Getting back into Magic the Gathering

[Mendoza]

o.pwuaioc:

Yeah, you have a good point about the expense. I can only remember one time when i ever had a full conventional deck for tournaments that wasnt pieced together with what stuff i had.

Back in the Odessy invasion days I had the prototypical UG madness deck, and that was about the cheapest standard deck i can think of. Now that caw blade is dead a lot of cheaper decks are playable, but even those are 100+ decks.

Just playing what you find fun is really the best.

[gtmtnbiker]

So what one expect to pay to build a decent deck? Is the issue that you have to pay $10 or more for a pack of cards and you have to buy multiple packs? Sort of like baseball/pokemon cards?

[Erik_Twice]

Expensive to play regulation. I stopped playing tournaments when I realized it was a matter of money. Those who could afford the best desks by far and large got further.

That's common sense. If you go to a tournament with a subpar deck, of course you won't get as far as the guy who has a good deck. Good cards are in bigger demand than bad cards so they are more expensive.

But being able to afford a good deck offers you no advantage when everyone else also has a good deck. Competitive Magic has a barrier of entry if you play constructed, and that's the cost of a good deck.

So what one expect to pay to build a decent deck? Is the issue that you have to pay $10 or more for a pack of cards and you have to buy multiple packs? Sort of like baseball/pokemon cards?

A pack of cards costs 3$ but if you are building a deck, you are better off buying specific cards, it's much cheaper.

The reason Magic is expensive to get into is that good cards tend to have a big demand. So, for example, if card X is worth 6$ and I need four, that's a good chunk of money there. There has been a huuge bubble in the American market recently, never before a "chase rare" costed more than 20$, the costs of 55$ for Jace or 100$ for Tarmogoyf were completely unheard of.

Fortunatedly once you get a deck running, maintenance is low. You can always trade your cards and many good cards are very versatile so going from one deck to another doesn't have a huge cost.

"Decent" decks are not expensive, you can just take a good deck and change some key cards to lesser variants but the result will be just that, "Decent". If you don't play competitively, Magic is quite cheap but, beware, once you know what's good, you can't go back to ignorance, you won't be awed by horrible cards again.

A good deck's price can vary a lot depending on the format (Amount of card blocks allowed). I would say that as a rule of thumb a deck will cost you between 150$ and 250$, assuming you pay full price for everything (You shouldn't, buy online and you can save an awful lot of money, specially if your cards are expensive but not used in barely any decks).

Of course, you can always play Limited, where you are given 3 boosters to make your deck and compete, bypassing the huge barrier of entry to the constructed variants of Magic.

[Luke]

We already have a thread for this:

http://www.racketboy.com/forum/viewtopi ... secondbase

Have a sense of humor, please.

I've watched MTG contests on ESPN, and I swear that although I have little interest in the game, the matches were nothing less than tense and entertaining. If memory serves, part of the game depends not only on which cards you draw, but also math is incorporated into a player's strategy.

So, how exactly is the game played and won? I love card games (everyone should play Phase 10 at least once) but is this more of a card game or role playing game?

[AmishSamurai]

So what one expect to pay to build a decent deck? Is the issue that you have to pay $10 or more for a pack of cards and you have to buy multiple packs? Sort of like baseball/pokemon cards?

packs are rather cheap. A good way to get started is going into a draft game. Everybody in the draft buys three booster packs. You grab a card, pass the pack to the next person over, take the pack passed to you, take a card, and so on. Usually somebody will have enough land cards you can borrow, and then eventually you have a deck.

[Erik_Twice]

So, how exactly is the game played and won?

Basically, there are three ways to win the game:

1) Leave the opponent without cards in his deck
2) Reduce his life points to zero
3) Playing a card that wins you the game

However, while there are millions of ways of achieving that, you must stick with a few strategies that form your gameplan. Perhaps you want to play that combo or perhaps you just want to smash your opponent's face with creatures, but you won't be able to do everything at once.

Getting your opponent to play according to your gameplan is the core of the game.

This means evaluating trade offs. How many life points are you willing to lose drawing cards instead of killing creatures? How should you play if you think your opponent has a counterspell ready? What if it is a bluff?

Of course, all this extends to deckbuilding as well.

Calculating the odds of your opponent's drawing a card doesn't tend to be a big part of the gameplay, you normally obtain better information about your opponent's hand by watching how he plays.

It's a really good game with a very developed competitive scene. However the fact that the game is so rooted on what your opponent will do and the overall state of the metagame, it's not as pick up as play as other games.

[Ivo]

If you are interested in Magic Online, this series of articles keeps an eye on card prices and has some deck costs - as people are discussing that you may be interested. Note it uses prices of the online cards, usually cheaper than the real ones but there are exceptions (such as Force of Will, the most expensive card online):

http://puremtgo.com/articles/state-program-july-8th

From the recent article above, copy pasted some deck values

Standard
UB Tezzeret control costs $ 299.
Elves cost $ 163 on July 1st.
Kuldotha Red was $33 on June 16th
Soul Sisters, the cost was $199 on May 30th
Shrine of Burning Rage, (Winner, PTQ Madison) was $141 on May 25th.
Valakut, (3rd place, here). The cost was $ 140 on May 18th.
Caw-Blade, Standard. The cost was $ 518 on May 11th.

So in Standard, Kuldotha Red is fairly cheap. I don't know how good it is. Caw-Blade is no longer in the format, as the cards were banned.

The top decks tend to cost over 100 in the rotating formats. There are some (infrequent) exceptions and it depends a lot on the format. I am thoroughly convinced they develop the sets and select rarities of cards to keep it that expensive (particularly after the Mythic rarity was introduced and they started putting too many constructed staples there). It is probably part an integral deliberate part of their business model, so whenever it is lower than that it is probably because they didn't see the good, cheap deck in development (otherwise, I currently think they would bump some cards of that deck up in rarity before printing them). Often there is a decent "budget" option but it is not necessarily consistently good - it may be a deck that specifically does well against the best deck but bad against the other ones, so you make a bit of a gamble that you will face the best deck many times.

In my opinion, 100 to 200 bucks isn't THAT much for the quality of gameplay you get - they have to pay a large team to keep that quality so I don't even begrudge them for being greedy as long as they print quality sets. But you need to reinvest frequently when cards rotate out. It is just not good value for money compared to other entertainment choices - at least, not for me.

In theory you could play a rotating format without significant reinvestment, but that means you only play during the "middle" of the season. You have to be buying the cards a bit after the very start (at the start the cards are new, not as available, and in general more expensive) and selling well before the rotation (when the cards approach the date when the rotate out they will become legal only in older formats which are more powerful and have less of a playerbase, so their value takes a significant dip).

There are also eternal formats without rotations which means if you get a deck you won't need to spend basically again, but sadly the ones currently available have gotten to be a bit expensive, even Legacy is rather pricey. Think over 500 bucks in the best cases...

Legacy
12-Post costs $ 704. (The four Force of Wills account for $ 500 of that cost.)
Four Color Loam cost $ 701 on July 1st.
Cephalid Breakfast was $ 859 on June 16th
Paulo’s Blue Control costs $1,608 on May 30th
Landstill BUG, Legacy, (Winner, Bazaar of Moxen), was $ 1,559 on May 25th.
Painted Stone, (3rd place, here) Legacy. The cost was $ 1,200 on May 18th
Team America, Legacy. The cost was $ 1,586 on May 11th.

Force of Will online costs over 100 bucks per card (it peaked at 160 or so, now is slightly lower, may get back up with time). Legacy with real cards is even worse than this as although Force of Will is cheaper, the dual lands are more expensive.

In my opinion it is highly likely that a new eternal format will be added relatively soon to avoid this problem, but there is nothing confirmed.
Personally I think if there was an eternal format with decks costing around what a standard deck costs, in the 100 to 200 range it could be really good for the game. It is still a lot but at least you only invest once (that is what the Legacy players say about their decks when comparing to standard, but they shell out over 1000 typically so I'm not sure how valid it is).

I returned to playing recently because there is a strong likelihood of this eternal format becoming a reality, and it helps if players show they are interested in it: a representative from Wizards said they would be paying attention to the players on this. I'm showing my interest in such a format by playing in the player organised events of the format in Magic Online - hoping Wizards to take note and start supporting the format officially. One powerful deck in this new format would be 12 post WITHOUT the Force of Wills, so think of it around 200, and there are cheaper ones. In fact someone mentioned UG madness deck - this is a viable deck (with some changes). In principle, this would be an investment that lasts you for as long as the format is around as it is highly unlikely that a strong deck in these eternal formats becomes too weak to compete (it is not impossible though).

Finally, there is also Pauper - this is a format which only has commons legal. Against many disbelievers, Wizards have officially supported this format. As I and other supporters believed, the format is actually good for their bottom line as it brings new players in which often become interested in the "powered up" (and more expensive) formats. You can easily find cheaper decks in Pauper.

I've watched MTG contests on ESPN, and I swear that although I have little interest in the game, the matches were nothing less than tense and entertaining. If memory serves, part of the game depends not only on which cards you draw, but also math is incorporated into a player's strategy.

So, how exactly is the game played and won? I love card games (everyone should play Phase 10 at least once) but is this more of a card game or role playing game?

There is definitively a lot of skill involved in doing well. There is no way around saying it is luck based when some players are so good they reliably win again and again (for older players you may remember Finkel and Kai Budde which, and now there is LSV which just keeps winning).

You often need to do some "calculations" in order to determine which move to do. For example, if I do this, then I need to draw card X or Y to win. If I do that, I need to draw card Z to win. It is more likely that I get either X or Y, so I decide for that course of action. That is the kind of thing you need to think about but it can get more complex of course. If you practice a lot the matchup you can identify strategic goals and so on.

It is a card game, there is no real role playing involved. There are very clear rules without much room for interpretation. There is nothing stopping you from pretending you are a Wizard or whatever, but that is not the point. You could play the same game with just numbers and no artwork, but people find this more appealing and if the card is well designed it helps you to understand some rules intuitively. They use terms such as a creature Power, the Battlefield and so on to give it a more which helps draw more casual players in (and I think it is fair to say it also keeps the game more fun for the not so casual players - attacking with a dragon is "cool" and so on).

Ivo.

[Luke]

^Thanks guys.
Sounds like it could be a lot of fun to try out.

[Mendoza]

A deck builder's tool kit is a good place to start for a casual player.

85 fixed cards split between the various colors and 6 non basic lands.

20 of each basic land type.

40 semi random cards

and 4 normal booster packs.

These retail for 19.99. I picked one up at walmart for my friend.

The game is very much based on skill. Luck always plays a small part even if both players have access to every card around. A bad draw can destroy even the most finely tuned deck.

[weasels]

getting into magic can be a hassle though. there are a lot of small unsaid rules that you need to be aware of. but it's not too hard to pick it up.....which reminds me...
anyone check out some of the new phyrexia decks. the green/blue starter deck is actually a monster. it's full of infection cards and is hardly fair for some beginners. my friend got it because i got him into the game, and he destroyed me with most of the well made decks.