The Magic: The Gathering Thread

Its easier if you tell us what your budget is.

Fair warning, if you ever complained about having to buy a new version of an FG a year later, this is really not the hobby for you. :rofl:

Minimum you probably want a few hundred dollars. There are some incredibly cheap budget decks but even if you build one you’ll probably want to play more than one deck.

That’s the thing with Magic, you’re never finished, there are always new projects and decks.

You can hold creatures back in your hand to avoid and play around sweepers, holding back lands in case you get swept would just get you overrun whilst your opponent continues to curve out ahead of you and play better threats than you can.

Also, land sweepe

What do you mean buy a magic set, like you talking singles or packets here?

Also what format you looking at, modern or standard?

Modern would be the best bet to get into. Yes expensive at first but cards hold their value better than standard with it’s rotations.
Or alternatively install xmage and see if that’s better for you(no $$ involved)

Just 2 cents from a guy who doesnt have a lgs to go to (closest is 2 hours away in 3 of 4 cardinal directions)and just have a playgroup.

It depends, with how viable eldrazi are in modern atm if he builds some kind of x/colourless standard deck using the matter reshaper,thoughtknot,reality smasher package they’ll transfer right over to modern post rotation.

The trick to doing standard cheaply is to not sit around waiting to netdeck but to look at upcoming sets and pre-order the good cards before they appear at a pro tour and the zerg rush pushes the price through the roof.

Also look at standard cards with an eye to “Will this be good in modern” when dropping any kind of money on them.

As long as you do both of those things it’s possible to play standard without pissing too much money away come rotation.

My budget is like 300ish but I told Pertho that I wanted to have a Tarmagoyf deck. He lol’d me. >.>

Yeah 300 won’t even cover the goyfs.

Basically before even building a modern deck you’re probably looking at a fair whack just for the landbase, even making do with fastlands over shocklands and fetches can be fairly expensive.

Decide if you want to play fast or slow. Fast is easier but not easy. You can build a competitive deck like Burn for 300 dollars in mono red. What colour is your favourite?

I am really liking Black and Blue.

Black Zombies or Devotion could be done on a budget.

Blue is probably the hardest colour for new players.

If you’re trying to keep cost down look at what works well in 1 or 2 colours as land drives up the price of decks massively. Mono-colour decks tend to be cheaper.

I don’t know how viable an infect deck is anymore post fatal push but blue green infect is fairly budget friendly and was quite effective. Excluding the obvious Noble hierarch for budgeting reasons (like 60-80 a pop).

Well if you look up the tournament placements infect has gone down a lot. Scapeshift and Creatures Toolbox seem to be a better pick for combo.

http://mtgtop8.com/format?f=MO

You remind me of me in 1995. I had zero cards then. My first 60 cards ever was a 4th edition starter deck. It had a Dancing Scimitar.

Long story short; I got into Magic when I saw a group of people playing Magic in our high school’s career center during lunch a table over. Our table was playing D&D. Our DM was always stoned so it took forever to get anything done in our campaign. Some of those people playing Magic were in some of my classes as well.

Starter decks and core sets aren’t being produced anymore; I would have recommended a core set.

I did hear that Wizards might make core sets again though. Guess Origins was like the last core set.

Quick question about Standard: how cheap and how good are red decks right now?

I ask this as a player who hates to play against RDW style of balls-to-the-walls aggro. The Tarkir days of Goblin Rabblemaster everywhere put me off for years but I’m tempted to give it a try provided I don’t get to play all day against the same 10 dollars deck.

Wizards did stop the core set, and tried to change up the block cycle.
But the whole thing was very poorly received. Magic going back to the old 3 sets per block and core set cycle again after Dominaria.

It’s been a long time since RDW was this good in Standard, to my knowledge. You might want to run a Chandra in the sideboard, but otherwise everything is pretty cheap. Hazoret is otherwise the most expensive card in most lists.

Infect is G/U and it’s still a top tier deck but it has taken a lot of hits. GProbe ban, Push and now Solemnity. The meta is moving away from it. In a lot of ways Death’s Shadow is taking it’s place as the win fast pseudo-combo deck.

Okay. Big event next year. Team Unified Modern. Basically you collect results as a group of 3 and you can give each other advice mid-game. Other than that, you’re not allowed to share cards other than basic lands, so basically if one deck is running something, the others can’t, includes sideboards.

I don’t know exactly what I’ll take because I don’t know exactly who I’m pairing with but I’ll probably run UWR Control or Soul Sistas. I’m thinking of pairing with Jund and Infect at this stage but we need to sort out teams still. One of the guys is almost definitely taking Lantern, another is almost definitely taking WB Eldrazi Taxes. We might have a guy bringing Ad Nauseum and another bringing Titanshift.

That sounds pretty cool. Also, what’s Lantern?

There is a card called Lantern of Insight. It lets you see the top card on each player’s library. Basically it’s a combo where a bunch of artifacts tap to mill the top card of their library and you stop them drawing what they need. It has other stuff like Ensnaring Bridge to stop them killing you. It’s a very hard deck to play. It’s like pro/expert level Magic.