MTG thread

MTGO is a whole different beast due to the efficiency of the market and how fast prices change. If I were to do speculation it would be there. However I don't think MTGO supports too many people like you Mist. Now what I was talking about is paper speculation where investing in paper is a bad idea unless you are a store. Besides as a store you care more about flipping inventory quickly for a reasonable margin than anything else.

Mist_sl said:

There's actually a shitload of other speculators on MTGO, which is sometimes bad because it means you have to work harder to buy up cards faster than the competition. But it also makes losing money nearly impossible, because when you want to get out of a card there's always another speculator waiting to buy up whatever you want to sell. You have to be asleep at the wheel for days to actually lose money on a card.

MTGO is a great place to make money. The guy that owns MTGO Traders just bought a 1.3 million dollar building for his IRL store, Cape Fear Games, paid for primarily by his MTGO business.

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Only until it crashes because the interface is from slightly after Revised in GUI design and everyone abandons it.

And until WotC actually pays their devs $100k a year (going market rate in Seattle) it'll still be shit. The only reason MTGO does as well as it does is because there is no viable alternative that will improve your skills as fast as MTGO. That said, xmage is in active development, so there is that.

There is another way to look at it. MTGO has done and is doing so well despite the UI and functionality, so what happens when that is improved ? I see my teenage kids and their friends getting into MtG and MTGO and I think the market for it is still growing and is going nowhere. And as the game gets older more players mature and have more disposable income and it makes them happy to put that money into cards, digital or paper.

Hex has come along at just the right time. I believe that regardless of the result of the lawsuit it will be good for the game and good for the players. It will stop Hasbro being lazy and putting up with second rate delivery. I also think that because of it we'll see some really collectible stuff released over the next 12 months.

The trick as ever is to be selective, stick to rules about buy/sell prices and be ahead of the game. Do your homework - little things like one of the WotC guys letting slip in an interview that they did another print run on Conspiracy tells you that's generally not a good place to be putting money. There may be a crash at some point but if you bare that in mind and buy/sell wisely it's not something to worry about.

I'm seriously considering getting out of Onslaught fetches that I'm not actively using. My problem is that I straddle the line between serious collector and serious player. In the abstract, I don't really mind losing a bit of value if they get reprinted because I'm going to want the originals anyway, whereas another part of me wants to maximize my collection by flipping them while they're high. I realized the other day that I just have too much damn legacy stuff compared to how often I get to play it. Modern I like being comprehensive about because the meta does change, albeit slower than Standard. I don't want to be locked into a single deck forever. With legacy, I need to force myself to stick to one.

Right now I waffle between RUG Delver, American Delver, UW Miracles, Dredge, Loam, Jund, and now Maverick. I can sleeve any of those up for a random Thursday and get nowhere with any of it because I don't stick to a deck long enough, but the collector part of me keeps eyeing cards for other lists because I'm such a completist. If I'm only 3 or 4 cards away from finishing some other deck, I tend to go ahead and start searching them out just for the hell of it.

Mist you should sponsor me in MTGO. I've got top 8s under my belt at PTQs but am too cheap/lazy to build a MTGO collection.

Mist_sl said:

I don't know what product Onslaught fetches would be printed in. I don't see them ever being printed into Standard, and therefore not Modern legal. And I doubt we'll see a Legacy Masters in paper.

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See, I disagree. I really think there's a strong chance we'll see them this fall, with a different land type in the third big set (not Zen fetches), and then Zen fetches in MM2. There's really no reason they can't put them into Standard again, and they're not especially busted alongside non-fetchable duals like the current temples or pain lands. Further, there's no real reason to keep them out of Modern forever. In fact, their absence actively hinders shard decks from competing with wedge ones.

Xalara_sl said:

And until WotC actually pays their devs $100k a year (going market rate in Seattle) it'll still be shit. The only reason MTGO does as well as it does is because there is no viable alternative that will improve your skills as fast as MTGO. That said, xmage is in active development, so there is that.

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Just checked out xmage, seems surprisingly good so far. Easy install, stable, multiplayer works etc.

Open to correction on any of the following from you folk who have been around the last few years as it's just me reading between the lines.

Present standard seems slightly weak - this is being displayed in pressure on WotC to change some upcoming Pro Tour events from Standard to Modern. So at the same time as they are facing the first direct (clone) competition from Hex they are also getting the message from their player base that the feeling is Standard could do with a little power boost.

Based on the above -and remembering the reason WotC have tours is to sell new stuff:

i) it's not unreasonable to think Fetch lands will see a reprint some time in the near future (and while I'm at it I'll go out on a limb and say Tarmogoyf also);

ii) it's going to be an interesting 12-18 months as far as new collectible product is concerned.


The thing is to plan ahead now on when is best to buy/sell/hold what comes out and what you have already that might be reprinted and see a move in value.

If Xmage works on my work laptop I can see me no longer being a productive member of my team for a while >.> even just messing with the deck builder

Right? I've been fucking with it for an hour now and don't even have anything close to built.

Do any of you know where you can send cards away to get graded? I really need to unload these p9, prolly going to unload the rest of my collection too but those are the ones I want to sell asap. Alpha lotus, beta mox sapphire, and beta bayou etc.

Think hard before you actually get them graded. The market for graded cards is dramatically smaller than for playable ones, especially beta duals. Yes, they're worth more. They're also a lot harder to move for the price that they're valued at.

Flight_sl said:

i) it's not unreasonable to think Fetch lands will see a reprint some time in the near future (and while I'm at it I'll go out on a limb and say Tarmogoyf also);

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Tarmogoyf, no way. Not ever. It is far, far too above rate for a simple 2 drop, and a mass reprint would crash the secondary market in a way that WotC doesn't want. Keep in mind, they don't necessarily want every card to be cheaply available (whatever that means). It's perfectly fine with them to have some chase cards with 3 digit prices.

As for fetches, my reasoning is as follows:

1. Mana Confluence and pain lands both show that the prior wisdom about not wanting pay life effects because new players don't like them is bullshit. Further, the fact that we only have opposing pain lands also debunks the other common assumption that lands will only come out in full cycles from now on.
2. The Zen fetch increase caught WotC by surprise, and they admitted it would take some time to get new copies into player hands. Nothing was said regarding older fetches.
3. Temples and pain lands aren't fetchable, and enemy pain lands implies that we'll be seeing a cycle of allied-only lands in Khans. Fetches aren't broken without fetchable duals.
4. Khans is a wedge block, meaning each wedge has two pain lands available to them. An allied fetch fits the triangle as well as anything else.

It might be something entirely new, like some kind of tribal land a la Lorwyn, but I really doubt it. They also just did enemy lands, so enemy fastlands or manlands are out at least for set 1. Presumably it will be something that provides mana on turn 1 so as to differ from scry lands. Fetches just fit the bill.

Ob Nixilis, Unshackled printed in M15 => Fetches are coming in Khans.

QED.