MTG thread

Genjiro

Genjiro

Ahn'Qiraj Raider
5,218
5,066
Looking at prices on that site got me thinking I should sell all my cards off. Still have some from when MTG first came out, the prize being one of the few (only in the thousands I think?) original alpha Black Lotus cards. Think I have a mox sapphire beta, beta dual land or two, and then a ton of revised to invasion stuff which is when I stopped.

Plus if I have the ccg urge, well Hex is coming out and I could always get into that I guess.
 
Sterling

Sterling

El Presidente
13,082
8,051
Taloo_sl said:
Duel lands are way before that era. Lion's Eye Diamond is worth a bit. Dark Depths from ice age too. There's not many cards worth more than a couple dollars from 4th until Urza block unfortunatly.
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He mentioned revised so duals do apply. 4th, Ice Age and Mirage are mostly not worth much anymore aside from the already mentioned LED.
 
Mahes

Mahes

Bronze Baronet of the Realm
5,078
5,986
Genjiro_sl said:
Looking at prices on that site got me thinking I should sell all my cards off. Still have some from when MTG first came out, the prize being one of the few (only in the thousands I think?) original alpha Black Lotus cards. Think I have a mox sapphire beta, beta dual land or two, and then a ton of revised to invasion stuff which is when I stopped.

Plus if I have the ccg urge, well Hex is coming out and I could always get into that I guess.
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I envy people who are unsure, but pretty sure, that they have a 2-5 thousand dollar card somewhere. I wish I could care less about that kind of asset.
 
Gorehack

Gorehack

Lord Nagafen Raider
1,534
40
Kuro_sl said:
The Tutors from Mirage can also be sold fairly quickly at local shops, since the EDH crowd gobbles them up.
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I focused most of my collection into black...so I've got 4 royal assassins, 4 demonic hordes, 4 demonic tutors, 2 or 3 icy manipulators, etc...this was before they started banning shit like crazy.

4 Shivan dragons, think they're revised...a couple arabian knights, a couple with the same symbol but the black border (forget the set), couple urza's lands...I'm sure there's a bunch of other shit in there that might be worth something but I have no clue...nor do I have the time to sit there and look them all up.
 
OneofOne

OneofOne

Silver Baronet of the Realm
6,833
8,571
I'm in the same boat, looking to sell off a large collection. There are a few stand out cards here and there, but for the most part nothing is worth nothing in that time period. Of the above, only the DT's are worth mentioning.
 
Sterling

Sterling

El Presidente
13,082
8,051
Gorehack_sl said:
I focused most of my collection into black...so I've got 4 royal assassins, 4 demonic hordes, 4 demonic tutors, 2 or 3 icy manipulators, etc...this was before they started banning shit like crazy.

4 Shivan dragons, think they're revised...a couple arabian knights, a couple with the same symbol but the black border (forget the set), couple urza's lands...I'm sure there's a bunch of other shit in there that might be worth something but I have no clue...nor do I have the time to sit there and look them all up.
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Unfortunately only the tutors are worth anything that you listed. Rest is basically bulk. Unless the Urza Lands are actual Antiquities instead of Chronicles.
 
N

nurdi_sl

shitlord
24
0
Not sure how big the discussion has been, but I'm curious why there is so much rage about EDH. Anyone playing it regularly to offer some insight? I generally just play standard with friends with the occasional mini masters, 2HG or archenemy.
 
Heylel

Heylel

Trakanon Raider
3,602
430
It lets you use all your old cards, and it just plays very differently. It kinda reminds me of old school magic back in the day when everything was legal and no one had playsets. Honestly, it's just a very different beast. It's also a collector's favorite, since once you put a deck together it tends to stay pretty much the same, and it uses some very off the wall cards.

I opened my Modern Master's box tonight and did pretty well. Pulled two dragons, but they were Yosei and Kokusho, and I also snagged a Kiki Jiji and a foil Sword of Fire and Ice. Kiki went right away for a Glimmervoid and a Pact of Negation to a buddy. Overall I pulled a LOT of $10-15 rares, easily paying for the box. I can't tell what the Sword is worth yet since there are none listed on TCG.
 
Mist

Mist

Eeyore Enthusiast
<Gold Donor>
30,871
23,161
I'm hoping to put together a set of foil Swords soon, I would have squeed with joy if I opened a foil Sword of F&I.

It'll probably end up similarly priced to the judge promo foil.

Apparently my playset of FNM Foil Remands skyrocketed due to the fact that it wasn't reprinted.

I need to get a playset of foil lightning helixes from MM. Shouldn't be too hard to find.
 
Heylel

Heylel

Trakanon Raider
3,602
430
Yeah Remand needs a reprint bad. $8 uncommons are fucking gay.

I'm hoping Ravager comes down a bit. That and Opals are the real money cards before I can build Affinity and actually play Modern a bit. I snagged the Glimmervoids I needed tonight, and Blinkmoths should be no problem.
 
Mist

Mist

Eeyore Enthusiast
<Gold Donor>
30,871
23,161
Seriously, don't play Affinity.

Play some URW deck, either geist or control.

Or just play Pod, or Twin. If you really want to play aggro, play one of the RG or dark zoo decks.

Affinity is going to be target number one, and people are going to start devoting 6-8 SB slots to it.
 
Heylel

Heylel

Trakanon Raider
3,602
430
It's not my first pick, it's just the simplest entry into the format. In a world of no monetary restrictions I'd probably build Melira Pod, but I don't want to rebuy a half dozen fetches that I just traded away in February to get back into the game in the first place. I just want something playable so that I can learn the format and then move towards something more my usual speed.
 
Chris

Chris

Potato del Grande
19,238
-9,866
I'm surprised how little theorycraft backed up with stats there seems to be for MTG? Do players normally copy mana curves from someone else, guess/playtest or keep their stats secret? Am I missing something?

I've been experimenting in excel with looking at the probabilities of playing 3 lands in the first 3 turns to see what the optimum amount of lands in deck is for that, taking into account being an aggro deck and not wanting to draw to many and not having enough creatures to play. I assumed I was mulliganning on 0,1,5,6 or 7 lands in opening hand and put down having only 2 or 6+ lands on Turn 3 or mulligan below 5 as mana flood/screw.

24 and 25 Lands gives you a 77% chance of no mana flood/screw on T3, which is the highest possible under my assumptions.
21 Lands gives you a 72% chance and is the sweetspot for avoiding dimishing returns (adding more land adds a smaller success percentage than it used to - so is it worth it?).
23 Lands gives you a 76% chance and seems to be the best of both worlds.

I did the same with the chances of playing a one drop on turn 1, two drop on turn 2 and three drop on turn 3 (again being for an agreesive aggro deck). It didn't fit into the deck with 23 lands but shaving off a percentage from each to use the next optimal and goign for multiples of 4 & 3 gave me:
16 One Mana Spells (89% Chance).
12 Two Mana Spells (79% Chance).
9 Three Mana Spells (67% Chance) - and you can play multiple cheaper spells to deal as a backup.

My best FNM was actually when I copied the curve of a tournament deck withexactlythis distrbution (maybe he ran the same numbers?), so I will try it again this time with more powerful cards.


I'm sure I can refine my assumptions... am I going down a dead end here or is persuing this kind of data helpful?
 
Heylel

Heylel

Trakanon Raider
3,602
430
Mana curves are more art than science but yes, people do those sorts of calculations all the time. You can find websites online that will do all the math for you quite easily, but in most Standard format decks, you're generally going to run between 21 and 25 lands, with a couple of outliers. It's possible to push aggro down below 20 if it curves out very low, and many control decks will run more (Esper Drownyard runs about 27-28, including its win condition).

There's a mountain of theorycraft out there, and just about every pro player does at least some probability math in their heads during a match, but for your average player this takes the form of common wisdom or established deck design concepts like the mana curve. Believe it or not, the idea of a mana curve didn't even exist for a couple of years after tournament MTG was a thing. Sligh was the first truly curved deck, and it was pretty much a paradigm shift.

Your average FNM player today is light years ahead of where pros were back in the 90s. Information exchange is so much faster, and deck lists so freely available that the collective tends to raise the level of play for everyone else. You've still got scrubs, but that's more an issue of learning the timing rules and so forth. If a player wants to improve, they can do so more easily now than in any previous era of the game.

edit: Hey Mist, what do you think about the UR Storm deck that Finkel played in Portland? It's budget enough for me to scrape together. There are fetches in it, but they don't look quite as vital to the deck as with something like Pod.http://www.mtgtop8.com/event?e=4927&d=228464
 
Ratina

Ratina

Bronze Knight of the Realm
243
79
Crossing fingers that my 2 boxes of MM for $200 each will go down as expected tonight. My main LGS wants $300 a box.
 
Heylel

Heylel

Trakanon Raider
3,602
430
I was super happy with mine. Prices are falling fast as product is opened, but the chase cards will rebound by next Modern season. I'm going to try and gather up as much as I can while demand is low.
 
Mist

Mist

Eeyore Enthusiast
<Gold Donor>
30,871
23,161
Chris_sl said:
I'm surprised how little theorycraft backed up with stats there seems to be for MTG? Do players normally copy mana curves from someone else, guess/playtest or keep their stats secret? Am I missing something?

I've been experimenting in excel with looking at the probabilities of playing 3 lands in the first 3 turns to see what the optimum amount of lands in deck is for that, taking into account being an aggro deck and not wanting to draw to many and not having enough creatures to play. I assumed I was mulliganning on 0,1,5,6 or 7 lands in opening hand and put down having only 2 or 6+ lands on Turn 3 or mulligan below 5 as mana flood/screw.

24 and 25 Lands gives you a 77% chance of no mana flood/screw on T3, which is the highest possible under my assumptions.
21 Lands gives you a 72% chance and is the sweetspot for avoiding dimishing returns (adding more land adds a smaller success percentage than it used to - so is it worth it?).
23 Lands gives you a 76% chance and seems to be the best of both worlds.

I did the same with the chances of playing a one drop on turn 1, two drop on turn 2 and three drop on turn 3 (again being for an agreesive aggro deck). It didn't fit into the deck with 23 lands but shaving off a percentage from each to use the next optimal and goign for multiples of 4 & 3 gave me:
16 One Mana Spells (89% Chance).
12 Two Mana Spells (79% Chance).
9 Three Mana Spells (67% Chance) - and you can play multiple cheaper spells to deal as a backup.

My best FNM was actually when I copied the curve of a tournament deck withexactlythis distrbution (maybe he ran the same numbers?), so I will try it again this time with more powerful cards.


I'm sure I can refine my assumptions... am I going down a dead end here or is persuing this kind of data helpful?
Click to expand...
This is done frequently for finding the best linear aggro decks. But there's a lot more kinds of decks than those.

Also, sometimes you don't want to play the curve that gives you the best chances of being merely optimum. Sometimes you want to shave a land or two and just hope for good draws for the majority of your games. Remember, winning a tournament isn't about finding the deck that wins 60% of the time. Especially when it comes to aggressive decks, it's about finding the deck that can just crush anything if it gets its good draws, and then hoping you get a lot of good draws in a row in the games that matter.
 
Chris

Chris

Potato del Grande
19,238
-9,866
Well it worked, won 2 games at FNM for the first time going 2-2. I won the first two games. Looking forward to refining my deck with my new strategy in mind, I'll post it tomorrow.

I almost caught the first guy I lost a match to cheating, he had more cards on the board than me but I called it too late so we didn't know what turn we were upto so me accidentally missing a draw is a possibility. The second loss was just bad draws and mistakes on my part for being tired, so looks positive!
 
Heylel

Heylel

Trakanon Raider
3,602
430
Split top spot again this week with Junk Aristocrats, then spent the credit on MM packs. Got some value out of it, but nothing stellar. Foil City of Brass is awfully pretty though.

Still not sure what the foil Sword is going to be worth. I can't find it listed anywhere.
 
Xalara

Xalara

Golden Squire
826
81
Ended up going 1-2 in a Modern Master's draft where my one win was a bye. Had a good giant tribal deck but didn't draw well and got mana flooded for three of the four games I played. That said, I did lose one game in a most spectacular fashion. I was playing a guy with a storm deck and he spliced that card that gives 3 mana onto each of his spells and did: Lava Spike > Lava Spike > Lava Spike > Steal 2 life > Actually cast the 3 mana spell > Grape Shot for 17 total damage.

In the end I still got myself a Dark Confidant and some other money cards so I am happy since it means I can trade for more shock lands. I have two more drafts tomorrow and am hoping I do better since they will have Modern Master's prize support.
 
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