Magic: The Gathering C/D

card prices are always rock bottom around the end of the release period (ie now)

also holy shit @ bonfire's price. kind of wish i hadn't cashed mine in at $30 per already

Mtgo price is $42.59, above SCG's $39.99 price for the paper version...I've never heard of a card that was worth more online than IRL! (though maybe Force of Will is one)

there are lots actually! in standard it only really happens with mythic rares because of how set redemption affects their supply disproportionately to regular rares. Falkenrath Aristocrat is another example of this (plus its value gets bumped up by Block Constructed, a format that isn't played much IRL). and then there are the legacy staples that never had a 'real' print run online and thus have very limited supply, like Force of Will and Lions Eye Diamond.

I see the set redemption pushing foil mythics to ridiculous values. I think $10 is the base price for a foil mythic, compared to, say, 40 cents for your typical foil rare. Never really thought about the Block thing but that makes sense.

either way, is there a way to calculate the average value of a pack on MTGO? (okay, I know there is a way, but has anyone done it?)

people have certainly done it, it comes out to far less than the $4 retail value of course. i think it's under $2 and maybe even under $1 for some sets

last i saw avr was about $3.10 for mtgo which is by far higher than any other currently drafted set

i honestly don't care about nickel-and-diming my way into value from card transactions though - i'm constantly buying/selling in and out of various standard and modern decks and taking the 10% loss or so every time and it doesn't really bother me since i'm playing purely for fun and practice, and not for sustainability

like, if playing 'for free' is your goal then you're best off just fronting $200 on a top tier standard deck and jamming daily events with it until you're loaded with packs, but who wants to actually do that every day? i guess some people do since i see the same names in those tournaments day in day out, but i feel like if you have that mentality you should just be playing poker

for me it's all about limited, which IMO is fun enough to even cancel out the grindy mentality of it. also poker is not really an option in America anymore :S

i weirdly care about value but not enough not to do stupid stuff like buying 4x desolate lighthouse and promo silverblade paladins and stuff. its more that i like knowing what the cost of the stupid stuff i do is? i mean im happy that i havent had to deposit money on modo since early may and one of my goals is definitely being able to make drafting self-sustaining but ill also 'waste' money on stuff like 12-6s for fun or buying foil lands or w/e

the only constructed deck i have on modo is a block jund deck that would probably win me more packs than drafting does but i like the challenge of drafting a lot more plus block has been p stale since avr came out.

i think the best value on modo might be like building a u/g infect deck for $35 and grinding two-mans/dailies which, yeah, that seems p dull

u guys are making me want to start playing mtgo

do we have enough people for an ilxor clan on mtgo

maybeeeee

What do clans even do, they seem like a yoga flame pointless invention for the ages.

Help request: a friend is learning the game, he likes it when I give him stack-based rules questions (e.g. "How does Kiki-Jiki interact with Phyrexian Dreadnought"). Can anyone think of any more puzzles like this? I'm looking interesting stack-based interactions, not layer-based ones (so no Opalescence-on-Humility stuff).

Okay - both players have four of these puppies on the board:

http://static.starcitygames.com/sales/cardscans/MAGPRO/rhystic_cave.jpg

One of them tries to tap one for mana and the other player tries to stop him, who gets what?

(alright, maybe it's not that hardest rules question I can think of, but it may be the most obnoxious)

neither player gets anything.

first player taps for 1, second player taps for 1 to block it.
(end of first round = no net gain for anyone.)

first player taps to block second player's response, but second player taps to block that, too.
(end of second round = no net gain for anyone.)

etc...
(every round ends in stalemate with no gain, so long as both players have the same number of caves.)

if the first player had four and the second only three, then s/he'd be able to break the chain and get 1 manna.

yeah. it's not hard if you don't think of it as 8 triggers going on the stack at once. its just an obnoxious question.

if you really want to give your buddy a fun puzzle to talk about, how about telling him how you can stack Fiend Hunter and Cloudshift to permanently exile something (I have a deck that does this and I hate having to explain this to newer players...I feel like they think I am making up rules)

maybeeeee

What do clans even do, they seem like a yoga flame pointless invention for the ages.

― Gravel Puzzleworth, Tuesday, August 14, 2012 10:19 AM (35 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

xp using Redirect (or any similar redirection spell) to counter a counterspell is an interesting one - because of the wording of Redirect you don't need to choose the new target for the spell until Redirect resolves, but Redirect is still on the stack when it resolves so you can change the counterspell to target Redirect even though Redirect is in the process of resolving already and thus can't be countered anymore (the net effect being that their counterspell is countered due to illegal targets)

I remember seeing people use Misdirection as a counterspell to counter other counterspells and always thought they were Misdirecting the Counterspells to counter itself because the alternative didn't make sense. I've had this conversation many times.."wait, if the Misdirection is countered, then how did the.....whatever"

Another weird one is Caged Sun which has the "if a land would add a mana to your mana pool, add an additional mana" wording, which means that if you can somehow turn Caged Sun into a land and tapped it, it would literally add infinity mana to your mana pool.

wouldn't that create an infinite loop and draw the game though? it's not a 'may' ability and doesn't use the stack, so you can never stop it.

I think the solution is to try to set this up on Magic Online and see what happens. Perhaps it could crash MTGO's servers.

i've seen the triple oblivion ring loop happen on mtgo and it's pretty hilarious - if both players F6, then after about 100 iterations, the game crashes, and then it attempts to reconstruct the game by playing it out again from the start, reaches the loop again, crashes again, then declares a draw

another one i can think of is if you somehow make a token copy of Garruk Relentless, then get it to 1 or 2 loyalty, its triggered ability will just happen infinitely because it can't transform

i'm not actually sure whether there's any sequence of plays that can make a token Garruk though

yeah im trying to think of noncreature token permanents and cant think of any

well the issue is more how to copy it without the original garruk being on the battlefield, because they'd die from the planeswalker uniqueness rule. if not for that you could just liquimetal coating + phyrexian metamorph it

the most insane MTG puzzle i've figured out without help was the turn 1 kill on the play in Scars of Mirrodin Block Constructed

Let's see - you'd have to use Liquimetal Coating to make it an artifact, March of the Machines to make it a creature, then Cackling Counterpart to make a token.

Caged Sun is even weirder, you have to do March, then play Life and Limb and make the Caged Sun into a Saporling/Forest with Xenograft or Unnatural Selection

none of those cards remove the planeswalker type or Garruk subtype though so it doesn't work

okay in that case I don't think it's possible to do this unless there's some weird old card that can remove a subtype

planeswalkers hate this one weird old card

ok i think you can do it with Mirrorworks, if you do liquimetal + metamorph with Mirrorworks in play then the Mirrorworks token will use last-known values for the Metamorph and make a Garruk artifact

and that artifact wouldn't have the subtypes? wouldn't it make a "planeswalker artifact" or am I misreading section 403 a) i. iii. iv. ?

no, the metamorph would copy garruk, trigger, mirrorworks, then garruk and metamorphed garruk would die, allowing the mirrorworks token garruk to be the only garruk when it comes into play

Okay. I may be confused as to how that rule works. I thought that the Planeswalker rule didn't use the stack; as in, you couldn't respond to it, similar to being at 0 life and losing. Either way, I'd like to see how MTGO handles it; I can't imagine what their background coding looks like at this point. It's insane how complex MTG's rules are when you really break them down.

thomp u live in london right? (i have asked you this like 8 times I think). Come along to dark sphere or something!

― Gravel Puzzleworth, Monday, 13 August 2012 12:57 (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

nah i'm in oxford innit. i might end up going to london to fulfil these nerd inclinations i'm getting though. don't shit where you eat and all that.

otoh the last fifty posts i keep trying to read and it's like a blast of white noise overruling any attempt to make sense of it so:

Yeah, this conversation makes me think I'm not really ready to take on local competition

don't worry we're discussing weird rules corner cases that will never turn up in an actual game

Okay. I may be confused as to how that rule works. I thought that the Planeswalker rule didn't use the stack; as in, you couldn't respond to it, similar to being at 0 life and losing. Either way, I'd like to see how MTGO handles it; I can't imagine what their background coding looks like at this point. It's insane how complex MTG's rules are when you really break them down.

― frogbs, Tuesday, August 14, 2012 3:23 PM (5 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

bravo

Thinking of trying out mtgo. May be a less intimidating option than going straight to irl competition.

OK, got my account started up, now trying to figure out what to do next to establish some decent cards. Should I sell off my booster and use the cash to buy up some commons and uncommons instead?

iatee

depends if you wanna play constructed or limited

i do believe new accounts get to do some "phantom" drafts...as in you can play and i think win prizes but you don't get to keep what you draft

I guess I'd like to figure out the best way to start accruing some passable card so I don't just get killed constantly

The quickest way: Look at the decks that are winning daily events, and then buy all of the cards you need to make one of those (this will be costly unless you concentrate on relatively inexpensive formats, like block or pauper. Even then you should be prepared to pay a fair amount)

The cheapest way: Take note of the most expensive cards in a given format, and then try to make a deck using none of those cards. The Magic economy is usually set up such that the ten or so chase rares are worth heaps, but then everything else is five cents or less. Obviously the expensive cards are the most powerful, but you can still have fun trying out tier two options, especially if you stick to casual (i.e. non-tournament event) games. If you go this route you might want to lean heavily on the cards in M13; almost everything in that set is pretty cheap at the moment.

The most fun way: Start playing limited (sealed or draft) events, and build decks with the cards you get.

Oh, also there are some bots on MTGO that give away free commons, and if you know anyone on MTGO they will probably be willing to give you a bunch of commons/uncommons, since having more than four copies of a single card is pointless and selling them to bots generally nets you a small fraction of a cent.

i've got shitloads of innistrad commons/uncommons if you need any of those, since i did dozens of triple innistrad drafts last fall. might have some excess stock of core set cards and other recent sets too.

my MTGO username is smh

I really wish that you could trade away more than 75 cards at once. My client freezes sometimes when I even try to do that many.