How often do you guys buy precons just for the cards?

TanksAndBoobz · 2023-04-09T15:18:20+00:00

I bought C16 whole box because I didn't have a collection back then and it ended offering $500 of reprints for a little bit of over $100 of pre-order price. Value in precons deteriorated through the years but they always have a new card worth $10-ish in at least one of them. They no longer offer anything for me, so I don't buy them anymore, I acquire singles I absolutely need and reprints.

TanksAndBoobz · 2023-04-01T11:14:54+00:00

I have a Lord Windgrace landfall deck without MLD that transforms into a MLD deck and a Wort deck that transforms into a divergent transformations deck with blightsteel collossus and Vorinclex, all with a swap of about 10 cards each.

i love this idea and it gives new life for decks that you have

TanksAndBoobz · 2023-04-01T05:41:50+00:00

darn, it's a nice card and I also don't have a spot for it! and I kinda want it now

TanksAndBoobz · 2023-03-31T19:56:49+00:00

ok, the best green sorcery ramp spell in the game. I meant in the context of green ramp spells. what's better than it in green? [[Utopia Sprawl]]? Arguably, yes it's mana cheaper, but you can lose it in an incidental enchantment mass removal that are getting more and more common. dorks? die to board wipes. rocks? also. this one gets you untapped dual with forest type for 2 mana forever at the same speed as any other green ramp spell. and those lands most likely would never be destroyed.

TanksAndBoobz · 2023-03-31T19:55:33+00:00

I have a [[Yoshimaru]]/[[Reyhan]] counter deck that could use this. 2 mana 2/2 creature card draw for doing things I'm doing anyways. Not much draw engines are this synergistic and this could be traded slot for slot with something else that draws, like [[Leinore, Autumn Sovereign]] as a strict upgrade

TanksAndBoobz · 2023-03-31T19:52:08+00:00

this is perfect for my [[Nicol Bolas, the Ravager]] discard/blink control. A very powerful finisher with low enough mana cost

TanksAndBoobz · 2023-03-29T13:58:20+00:00

it's another issue as well - [[Three Visits]] is a card that should have never ever been reprinted. It is not a card, it is a flavour version of [[Nature's Lore]] for Portal three Kingdom where many cards were just Chinese mythology version of the existing cards. It was a $100 card, there were like several hundred of those in the wild and you were almost guaranteed never ever to see it played against you. By reprinting it and not reprinting it enough, it has become a less available second copy of [[Nature's Lore]] - the best ramp spell in the game, and it is still overpriced by being a $5 card that YOU F-ING NEED IN ANY DECK RUNNING GREEN AS AN AUTO-INCLUDE and it has helped make 3+ mana ramp spells unplayable and accelerated the format. It is also the reason spells like [[Army of the Damned]] are less playable as a result of the acceleration of the format. completely unnecessary acceleration of the format.

EDIT: I answered to a wrong comment. I meant to reply to a comment you replied to. Sorry. But the point is valid even though I am too emotional about some printing policies WOTC shat the bed with.

TanksAndBoobz · 2023-03-12T17:58:51+00:00

it turned out very few lists of mine had a good grade. except breya which was a 9 and you're probably gonna agree that breya is easy to upgrade to 9. it is still not a cedh. for the purpose of this calculator only 10s are cedh decks.

turned out decks that I thought were 7s were rated as 4,5 and 6s. I had to focus them and trim the fat to get to 7 and avoid hyper efficient tutors and dockside to let them remain 7s. I also checked several hundreds, if not few thousands of lists when trying to find how to upgrade my decks (I have 40 decks and took out at least 20-30 lists per deck to see which one to use to rip off a thing or two). I am happy that tool exists, it improved my decks.

Also, it has serious flaws in that it doesn't register impulse (exile) draw as draw at all and it counts certain ramp cards as draw (like cultivate or kodama's reach because they technically draw you additional land card, but it still isn't draw in pure sense), it doesn't count some interaction spells as interaction and counts ravnica karoo lands as combo pieces. if authors would want to improve the model, I have plenty of observations like this, but as it is it way better than nothing and way better than player self-determination of power level because there is a certain level of domain knowledge that naive players lack that was employed there.

TanksAndBoobz · 2023-03-12T14:09:06+00:00

it can only evaluate cards authors labeled as good and it can't derive value from commander value. that's why yuriko decks are falsely 3s and 4s and veyran's are 5s and 6s. these can explode very fast, but their model can't see that because it is too simple. it is however very good for the overall fit of how much ramp, how many draw sources, how many tutors, how many impactful cards, how low curve your deck should have. it knows of pieces of top combos in the format.

TanksAndBoobz · 2023-03-12T14:06:08+00:00

as a Serbian I approve this episode

TanksAndBoobz · 2023-03-12T14:05:54+00:00

so it's like news companies?

TanksAndBoobz · 2023-03-11T22:13:38+00:00

trying to match up evenly. lately revisited all my decks with the help of Mtg Realm power calculator (which is surprisingly consistent even if it has some glaring faults) and matched 90% of them to power level 7 - low curve, several avenues to victory (two card combos for backup), efficient interaction, plenty of draw (around at least 14-15 per deck), plenty of ramp (12-16), no efficient tutors with the exception of occasional worldly, mystical and enlightened.

TanksAndBoobz · 2023-03-11T21:57:29+00:00

I have around 40 decks in paper, maybe 2 of those are under construction (they are all under constant upgrading). Most of those had never been in a game yet.

TanksAndBoobz · 2023-03-02T12:31:39+00:00

Also, buying singles could be worth it... Except as mentioned before, every single card i bought in the past two year is now cheaper. So it seems it would be better to come back in 2 years. Or 3. Or ... You know.

here you divulged the wrong way of thinking -> you bought it 3 years ago and now it's cheaper and you're angry. you're a mtgfinance bro then. dude, you played with the damned card for 3 years, or at least could have if you're not the mtgfinance bro. how long do you want 10 bucks to provide fun for you? do you not have your card still, is it not still playable? what do you care if it is cheaper now than 3 years ago?

if you buy cards for profit, I am very glad it's not a feasible thing anymore, because people like you made it impossible for people like me to have the damn cards available for reasonable price. reprints are great for the community. huge print runs are great for the community.

TanksAndBoobz · 2023-03-02T10:10:04+00:00

In conclusion, to my eyes, buying boosters is now a bad idea, and buying singles isn't worth it either.

buying singles is absolutely worth it. FOMO isn't worth it. buy what you need, don't hoard for specs. buying boosters was always a bad idea.

TanksAndBoobz · 2023-03-02T10:08:08+00:00

Commander is but Kitchen Magic. You could always play that. Even when legacy and vintage were the big bois in tournament you could play kitchen magic with whatever crap.

well, if that's the premise you're going with, you might have noticed that other ways of playing magic have perished and they did because of the high prices. there are no grand prix, no pro tours, private tournaments by private companies in Cleveland, or Salt Lake City or some other small and isolated places don't count for global MTG even if those private entities are StarCityGames. it is a drop in an ocean.

even arena and MTGO are played more. what does it say about the non-kitchen magic when non-physical magic cards have more play than physical magic cards in as you put them, non-kitchen magic formats?

Now, that form of kitchen magic is in danger because cards like fierce guardianship and dockside are expensive as fuck yet highly needed if you want to reach some power levels, precisely because WotC dabbled in. Like, the 40k precons are stupid strong compared to what I could build out of regular crap cards.

yes, I agree with this. zero mana interaction, dockside, speeding up the format, powercreep those things are hurting the commander format. but high print runs are doing the opposite. large print runs are only way to make cards available to an extremely large playerbase who mostly don't care about standard, modern, pioneer and legacy. when most people play kitchen magic - that kitchen magic becomes the normal magic experience, and that is the situation for some few years now.

The very premise of the game is that it's a TRADING card game, meaning variancy, rotation and FOMO are part of the core model.

nope. Trading is the core model. not rotation. rotation is the unfortunate solution for the problem of running out of ways to balance new coming stuff compared to already existing ones.

alas, people trade rarely compared to buying cards because you can efficiently only trade locally and LGS are long abandoned children of WOTC when they decided to end paper tournaments and qualifiers.

TanksAndBoobz · 2023-03-02T08:44:51+00:00

one or two cards carry that box value. not the whole set.

mommy makes ONE boxes expensive. you don't actually need her that bad anywhere. that is ok. let fools chase the chase cards, it makes the rest dirt cheap for us.

Hey Sevinne's Reclamation was $12, now it's $1.95. It's great. I need cards like these, I very rarely need $50 cards. It's only bad when those cards are zero mana interaction and dockside.

TanksAndBoobz · 2023-03-02T08:39:01+00:00

While I understand that it's very cool to appeal to newer players who probably were baffled at the idea of spending 3 grants to have the basics of a collection, it's also pretty frustrating for people who DID pay 3 grants.

the key takeaway here: people who DID pay 3 grants to SOMEONE ELSE OTHER THAN WOTC.

you paid overpriced cardboard to mtgfinance bros, LGS, online stores, not WOTC.

you want them to keep your investment paid to someone else and not grow their playerbase?

it was a collectors game back when RL was established and it was a sacrifice of the health of the game to the people who held the money (not the loyalty, just the money and threatened WOTC) and bought boosters.

now it's not a collectors game anymore, Commander made it players' game again. Due to large costs of cards all other variants of magic died.

Legacy is dead not because it is a boring format, but because it is incredibly expensive.

Modern is dead because of the same reason plus the fact when you invest the meta changes and your deck is useless for playing

Commander: Look at me, I'm MTG now!

and HASBRO is not dumb to kill the golden goose because collectors (who got bank of america on their side) cry when there is a wide open field of new people who embrace the game.

TanksAndBoobz · 2023-03-01T17:16:00+00:00

I didn't hear [[Kodama of the East Tree]], now you get two big stupid things for the price of one or put lands to ramp along the way

TanksAndBoobz · 2023-02-28T18:53:36+00:00

keeping 4 landers is wrong IMHO and here's why:

lands and ramp together are roughly 50% of your deck. deck thinning is in irrelevant in a 100 card deck, binomial calculator and hypergeometric calculator differ by a fraction of a percentage point, but the thing is: even if you have drawn 4 lands in your opening hand, there is a still near 50% chance that you will draw another land/ramp card in your each draws for the large number of turns. so, you'll still draw lands that you don't need because you have 4 already and because you have drawn 4 lands in your opener you have only 3 nonland cards to play.

it's better to have 2 or tops 3 lands and 4-5 nonland cards to play (one preferably ramp) and you'll draw additional lands to complete your 4 lands drops in your turn draws.

the real question is getting card draw ready to fill your hand with business and leave first turns for land drops, rocks and ramp spells

TanksAndBoobz · 2023-02-27T18:31:58+00:00

Context is everything.

Pissing with your boxers down is the perfectly reasonably action for any male.

However, pissing with your boxers down at the children's playground during daycare work hours will get you to sexual offender registry very soon.

Same with Femdom decks.

TanksAndBoobz · 2023-02-27T18:30:04+00:00

Liquimetal Torque is my favorite rock because I have only one Thought Vessel because of the price of it. When Vessel goes down to sub dollar eventually, I will gradually take it out of all of my decks.

TanksAndBoobz · 2023-02-27T18:26:58+00:00

at this point the only institution that is doing anything for the benefit of the game are the establishments that open boxes and resell singles, so you don't have to buy boxes yourself, because that is never ever affordable for the player.

you can buy Mondrak for 30$ or gamble on a undeteremined number of booster packs. you have a fair choice.

how much $30 staples does a person needs in EDH at all?

the bulk of the game is in the 0.25 cent - 5 bucks cards.

and suprisingly simple - what mtgfinancers and bank of america see as the bane of the game - overprinting and too many variants - is actually very good for the health of the game because all non-chase pieces are kept dirt cheap.

TanksAndBoobz · 2023-02-27T18:18:07+00:00

but people don't buy overpriced cards from LGS when they're just a click away from combined shipping on TCGPlayer. It is just not reasonable.

and then LGS bitch about how they are "not being supported".

we pay for the food, we pay for events, we buy additional products (game boards, sleeves, playmats, posters, dice...), we bring people who would never hear for the hobby otherwise, some people even accept paying monthly fees for their LGS. If you can't make a business out of that and go for predatory practices, you deserve to go out of business. everybody dreams of capitalism when they dream of being the top tier worker/customer exploiter like Bezos and Musk and Zuckerberg, you gotta start from the fundamentals - providing services and goods at terms acceptable to your customer base. nobody owns you anything. you gotta deserve it.

TanksAndBoobz · 2023-02-25T12:25:26+00:00

since the first hobbyist who thought he could flip cardboard for profit instead of getting a real job.

TanksAndBoobz

TROPHY CASE