Off topic, but I recently looked in to playing MtG again because my son expressed interest. But, I was a bit taken aback by how different the environment is. I last played when they still had numbered "base sets", e.g., "9th Edition", and then rotating "blocks" of three smaller-but-more-advanced sets.
I was assuming I would go in and buy a couple of starter decks from the most recent numbered "edition" to start teaching him, but it appears that they don't do this anymore, and everything I saw was focused around the "Commander" format, which has even more mechanics and rules. The game was already complex enough that I was worried about teaching it to someone new (Plus, the commander mechanic didn't appeal to me, personally, anyway).
Is there no longer the concept of a "simple base set" with just the basic mechanics? Or is everything just theme-heavy sets now?
I was assuming I would go in and buy a couple of starter decks from the most recent numbered "edition" to start teaching him, but it appears that they don't do this anymore, and everything I saw was focused around the "Commander" format, which has even more mechanics and rules. The game was already complex enough that I was worried about teaching it to someone new (Plus, the commander mechanic didn't appeal to me, personally, anyway).
Is there no longer the concept of a "simple base set" with just the basic mechanics? Or is everything just theme-heavy sets now?