MTG thread

What, because it doesn't have a Pro Tour? That hardly makes it non-competitive.

I'm thrilled they removed it from the PT. All it's for is marketing anyway.

Have not played MTG in a long while,

Is there any online version that is self contained (I want to buy a video game not online cards) like the 1997 shandalar which I loved?

Not really. You can play magic duels "free", but it'll take a while to cobble together decks/collection
There are third party platforms like xmage and cockatrice that are actually free, but they're very "sticks and twine in a cave" construction, compared to true programs.

The Pro Tour is a marketing effort. It exists solely to highlight new sets and cards. Modern is extremely popular because the barrier to entry is / was lower than legacy, and it allowed the recent crop of newer players to continue playing with all their stuff. However, WotC saw it as needing more direct intervention in order to keep interest high in the Pro Tour, so they were much more aggressive with banning cards than they might have been otherwise.

They didn't want consecutive modern Pro Tours to resemble one another, when one of the big advantages of a non-rotating format is that once you buy into a deck you can more or less play it forever. Modern has always had a cloud hanging over it where people worried about bannings due to decks being too popular or strong for the format. It's had quite a few, and a lot of them are justified, but it makes people skittish about investing in a deck. With no modern Pro Tour, WotC doesn't have as much incentive to meddle, and can let the format evolve at a slower and more natural pace. They'll still step in as required (see Eldrazi Winter), but there's no reason for them to ban things just to shake the format up ahead of a Pro Tour like they've done in recent years.

Frankly, if you have even a reasonable modern collection then it's not that hard to jump over to legacy. The decks are very different, but the same general strategies all exist in one form or another. It's expensive, sure, but modern now costs about as much as legacy did 3 years ago when people claimed it was beyond the price of most players. It's just not that hard to acquire cards with a little effort. Even vintage only took me four months or so, and I didn't commit much in the way of actual money.

I guarantee you that the amount of resources that you have invested to enter the eternal formats would look like madness to an outsider.

Your explanation of Modern was 100% fair and balanced. Bravo. This however:

Heylel_sl said:

It's just not that hard to acquire cards with a little effort. Even vintage only took me four months or so, and I didn't commit much in the way of actual money.

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You got into vintage so I assume you acquired a Black Lotus. I'm looking at a HP UNL Lotus on TCGplayer for $3400. That's one card. Care to expound on your definition of 'little effort'?

pharmakos_sl said:

what's the bare minimum cost for a competitive legacy deck?

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The low end for a competitive deck that does not run ABU duals, but is still not burn or some weird outlier, is probably around $2,000.00.

I'm not sure how much legacy merfolk costs, but it may be a good bit cheaper come to think of it, especially if EMA lowers the price of force of wills. I feel like most people arent looking to play legacy merfolk tho.

Seeing that Drtyrm has taken a position similar to mine I would like to formally retract my prior statement and instead agree that getting into eternal formats quote "ain't no big thang" - Heylel 2016

That hurts.

Drtyrm_sl said:

You got into vintage so I assume you acquired a Black Lotus. I'm looking at a HP UNL Lotus on TCGplayer for $3400. That's one card. Care to expound on your definition of 'little effort'?

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Sure. I traded a lot for a while to get into modern, then stopped bothering with the trade tables once I started judging events, which I do about once a month. As payment I always take credit and buy some kind of reserve staple.

Last GenCon I traded a bunch of modern stuff I wasn't playing (goyfs, fetches, colonnades, other stuff) for a Ruby, Emerald, and Ancestral Recall. Wasn't really intentional, I just found a backpack trader with a pile of power to break up and grabbed it while I could. Also left with all of legacy Lands, Tabernacle included. It was a good weekend. 3 of 9 acquired, no cash spent.

I started banking all the credit I could with SCG ahead of GP Atlanta. Saved anything I got working their events, exchanged local credit for SCG with other judges, and sold some random staples for cash that I used to buy more credit for .80 on the dollar. By GP Atlanta I had a touch more than 3800 banked, and called requesting they have a specific LP Lotus on hand marked at 4k so I could see it before dropping that much. I also buylisted more stuff I didn't much want anymore. Chains of Meph, some MM2 stuff, etc. Added another 700 or so to my tally.

I haggle them down on a Time Walk to 600 since I was spending 4000 on the Lotus. Didn't bother telling them I had it all basically paid for on my account. Grand total on my debit card that day was 80 bucks. 5 of 9 acquired, Lotus done, 80 cash spent.

Saturday of GP Atlanta they ran a vintage sale for 15% off. I convinced them to refund me the difference on my 4600 purchase the previous day, netting 690 back. Immediately picked up a Pearl and Jet for 1300 combined, making this the first significant cash outlay I made on power. 7/9 down, total cash spent 690. Still under a hundred bucks per card.

Only major thing left was a Sapphire, which I bought for cash off a friend for 900 using a mix of local store credit and money from judging. Later on I buy listed some standard junk for most of a Timetwister to finish my 9. All told, I have well under 1800 in "real" cash sunk into power that I can retrieve in less than a day should I ever need to. I mean yeah, the value all came from somewhere. It's stuff I got through other means and a bunch of judging and haggling, but it hasn't put a dent in my actual income at all. Took me about five months total.

And it never really felt like effort. I wasn't doing anything out of the ordinary. If I wasn't judging an event, I'd likely be there anyway not making much of my time. Might as well work it and still get to hang out. I actually have spare power at this point because... Why not? I'd rather flip my judge mailings into reserved cards than sit on foils that will only go down and are a hassle to keep mint. I still need to finish a set of Workshops and maybe Bazaars, but otherwise there is very little I feel the need go acquire anymore. It just comes to you naturally over time if you want it.

and have the time to judge a weekend event multi times. thats sort of a big thing, to 90% of mtg players

I guess. A Saturday a month, or an Open/GP every six months or so doesn't feel like much of a burden to be honest. It's all hobby time. People spend more than that mountain biking, camping, or what have you.

I am 100% confident I spent more in bars during my twenties than I do on any hobby now, Magic included. I realize it seems monumental but it sorta just works out.

I do, yeah. Made a lot of great friends in the judge program that I wouldn't have had reason to know otherwise.

For what it's worth, I got back into Magic with RTR in 2013, so I haven't been at it all that long. I played as a kid back in the 90s but all that sold off. Everything I have and all my knowledge of the game comes from the last few years having started over from scratch. It can be done, it's just... a little effort, like I said.

Aren't you the homie that bought my like ~200k card collection and sorted through it all? I think your definition of "little effort" differs a bit from most casual folks sir

This weekend I'm heading to a PPTQ and am taking G/W tokens with me. I like to go through my matchups before a tournament and plan out how I'll sideboard but I am having difficulty this time around. I feel like I'm missing something despite playing the deck a ton online and going through several articles. Anyone able to provide some help/advice?

Ronne_sl said:

Aren't you the homie that bought my like ~200k card collection and sorted through it all? I think your definition of "little effort" differs a bit from most casual folks sir

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I am, and it was more like 100k cards. The real effort was carting it from Chicago, which I was lucky to have a friend in the area to do. It was about 12-14 printer boxes iirc, and I loaded them up and took them to a local shop where the regulars all helped me sort through it in about two afternoons. Many hands make quick work. All the real value was in a single long box, the rest was mostly bulk. We picked out the worthwhile commons and uncommons, many of which are still sitting downstairs.

The only hard part was storing it a few weeks until SCG came to town so I could dump the bulk on them. It was enough that they didn't even count it; there wasn't time. They just asked me for a ballpark number, asked cash or credit, and sent me down the line to buy legacy staples. Turned a bunch of Fallen Empires and Ice Age crap into a set of Wastelands, Dark Confidants, and a judge Karakas. I traded off what I kept out of that collection for almost a year. It was solid gold to the EDH crowd around here.