Just stating the obvious ...

Dear MTGO family,

I really hate writing this post, but it's a bit easier than thinking of reasons to not write another column for the time being.

To be honest, I just feel like there are better things to do with my time than play/write about MTGO at the moment. The time/value just isn't there for me at the moment.

Part of the problem is that the 3.0 version of the game still has too many issues -- both social and within the code itself. Part of the problem is that the game as a whole, both digital and paper is kind of blah to me at the moment.

However, the biggest problem is simply that I would rather be doing different things right now, both from a personal and a gaming perspective. As some of my closer friends know, I've been very involved in 'real life' politics this year. Regardless of your political leanings -- and I don't mix my gaming interests with my political interests -- if you're an American, you really need to vote.

As far as computer gaming goes, I'd really rather play both Warhammer Online and WoW before MTGO at the moment -- and Madden 09 as well. Not to mention about 10 more titles due out before Christmas.

I'll still sling the old paper cards a bit on the weekends. I'm not excited about having to travel so much to play in a good Vintage tourney, but I do plan to make a couple of pilgrimages later this year after the elections and such.

Plus, I now have two kids in high school ... that means more time taking them to football practice, band rehearsal and everything else that goes along with having active teenagers around the house. My family needs my time, and that's getting to be quite the limited resource!

Anyway, this isn't a goodbye or farewell as much as it is a time to recharge my batteries post. I still think Magic -- both paper and digital -- is one of the greatest games out there. It's just that I'm feeling an ebb towards Magic that's exasperated by some ebbs within the game itself.

I'm looking forward to a time when I'm excited about the game again -- and when that time comes, I'll definitely write about it. Maybe it will be in a continuation of this blog, or maybe in some other venue -- but I'm not leaving the game, just taking a break/breather.

Regardless, I will still be spending a little money each month on MTGO -- and I look forward to spending a few nights each month tossing virtual cards around the old monitor at home. If you catch me online, feel free to say hello -- or anything else good or bad, for that matter!

One last thing, never forget -- People > Pixels. In the end, that's what's important.

Later,

Don!

What I did on my summer vacation ...

Dear MTGO Family,

Sorry for the sudden absence from the blog -- but I had an opportunity that I couldn't turn down.

I don't want to get into politics on an MTGO blog, but last month I accepted a very short-notice position in support of my political party that required me to not post/publish anything until early this morning. Yep, I couldn't even post about MTGO -- but I'll have some great stories to tell my kids and grand kids someday.

Anyway, the chains are off -- and I can go back to posting. A lot has happened in the last month in (and out) of MTGO, and I can't wait to write about it!

I'll toss up a post later this week, and I think I might make a few format changes to the blog as well. We'll see.

Later,

Don!

Squee, Goblin of Coolness

I loves me some Squee. Click on the picture for the full-sized version. ;-)

I think Squee is my all-time favorite Johnny card in Magic. In the evil paper Magic world, I have for of the original version of the card, all in foil and about another 20 or so in good old non-foil goodness. Every time I see a new expansion, I always look for cards I can abuse with Squee for my casual Squee decks.

Of course, in Shadowmoor they've given me a really nice Squee-outlet tool in Knollspine Invocation. So, I decided to spend the month's $15 to get a set of Squee, Goblin of Coolness and some cards that might help to make a good deck.

(Shameless plug: Actually $17.44 for playsets of Squee, Mind Stone, Firespout, Knollspine Invocation, and a few more cards from the wonderful folks at MTGO Traders, who offer good prices and a PayPal discount!)

In my humble opinion, any card that says "Discard a card" to get an effect is a card that Squee was built for. In paper, my all-time favorite casual deck was a highlander deck built around Squee. Of course, I cheated the Highlander rules by playing 1 Regular Squee, 1 Foil Squee, 1 Autographed Squee, and one Personalized (hand-painted by a good friend of mine with talent) Squee. The deck featured all kinds of the original spellshapers and other discarding for effect cards like Balduvian Horde and Null Brooch. It was one of those decks that people never really minded playing against, and played differently every time you played it based on who you were playing and what you drew in that particular game.

Anyway, with that in mind -- I'm going to spend the next couple of posts building the best budget Squee deck I can in MTGO. Granted, Squee is a touch stiff pricewise at around two tickets each, but he's a great utility card to have fun with in MTGO.

Here's where you the loyal reader come in. See the poll to the right? Help me pick the base of my new casual Squee deck. Red's a given, since I know I plan to use Knollspine Inquisition for the main kill mechanism of the deck (at least for now) -- but other than that, what works best? Straight Red? Blue/Red with lots of drawing effects? A White/Red defensive build? Green/Red agro or mana-acceleration Squee? Maybe an evil Black/Red Squee abomination?

Just remember, the deck's being built for the casual room -- not a tourney. I hope to stay away from too many things that casual players find annoying, specifically Land Destruction, Counters or Discard. A certain amount of burn is unavoidable in a base-red deck, but not all burn, okay? A couple of those in the deck might be okay, but if there's too many -- that might not be as fun as possible for the folks playing against me. It's okay, I don't mind losing -- I just want the deck to have a chance to win, and generally be fun to play.

So, vote. And after that, e-mail, post or catch me in game to give me some ideas. I want to have some fun with my little red recurring friend this month -- and I think that's a cheap way to play MTGO on a budget!

Later,

Don!

Shield of the Oversoul

Since the world of MTGO has flamed out into a big ball of poo this week, I've decided to write just a bit about the most broken limited common enchantment in Magic since Rancor.

Shield of the Oversoul.

Enchantment - Aura
Enchant creature As long as enchanted creature is green, it gets +1/+1 and is indestructible. (Lethal damage and effects that say "destroy" don't destroy it. If its toughness is 0 or less, it's still put into its owner's graveyard.) As long as enchanted creature is white, it gets +1/+1 and has flying.

This is a card that will see a lot of play in MTGO. If you can't afford to buy an Armadillo Cloak for your PDC deck -- this card will do just fine, thank you very much. And at three mana, it's perfect in the curve of the deck it needs to be good in -- a small to mid-range creature agro deck.

Even on the expensive constructed side of the world of MTGO, this card can be flat annoying. Put this enchantment on a Safehold Elite, and you've got a 4/4 flyer that just shrugs off that annoying Wrath of God or Damnation. I like Steel of the Godhead (Gives a B/W creature Unblockability and Lifelink) almost as much -- but that creature is only a Terror away from being two cards in the graveyard.

Of course, for real fun -- all the new Shadowmoor color counts enchantments tend to work real swell on our old friend Transguild Courier. Sure the Courier is an uncommon, and extended-legal instead of standard ... but he's all colors all the time! Of course, if your a standard purist, you could play Scrapbasket and/or Scuttlemutt for a similar effect for a limited time.

So, here's a little cheap block/standard ditty for having some real fun with the Shield and it's friend Steel.

Lands: (22)

12 Forest
6 Plains
4 Islands


Creatures: (22)

4 Safehold Elite
4 Raven's Run Dragoon
4 Farhaven Elf
2 Medicine Bearer
2 Silkbind Faerie
2 Elvish Hexhunter
2 Barrington Cragtreads
1 Scrapbasket
1 Scuttlemutt


Spells: (16)

4 Shield of the Oversoul
4 Steel of the Godhead
3 Gleeful Sabotage
2 Æthertow
2 Consign to Dream
1 Mine Excavation


Hey, this deck won't win you a PTQ, but it should have some entertainment value. Of course, I sincerely hope the MTGO servers will let us all play long enough to get some good entertainment value as a whole -- no matter what deck you're playing at the moment.

As always, check out this week's poll. I fully expect the results to be lopsided based on this week's column -- but hey, you all out there have surprised me a few times already.

Take care out there, and may all your pixels be perfect in game!

Later,

Don!

Shadowmoor and the evil casual premier event ...

Well the Shadowmoor release events have come and (mostly) gone in MTGO this week, and they definitely seemed to be a love them or hate them event. Personally, I've always kind of liked them -- but I can see where some people don't care for them.

In my case, I blew the entire month's budget on one of the new 'casual' premier event tourneys. These tourneys are a new format for the game, with a longer build time, longer playing time, and a flatter payout (less to win, but more to people with lower records) than the normal PEs. The event I played in had five rounds, with every entrant receiving a Murderous Redcap avatar. Players who went 5-0 would get 20 packs, 4-1 players got 10 packs, 3-2 players got 4 packs and 2-3 players got two packs. If you managed to go 1-4 or 0-5, well, you didn't get anything.

In my case, I knew I could go at least 2-3, and maybe as good as 4-1. I've only 5-0ed a release event once, and that's because I got the flat nuts packs.

Well, as far as this specific event went -- I knew even 2-3 would be a challenge with this pool of cards. My closest things to 'bombs' were a Knacksaw Clique and a Swans of Byrn Argoll. I only got one of the common multi-color +1/+1 enchantments, a Helm of the Ghastlord, which worked for Black and Blue creatures. The biggest downfall for this deck was its lack of removal. I didn't have any direct creature removal spells, though I did have an Inquisitor's Snare (prevents all damage from a creature, plus kills black or red attacking/blocking creatures) and Curse of Chains (at the beginning of every turn, tap ~this creature).

I had absolutely no artifact or enchantment removal in my packs -- and no bounce either. So, when something hit the board, it stuck unless I could kill it in combat, or by my limited means of direct damage. In the direct damage department, I got just a touch -- all in red of course. Burn Trail is awesome if you can cast it with conspire, but with almost no red creatures of note -- that would be tough. Puncture Bolt kills almost any 2/2 creature, and also puts any x/1 regenerator to the graveyard as well -- but the MVP of my limited removal suite was a single copy of Power of Fire. That one card turned any creature into a Tim (tap to do 1 damage to target creature or player) ... and did I not say that one of my only good cards in my pool was a Mistform Clique?

Well, I wound up putting together a W/U deck with a splash of red and green. The red was for my removal, and the green was for the creatures I lacked in any of the colors to make a passable deck. Fortunately, one of the good things about Shadowmoor as a set, is that it's relatively color friendly with a couple of mana fixers, but mostly through its hybrid casting costs throughout the set. The deck itself was passable, but not a 4-1 or 5-0 deck. I was hoping for 3-2, and hoping against 1-4 and 0-5. I saw about equal chances of both --- and darn it, I better get at least two packs out of all this effort. Not to mention my entire month's budget!

In the first round I drew Tanaka_Katana_Nakata_JP, a 1760 rated player. He didn't speak much -- but I bet he was from Japan. He also wound up being the one 5-0 player in our pool, even though his deck looked awfully similar to mine. There was one big difference -- he had a couple of Shield of the Oversoul in his deck. Oh, and a couple of Safehold Elites as well. For those of you who don;t know that much about Shadowmoor, the Elite is a 2/2 G/W hybrid card with persist for two mana. The Shield of the Oversoul is an enchantment that gives a green creature +1/+1 and makes it indestructible and gives a white creature +1/+1 and flying. So in games 1 and 3 of our match (I lost the dice roll), I faced a 4/4 flying indestructible creature with haste on Turn 3. Needless to say, I lost those games. However, in game two I got my own Tommy Gun of Doom ... DOOM, I say! That was accomplished by placing my Power of Fire on my Clique. I actually won game two down from 16-4 by clearing his board with the pinging Clique and then taking him down of the course of four turns. Seeing as he only lost two games all day in the tourney, I felt pretty good about myself in the end.

Anyway, in the second round I played a deck with even more bombs. In addition to the above Elite/Shield combo, Catsg added a Firespout (combination Earthquake and Hurricane) and Twilight Shepherd (5/5 Serra with persist, plus returns your other cards sent to the graveyard that turn back into play). How he lost in the first round, I'll never know -- but he sure didn't have any problems with me -- sending me out the door in two games in about 10 minutes.

Bleh, being 0-2 sucked -- but not as much as having to wait more than an hour for my next game. That's the one bad thing I'll say for this tourney format -- 45 minutes per player makes a 90 minute match, and a lot of people dropped because of that. Heck, if not for the flat payout -- and I knew my deck wasn't THAT bad, I might have dropped too. The other bad part of that long wait is when people drop, it's hard to match up like-record decks. In my case, I eventually got to face up with another 0-2 deck, but there were a lot fewer people in the tourney past the second round -- making 2-3 look like a good possibility for me.

Anyway, I proceeded to win my next two matches. Unfortunately, I lost the last one to go 2-3 overall. Eh, it's in the money -- and the tourney was fun. The tourney as a whole lasted just over six and a half hours, and that was one long Saturday to spend in front of the monitor. Luckily for me, it was too darn hot outside to do much of anything, and I had been smart enough to schedule a late showing of The Incredible Hulk through Fandango. So it made for a good Saturday all around.

Generally, I like Shadowmoor as a set. However, for limited it's just to pack-dependant for my tastes. A lot of pools are based more on the bombs and combos that you open than just the skills in building a deck and playing it. I love the set for drafts, where there are lots of choices for drafting and color combinations that you don't normally see played in draft games. Four and five color decks are possible in both draft and limited, and possibly good if the mana works out. Two and three color decks seem to the best though, and the various hybrid cards shine in such a deck.

I do like the new casual PE, but in terms of the players playing it -- don;t expect it to bee too casual. I'm normally a solid 1700ish player myself, and I played three 1750+ players in my five matches. The other two folks were both over 1600, meaning that they've at least won more than they've lost in these sort of matches. I'm not sure if there's ever going to be a format for truly casual player to play in, but while this is an improvement -- it sure isn't casual in terms of attracting lower rated players to try PEs in my opinion.

The one last thing that I'm dying to try is to see what fun I can have with graft creatures and the Murderous Redcap avatar. I'm sure it won't be tourney quality, but I so want to see how much fun it is to cast a Vigean Hydropon and put 5 points of damage to my opponent's dome.

Anyway, take a look at this week's poll about the Shadowmoor release events. Let me know how much you enjoyed them, and that'll give me a good idea on how much time/coverage to set aside for the next set of release events.

Later,

Don!

I've got a hole in my pocket ...

Ouch, my computer's had a few issues since last week. Sorry for the delay in posting. I have some very important non-Magic related files on my machine, and I had to make sure that nothing was compromised after last week's Flash vulnerability issues were addressed.

For me, that meant setting up a few extra precautions for protecting my data ... and completely removing the files from my current machine and going with a complete reinstall of my OS and programs. Ouch.

Just remember folks, better safe than sorry -- especially where computer security is concerned. The good news is that I now have a completely separate network for my important files and a dedicated gaming network for stuff like this.

Speaking of stuff like this, you're probably not here to listen to me discuss the finer points of my real life work. So let's talk about Magic!

Well, with the Shadowmoor release scheduled for this weekend on MTGO, it's not too hard to figure out where I WANT to spend my money for the month, but is it the BEST way to spend my $15?

Probably not, but what the heck!

In this case, it's actually liable to be a touch over the month's budget ... but except for watching The Incredible Hulk this weekend, spending some quality time with MTGO is much better than going outside where it's 186 degrees right now. Well, maybe it's only in the mid-90s, but it feels much closer to the boiling point of water than anything the weatherman's telling me.

My goal for the weekend is to play in one of the new casual tourneys with the flatter payout. If I can win just 2 of my 5 matches, I'll get two packs of cards -- that I can resell and use to bolster my collection of commons. If I can manage to win three matches, I could enter a release draft, or sell the packs. Heaven forbid, should I win four or five matches ... muhahahahahahaha!!! (evil laugh).

If nothing else, I hope to pick up a few of the Shadowmoor commons that will be really good for casual play. The multicolor/hybrid cards rock. You'll see them everywhere. They're specially broken in limited -- and when combined with other multicolor cards. Multicolor critter + multicolor enchantment = good times.

But there's not as much goodness in the mono-color cards. I'm looking forward to Briarberry Cohort and Crabapple Cohort myself. I know Faerie Macabre will be a tourney sideboard card, and Burn Trail will be broken in limited. Possibly my favorite card right now is Hungry Spriggan -- I just love the art and text. If nothing else, I'll try to get a signed artist's proof ... but if I see the original artwork go on sale ... I might invest. Just the look on the guy's face makes me laugh. Plus the flavor of the card as a whole makes my day. However, my first thought from looking at the single color commons is that you're going to see a lot of Sickle Rippers and Ballynock Cohorts. But not near as much as you will the multicolor cards in the set.

Maybe it's just me -- but this is a set that looks a lot more fun at the uncommon and rare levels. Kitchen Finks will be a 1+ ticket card right off the bat I bet. This set has a lot of love for the constructed serious player, I think. But there's also going to be a a few more tribes to build fun decks around, especially the Scarecrows. In addition, I love the idea of playing Twilight Shepherd in my Angel deck. That's definitely a card that will swing games. I'm hoping the 3WWW cost will keep it from becoming too constructed-worthy, so I can afford to get at least one or two for my decks on the cheap.

The one card that I will build a deck around at some point is Knollspine Invocation. Let me think, what's a card that I can discard and get back into my hand cheaply. And when I say cheaply, I mean ... free! What rhymes with free, oh yeah, Squee! I see the beginnings of a beautiful deck there.

Anyway, I'll post back eariler next week with all the gory details on how I did in the release events and the options I have for the rest of the month.

Oh, and if anyone has any ideas on how to get an artist's proof or such for Hungry Spriggan -- let me know. I looked at Drew Tucker's site on the web -- but I don't think it's still active.

As always, if there's anything I can do to make your MTGO time a little nicer -- let me know via this site, or by dropping me an e-mail to thrifty.djinn@gmail.com or just chat me up in game when you can catch me!

Later,

Don!

Darn you Age of Conan and the evil Flash vulnerability released this week!

Hey all, this will be a short post for the moment. I've been a touch busy trying to fix some issues -- mostly trying to repair some issues related to the recent Flash vulnerability on my home network.

Don't panic -- this site is safe -- but please do go to

http://www.adobe.com/shockwave/download/download.cgi?P1_Prod_Version=ShockwaveFlash

and upgrade your version of Flash to protect yourself from some malicious software issues. Especially if you play World of Warcraft or any other big online game ... and I'm assuming you play MTGO if you're visiting here.

A couple of the larger WoW sites have been exploited through this vulnerability, and I hear PureMTGO has had issues as well. Fortunately, both WotC and Blizzard keep database records of transactions -- so I doubt there will be any large-scale damage to the economy at large -- but there is definitely room for individuals to get hurt by the sort of folks who hack accounts to sell the contents to unknowing customers.

For right now, be just a touch extra careful -- and if someone you don't know offers you a deal that's too good to be true -- be just a touch extra wary. I'd stick to dealing with folks I trust for a bit until the issue gets resolved.

-----------------------------------------------------

My other big time waster this week is Age of Conan. I've been playing around with it for the last little while since it's release -- and it's definitely a different take on the post-WoW philosophy for MMOs. I haven't played enough to say whether it's good or bad, but it is worth checking out if you're so inclined. Be aware, it is rated for "Mature" audiences -- and yes, female characters can run about with their naked boobies bouncing around. Plus, there's "Fatalities" in the game play where every so often, you get a particularly grisly death when you kill a NPC or another player. If you want to know more about what I think of the game -- flip me an e-mail and I'll be more than happy to tell you.

-----------------------------------------------------

Okay, back to the business of MTGO for just a moment. I've played a lot of standard games in the casual room this week -- and I think the two cheap rares (less than a ticket, often 2-for-1) that have worked out really well for me have been Voice of All and Story Circle. Those two cards are a near death sentence to any mono-colored deck, and can also make it tough on a two-color deck that runs it's second color for removal or direct damage.

I played a Black-Red goblins deck the other night, and with a Voice of All set to protection from Black and a Story Circle set to protection from Red -- I kept my opponent locked out from a lot of his normal game play options. When you combine those two cards with some other flexible White removal spells, like Disenchant and Oblivion Ring -- you have the basis for a good cheap deck. Heck, add in some 4-for-1 ticket Serra Angels, and you have 75% of a deck.

Kind of like this one:

Those Pesky Angels (Standard)

Land

4 Quicksand
4 New Benalia
16 Plains

Creatures

4 Serra Angel
4 Voice of All
4 Angel of Mercy
1 Reya Dawnbringer
1 Angel of Salvation
1 Platinum Angel
3 Malach of the Dawn

Spells

4 Oblivion Ring
2 Disenchant
2 Crib Swap
1 Spirit Link
1 Spirit Loop
4 Story Circle
3 Sunscour (The poor Djinn's Wrath of God!)
1 Akroma's Memorial


The Platinum Angel is a bit pricey, but it's easily replaceable. The Akroma's Memorial is kind of superfluous as well -- but it's more a fun card than anything else. You can build this whole deck for around 10-15 tickets depending on how much time you take putting into getting the cards. I really love the Sunscour. It's a really cheap WoG for the deck -- both in terms of ticket cost and in casting cost. Sunscour will really punish a player for overcommitting to a lot of critters on the board to try and out race the Story Circle -- and the ability to pay the alternate casting cost and then follow it up with a Serra Angel or Angel of Mercy can really cripple an aggressive deck that had you down low on life.

The Oblivion Rings are the best cheap removal spell in Standard right now. Disenchant is always good as are the Crib Swaps. The biggest problem the deck seems to have is with aggressive decks that can get around the Story Circle with either multiple colors of creatures/damage -- or artifact sources of damage. The deck will sometimes get pushed around by a true control deck, since it relies heavily upon resolving a few key spells each game. The deck itself works more like a toolbox deck, meaning it has different ways to win from one game to the next. Sometimes you're the agro deck, playing spells every turn and using the Angels in beatdown mode -- and other times, it's very reactive ... especially in those games where you can hide behind the Story Circle and deal with the opponent's other threats retroactively with the Crib Swap and Oblivion Ring.

Anyway, give the deck a spin if you like it. Or catch me online and I'll play you in a game or two!

Later,

Don!

Playing in a Standard PDC tourney ... or how I learned how to hate Goblins in just three short hours!

I knew I should have voted for Goblins in last week’s poll of most hated tribes. I played in my first Standard PDC event Thursday night, and all I saw were those pointy-nosed demons of doom on the other side of the virtual table across from me!

Unfortunately, the Goblins got the best of me – taking 2 out of 3 games from me in the Swiss portion of the event – but every game was close. Oh, and as a random thought, why are Goblins green – but normally on Red cards?

I played my Faerie Burn deck, with a few modifications since the last time I tested it in the PDC and Casual rooms. At the 9 p.m. close of entries, 26 players had entered the tourney for 3-rounds of Swiss pairings followed by a Top 8 final.

Here's my deck for the evening. It should look familiar to my regular readers.

PDC Burning Faeries v2.3

MAINDECK

4 Latchkey Faerie
4 Looter il-Kor
4 Pestermite
4 Spellstutter Sprite
2 Mudbutton Torchrunner
2 Mulldrifter

4 Broken Ambitions
4 Incinerate
4 Lash Out
4 Ponder
2 Unsummon

11 Island
7 Mountain
4 Terramorphic Expanse

SIDEBOARD

4 Remove Soul
3 Hurly-Burly
2 Mudbutton Torchrunner
2 Mulldrifter
2 Sentinels of Glen Elendra
2 Unsummon

In the first round, I played Zipstein who was playing … wait for it … GOBLINS! He led off with a Raging Goblin, Mogg War Marshal and then … Fiery Temper? I had to think that through for a minute. Fiery Temper is a common in Tempest, and legal in Standard – but only because it was reprinted as a purple-rarity card in Time Spiral. That means it’s Standard legal, but not Standard PDC legal – at least I didn’t think so.

Zipstein didn’t know the card’s legality either, so we continued playing while waiting for Icrodx (the tourney organizer) to pop in and tell us what to do. I watched my life whittle away but eventually stabilized at 3 life with a pair of Pestermites and a Looter il-Kor on the board. I countered an Incinerate pointed at my dome with a Spellstutter Sprite, and knocked him down to 5 with enough creatures on the board to win the next turn – but he drew another Fiery Temper (darn that card again!) and killed me dead.

However, somewhere between the first Fiery Temper and the one that killed me, Icarodx came over to the room and let us know that the card wasn’t legal – and worse, it was a match loss infraction for Zipstein. He could continue in the event – but he would have to replace the Fiery Tempers in his deck. I felt really bad about how that turn of events turned out – and I wanted to help Zipstein if I could. He asked if I had any Bloodshot Cyclops – and I gave him three from my 10^th Edition playset – since I’m not using them in any decks at the moment.

So after my first 20 minutes of playing in a serious PDC tourney, I’m at 1-0, but feeling like poo about it. But, life goes on, and about 30 minutes later the pairings for Round 2 came down from Icardox.

I get a PM from Roynot who has started a match for me to enter and play. I lost the roll, and Roynot played a mountain and passed. I kept a solid hand with two Looters and a Spellstutter Faerie and a Ponder. I played an Island, Pondered my next three cards, and kept a Mountain from the draw. Roynot started his next turn and played another mountain and … wait for it … a GOBLIN! An Emberwilde Augur to be specific. I untapped and played a Looter, then Roynot untapped and played another Augur, while burning my Looter. I ate 2 from the first Augur and he passed the turn. I played a land and a second Looter, then passed the turn. Roynot once again burned the Looter and then sent his pair of Augurs at me for 4 damage. This begun an annoying cycle for the next two turns – I play a critter, he burns it and attacks for 4. Not long after, one of the Augurs goes to my dome for lethal damage during his upkeep.

Game 2, I get to go first. I get a Pestermite to stick when I counter his burn with a Spellstutter. I eventually get six power of flying faerie on the board and end the game quickly. On to Game 3!

This game has to be one of the coolest games I’ve ever played in MTGO. We both have good games, and he is bleeding me to death with an Augur followed up by a pair of Needle Drops. I have a Pestermite down, an active Looter and a rogue-cast Latchkey Faerie doing damage on the board. Roynot has played a lot of land and poked me a bit in tactical battle. At the mid-game, I have him down to 12, and he has me at 9. I draw an Incinerate to go along with the Lash Out I have in my hand. I attack him down to 6, and I know he’s holding a bit of burn in his hand. I don’t want to go to his upkeep when he can sac the Augur and possibly burn me to death.

So I cast the Lash Out on his Augur and win the clash with a Pestermite over his Incinerate. I only have the one counter left, and it’s a Broken Ambitions which is mostly useless as Roynot has a lot of land on the board. So I go for the win with an Incinerate to the dome.

Bad move.

Did I mention I’m at 9 life? With lethal Incinerate damage on the stack, Roynot hits me with an Incinerate, followed by a Shard Volley. I cast my Broken Ambitions for a measly one in response, just to hopefully get him to tap enough mana to not be able to cast anything. He taps an extra land to pay for the soft counter and follows up with a second Shard Volley. 3+3+3 damage at the end of my turn = dead Djinn. So I almost won. Almost.

Now I’m in the 1-1 bracket and needing to win my final match to have a chance to make Top 8. One of the best things about the PDC tourneys is that there’s only three matches of Swiss. So it’s not a big commitment if you’re not going to have a chance to win. Win 2 of 3 and you’re likely to make Top 8, lose more than one and you can do something else with your evening. A number of these tourneys also have door prizes – but not the one for this evening. So you can win without winning a thing sometimes. As for me, if I want to win anything this evening, I have to win my last Swiss match. If I was lucky, maybe I would get something other than Goblins.

My third round opponent was Teliot. And the first land he played after winning the dice roll was an Island! Outstanding. I played a Terramorphic Expanse and sacked it for a Mountain and we both played Islands on our next turns. I tapped my island and mountain for a Looter, and he responded with a Remove Soul. Teliot dropped a Mountain on his next turn and passed. No Goblins yet, that’s a good sign. I played another looter and passed. During Teliot’s next turn he Tarfired the Looter and suspended an Errant Ephemeron. Hmm, Tarfire is a goblin tribal spell … bad sign perhaps?

Well the next few turns were uneventful with the exception of me getting a hard-cast Latchkey to stick on Turn 6. Unfortunately, getting him to stick left me tapped out. During Teliot’s next turn he cast a Ponder, burned the Latchkey with another Tarfire and then played Empty the Warrens.

I now officially hate Goblins. Especially the six staring me in the face from Teliot’s side of the board.

On my next turn, I drop a land, Looter and evoke Mulldrifter for two cards. No help. The Errant comes out of suspension and two turns later, I’m toast from those darn goblins and a flying 4/4.

Off to Game 2. I have three copies of Hurly-Burly in my sideboard, just in case of the mirror match or a herd of 1/1s. Empty the Warrens makes 1/1s – so in goes the Hurly-Burlies. I also kept spare Unsummons for the Errants, a card I considered for my sideboard as well. So with those changes in place, off we go. The game was actually uneventful. I got an active looter down on Turn 2 and saved him from a Tarfire on Turn 3 with a Spellstutter. Teliot said he hated those darn faeries – and played PDC a lot just to avoid them. I kept the pressure on with my small flying armada – while Teliot made six goblins on Turn 6 again. Fortunately, I had the Hurly in hand, and the game in hand after casting it on my next turn. Teliot had six land, not seven – so he suspended an Errant, and never lived long enough to see it come out.

Match Three, Game Three. Do or die. Teliot went first, and dropped a Martyr of Ashes. That really sucked for me, seeing as I kept a three Looter draw. I played the first Looter on Turn 2, and took a few points of Martyr beatdown, when the Martyr offed itself when I attacked with the looter on Turn 3. I played a second Looter, who met Mr. Tarfire as the turn ended. I played a third Looter on my next turn, and protected it with a Spellstutter. On the next turn, I played a Latchkey with rogue and felt good about life, since I also had a Spellstutter to protect them from anything casting 3 or less.

Teliot untapped, and casually pointed an Incinerate at my Latchkey. I spellstuttered and felt good about life.

For about two seconds.

Teliot pondered, cast another Martyr, and then he introduced me to his other stormy friend – Mr. Grapeshot. Mr. Grapeshot didn’t like Mr. Looter, Mr. Latchkey or the Spellstutter sisters. Or me. Ouch. So my board was clear, and all I had in my hand was another Latchkey and a Terramorphic I was saving to pitch to Mr. Looter the next turn. Teliot suspended a 3/1 blue shadow creature and I hard cast a Mulldrifter for two cards and a warm 2/2 flying body. A turn later, Telliot’s shadow critter came out, the Mulldrifter was Incinerated and the Latchkey burned. Oh, and 8 1/1 goblins stopped in for tea over at Telliot’s house too.

I drew a ponder, and pondered looking at two Islands and my last looter. So I pondered shuffling my library and hoped like heck for a Hurly-Burly. I got another Ponder and pondered up three cards not named Hurly-Burly. I shuffled up a Latchkey and cast it. My flying 3/1 met a random goblin on Teliot’s next turn and I drew an Incinerate to flambé the 3/1 shadow critter. Unfortunately that left 7 goblins on the wrong side of the table – and drawing and playing a Pestermite and a sideboarded Remove Soul didn’t help.

Death by goblins again. But hey, at least I could still get in bed by midnight.

I really enjoyed playing in this PDC tourney. It felt a lot like playing in a tourney back in my old paper Magic shop. The folks in the chatroom were generally friendly, as were the players. Icardox was nice to both me and Zipstein when we had problems in the first match, and I’m looking forward to playing in some future events. The whole event felt almost … human – as opposed to the antiseptic environment found in the game’s official sanctioned events. Players talked, some talked smack, others joked – and everyone actually seemed to be part of a community.

All in all I give the experience two big thumbs up. If you’re interested in a good, cheap entry to the world of competitive (while still casual) tourney Magic – PDC is highly recommended. In the next month or so, I hope to get a bit further back in my commons collection – and then I’ll play some Extended and Future-Extended PDC events.

Until then – I hope you enjoyed this post. As always, let me know if I can be of help to anyone out there and feel free to chat me up or play me a game in the MTGO casual room when you can catch me there!

Later,

Don!

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Bonus: PDC Burning Faeries v2.4 (based on last night!)
The biggest change was in finding answers for smaller creature swarms and more actual useable choices in the sideboard. I never felt comfortable with having the Sentinels in there and never used them – and I really wished I had 8 Hurly-Burly in there too. The Martyr of Ashes solves those problems – at least I think they would. If you can get the Rune Snags, I'd put them in over the Negates and Remove Souls in the main deck.

PDC Burning Faeries v2.4

MAINDECK

4 Latchkey Faerie
4 Looter il-Kor
4 Pestermite
4 Spellstutter Sprite
2 Martyr of Ashes
2 Mulldrifter

2 Remove Soul
2 Negate
4 Incinerate
4 Lash Out
4 Ponder
2 Unsummon

11 Island
7 Mountain
4 Terramorphic Expanse

SIDEBOARD

2 Remove Soul
2 Negate
4 Hurly-Burly
2 Mulldrifter
2 Unsummon
3 Errant Ephemeron

Weekend PDC

I really wanted to hold off on this column until I had a chance to play in a PDC tourney, but the evil RL (real life) is seriously interfering with both my MTGO and World of Warcraft time this week.

I'm really comfortable with my Blue/Red Faeries deck in PDC at the moment. I'm set on about 56-58 cards at any given time. The biggest questions I have, pre-tourney revolve around the Mudbutton Torchrunners. I've been running four, but I've been siding them out as much as any card between games in a match. Usually, I'll side out two for the last two Lash Out(s) or sometimes all four for a combination of Lash Outs and Remove Souls. I also realized I'm somehow short one Unsummon -- so I have to make sure I pick one up from the MTGO Traders card bot the next time I can remember. I'm glad they credited the account from earlier, it's let me pick up a few commons I missed before.

Anyway, I'm currently trying to find a good Standard PDC format tourney to play in this week. I'm not sure how much is going on over the upcoming holiday weekend -- but it's a four-day holiday for me. However, I also have to coordinate with the wife and kids -- and I'm sure they have dreams about things like sunshine, the beach, movies ... Indiana Jones does come out this weekend -- and that's a "Must See" in my household. But, as soon as I can get a good tourney under my belt -- I'll be back to tell you all about it.

Until then, I've learned a few things in playing PDC in MTGO.

The first thing is how few people read the game descriptions in the casual room. I'll advertise my games as "PDC Decks Please" or "PDC" or even "PDC DECKS (ALL COMMONS) ONLY" ... and 2/3rds of the time -- I still see other random standard decks. It's not so bad when the person honestly didn't realize what they were clicking -- but when a person busts out a Llanowar Wastes, BoP first turn, and Doran on the second ... I just think they're looking for an easy win to boost their ego. Especially when they try to drop the Thoughtsieze on the next turn.

Ehh, it happens -- and I've actually beat a couple of those decks once or twice -- with a few mysterious disconnects when I have fatal damage on the stack. That makes me chuckle.

I've also noticed a lot of folks playing pseudo-PDC decks with the Vivid lands. Some players didn't realize they''re uncommon -- others thought you can play PDC with up to 5 uncommons, and others gave various rationalizations. The Vivid lands don't bug me in the least for the format, and they usually wind up being less effective than using Expanses in the same decks, at least in my opinion. I love the Vivid lands for my 5-color budget decks, but even if they were PDC-legal, I have yet to see a deck that really was worth their come-into-play-tapped clause worth it.

As far as any sort of scouting report, I'd say I saw a lot of mono-white Kithkin decks, and a number of R/G warrior decks as well. Both seem pretty solid, but I'd be interested in playing them in a tourney since I think I've handled them well in casual match play. I've seen a few sliver decks, and a few mono-blue control decks as well. One of the better games I played this week involved a mono-blue deck where I had a pair of Pestermites go all the way past a couple of counter wars involving his Errant Ephemerons and my Looter il-Kors. The last turn involved him countering a third Pestermite at the end of his turn, keeping his Errant from being tapped -- only to have me top deck another Pestermite.

Another thing I noticed was that some PDC decks aren't cheap -- even in standard. The above mentioned mono-blue deck ran all Snow-Covered Islands and all four copies of Rune Snag, and the best R/U deck I saw featured Snow-Covered mountains along with their Island counterparts -- and I don't think anything in this format can survive a 12-point Skred. I'm just thankful they can't point that at the dome -- or the format would be seriously doinked!

Okay, let me transition back to what I'm planning for this week. There's a SPDC event hosted by MTGO Traders scheduled for Thursday night at 8:30 p.m. EST -- at least according to the calendar. I hope to be there and play if it goes off -- and if not, I'll bust my humps to put together a future extended deck for the regularly scheduled Sunday event run by the PCDMagic.com folks.

In building a deck for future extended, I'm leaning towards either running my current standard deck almost as is except for a few sideboard options -- or building a White-Blue control deck. I do loves me some Oblivion Ring ... and I've really learned that a protected Errant Ephemeron can be pretty annoying. I fear for swarms of Elves and such though, so I might have to make it an All-American R/U/W deck much along the same designs. I'll have to see what's available to me at this point though, since all the cards I've picked up along the way have been standard.

Okay, as for the poll to the right this week. I've noticed about half the decks in the casual room right now are strictly tribal based. I've also noticed a fair amount of hate for Faeries and Kithkin and Merfolk decks from folks in the room. I don't really mind, and I normally love to play a tribal deck -- but since the last few blocks have kind of force fed that concept to us -- are these decks really casual any more?

Anyway, let me know what your LEAST favorite tribal deck is right now -- and I'll make sure to avoid it in my cheap decks lists coming up after another couple of PDC posts.

As always -- thanks for reading!

Later,

Don!

You want it -- you got it!

Okay, it seems a lot of folks want to see some PDC coverage here. So, I'm going to give it the old college try!

But, I bet my PDC deck comes in at under 5 tickets as well -- so I can kill at least two birds with one stone. Heck, I might even practice in the Casual Room ... that would be three birds! And if I had a deck that maximizes the synergy of a certain card or two ... well, you get the point.

My first stop is going to be to explore the world of PDC this weekend. So keep an eye out for Thrifty Djinn in all the PDC hangouts online -- and offline as well. I'm not above pimping out a good website or service, so make sure to check out www.pdcmagic.com or type /join pdc in any MTGO dialog box to join the PDC room. (Thanks for the info to plug, Andy!)

Anyway, here's the deck I'm planning to play with and improve over the next week or so. Since it's PDC, I'm pretty darn sure that it's less than 5 tickets -- especially since there's no Rune Snags in there. This is the deck I've been playing a bit in paper, and it works well online ... well, at least so far!

PDC Faeries and Burn (v2.1)

Creatures (20)

4 - Latchkey Faerie
4 - Mudbutton Torchrunner
4 - Muldrifter
4 - Pestermite
4 - Spellstutter Sprite

Spells (16)

4 - Broken Ambitions
4 - Incinerate
4 - Ponder
2 - Unsummon
2 - Lash Out

Lands (24)

12 - Island
8 - Mountain
4 - Terramorphic Expanse

The sideboard's in flux, and I'll post that a bit later on when I'm more comfortable with it. I'lll also go into a bit of detail on how this deck came to be -- but that's in the 5-ticket deck post, and the next one is going to be all about the fun you can have playing PDC!

Later,

Don!

Happy Anniversary!

Well, one month ago today -- The Thrifty Djinn was born. The actual blog you see here will hit its first month anniversary next Wednesday, but I've been at this a month now -- and I'm pretty happy with how it's turned out.

I'm still working on some rough edges, but overall the timing and spacing of the blog is right where I'd like it to be. I'm past the initial rough edges of building a new online collection, with 1,913 cards and a number of solid casual decks for just under $45. I feel like I could plunk another $15 into the kitty right now, but I also feel like I don't have to.

I have my three favorite tribal decks up and running in the casual room, so if you see me in there -- send me a message and I'll be more than happy to play a game or two. My Angel and Merfolk decks are particularly solid -- and the 5-color Dragon deck doesn't suck. Well, sometimes they all kind of suck -- but that's the way the game goes.

Okay, at this point -- I'm willing to play 'Choose Your Own Adventure' with the blog. Check out the poll to the right.

Do you want to see the next post be about specific decks? The official "Building on a Budget" decks cost 30 tickets. I think I can build a deck at least 90% as good for 1/6th the price -- 5 ticket decks that don't suck. Maybe I can get an official sponsor to actually sell the darn deck, but if not I'll at least point you in the right direction.

How about PDC coverage? I can put together a PDC deck and play in a few tourneys. In this case, I might suck though. But, I can always find folks (and decks) that don't suck -- and tell you about them!

Single card strategies? Cards you MUST have? Heck, I could extol the virtues of Terramorphic Expanse all day, but I do have a sweet spot for Steamflogger Boss too. And I'm sure there's a audience for finding out the more than 7 ways you can kill someone with a Mudhole.

Life in the Casual Room? You're going to be spending a lot of time there as a casual player in MTGO, and there's a lot of little tips and tricks you can use to make playing there a lot more fun. I can also tell you the three things you should NEVER put in your deck description, and the five best reasons for putting someone on your friends or block lists!

Anyway, that's what I'm thinking about for this blog on a Friday night -- let me know what you would want to see. As always, feel free to post here on the boards, drop me an e-mail at thrifty.djinn@gmail.com or just catch me in game!

Later,

Don!

Which MTGO stores give you the most mana and merfolk (and Angels) for your money?

Thank goodness it’s May! That let me tap into the new month’s funds and start fleshing out some solid decks for the casual room – plus check out the MTGO stores to see who gives me the most cards for my money …

I've just completed the last in-game trade for my first MTGO shopping review. One consistent thing about all four sites I visited was their professional and prompt service. From the first order confirmation to the last delivery from all four sites took less than two-and-a-half hours.

I started my shopping review with a goal of spending my last 10 initial dollars on as much product to complete my casual decks as possible. To that end, I made a shopping list of commons, uncommons and rares in those decks that I thought a budget player would like to assemble at some point. I then went to each of the four sites and priced the items. I decided I would buy the lot of items from the shop with the best overall value for the lot, with an emphasis on availability and price. I’ll show you my initial list below, along with the advertised prices for each card. The prices shown are single card prices. If a card belongs in multiple sets, I selected the cheapest variation of each.

As you can see, the individual card prices are pretty close together for most cards. The biggest percentage differences were in the highest and lowest priced cards. Of course, there’s only a seven cent difference in the price of a Spirit Link – but that’s more than a 200% markup from the lowest to highest price. The price of the Platinum Angel was only a 33% swing from high to low, but that’s a full 50 cent difference between $1.50 and $2.00.

Okay, so who's the winner of Thrifty Djinn's hard earned cash? The answer is actually ‘All Of The Above.’ – But some stores won more of my cash than others!

Based on my criteria, ABU gets the first-place award because they presented the lowest price for all the cards I wanted.

Cardhoarder gets second place and was oh-so-close, and if not for the absence of a certain red instant – they would left me perfectly impressed. If they had had the two extra copies of Incinerate I was looking for, they would have finished a few cents cheaper than ABU.

Cardshark finished a solid third, and along with ABU, were the only two stores to have all the singles I wanted to buy in stock and showing online. In this case, ABU had the best price after their 10% discount for PayPal and was a bit more straight forward in how they work. Cardshark could have actually been cheaper, except that they add a 35 cent surcharge on to each different vendor you purchase from, and a one dollar minimum for each of those mini-transactions. (I’ll explain more in my detailed review of each store – but Cardshark is a different animal from the other three stores in the way they’re set up to do business.)

Finally, MTGO Traders was a solid fourth place -- and could have easily finished first because they had consistently good prices, but they were showing as out of stock on a lot of items. The prices for their cards and PayPal discount put them in the running, but unfortunately (as I’ll also explain later) they’re the store seemingly most (and worst) affected by the programming issues in MTGO’s v3 release.

Okay, on to the store by store review! (Click on the stores name to jump to their site)

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

ABU (ABUgames)

This was the store that had everything I wanted at the lowest price. Their website was clean, and their search engine for finding cards pretty straight forward. Items were easily placed in the basket and ready for checkout. The list of all the prices from the cart to the checkout was itemized and easily understandable. One thing to note, is that ABU's (and some of the other site's) base price for their cards is measured in MTGO tickets. That makes it easy for people in game to have the extra security of keeping the transaction completely within the MTGO client – but it can make the initial price seem a bit higher if you’re planning to pay with your credit card or directly through PayPal. Like all four of the stores I visited today, ABU accepts PayPal payments – and in their case offers a flat 10% for paying in PayPal over tickets.

I placed my order through the store and then payment through PayPal and then was instructed to meet with the store’s account in game. One of the funny experiences in trading this evening was looking at the ratings for the ABU store account. Not many store accounts have over a 1,750 limited rating. Delivery of my items was prompt and courteous. It took less than 30 minutes to receive my cards after ordering them at 6 p.m. on a Friday night. The folks running ABU said they didn’t offer any set discounts – but relied on their consistently low prices to keep customers. One other big bonus is that ABU offers full playsets of commons and uncommons – cheaper than eBay, at least in my experience from last week. Their 10% PayPal discount and wide selection made them a solid choice to spend the majority of my hard-earned MTGO budget this month.

Cardhoarder

The Cardhoarder site was probably the best designed site of the bunch, and their prices were the lowest card-by-card most of the time. The only thing that kept me from spending my initial money there was a shortage of Incinerates according to the store’s website. Since I wanted to be able to review each of the store’s ability to deliver product – I went ahead and dipped into The Thrifty Djinn’s cache for the month of May. In this case, I bought a play set of Vesuvas for my decks. I think the Vesuva/Cloudpost combo is one of the most consistent high-mana engines in Extended – and a lot of my budget decks will start with this six dollar combo.

The Cardhoarder site is colorful, efficient, clean and easy to navigate. I can easily say that this site is only a few Incinerates away from being the best of the bunch – pretty close to hands down. Their search engine and navigation helps you to find cards quickly, and each selection has a full card graphic link to place your selection in the card. Cardhoarder also accepts event tickets and PayPal – plus they take Euros. They offer a 13% discount for cash (non-ticket) purchases – making their first-rate prices even better. The only negative about their site was when you place the first item into the basket, the confirmation pop-up box often comes right up over where you want to click for an additional item. Like ABU, completing the selection process takes you straight to PayPal to pay for the transaction. The Cardhoarder account in game completed my transaction in less than an hour after receiving the funds – and it would have been even quicker, except that I was AFK for a bit playing paper Magic with my son. All-in-all, I give my highest budget recommendation to Cardhoarder – they have a slick site and great prices – and more than 90% of the cards I wanted in stock.

Cardshark

Cardshark is the odd duck of this bunch. They’re not a single store, they’re more of a middle man for buyers and sellers in game. The biggest advantage of the Cardshark business model is that you’re almost guaranteed to have every card in stock – in this case, they were one of only two in the survey who could say that. The disadvantage is that you’re actually liable to pay more for what you’re looking for if you’re not careful. For example, Cardhorder (the store above this one in the review) is one of the accounts that uses Cardshark as a middle man. You can always get the card cheaper directly from Cardhoarder – but if you didn’t know any better, at least Cardshark provides a solid matchmaking service. The other disadvantage of Cardshark is the matchmaking fee of .35 it charges for each transaction, plus the one dollar minimum fee. You can avoid a large chunk of that by sticking to the same dealer within Cardshark and by making all your smaller common/uncommon purchases together. Something that's made easier through the pop up box that's displayed when you make a selection. I'd advise sticking to the same dealer throughout when possible to make the most of your money.

However, I don't you can’t beat Cardshark if you’re simply looking for the best price on a single card. Since so many different dealers are essentially competing for your business right there on the one site, the competition for your dollar can be fierce for bigger ticket items. (Especially for the two-mana green creature who will not be mentioned on this site ...) I would highly recommend Cardshark for making a purchase of more than $10 or so, simply because of the different way their model operates insures a good price.

One thing the site does well is in how it grades different dealers. CardShark has three preferred levels of sellers: Great Whites, Hammerheads and Landsharks -- and gives them an icon on the end of their name. Look for the dealers with the GreatWhite symbol and you’re pretty much assured of getting a good deal.

In my case, I bought two Akroma, Angel of Fury cards and a Luminous Angel from ccgbot through Cardshark. Like the other stores, the service was prompt and courteous. After entering the trade, I realized I had bought the wrong version of Akroma (I wanted Akroma, Angel of Wrath) and he offered to help me change the selection. I told him it was my mistake – but appreciated his desire to make the customer happy. Ccgbot is definitely a good example of the best sort of seller from Cardshark. He said he was just getting started in his relationship with Cardshark from MTGO cards, and only sold about $100 in digital cards through them to date – however, he said he had sold more than $3,000 in paper cards, so this is a good indicator of a seller with a long-term investment in Magic as a whole. In the end, I may not like Cardshark as much as the other sellers for my budget needs, but for a single card value – they may be the ones to beat.

MTGO Traders

I’ll be honest, I think these folks might be the nicest of the bunch – but they’re definitely the one’s hurt most by the issues with v3 right now. The MTGO Traders site is clean, easy to navigate and their prices are consistently low. Unfortunately, their web site isn’t able to keep up with the store’s holdings online – so they don’t seem to have as much in stock as the other stores. That’s the only real knock I have on the entire site – it’s just about as easy to use as Cardhoarder’s site and the prices are similar and maybe better depending on the card selection. It was really easy to put about five dollars of Angels and Elves into the cart, and quick enough to get though the site and PayPal to pay.

MTGO Traders advertises store hours of 9am-3am Monday to Friday, and 11am-2am Saturday and Sunday (EST - GMT -4). In this case, the store account was already online and ready to trade almost as soon as I sent the payment to the store. One valuable piece of info I overlooked was that there's a coupon code box inside the shopping cart, you need to type 'paypal' in the box and click on "apply coupon" to get a 12% discount. The discount applies on orders over $5 and to cards only, so it doesn’t count for tickets boosters, starters or bot credits – all of which you can buy from the store. Fortunately for me, the staff noticed my mistake and credited the discount in CardCaddy, the store’s automated bot online – that will let me get a few cards later!

Another feature the folks at MTGO Traders have is a monthly contest where folks who spend more than $50 (unfortunately, that rules out The Thrifty Djinn … DOH!) can win a Xbox 360, PS3, Wii, Ipod Touch or a $400 mtgotraders.com gift certificate. So if you’re the kind of person who is going to make one big splash in cards, and you want to get that extra lotto feeling from your purchase – MTGO Traders might be the place for you. All-in-all, these are a great bunch of folks to shop with – and I sincerely hope they get past the v3 blues and back at full capacity soon.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Okay, so there you have it. The first Thrifty Djinn store shopping spree and store review. I think each of the stores has a lot to offer the MTGO community, and as a whole they provide a valuable service to budget players everywhere. I’d recommend any of the sites to anyone looking to make a purchase in MTGO cards – the prices here are universally better than eBay, and short of buying packs and such from the online store – offer the best bang for the buck to the budget MTGO player.

Unfortunately for The Thrifty Djinn, this economic exercise has sploinked my initial start-up budget, and the first $15 monthly stipend. Fortunately, I have a lot of cards to play with with my money – and the next month is just a few short weeks away. This won’t be the last store review for The Thrifty Djinn – and I look forward to seeing how these stores and others fare in future visits.

Later,

Don!

Ready to hit the stores!

Okay, so I've been poking around the last few days trying how to figure out what I'm going to buy from the stores.

The first thing to decide is what stores I'm going to use in my search. A lot of the online stores overlap and share similar features, and some of the stores themselves use the same actual sellers in game. Those stores are more like middle men who just facilitate various trades for a fee, and consolidate billing.

Since this was an initial effort -- I let Google do most of the work for me. Based on a Google search of MTGO card sales, I'm using these four sites for my first venture into MTGO sale stores. When it's all said and done -- I'll rate each site on how well they met my needs as a budget buyer. I've added the links to each of the sites below.

1 . MTGO Traders

2. Cardshark

3. Cardhoarder

4. ABU Games

What will I be buying? Well, I'm not letting the cat out of the bag just yet -- but my emphasis will be on improving the pseudo-tribal decks I enjoy playing in the Casual Room. Mostly Angels, Dragons and Merfolk. I'll also be looking at some staple cards that can go in almost any deck of a given color -- but I'd wager my first buy will be mostly Blue, White and Red.

The final buy list will contain at least 20 cards that I can reasonably expect to buy for around $10. My final decision will be based primarily on lowest costs, but I will also factor in availability and ease of service into the equation. Of course, any special offers will make a difference as well -- so I'll be keeping an eye out for advertised discounts along the way!

I plan to make my purchases between tomorrow evening and the weekend -- so look out Monday for The Thrifty Djinn's first store rating extravaganza!

Later,

Don!


P.S. There's a lot of discussion over on the MTGO General Boards about the possibility of 'free' tourneys and such. I'll make a post on that as soon as the details become more concrete -- but keep your eye out for some new promotions for getting people to play more MTGO.

eBay: The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly

After spending my first 20 dollars/tickets on cards within the client, I'm planning on spending the last $10 of my initial start up on eBay or in one of the MTGO stores.

My first goal in building a budget MTGO collection is to try and finish as many 4x common playsets as I can. One of the best places to find those pre-built collections is eBay. So with PayPal account in hand, I wandered over to the den of iniquity that is eBay to see what I could get.

One of the best advantages of eBay is that their seller ratings give you some idea of how reliable the different sellers are. Personally, I don't buy from anyone on eBay with a zero or low feedback score, and any account that has just been created or had its name changed in the last month will scare me off as well.

Fortunately most MTG and MTGO sellers on eBay are relatively reputable and have good feedback ratings. So while not as secure as the reputable MTGO web-based stores, the chances of successfully completing an auction are good enough to make it worth your time.

One quick note -- you can get scammed on eBay, but you can protect yourself as well. The best way to protect yourself is through your credit card. Check with your credit card's bank/issuing agent about their policies on returned/fraudulent digital items including the MTGO store itself, along with the differing policies on PayPal and eBay transactions. My credit card will cover me for PayPal charges against my card in the event of an eBay purchase for physical items. However, they won't for digital goods. MTGO product kind of fits in the middle, and the representative I spoke with said that if the seller was listed as a 'Secure Seller' than MTGO goods would be covered. They also said an individual seller would be covered up to $50 on a single purchase. Regardless, checking with your credit card company is a good thing to do before venturing into the wilds of the online marketplace.

Okay, back to eBay. For the purposes of this experiment, my target was the TSP block of cards. I was reasonably certain that I could get one of the 4x common sets in the block for less than the estimated $10-15 dollars I would spend in tickets to get it online. Fortunately, there was one dealer offering just that over the weekend. Since Time Spiral was the big block, I put in a maximum bid of $7.50 for that set and a max bid of $5 on the two smaller sets in the block, Planar Chaos and Future Sight.

I was "in the lead" with all three auctions with only two days left to go. Things were looking good, coming into the last day of the auction. I was winning the Time Spiral auction with a bid of $4.88 and both the other two auctions with bids around $3. To be honest, I thought that was a reasonable price and likely to survive the final 12 hours.

Little did I know.

Actually, I did know that almost every auction on eBay gets the major amount of attention in its last hour. This case was to be no exception. With about 45 minutes to go in the auction, I was outbid on the Planar Chaos set. With about 20 minutes to go, the Time Spiral set was gone too. Shortly there after, the future of my owning a Future Sight common set went poof too.

In the end, the Time Spiral set went for $8.33. That's not bad for 400 commons plus land. The Future Sight set went for $5.50 meaning that the only person to outbid me won the auction. The real shocker was the Planar Chaos set. It went for a whopping $15.51! Who the heck would bid that much (and maybe more) for 240 commons? The answer was that the same guy won all three auctions. So he got a full TSP block playset of commons for $29.34. Maybe it's me, but I'm not telling anyone to spend that much on MTGO right now. But hey, I'm happy he got his set -- and it's still cheaper than some of the 'Buy It Now' prices you see for 4x common sets on eBay.

The good news is since I didn't spend any of my remaining $10 budget on eBay this month -- it's all going to go to one lucky store. Of course, you'll have to check in later this week to find out which store it will be -- because I don't know myself.

All I know is that The Thrifty Djinn is going shopping -- and everyone enjoys shopping for a bargain, right?

Later,

Don!

Alls well that ends well ...

As bad as my last attempt at trading went, the next one went much better.

To be honest, I've been looking at all four routes to build my collection, and the traditional tix-for-cards is still viable. I had the 20 tickets available to trade with the other player, but since that fell through -- I checked the boards in game. There were several good bots up and running, but nothing great, at least not right off the bat.

Then I saw it. The siren song of budget traders everywhere: 64 cards for 1 ticket.

I wasn't expecting a lot to be honest, but I figured what the heck. I could at least get started in building playsets of standard commons. But, much to my happy surprise -- the first scene that greeted me entering trade was a darn near full set of 10th Edition commons. Beyond that, near full playsets of Lorwyn and Morningtide.

I asked the owner if all his cards were available at 64-for-1 and he said, "Sure." I explained to him what my goals were, and he said he was more than happy to help. In fact, he even gave me a couple of extra pulls and some filler at the end to complete my sets. So for 14 tickets, I pretty much have 4x playsets of 10th Ed, Morningtide and Lorwyn. I think I'm short three Incinerates and one Terror, and two Unholy Strengths ... but that's about it.

So, dear Chef Woods -- this Bud's for you. When I start to think there's too many bozos online trading cards, you reminded me that people can still be nice out there.

Since Chef did a great job of setting my up for success -- I still had a few tickets left to trade for uncommons and to pick up those few missing commons. Karn Evil Nine had some great commons and uncommons for sale -- including a lot of Invasion block commons. No Armadillo Cloaks or Terminates, but he did have most of the 2/2 bears like Gaea's Skyfolk and a number of other helpers like Shackles and Quiron Elves. A pair of bots rounded out my other trades, with Natas70 having a lot of bargains in the 16 for 1 bin, and lark_mtg having a good filler selection as well.

As for my last $1o left for this month, and my first monthly $15, I'm looking to the stores and the evil that is eBay. I'd like to finish out my 4x standard commons, and then add some cheap uncommons and rares to build a set of good budget decks. I'm likely to start with a few tribal decks, since I've always been a Merfolk fan, and I love me some some Angels as well. Goblins can be cheap to build as well, except for a couple of the high end rares. Of course, I could go with Slivers, but I don't want to get on too many folk's block lists!

So, I'll be poking at the major MTGO card sites over the next few days and hoping for some luck on eBay. I'll let you all know how it turns out, and hopefully post as CSV file for my first month's efforts pretty soon. I'm actually pretty impressed with how much you can get for very little right now.

Later,

Don!

Sometimes you can't trust people ...

I guess you can file this under, "I saw this coming."

As of this morning, of the four choices in building your collection, no one voted to use the official offline boards. However earlier this week, I did my due diligence and paid them a visit anyway. Once I was over there, I thought I had found a great deal -- someone selling playsets of commons for reasonable prices.

I e-mailed them per their request, and I agreed to buy six full common playsets for 20 tickets. I tried to catch the person online, but they weren't available. I sent a second e-mail, which went unanswered. I should have been wary then -- but I spent the majority of Friday online in MTGO waiting for them to logon.

I checked his board thread this morning, and he said all the sets were gone -- I was lucky I had already sent my e-mail earlier this week -- right?

This morning, I jumped on MTGO and he was logged on into the client -- but surprise, all the sets had been sold -- even the ones he had agreed to sell to me. The story I was told was that supposedly one person had bought 40 of the sets. Sigh, so either I'd been lied to -- or he was impatient, but the end result is likely someone else is simply going to put the sets up on eBay or such just for profit.

I'm going to have to do a bit of research, but I can tell you any entity related to the 'BezelShop' account, Rozbity_Bezel boards account or Hubert Multana is not to be trusted at their word.

Here's this morning's conversation in MTGO:

9:18 AM ThriftyDjinn: Hey!
9:18 AM BezelShop: hi
9:19 AM ThriftyDjinn: You sold all the sets?
9:19 AM BezelShop: yeah, sorry but i couldnt catch
9:19 AM BezelShop: catch u
9:20 AM ThriftyDjinn: Sigh, I was online almost all day yesterday waiting for you to logon
9:20 AM BezelShop: i was only 2-3 hours on-line
9:21 AM BezelShop: and then one guy took 40 sets
9:21 AM ThriftyDjinn: But I e-mailed you like you ased and we had a deal, or so I thought
9:21 AM ThriftyDjinn: asked
BezelShop has left the conversation.

So, at the end of the day -- what did I learn from this? Well, I learned that you can get some really good deals by checking out the official online boards -- but it's definitely a Caveat Emptor environment.

BTW, I let 'BezelShop' know that I posted here and also back on his thread on the official boards -- it will be interesting to see if there's any response. You just have to love a good opportunity for weekend drama, right?

For me though, it means I'm back to the client to find some better trading partners -- and I actually have a few good experiences I'll post about tonight. I just need to get my notes in order!

Later,

Don!


*** Drama Update ***

He did at least answer the post on the boards, here's a cut/paste:

-----------------------------------------------------------------

lol, this guy is funny. here's the situation. he wanted to buy 4x of all and send me an email about that, sure thats true. i anwered him :

"hello sure, not a problem. i will be on-line in about 10 hours, im in
school now. u must catch me on-line (bezelshop)

all x4 is 20 tickets

cya!"

now he is crying, couse he catched me on-line when all the set were sold, couse many people wanted to buy them and were on-line earlier. i did not told that guy, that the sets will be waiting for him forever. i sold over 145 common sets in few days and all my customers were satisfied.

case is over.

-----------------------------------------------------------------

I also spoke to him in game afterwards, let's just say that he's not a very friendly or conscientious person. I really do think you can get some good deals out there, but the lesson I learned here was that some of these folks just aren't nice people to deal with.

The adventure starts here ... sort of

Well, I've made my first purchase in the online store -- redeeming my starter coupon. Sort of. Most of it, anyway.

I was going to go ahead and buy 10 tickets with the $9.99 online coupon, and pay the entire one cent balance with my credit card. Unfortunately, you can't use a coupon in conjunction with your credit card for a purchase right now -- so I had to buy only nine tickets instead of my planned 10.

On the up side, I called the customer support folks and they were both quick and friendly in explaining the issue to me -- and promised that my remaining 99 cents would be available on the coupon for a later purchase once that functionality in the store is addressed.

So now I have my first nine tickets, and I'm starting to look at how to spend the rest of my $20 for this month. Plus, I'm looking ahead to next week when I can spend my first scheduled $15. This is where I'll need your help.

LOOK at the poll to the right. Pick a choice, or post a reply to this blog note. What should I do with my initial seed monies to get the most out of MTGO? My initial thoughts are to simply get the best pool of cards I can to play in the casual room -- since there's not a lot else to do in MTGO right now. With that having been said, there's several different ways to go about getting the most cards for my money.

1. Buy tickets, trade for cards in bulk.

There are a few bots and a few live traders online now, however I don't see any of the 32-for-1 trade bots or any offers in that range in the marketplace. However, I could go over to the ticker and stalk the room for a bit and see who is willing to sell commons and such at a rate of 32-to-1 or better.

2. Check out the local dealers.

I would think since the in game trading functionality is kind of wonky right now, some of the full-time MTGO sites would have sales on their wares that they would normally sell in game through bots and locally-manned accounts. If anyone knows of any of the dealers making bulk sales of commons or such online -- let me know, and I'll a) Check them out, and b) post a link here for others to peruse.

3. The evil that is eBay.

I'm definitely looking at heading over to eBay and seeing what 4x commons sets they have available. I'm reasonably sure I should be able to get a set of 4x standard commons relatively cheaply -- but I'm not so sure that eBay is the cheapest way to do that. However, right now, eBay may well be the most reliable.

4. Online trading posts.

There's an official online trading board over in the official WotC boards. Both paper and digital cards get swapped there, but I'm leery of the process. Of course, any deal that ends in a cards for tickets trade in game is safe -- but I'm thinking many of the posters want an out of game transaction ... that's not near as safe.

There may be more options than those -- please let me know if I'm missing something obvious. I'm not guaranteeing I'll go by the results of the poll -- but I'd really like to start playing on a budget and not just talking it about it so much!

Oh, one final note -- I got a couple of e-mails to my last request for information regarding getting about in v3. Probably the best source of information listed a post on the official boards from tempesteye -- LINK HERE -- that was posted late in beta. I know I learned a lot about the various chat line commands, and the rest of the information still seems to apply to the current build.

As always, please don't hesitate to let me know how I can make The Thrifty Djinn a more useful and enjoyable resource for all your budget MTGO needs.

Thanks,

Don!

Same old song and dance ...

Nothing really good or bad about the state of v3 over the weekend. It is what it is.

It appears that the general frustration level from the MTGO community is beginning to come down. Not that people are suddenly happy about v3, just that they're beginning to realize that nothing that's said is going to make the program any better right now. The first (of quite a few) patches is due this week -- and a SP1 is likely to be out in a couple of weeks.

The initial fixes are supposed to deal with the problems regarding chat fonts and 'escrow' problems in the client. I think what a lot of people want to see is an end to the 'docking' mechanism that has been universally panned since it was launched. For the life of me, I don't understand how that piece of programming was left in the release client -- it's awkward, not user-friendly and just a sharp jab in the eye visually. Not to mention that the icons for using the 'docking feature' aren't intuitive at all. My son asked what the 'pen tip' icon was, and I had to explain to him the concept of really old writing implements that had to be dipped in ink to function. I think that there could have been a much more descriptive icon for that -- but of course, if the dock goes away, I won't miss that icon's departure at all.

Anyway, I'm still waiting to for a couple of things to get cleared up before I dive into the MTGO pool again. The marketplace is still not very useful, with both the 'bots not being out in force yet -- plus the annoying 'pop to top' bug every time someone posts as new ad -- making it tough to see any of the items past the ones on your initial view screen.

Speaking of which -- has anyone seen a good article or post for teaching players how to navigate around in v3? I'm still having fun playing with the different colors in chat -- but that's a feature that's not highlighted in any official capacity, and I imagine there's a lot of other features in this client that I'm equally unaware of. If you know of a good resource for getting to know the new client, let me know and I'll link to it here.

As always, thanks for taking the time to read the blog -- hopefully we can get to the intended purpose of the blog soon. Things should begin settling down soon enough.

Later,

Don!

Holding pattern

Hey all, if you haven't noticed -- this blog is kind of in a holding pattern at the moment. The release of v3 has been a little bumpy for Magic Online right now, and I expect it to remain that way for the next few days at least.

That presents a pretty large challenge for a project like this -- when the only reliable and repeatable method for getting cards and such is through the MTGO online store.

The first few 'bots have come online today, and I'll put up a new poll later this evening. The original poll showed that 71% of you were looking forward to having the bots return, with 15% of you happy that they're gone. The remaining 12% of folks weren't concerned one way or another.

Store coupons, like the one you get when you start a new account aren't working either. So, I'm sitting on the initial $9.99 coupon for the ThriftyDjinn screen name as we speak.

With all that having been said, if anyone knows of any good places or value deals for people to get cards -- feel free to add a comment to the blog, or drop me an e-mail at thrifty.djinn@gmail.com to let me know. I'll post the best ideas up here and hopefully some of our early adopters can get a good bargain while they're waiting for the masses to come running into MTGO.

Okay, one final note -- I'd like to thank everyone who has visited the site over the past week. Someone overnight was the 1,500th visitor, and I've had more than 340 hits from unique IP addresses -- that's not bad for an initial 'word of mouth' blog opening. I hope that as the kinks get worked out in MTGO and this blog that it will be a place you want to recommend to your friends and anyone interested in playing Magic Online.

Later,

Don!

Free drafts that aren't really free ...

UPDATE 2 -- Straight from Worth <-- Click the link for updated info!

*** UPDATE ***

According to Adept_Ponza in game, Scott (Larabee, I assume) said there would be no more free drafts today and that they had the information they needed.

*** End Update ***


File this one under 'Also Expected' regarding the troubles with MTGO.

As some of you already know, Worth Wollpert came on to the official boards yesterday to discuss when the drafts would be up and running in MTGO. He said that they hoped to have them up Friday afternoon and would run a few no ticket/no product required events to test the system.

Well, nothing fires up the masses like a chance at free product, right?

There was one small hitch. The 'free' drafts required the players to have the product, and would not allow players to enter the event unless they had the product. Players who managed to enter the 'free' drafts were to be reimbursed via a coupon for replacement product, i.e. three packs and two tickets.

Needless to say, the road to H-E-Double Hockey Sticks is paved with good intentions. So on top of all the rest of the hubub in game and on the various MTGO boards -- people are accusing Worth of a bait-and-switch.

I gotta admit, Worth kind of screwed the pooch with this one. But I also don't think the idea was a bad one. It just needed some more work, and a lot more clarity in communication.

Face it folks, right now they're just trying to get v3 up, running and semi-stable. Worth's going to have to make a lot of snap decisions on a thousand different things between now and the end of the month, when hopefully things will get better. If this is the worst mistake that gets made, then so be it.

With that having been said, Worth's kind of saying now that there may actually be some real no ticket/no product drafts to test the system in the near future -- so keep your eyes out for that in game and on the official boards. No promises mind you, but I'd be surprised if there isn't some sort of product giveaway to ease the rampant flames currently going on around the release of v3.

One big thing to note, I can tell you that the current management doesn't like to give away free product near as much as the previous administration. That's both a good and bad thing. Good, because it shows they have faith in their processes and a concern for the market -- both WotC's store and the secondary market. Bad, because, well -- frankly people like free stuff. Used wisely, free stuff can keep people interested in a product and show that they're more than just a source of easy income for the company.

Anyway, I'll try and update the blog with any news as it comes in regarding free drafts or anything else that will help stretch that MTGO dollar!

Later,

Don!

P.S. Feel free to chat me up in game if you see me, and don't hesitate to add ThriftyDjinn to your friends list. I really appreciate all the support you all have given me so far, and I really hope that once stuff settles down that this project/blog will be of value to the MTGO community.