MTG thread

Yea it's just a regular old rare.

People at my store are probably sick of me bitching about like it like some crusty old greybeard, but man it rustles me so hard.

I ordered a Japanese Chandra off ebay a while back because it was cheap, and sitting that card next to the english version was the final straw for me. English version feels like a cheap fake compared to whatever card stock is getting used on non-enghlish cards.

Its cause the factory they use for almost everywhere but USA is so much better and uses all the old stock, print process, etc.. they changed factories for US a fw years ago. The cards have a much stronger 'magic card smell' too. Used to notice when id order a box of korean cards. Think its the belgium location. Believe theyd all say 'made in belgium'.

Btw if anyone has a spare arena key or doesnt want to play their account, ill buy it off you.
I was trying eternal and then gwent, but neither seems to be keeping my interest. Eternal's larger deck size really exacerbates mana flood/screw problems and gwent started off great but has steadily been making the game worse and worse with each patch.

Enzee said:

Its cause the factory they use for almost everywhere but USA is so much better and uses all the old stock, print process, etc.. they changed factories for US a fw years ago. The cards have a much stronger 'magic card smell' too. Used to notice when id order a box of korean cards. Think its the belgium location. Believe theyd all say 'made in belgium'.

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Overseas cards tend to be better, but still have issues. I mean look at the Brazilian transform misprints from Rivals as a good example.

The latest patch in eternal is making me lose interest in the game, when they decide to make "dumbing down" nerfs.

ronne I've been getting a lot of foreign stuff lately because of cheaper prices and it tends to have less counterfeiting going on, also noticed the quality tends to be nicer too.

Another reason to always run Korean cards!

Your reading comprehesion is off. I wasnt blaming the printer, was just pointing out the ones printed in belgium are all still fine to this day. Its only the ones for US and whatever else comes out of that factory (used to be japanese, but they got their own factory a few years back).
Russian, korean, and a few others, all come out of the belgium factory and are just as good as theyve always been. Unless something changed in the last year since i played paper mtg.

I'm pretty sure they still use Cartamundi here in the USA for printing. Their factory is here in Dallas somewhere.

Even if it's the same company, something has changed, and changed drastically. Current era cards legitimately feel like cheap knockoffs next to older card stock, or even foreign stock of current cards. It's absolutely damning when they are right next to each other.

Foils have been a problem for years and years, but now even the regular cards are curling up like mad. It's bad enough I can't actually bring myself to buy anything until something changes.

The rumor I heard was it's basically due to the leaks of the card sheets a couple years ago (last year?). They had to do something to show that it was an unacceptable breach, but it turns out there are very few companies and even fewer factories that have the capabilities to produce magic cards. So pulling out of that spot has really hurt the quality, but it felt like Unstable had corrected things somewhat; I havent held a RIX card yet.

I just assume the baby boomers are all retiring and now some 20something with a spotty beard who only knows how to push the big red "print button" is working the line.

OU Ariakas said:

Did you try Hex:Shards of Fate? Not free but drafts are half as much.

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i briefly tried hex before, and while it seems ok, if I wanted a non free to play ccg, i'd just play magic/mtgo again. Idk, maybe i didnt give it enough time, but my understanding is the ftp model is pretty slow in that game? While I'm not broke these days, I don't want to get sucked into a similar rabbit hole cost wise. That's the main reason I'm not just playing magic instead, but I'd really like to get into arena.
All the other games just make me miss magic's mechanics. Just the simple thing of being able to play stuff in response to your opponent adds so much tactical and strategic depth, and while Eternal has that a bit, the designers are really clueless. It made me appreciate how well the magic R&D team has actually been over the years.
So many things we take for granted that other companies can't get right. ex: Eternal's drafts are a bit of a mess right now. Some cards are just utter trash or need ridiculous amount of synergies for a pay off, while others are just broken in comparison. It'd be like if every common in a set was either a 1/1 elf for 2G that gets +1/+1 if you have another elf in play, or a 4/4 flyer for 4 that dealt 2 when it entered the battlefield. Like, there's very little middle ground.
Constructed might be better, I've just recently started playing again since closed beta, but i doubt it from what I've seen.
Plus, the 75 card deck size just increases the number of mana screw/flood games and reduces the consistency of your deck in general.

Eternal has a modified mulligan so your opener should be more consistent than a MtG mulligan. Why would a larger deck size increase screw/flood?

Lendarios said:

So how does the manatrader thing works? I pay $10 and I can play in online tournaments with a good deck? Do i still have to pay for the tournament?

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You still have to pay whatever entry fee for MTGO, so 8tix/80 points for friendly 12tix/120 points for competitive. The only real difference between the two is how prize payouts work, so if you just want to grind matches friendly is easier to go infinite.

You can borrow whatever you want up to your tix limit with manatraders and keep them for as long as you like, but it track how long you have the cards and has a cap. It's X times Y, with x = tix value of cards borrowed and Y the amount of time you have the cards borrowed, so you can't keep the stuff for a week or whatever, you play your league or whatever then give the cards back. I doubt the 10$ plan would be enough to cover standard right now unless you already have somewhat of a collection online. I used the 35$ one and can play anything I want in standard without issue basically as much as I want. In January I used 7000 of my 35000 hours limit and that covered I think like 12 leagues, so unless you're gonna grind like 4+ hours every day you'll never hit the cap.

drtyrm said:

Eternal has a modified mulligan so your opener should be more consistent than a MtG mulligan. Why would a larger deck size increase screw/flood?

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So, imagine a 10 card deck with 5 mana/5 non-mana. You draw a mana, the chance to draw another mana is now 4/9 (4 mana cards out of 9 total). Or, ~44%. If you draw another mana, the chance to draw the 3rd goes down to 3/8, or 37.5%. It naturally balances itself out more and more to reduce the chance of drawing all of the mana cards in a row.
Now, imagine a 100 card deck, same ratio. Your first card is a mana, the chance to draw a 2nd mana in a row is 49/99, or 49.4%. If you draw a 2nd one, the chance to draw a 3rd is ~48.9%. The larger the deck size, the less impact drawing each one has on drawing more copies of it. You increase the variance by a fair amount when you make the deck bigger, which naturally means you have more games where you draw a 'clump' of the same type of card, which leads to more non-interactive games.

edit: To be clear, the difference between 60 and 75 isnt nearly as drastic and 10 to 100, obviously, and we are talking about an extra 3-4 games out of 100 that get effected. But, imagine how often you have a game like that in magic. Now, add more on top of it. Also, reduce the card draw/tutor/library manipulation options in half, reduce the amount of lands that act as mini spells in half, and you can start to see how it'd get frustrating. I'd estimate that roughly 10-15% more games in eternal are determined by screw/flood then in magic.

If I made a digital card game I'd program it to mana fuck people based on their user name.

Specialty character? "xXx"? Time to drown in mountains, friendo.

I'll alpha test it for you.

Enzee said:

So, imagine a 10 card deck with 5 mana/5 non-mana. You draw a mana, the chance to draw another mana is now 4/9 (4 mana cards out of 9 total). Or, ~44%. If you draw another mana, the chance to draw the 3rd goes down to 3/8, or 37.5%. It naturally balances itself out more and more to reduce the chance of drawing all of the mana cards in a row.
Now, imagine a 100 card deck, same ratio. Your first card is a mana, the chance to draw a 2nd mana in a row is 49/99, or 49.4%. If you draw a 2nd one, the chance to draw a 3rd is ~48.9%. The larger the deck size, the less impact drawing each one has on drawing more copies of it. You increase the variance by a fair amount when you make the deck bigger, which naturally means you have more games where you draw a 'clump' of the same type of card, which leads to more non-interactive games.

edit: To be clear, the difference between 60 and 75 isnt nearly as drastic and 10 to 100, obviously, and we are talking about an extra 3-4 games out of 100 that get effected. But, imagine how often you have a game like that in magic. Now, add more on top of it. Also, reduce the card draw/tutor/library manipulation options in half, reduce the amount of lands that act as mini spells in half, and you can start to see how it'd get frustrating. I'd estimate that roughly 10-15% more games in eternal are determined by screw/flood then in magic.

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How could Eternal be so much worse than MtG when it has a digital mulligan rule that couldn't be recreated with paper cards?

By 'estimate' you mean 'guessing' right?