual cards in mind, so the boosters seem a good way to go.

Shards of Alara is the latest set, and it’s supposed to be pretty good. Go for that!

And on the other hand, @sofia, keeping him busy for the rest of the month is not a bad idea.