Some of the things you mentioned may sound fun, but are really unappealing on a professional level. I am amateur but I have done several magic tournaments, the game is not simple but most of the time the cards are clear enough on interactions, not being able to rely on a judge to resolve a question is something that does not appeal to me at all.

Also, and this would have to be my biggest complaint by far. When I got out of YGO, I kept my cards, and my spellcaster deck I was REALLY proud of. Come back a couple of years later to people still in the scene telling me that almost all of my cards are pretty much garbage compared to current cards. And I saw it, it was obvious, the newer cards were way more versatile, able to be played faster, had way better synergy etc. This is disappointing, it feels like if you do not have the newest cards in YGO you might as well not have any.

Magic cards never stop being good, the game is VERY well managed to prevent power creep. Older cards are in fact, on average more powerful than newer cards as they dialed in where they wanted the power of the game, and since then it’s been fairly stable with some blips on the high low end, notably recently high power blip being mirrodin and low being kamigawa. But they weren’t massive, and cards from ALL sets are still amazing in the proper formats.

I have read this article and enjoyed it

I know more than the basics of both, and eventually I for one stuck with MtG.

I won’t dabble into comparing artstyle and flavour, as there’s nothing objective to say there; whether you find it cooler to have cards representing characters or events from an anime show, or a batch of fantasy novels is completely up to your personal taste.

The main reason for my preference is that to me, MtG is the one feeling more rewarding towards not only what deck you’re running, but moreso how you play it, allowing more ways of reacting to your opponent’s actions and luck generally playing less of a role. Even in you’re opponent’s turn you retain a good bit of control over what’s going on as the stack sytem allows you to respond to whatever action your opponent takes, and you’re the one deciding whether not, and which creatures block, rather than the attacker declaring who fights whom.
You point it out yourself, in YGO you can very well drop your entire hand turn one, whereas MTG has a more differentiated options for early-, mid- and late-game; I get the appeal of the former, but eventually it also enable lucky first-turn kills (Beaver Warrior to victory :V ) – a feat basically unheard of in MtG – and leaves you extremely dependant on a favourable starting hand. On that note, you asked how much tactic is involved in the first few turns? The first tactical decision you have to take in a game of MtG actually happens before turn one – after drawing your starting hand, you decide whether you’d like to “keep” it, or take a “mulligan”. While “keeping” is probably self-explaining, the latter means you may shuffle your hand back into your deck, and draw a new, hopefully more favourable starting hand; you may do this as often as you like, however, your starting hand’s size is reduced by one everytime you do this (example, default starting hand size is 7; if you’re not happy with that one, you may shuffle it back in and draw 6 new cards).
And just because not all of the cards can be plopped down turn 1 doesn’t mean there’s no tactical thinking behind the ones you play – especially when more than one colour is involved you have to decide which manasources to set up; do you play a creature for an early attack, or rather leave the mana open to mess up what your opponent does with an instant? Do you quickly need a blocker, or is it safe to instead go for card-control?
There won’t be much variety if you’re trying to, say, run a 5-colored Sliver deck with a basic landbase, I give you that, but this is more inert to the nature of the deck than the nature of the game; Slivers are – or rather up to recently were – a very mana-intensive tribe, and trying to run all colors on top without spending tons and tons of money on multicolored lands is bound to result in a slow start.

While we’re at it, I’m calling bullsquid on the claim that there were no bluffs in MtG. Yes, with a bit of knowledge about your opponent’s deck you can have an idea of their options – that’s exactly the point! The amount of untapped lands and hand cards your opponent has can be as much of a deterrent as trap cards when you’re anticipating a Counterspell, Lightning Bolt or Doom Blade, regardless of whether not that’s what you’re actually holding – not even starting with the options opened up by manaless spells like Force of Will, or Surgical Extraction.

As for the “great playing field”, I get that some might find the rigid structures YGO revolves around appealing, but I’m not the only one who sees them mostly as a limitation. In MtG, nothing prevents you from having as many creatures/monsters, global enchantments/field spells and so on as you like; there is more room for the course of individual games to devellop, just as more things are left open to the player’s preference in both, deck construction and gameplay.
It’s not just the cap to cards on the field that feels – to me at least – like it’s narrowing the game down: the entire trap system eventually limits a good part of your actions to pre-set scenarios by design; not the case with MtG’s instants – those are practically playable whenever you feel like it, and it’s up to the player to find the situation where they can get the most out of the effect.

Up next, you proclaim that of the two, YGO is the one with higher standards when it comes to deck construction based on… what exactly? To me, the fact that unlike it’s the case in YGO, a pile of random MtG cards isn’t even remotely playable, somehow doesn’t look like evidence pointing in this direction.
If you know how to construct your deck, a bulk of lands isn’t a necessity at all – Belcher decks for example run smoothly with a total of 0-2 lands total, as they get their required mana from other sources, while Dredge decks can be built to not even be dependant on ever adding mana to their pool to begin with; and those aren’t just some gimmick decks, but tournament-winning builds, meaning if you’re demands for powerlevel are not that of a world-champion, variety only increases.
Looking on the other side, a viable deck without a base of monsters would be completely unthinkable in YGO. Not to mention that many cards’ effects are referring to others by name, basically setting up the one setup they can be played in, cramping up deck construction a good bit.

A point you only grazed is user-friendliness – and it’s one that MtG easily takes, on my cap.
Starting at card-layout: In MtG, it’s generally obvious how a card behaves without having to google for an explaination, it’s not only the vanilla cards that get flavourtext, and the textbox still doesn’t look like a wall of letters. I know it’s a generalization, and exceptions exist on either side, but to give you an example of what I’m going on about, have a pic of the first card that shows up on google images for “magic the gathering card”:
http://magiccards.info/scans/en/dvd/13.jpg
Now compare it to the first card that shows up for “yugioh card”:
http://img2.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20130626162635/yugioh/images/9/92/FireKingHighAvatarGarunix-SDOK-EN-UR-1E.png
Well, see what I mean?
To keep textboxes clean and make cards of similar traits more comfortable to find for deck constructors, MtG often abbreviates commonly seen mechanics with a single term (as seen above with “flying”).
I can already hear the inevitable “Oh, so insider vocabulary I have to learn first is ‘user-friendly’ now?”, and the answer of course is no. Unlike it’s the case with YGO where all the effects are on the card, a MtG player should be familiar with terms like “flying” or “trample” beforehead, and that can definitely be a challenge for newcomers. This is why MtG ships new expansions specifically dedicated to introducing new players to how the game works on an annual basis (in addition to the canon expansions, that is). These “core-sets” typically feature a lot of reprints of old cards that were tricky to get your hands on, making them available without too much money involved (without harming the old version’s collectible value, as they ship with different artwork), and all cards are outfitted with additional reminder text, explaining how each ability or keywoord that might seem ambigous works in-detail (here’s an example for above’s flying: http://magiccards.info/10e/en/64.html ).
Additionally, regardless of the expansion, effects working within similar circumstances share a common keyword – for example, cards benefitting from lands being played all are labelled with “landfall” – making deck construction more comfortable, as it becomes less of a chore for you to find a pool of cards fit for certain situations you’d like to build around.

And to correct you on your research, MtG is at least as much, if not more of a money-business than YGO, which isn’t necessarily something speaking in its favour on my cap, but yeah… 300$ for a competitive deck isn’t remotely realistic here, as 3-digit-price per copy cards like Volcanic Island or Tarmogoyf for example are all but dust-gatherers for collectors, but actively played in any format allowing them and always high in demand – which may be cool if you’re interested in big business, but eventually brings a considerable gap in terms of powerlevel in comparison to decks on a narrower budget.
Unlike it’s the case in YGO, the cards’ value doesn’t hinge on banlist policies as much as playability and how well the card interacts with others; if you want to make profit with MtG, you don’t need to be as much of a stock-market broker as you need to be a clever player: Stoneforge Mystic, Planescape or Living End all were bargain-bin cards until some wise-guys found ways to seize their potential, and suddenly everyone was ready to pay them ridiculous amounts of money for their copies.

Bottom line, it’s a matter of preference, eventually. I’m the kind of guy who prefers a game being something where all parties involved have a saying in what’s going on at all times. That and the fact that luck and randomness carry a lot less of weight with MtG having a lot less weight on lucky opening hands, coin-flips, dice-rolls and so on make it my pick of the two.

That’s all, folks.

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