Magic: The Gathering

[Norellicus]

Goddamnit.

I told myself when I started Magic a year ago that I didn't want to get sucked in, just wanted to have fun with it; but I'm already itching to do another draft and the last one was only a week ago...

[zoobernut]

Goddamnit.

I told myself when I started Magic a year ago that I didn't want to get sucked in, just wanted to have fun with it; but I'm already itching to do another draft and the last one was only a week ago...

What I had to do to stop buying cards and reduce the amount I spent on magic was I stopped buying sealed product at all with this new set and the only way I get new cards is playing sealed and draft. Totally worthwhile. Give in and do the drafts. My last draft I drafted zombie tribal ended up with a decent blue/white/black deck and went 3-1 the only loss I had was because I didn't mulligan when I should have. I ended up getting 2 prize packs though one of which had a Liliana in it so I was happy. My three draft packs didn't have any decent rares in them though.

Falkenrath Nobles is one of my favorite cards in limited that is a beast every time it hits the board and over time does so much damage to my opponents.

[Xerlic]

Grats on the playmat Marajade. I missed states since my fiancee's birthday was this last Saturday. I don't think I would have done well running Birthing Pod with all these Wolf Run decks, anyways.

Goddamnit.

I told myself when I started Magic a year ago that I didn't want to get sucked in, just wanted to have fun with it; but I'm already itching to do another draft and the last one was only a week ago...

Only 1 draft a week? One of the LGS I go to runs 3 drafts every Saturday on top of a Standard tournament, and there are people that do all 3 drafts.

Seriously though, drafting can get stupidly expensive, but it's definitely more efficient than cracking your own packs. Especially if you get good at it. I try to limit myself to one draft a week, but I much prefer constructed format.

[Norellicus]

Well, I'm sure the LGS in the area does stuff regularly; I just mean I'm already jonesing to do it again and it was only a week ago that I did one.

[dabis]

I recently got back into MTG with another friend of mine who had some cards, and I gotta agree with the above posters that buying packs and playing in drafts can be addicting.

Since starting back up with the game a week or two before inni, I have already spent cash and participated in 2 draft tourneys, as well as buying a box of inni and m12 to get a bit of a collection started for trading purposes. I also ended up spending another 20 on some good singles for my mono black zombie deck, which I will post a devilish for once I get home from class.

[dabis]

Alright, as promised above, I'm gonna post my decklist for my mono black zombie deck, and I would appreciate any input you more seasoned players have to give me. Keep in mind I have been playing MTG now for about 3-4 weeks, and without further ado, here is my deck:

Mana:
21 Swamps

Creatures:
x4 Cemetery reaper
x4 Diregraf ghoul
x3 Unbreathing horde
x3 Adaptive automaton
x3 Walking corpse
x2 Vengeful Pharaoh

Enchantments:
x2 Call to the grave
x2 Zombie infestation
x2 Endless ranks of the dead

Instants:
x3 Alter's reap
x2 Go for the throat
x2 Doom blade

Sorcery:
x1 Army of the damned
x2 Moan of the unhallowed
x3 Ghoulcaller's chant

Artifacts:
x2 Grimoire of the dead

Total: 61 cards atm.

Thanks in advance for any suggestions, and as far as B/U zombies go, I pulled a lot more good black zombie cards in my boxes as opposed to blue, which is why I went mono black for this first attempt at a decent standard deck. I only really have a snapcaster and 2 of the laboratory cards that allow for zombies to be played for 0 cost, so the rest of the rare/mythic blue zombies from innistrad and such I would need to buy or trade for first to run this deck B/U. Since I'm not too keen on blowing like, $30-40 on just snapcasters and skaab ruinators atm, I have purposfully shied away from B/U until I can figure out if it really is leagues ahead of mono black in terms of difficulty to beat.

[Xerlic]

BG needs [card] tags...

First off, how do you feel about your mana base? I know it's only a mono colored deck, but 21 lands seems kind of low. I don't know too much about zombies, but I would take out the Walking Corpses and Zombie Infestations. A 2CC vanilla 2/2 seems pretty lackluster tho I don't know what you'd replace it with. I don't see when you'll ever want to discard 2 cards just to get a 2/2 token. Is this deck just for fun? It seems that a Day of Judgement or a Slagstorm will ruin your day.

Kinda cool story - I was in my parents' neighborhood last weekend, so I stopped by and started digging around in my old bedroom to find some of my old cards. Other than a brief stint in Ravnica block when I bought a box of Ravnica and Dissention, the last time I played seriously was during Urza/Mercadian. I found my Ravnica binder which had a bunch of shock lands, a Life from the Loam and a Dark Confidant in it and some old janky decks that I had made. I also found a stack of some random old cards: a bunch of beta commons (Disintegrate, Disenchant, Juggernaut), an Unlimited Balance, a Revised Mind Twist, Revised Fork, Revised Wheel of Fortune.

Going through the decks, I found one was the remnants of a Type 1 land destruction deck that had some cool stuff in it: 4 Sinkholes (2 beta), 1 Alpha Ice Storm, 2 Wastelands, 1 Rishadan Port, a Savannah and a beat to hell Unlimited Plateau. I thought I had more duals, but I later found out what happened to them.. One deck was a mono-white Mercadian Rebel deck that had nothing of value. One was a mono-red deck that had like 20 beta mountains in it. And the last was a mono-blue deck. I started pricing it out, and was kinda bummed that the only thing of worth in it were 2 Grim Monoliths. Morphling and Masticore aren't the powerhouses that they were back in the day. I remember having fun playing it, so I kept it together for casuals.

So I used it to play some guy this past Monday and on turn 1 I brainstorm, which happened to be a Mercadian Masques foil. The guy instantly remarks on it and asks me what I valued it at. I found a ton of Brainstorms from both IA and MM, and I know it's been reprinted to hell so I say it can't be worth more than a few bucks. The guy instantly pulls out his binder and asks me to trade it. I tell him I don't really like trading older cards especially if it's for standard cards (and partly for sentimental reasons), and he starts offering to buy it. First he offers 10$ and I decline and he says 20$. So I immediately think that's weird and tell him no. We end up finishing our game and he asks me if I plan to trade/sell it to let him know. When I get home, I look it up and an english foil Brainstorm is anywhere between 50-80$ with the Japanese pushing 200$. All I can say is WTF.

To counteract the bragging, here's the bad news. I couldn't find my old binder, which I think had some decent stuff in it, but I'm not 100% sure. I remember it having a revised Volcanic Island and several Gaea's Cradles among other random Urza's block rares. I also vaguely remember selling stuff on Ebay years back, so I checked my paypal history and saw that I sold 3 taigas for 25$, 2 Badlands for 20$ and 3 Bayous for 30$. That definitely stung, but what hurt the most was seeing the payment for 86$ I received for an Unlimited Mox Emerald. Ah well, back in 2002 that was a decent amount of money for a starving college kid. Sorry for the long post.

[Olo401]

It makes me cringe to think that Wastelands are worth $50 now.. I used to have at least 20 of 'em in my old binder.

[Weltall]

It makes me cringe to think that Wastelands are worth $50 now.. I used to have at least 20 of 'em in my old binder.

Had at LEAST 50 when they were .75 cents.

[zoobernut]

I had the same experience when I realized that Force of Will topped out at almost $90 for a couple of weeks. They were not an uncommon card to have and they were good but not very valuable when Alliances came out.

[Xerlic]

There were quite a few cards like that.

Bazaar of Baghdad was a 10 dollar card cos nobody wanted to discard cards.

Karakas was just a cool looking plains. The only land from Legends that people thought was good was Pendelhaven cos you could make your 1/1 Scryb Sprites into a 2/3 flyer on turn 2 lol.

Tabernacle was dirt cheap cos who wanted to pay 1 mana for their creatures every turn. Mishra's Workshop was dirt cheap cos who made decks based on artifacts and what's a mana curve?

[zoobernut]

Ironic because pendelhaven is worth nothing now. Though I admit it was my favorite land from legends back then too. Loved pendelhaven in my weenie aggro deck.

[Yuri-G]

man I never had anything that valuable. I hate you all. I played from around Fallen Empires through Saga and I can't remember ever pulling much of a money rare, nor trading for them. I had terrible luck and a poor understanding of card value.

then again, when I started back up I bought a starter deck of Invasion since it was cheap, and I pulled a foil Reya. so that was nice. certainly offset the sting of getting a booster of 4th and pulling fucking Web...

[oldoldman]

Ironic because pendelhaven is worth nothing now. Though I admit it was my favorite land from legends back then too. Loved pendelhaven in my weenie aggro deck.

It's worth nothing because they reprinted it in time spiral. Still has a place in elf decks

[Tomiko]

That definitely stung, but what hurt the most was seeing the payment for 86$ I received for an Unlimited Mox Emerald. Ah well, back in 2002 that was a decent amount of money for a starving college kid. Sorry for the long post.

That wasn't bad back then. I think that was about the time I got my Sapphire for around $100.

Good to hear you didn't get rid of the Brainstorm to that guy.

[Tricen]

Made some small changes to my Solar Flare deck and I am definitely feeling a lot better about it. It's weird, my friend that I pool cards with built Solar Flare as well, but he made his aimed towards aggro and I just made mine how I felt it should be, and I have yet to have any issue with an aggro matchup and his is kind of shaky lol.

[Xerlic]

I played my Junk Pod deck in a standard tournament last night. My round 2 match was against someone running Wolf Run Ramp. Third game I got land screwed at 4 lands and lost to Kessig with 3 Acidic Slimes in my hand. I wanted to punch my deck across the room.

I also dropped my mana dorks in favor of running 4 Viridian Emissaries and 3 Perilous Myrs. I was skeptical about doing this, at first, but it works out really well against aggro. Birds don't trade on block and opponents usually are more than happy to send them to the graveyard. Emissaries, on the other hand, can trade with a lot of early dropped creatures and most opponents don't want to kill them so they're great for surviving until mid/late game.

[Syntex]

I have a perfect condition set of 4 Chinese wastelands somewhere.

[Olo401]

A couple friends of mine (one is a minor partner in the store I play at, the other is one of the top female players in the world) decided to go on a two month worldwide trip playing in Grand Prix stops in Montreal, Milan, Brisbane, Santiago, Hiroshima and San Diego - part as a couples vacation, and part to grind out enough competitive and pro PW points to qualify for the Pro Tour in 2012. Over the weekend the better half finished 4th in Santiago (which got her $1500 plus an auto-invite to PT Honolulu including airfare). Crazy..

Oh and eye candy too - new box art for the upcoming Graveborn premium deck:

http://a2.sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphot...19622294_n.jpg

[Xerlic]

Nice! Congrats to your friend.

How much do the premium decks usually run? I just noticed Entomb is included in that deck.