MTG thread

Big W Powah!_sl said:

What, realistically, does it take to get back into magic with an up-to-date deck, keeping in mind I haven't bought any cards since 2002. I'd start fresh, to make sure everything is in play, probably. What am I looking at money wise?

Are red decks still sorcery/instant damage heavy? Always favored high magic damage decks.

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Competitive Standard deck - $150-$450 with the need to update the deck every 3 months.
Competitive Legacy deck - $500-$3500. Cards for existing decks rarely change. The lower end are decks like Burn, Dredge, etc. While they are viable decks, their viability is very meta dependent.
Competitive Modern - I've never really done the math. I only play the format when I have to and play Jund which is one of the most expensive decks in the format.
Competitive Commander - I despise the format so I can't help.

Modern is anywhere from $300-$1500 last I checked. The biggest cost being the land base. Luckily fetch lands are probably going to be reprinted in the next year or so and thus we should see more sane prices.

And to answer the rest of your question Big W. The only deck that I can think of that is similar to one you'd like to play is something like the following. Personally, I want to try it, but I am not convinced it's tier 1, yet.


Creatures (4)

4 Chandra's Phoenix

Planeswalkers (2)

2 Chandra, Pyromaster

Lands (22)

10 Mountain
4 Sacred Foundry
4 Temple of Silence
4 Temple of Triumph

Spells (32)

4 Chained to the Rocks
4 Boros Charm
4 Lightning Strike
4 Magma Jet
4 Shock
4 Skullcrack
4 Warleader's Helix
4 Toil

Sideboard
4 Boros Reckoner
3 Stormbreath Dragon
1 Wear
4 Anger of the Gods
2 Mizzium Mortars
1 Temple of Abandon

I just meant able to enjoy myself at Friday Night Magic; I'm so out of touch I'm not sure what standard/champion/etc is.

What all rule/gameplay changes has it seen since 2002? Obviously new cards have been introduced, but general gameplay flow changes?


Those prices are a LOT higher than I was expecting.

forget when these changes happened...

but combat no longer goes on the stack like 6th edition. no more mana burn, and mana doesn't persist through as many steps (not sure of the precise term off the top of my head) but previously, you could float man from upkeep to draw step. no longer the case.

you and your opponent can have the same legends in play. if you play a copy of a legendyoualready have in play, you can choose which one you can keep.

game is still mostly the same. biggest difference is the prevalence of planeswalker (think combination of creature and uber enchantment/artifact)

Big W Powah!_sl said:

I just meant able to enjoy myself at Friday Night Magic; I'm so out of touch I'm not sure what standard/champion/etc is.

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That would depend on what kind of player you are. The store by me does 15 dollar drafts for FNM and holy fuck are those fun. Any day I want to play FNM that's the cost and it's a fair cost to pay. In Standard I could probably put something together I thought was fun with physical cards for 30-40 bucks. If you are the kind of player who wants to pilot something big time it's going to be at least 300-500.

FNM is usually standard, modern, and/or draft. Depending on what the store owner is supporting that week (usually standard) or whether they can gather 8 people wanting to draft.

Standard is current expert level block + last years block + last years core set + this years core set (when it releases in the summer).

But yes if you're looking to jump in right now its likely $100 - 400 for a tournament level standard deck. Updating that deck each expansion will likely cost up to $100. Standard card prices are also ridiculously unstable and most lose 80% of their value when their set rotates out of standard. So if you jump in be aware of that.

You can play FNM with any deck though, and not all areas are so competitive where you need to have a tournament level deck to win. My area is unfortunately an area where you need a comptetive deck just to not go 0-4.

valishar_sl said:

FNM is usually standard, modern, and/or draft. Depending on what the store owner is supporting that week (usually standard) or whether they can gather 8 people wanting to draft.

Standard is current expert level block + last years block + last years core set + this years core set (when it releases in the summer).

But yes if you're looking to jump in right now its likely $100 - 400 for a tournament level standard deck. Updating that deck each expansion will likely cost up to $100. Standard card prices are also ridiculously unstable and most lose 80% of their value when their set rotates out of standard. So if you jump in be aware of that.

You can play FNM with any deck though, and not all areas are so competitive where you need to have a tournament level deck to win. My area is unfortunately an area where you need a comptetive deck just to not go 0-4.

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The couple of local stores I called said its fairly competitive. This is Arlington, Tx, so I don't know what their definition of competitive is. I'm going to assume its relatively tournament level. I guess the days are gone of buy a couple boosters a week and sit around trading after the oblig game at the lunch tables in Jr High/High School. I suppose thats what I was hoping for.

You could play MTGO. Standard legal cards are much cheaper and you can play all the games you want.

Yeah yeah, I know it's not a great option.

Just start buying one case per set, sell the foils, and in a year you'll be good to go.

Lasch_sl said:

forget when these changes happened...

but combat no longer goes on the stack like 6th edition. no more mana burn, and mana doesn't persist through as many steps (not sure of the precise term off the top of my head) but previously, you could float man from upkeep to draw step. no longer the case.

you and your opponent can have the same legends in play. if you play a copy of a legendyoualready have in play, you can choose which one you can keep.

game is still mostly the same. biggest difference is the prevalence of planeswalker (think combination of creature and uber enchantment/artifact)

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This.

I learned the game during The Dark and quit during Ice Age. I came back during Dragon's Maze which is only a few months ago. Sequence of products:Magic Products : Wizards of the Coast


For me, the biggest thing I had to grasp was the entirely new kind of card, Planeswalkers. It has its own rules and those rules should be read top to bottom at least once in order to be understood. Other than those Planeswalker guys, Magic is still the same game of 5 colors as it always was..which is awesome news!

MTGO is good for practicing and getting better. But yeah, the fact I have to buy the cards again if I own them IRL sucks.

For drafting the best way to practice is swiss and for most people it is the best expected value. It still is not cgeap. For standard practice the cheapest top tier deck is mono-black devotion since it consists mostly of rates.

P.S. RW burn can go die in a fire

Swiss is terrible EV. You literally have to win every round ever to break even on packs. It can be useful if you want to draft some weird fringe archetype and want to get a little practice in, but the problem with that is the level of competition is pretty bad so you won't necessarily get good opposition.

For most players looking to get better, swiss is the best EV until your win rate is like 80%. The reason being is that in swiss, even if you lose first round you can continue playing and continue to evaluate whether or not you made good or bad draft decisions while still being able to win packs.

Plus in swiss you still face reasonably skilled opponents. The lowest skilled being in 4-3-2-2 and the highest skilled being in the 8-4 queues.

So yeah, when you factor in skill level swiss tends to be the best EV for a good chunk of players, especially those looking to get better.

Big W, if you have any old cards left from when you played before check the prices on things. Some of them have risen dramatically (Lion's Eye Diamond), while others that were expensive then are now worthless (Psionic Blast, Icy Manipulator). If you randomly have 4 Diamonds sitting around, you are about 1/3 of the price towards 2 or 3 major Legacy decks. If you have any old duals still sitting around, you're even better off.

Fetches will see a reprint, and when they do you can expect the price of legacy duals to rise even further. Large shops like SCG are unlikely to let the total cost of a full legacy deck drop by very much, but the relative cost of different cards will change. More fetches will mean more standard players looking to hop into modern and legacy, while will mean rising prices on cards that cannot be reprinted. The 10 duals, Lion's Eye Diamond, Show & Tell, Sneak Attack, City of Traitors, Wasteland, Force of Will, and to a lesser extend cards like Mox Diamond are found in basically every single legacy deck. More players after the same cards will mean rising prices on those cards, which have unique and irreplaceable effects.

Basically what I'm getting at is if you decide to jump into legacy, focus on the stuff that won't see a reprint first even if it has no overlap with modern. I've had to drop a bunch on fetches already that I'm not happy about, but they're equally necessary until they see a reprint. Aside from Tarmogoyfs, there's basically nothing in Modern that I would prioritize over legacy duals, LEDs or sol lands at this point. Nothing else opens up even remotely close to the same number of decks.

I have a question about a ruling. My friends and I have been playing Commander, but only started a couple of months ago.

If someone plays down Flickerform, and someone else counters it with Counterspell, can the person that played Flickerform cast the 2 colorless, 2 white flicker ability from the stack? The other night, someone at the table insisted that was the case and we played it that way, flickering off the target creature and the enchantment in response to the counterspell. Then, tonight, another person played out Shattergang Brothers and was Counterspelled, and used the sacrifice creature ability on shattergang in response to the counterspell to sac shattergang, citing the use of flickerform the other night as the precedent for casting from the stack.

Is this how we should be playing these abilities?

It won't have resolved to use the ability in the first place. Your friend is taking the piss.

Valorath_sl said:

I have a question about a ruling. My friends and I have been playing Commander, but only started a couple of months ago.

If someone plays down Flickerform, and someone else counters it with Counterspell, can the person that played Flickerform cast the 2 colorless, 2 white flicker ability from the stack? The other night, someone at the table insisted that was the case and we played it that way, flickering off the target creature and the enchantment in response to the counterspell. Then, tonight, another person played out Shattergang Brothers and was Counterspelled, and used the sacrifice creature ability on shattergang in response to the counterspell to sac shattergang, citing the use of flickerform the other night as the precedent for casting from the stack.

Is this how we should be playing these abilities?

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Nope.

Alrighty, that's what I thought as well. But, I haven't been playing for as long as the other guys, and one of them was quite insistent that he was playing it correctly.

Thanks.