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!
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6 comments:
Why would playing slivers get you on people's block lists? I'm new and don't understand that part.
Hey Don!
I've been following your blog now for some time and I feel like I've got to post something to the story.
First of all: The approach is nice and I like it. Since I haven't got too much money to spend for Magic, I'll probably pick up some of your advice/ experiences.
BUT: 64 for 1 is really not too much of a great deal. In V2.5 you were able to get commons für 128 for 1 and sometimes even for 256 for 1. No kidding. Of course these bots would not have nearly complete playsets, but you could've taken all the interesting cards from them and fill up your collection with the 64:1 offer. Just a suggestion. With card prices currently dropping a lot, i don't feel like 64:1 is really the end of the line. Soon enough the bots will be coming back and competition will lead to even more generous offers. Also you can maybe expect 32:1 Uncommons trades again. Not too bad, too. Now I need to go to start building a nice Pauper Prismatic Singleton Deck. Won't cost more than, say, 5 tickets. Could be a reasonable approach for you as well since you're building on a budget, too. :-)
See you!
Skip,
Playing Slivers in the casual room is one of those little things that annoy some people. Occasionally, you'll see advertisements for a game in there where people will ask for "No Counters" or "No Land Destruction" or "No Slivers."
I think people think of a slivers tribal deck as a no-brain required, dumb luck annoying deck. Personally, as the only deck to put me in a PTQ final -- I have a soft spot for the little buggers.
Any deck that seems over played or unoriginal can be annoying in the casual room of MTGO -- the debates of what decks belong in the casual room have raged on since the rooms were invented.
I subscribe to the old policy of play anything you want in casual -- but respect the wishes of others. In other words, if you don;t enjoy playing against counters, burn, discard, Land D, or slivers -- put it in your game tag description and play to your heart's content.
However, if you enjoy playing those kind of decks -- be considerate of those who don't. If you're playing a blue-based permission deck and someone quits after the first counterspell -- don't be cranky about it, just move on to the next game. If it happens too often, consider playing in the serious decks room.
With the current limited cards I have now, my "best" deck is probably one of the most annoying decks I've ever played. Merfolk tribal with lits of tapppers and tap effects. I think I gained more than 300 life Sunday in one game -- and I really felt bad about the other player. He said he thought the deck was good though, especially being rare-free and with only six uncommons.
Anyway, that's just my take -- I think the idea of budget decks for the casual room is definitely something I'll be writing about a lot in the future.
Later,
Don!
ZerschlagenV1001,
Yeah, I miss the "good old days" of the 128-for-1 bots back in 2.5, and I think we may soon see them again. However, I'm really trying to appeal to the newer player and folks trying to get by on the limited functionality we have in MTGO's v3.
I don't see the bots coming back until at least SP1, and maybe later. There are some serious flaws in the trade function of MTGO, and the current marketplace setup just plain bites.
I think the longer you hold out from spending in MTGO, the better you'll do -- at least for right now. One of the longer columns I have planed for later this week/month has to do with the good/bad effects of no redemption in the current marketplace.
To make a long story short, with redemption not slated to be turned back on until the late summer or fall -- every card that enters the system will stay in the system. Think about that, every 8-person draft that fires adds another 24 rares, 72 uncommons and 264 commons to the overall community pool -- with nowhere to go.
If the overall player base remains stable or even decreases -- the market for commons, uncommons and cheap rares will fall quickly.
Anyway, keep an eye out for my market analysis post on that later -- but it seems the cost to play is only going down except for limited events where the floor price is upheld by the pack price of cards.
Later,
Don!
I was just wondering if you tried using the buying boards or whatever? In my experience you can get common playsets for 3-4 tix pretty soon after they come out that way, and now with the v3 price drop it should be even easier, no?
I really like it when folks get together and share views.
Great website, continue the good work!
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