Hey thanks for the help guys. Hadn't wrote anything a long time so I appreciate any help I can get. The difficulty is always getting what you picture onto 'paper'. @deluxie nice article, I think it'll be really useful for me. @Firemind, yea I can agree with that. It should/could grant you enough board position assuming that you don't draw dead the next few turns.
At least it's not Wood Elemental, a card which is unplayable in every format (even pack wars).
It's like our old friend Steamflogger Boss. It's not that you don't get the joke if you open one, but you still can't laugh because the joke is (literally) at your expense. I thought after that desaster Wizard finally realized that such cards aren't fun for people who have to actually pay for their packs.
I do all of my limited-playing offline, and am currently in the process of building a cube as a low-cost way to draft! I have a pretty good record of winning, and am usually fine with the cost of drafting, but a lot of my friends aren't, so we thought it would be cool to build a cube.
It's a shame that cubing isn't available on mtgo, or i'd like to write some articles here on the process of designing a cube. However, seeing as this is "PureMTGO", writing about a format which you can't play on MTGO doesn't seem like the plan.
Anyway, my basic point was, to cure any (offline) drafting woes, build a cube! It's really fun to design, and you get to fill it with your favourite cards and themes!
Hi, you could avoid the video against a GW that that remains mana screwed for 5 turns :) Decks are interesting, I would be more interested in 10$ decks as real paper gifts.
When the drafts are kicking the duals will be at around 8 for a while. With 2 duals or one bigger card paying for the draft.
[loop]
As long as they are higher than 8 tix people will try to draft for them, below that less people will draft them increasing the price again, causing more people to draft them. [/loop]
Hi, I always get no results from the gatherer, what's wrong with my queries?
Here I tries to find indestructible cards for commander from the advanced search, zero results.
http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Search/Default.aspx?action=advanced&text=+[indestructible]&format=%7C[%22Commander%22]
Here I try to find "lich" just typing "lich" in the aboce search field - zero results either :)
http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Search/Default.aspx?name=+[lich]
Hi, when I buy a box of paper boosters I pay 110 to 120 $ for the latest sets in T2. Then you sometimes find promotions, for example I have just purchased a Lorwyn boooster box at 72 $, a Chinese Onslaught at 70 USD, Chinese Mercadia at 50$ and other stuff like that. Players like me always buy at least one box of each new set. It's stronger than us, but at least the average price is slightly above 3$ this way.
1st
Buying paper boosters at these relatively low prices is already a lottery and often you feel like been frauded. But on MTGO, no matter how many booosters you buy, you always pay the full price of 3.99$. And you don't even get the "buy a box promo" which is instead included in the sealed package.
2nd
Paper drafts- at least in my area - are cheaper. My local store would ask 10 euro for a standard 3 booster draft. A single booster is sold at 4 euro, but the store owner promote the draft by discounting the price. To play a draft on MODO you pay the full price of boosters PLUS the tix
3rd
There is nothing like the real, physical trade in MTGO. Everybody look at bots prices. Nobody really trades the 10 cents cards, it's easier to buy them than to trade for them. If today's price for Koth is 35.00 $ on Marlon's, there is no way anybody would trade it for lower value cards.
I always have a bindere for the crap rares with me and sometimes I find people that just need some of that cards which is crap to me. I don't think I would ever trade a set of white border birds of paradises for 2 cabal therapies in MTGO, just to make an example. Or 4 white border counterspells for one Molten Tail Masticore.
Pretending to be a great trader is something you never feel in MTGO
I am no expert on price fluctuation but I'd say the prices will probably dip slightly (but not much) and then when drafts dry up jump about 300%. So if you want them and plan to keep them buy them when it's most convenient. If you want to maximize your +tix wait a little bit longer I think. (This is not sound advice by the way. Just my own gut feeling on it.)
I agree, they're just placeholders. What do you say, buy now or wait for MED4? i don't think I will buy any booster, perhaps I'll just participate to one or two launch events.
Hi Pete, I used to play Magic since the Italian revised set and I never played many of cards classified as rares in this expansion. Opening a card such as Rakalite for 4$ plus taxes will be as insulting customers.
By the way very few guys plays casual legacy while tons of people play casual classic with random cards from every set. The main failure of Wizards is that newbies can't tell the difference between legacy and classic and they can't understand which are the reasons to play legacy over classic in magic online.
Hi, I was waiting to buy my playsets of the above duals, do I wait a bit more? Eventual ban of survival may cause a drop in price of the green lands, I suppose they're so pumped up now only becuase of survival.
What do you suggest? Here are today's prices:
- Underground: 26
- Taiga: 16
- Tropical: 16
By the way Marlon already put ME4 prices in their website, and prices all the duals at 1.50$ .
I suppose it's an error? :)
The price list seems a bit out of date. Cryptic command, for instance, has been on MTGOTraders' website at the $18 mark since at least Wednesday, probably Tuesday. And as someone mentioned there are a lot of small cards that have had very very large % gains, like Heritage Druid. How is the list typically compiled - by hand or is it automated via spreadsheet?
I'd imagine the listed spiking cards would level off soon, as you said, but...I don't think we're anywhere near Extended staples in general leveling off. The season hasn't even gotten underway yet!
That last paragraph was a pretty awesome point. I'm not a mathy type of person. And should of left that to another person. I can see what your saying.....
As Mark Twain once said, "There are lies, damned lies, and statistics."
"Right now in Scars there are 55 rares and 14 Mythics (rarity is 1 out of 8 packs). Out of those 68 cards only 19 have a value of $1.00 or more. "
Large sets have 53 rares and 15 mythics, not 55/14. 1 in roughly 8 packs is correct though (15 in 121 packs).
--------------
"For the same $600.00, I could draft 40 times. That is 120 packs cracked and 40 tickets spent. Out of those 120 packs I can reasonable assume to open 15 mythics. So after I spend that $600.00 on drafts, my family has an emergency and I need to sell the cards from the draft. We will say for arguments sake that out of the 15 mythics you opened all 14 from SOM and then a Koth of the Hammer duplicate for a total mythic value of $109.00. That leaves you with 105 rares. We will put a value of $50.00 on the rares. Another $25.00 for the uncommons and commons. You have a total value of $184.00. Your collection is now worth less than a third of what you put in. If you need to sell it fast you will probably only get $120 to $150. This brings your value down to 1/3 of what you spent. Drafting is a money pit."
The math is really biased here I think.
Not sure how 600 bucks is only getting you into 40 drafts.
Say boosters are costing you a full 4 tix each, then that's a cost of 14 per draft. That means 42.85 draft entries covered off rip. It's actually highly likely the boosters will cost you a lot less than 4 tickets (currently som goes for under 3.50, m11 for around 3.75, roe for around 3.50, only zzw is above 4 tix per pack). Also, the packs you are going to win need to be added into your winnings if you would not continue to draft with them, or they need to be considered as extra drafts you would get to do with that 600 bucks. The conclusion that you would only get to do 40 drafts and end up with under a third of your initial investment is completely flawed... in fact, it is lower than what you would get if you lost every single game you played.
HOWEVER, I completely agree that drafts are a moneysink for the average person. I used to draft about ten times a week but I haven't been able to go infinite in any format since ACR so I've had to quit doing it. Mythics are most assuredly the cause, and I could back this up with real figures just as hundreds of others could...
But there is just so much usage of arbitrary figures that happen to extremely exaggerate the point you're making... the margin on boosters is hardly ever as extreme as your article suggests (boosters cost you 4 but you can only get 7 for your own 2? They're virtually as liquid as tickets themselves) unless you are ignoring the hundred or so fair offers posted in the classifieds by bots who deal exclusively in boosters.
Just way to much exaggeration, or inaccurate information that conveniently exaggerates your point.
BTW here is a paragraph I wouldn't have left out of this, it really paints a picture.
Say 1,210,000 packs of SOM are opened on MTGO. This will result in 10,000 of each and every mythic in the set, and 20,000 of each and every rare in the set. A 2 to 1 ratio in rarity! Now let's say 8,000 sets get redeemed. What remains? 2,000 of each mythic and 12,000 of each rare. A 6 to 1 ratio! Redemption eats and eats away at the mythics, and the ratio just climbs and climbs, and the arres become more and more easy to find.
I kind of see what you're saying, but what I'm saying is, if I can use an analogy, if you set up a lemonade stand in front of your house and are selling for 25 cents a cup, and someone comes by and wants to buy all of it, are they wrong? If they set up a stand elsewhere with your lemonade for 50 cents per cup, are they stealing your profits or are they taking a risk? If you would normally be happy to sell the lemonade and your goal was to sell it all, and you did, does it matter what they did with the lemonade?
I mean, at the very least I would hope there is some kind of warning and/or announcement about what is and is not an acceptable buying practice through the bots. Sure, on MTGOTrader's website they say 4 copies max, but the bots don't say that. It should be in the bots' message or something.
Re: Classic = unpowered Vintage, it's wrong because the card pools are more different than just 9 cards due to larger restricted list in Vintage. For example, Classic allows 4 Lion's Eye Diamond, Mystical Tutor, etc. while Vintage doesn't. So, just saying unpowered Vintage is an oversimplification.
Well Mtgotraders are a business. If they see someone raid them over and over. ANd thats all they buy...then yeah ban them.
If a regular customer does a little speculatin. Im sure they have no problem with that. Your part of their customer base. Not someone that is looking at mtgotraders as someone to be exploited when theres that "window".
I stand corrected. I had searched Morphlin.de and Manadrain.com, but I didn't find any searching the T8 lists, and it was absent from the Vintage World Champs T8 last summer. In a couple recent European lists, though, and in the semi-finalist's deck in a recent PA event, there it was. It seems to see play mainly in Oath decks. I generally play Workshop decks in Vintage, and haven't played Oath since 2003, so I don't play my copy.
I have played a lot of online Classic casual games, but only 2 DEs. Guess you weren't watching.
Still, regardless of the reason someone is buying, if you are selling and someone is buying, I don't see the problem.
After Evan Erwin Tweeted during Worlds to buy as many Necrotic Oozes as possible I did just that. I had no idea I had the potential of being punished for getting in there first. =/ I must say that speculation is always a risk. I still have my Oozes but no one wants them. I just don't think it ought to be a punishable offense.
I was trying to inform the population that has not noticed the "sink" that is drafting at the moment. A person could play $200 worth of drafts and have nothing to show for it in their collection. The article was on the complainy side because it sucks being priced out of current set drafts. If there was no mythic rarity, then regular rares would increase in price. Allowing for more drafts and the possiblity of going semi-infy. As of right now, only the great magic players are making money on drafts.
I do appreciate the criticism and will strive to do a better job with my serious articles.
I actually thought it wasnt going to get published. I was used to waiting a day or two for an article to get published. Have hope, more of your articles are on the way
Hey thanks for the help guys. Hadn't wrote anything a long time so I appreciate any help I can get. The difficulty is always getting what you picture onto 'paper'. @deluxie nice article, I think it'll be really useful for me. @Firemind, yea I can agree with that. It should/could grant you enough board position assuming that you don't draw dead the next few turns.
At least it's not Wood Elemental, a card which is unplayable in every format (even pack wars).
It's like our old friend Steamflogger Boss. It's not that you don't get the joke if you open one, but you still can't laugh because the joke is (literally) at your expense. I thought after that desaster Wizard finally realized that such cards aren't fun for people who have to actually pay for their packs.
It is possible to build a cube for online play. The problem is the drafting mechanism. Which can be solved as shown on the drafting simulation site.
I do all of my limited-playing offline, and am currently in the process of building a cube as a low-cost way to draft! I have a pretty good record of winning, and am usually fine with the cost of drafting, but a lot of my friends aren't, so we thought it would be cool to build a cube.
It's a shame that cubing isn't available on mtgo, or i'd like to write some articles here on the process of designing a cube. However, seeing as this is "PureMTGO", writing about a format which you can't play on MTGO doesn't seem like the plan.
Anyway, my basic point was, to cure any (offline) drafting woes, build a cube! It's really fun to design, and you get to fill it with your favourite cards and themes!
If you buy and open x number of packs (not sure how many exactly per set) online you will get complete sets. This is not true offline.
Hi, you could avoid the video against a GW that that remains mana screwed for 5 turns :) Decks are interesting, I would be more interested in 10$ decks as real paper gifts.
When the drafts are kicking the duals will be at around 8 for a while. With 2 duals or one bigger card paying for the draft.
[loop]
As long as they are higher than 8 tix people will try to draft for them, below that less people will draft them increasing the price again, causing more people to draft them. [/loop]
Hi, I always get no results from the gatherer, what's wrong with my queries?
Here I tries to find indestructible cards for commander from the advanced search, zero results.
http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Search/Default.aspx?action=advanced&text=+[indestructible]&format=%7C[%22Commander%22]
Here I try to find "lich" just typing "lich" in the aboce search field - zero results either :)
http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Search/Default.aspx?name=+[lich]
What's wrong with me??
Hi, when I buy a box of paper boosters I pay 110 to 120 $ for the latest sets in T2. Then you sometimes find promotions, for example I have just purchased a Lorwyn boooster box at 72 $, a Chinese Onslaught at 70 USD, Chinese Mercadia at 50$ and other stuff like that. Players like me always buy at least one box of each new set. It's stronger than us, but at least the average price is slightly above 3$ this way.
1st
Buying paper boosters at these relatively low prices is already a lottery and often you feel like been frauded. But on MTGO, no matter how many booosters you buy, you always pay the full price of 3.99$. And you don't even get the "buy a box promo" which is instead included in the sealed package.
2nd
Paper drafts- at least in my area - are cheaper. My local store would ask 10 euro for a standard 3 booster draft. A single booster is sold at 4 euro, but the store owner promote the draft by discounting the price. To play a draft on MODO you pay the full price of boosters PLUS the tix
3rd
There is nothing like the real, physical trade in MTGO. Everybody look at bots prices. Nobody really trades the 10 cents cards, it's easier to buy them than to trade for them. If today's price for Koth is 35.00 $ on Marlon's, there is no way anybody would trade it for lower value cards.
I always have a bindere for the crap rares with me and sometimes I find people that just need some of that cards which is crap to me. I don't think I would ever trade a set of white border birds of paradises for 2 cabal therapies in MTGO, just to make an example. Or 4 white border counterspells for one Molten Tail Masticore.
Pretending to be a great trader is something you never feel in MTGO
I am no expert on price fluctuation but I'd say the prices will probably dip slightly (but not much) and then when drafts dry up jump about 300%. So if you want them and plan to keep them buy them when it's most convenient. If you want to maximize your +tix wait a little bit longer I think. (This is not sound advice by the way. Just my own gut feeling on it.)
I agree, they're just placeholders. What do you say, buy now or wait for MED4? i don't think I will buy any booster, perhaps I'll just participate to one or two launch events.
Hi Pete, I used to play Magic since the Italian revised set and I never played many of cards classified as rares in this expansion. Opening a card such as Rakalite for 4$ plus taxes will be as insulting customers.
By the way very few guys plays casual legacy while tons of people play casual classic with random cards from every set. The main failure of Wizards is that newbies can't tell the difference between legacy and classic and they can't understand which are the reasons to play legacy over classic in magic online.
Placeholder prices do not reflect valuation. Nor will they be that when they have some for sale.
Hi, I was waiting to buy my playsets of the above duals, do I wait a bit more? Eventual ban of survival may cause a drop in price of the green lands, I suppose they're so pumped up now only becuase of survival.
What do you suggest? Here are today's prices:
- Underground: 26
- Taiga: 16
- Tropical: 16
By the way Marlon already put ME4 prices in their website, and prices all the duals at 1.50$ .
I suppose it's an error? :)
The price list seems a bit out of date. Cryptic command, for instance, has been on MTGOTraders' website at the $18 mark since at least Wednesday, probably Tuesday. And as someone mentioned there are a lot of small cards that have had very very large % gains, like Heritage Druid. How is the list typically compiled - by hand or is it automated via spreadsheet?
I'd imagine the listed spiking cards would level off soon, as you said, but...I don't think we're anywhere near Extended staples in general leveling off. The season hasn't even gotten underway yet!
That last paragraph was a pretty awesome point. I'm not a mathy type of person. And should of left that to another person. I can see what your saying.....
As Mark Twain once said, "There are lies, damned lies, and statistics."
Ya redemption is a big issue online with the mythic rarity, exacerbating the problem.
X-
"Right now in Scars there are 55 rares and 14 Mythics (rarity is 1 out of 8 packs). Out of those 68 cards only 19 have a value of $1.00 or more. "
Large sets have 53 rares and 15 mythics, not 55/14. 1 in roughly 8 packs is correct though (15 in 121 packs).
--------------
"For the same $600.00, I could draft 40 times. That is 120 packs cracked and 40 tickets spent. Out of those 120 packs I can reasonable assume to open 15 mythics. So after I spend that $600.00 on drafts, my family has an emergency and I need to sell the cards from the draft. We will say for arguments sake that out of the 15 mythics you opened all 14 from SOM and then a Koth of the Hammer duplicate for a total mythic value of $109.00. That leaves you with 105 rares. We will put a value of $50.00 on the rares. Another $25.00 for the uncommons and commons. You have a total value of $184.00. Your collection is now worth less than a third of what you put in. If you need to sell it fast you will probably only get $120 to $150. This brings your value down to 1/3 of what you spent. Drafting is a money pit."
The math is really biased here I think.
Not sure how 600 bucks is only getting you into 40 drafts.
Say boosters are costing you a full 4 tix each, then that's a cost of 14 per draft. That means 42.85 draft entries covered off rip. It's actually highly likely the boosters will cost you a lot less than 4 tickets (currently som goes for under 3.50, m11 for around 3.75, roe for around 3.50, only zzw is above 4 tix per pack). Also, the packs you are going to win need to be added into your winnings if you would not continue to draft with them, or they need to be considered as extra drafts you would get to do with that 600 bucks. The conclusion that you would only get to do 40 drafts and end up with under a third of your initial investment is completely flawed... in fact, it is lower than what you would get if you lost every single game you played.
HOWEVER, I completely agree that drafts are a moneysink for the average person. I used to draft about ten times a week but I haven't been able to go infinite in any format since ACR so I've had to quit doing it. Mythics are most assuredly the cause, and I could back this up with real figures just as hundreds of others could...
But there is just so much usage of arbitrary figures that happen to extremely exaggerate the point you're making... the margin on boosters is hardly ever as extreme as your article suggests (boosters cost you 4 but you can only get 7 for your own 2? They're virtually as liquid as tickets themselves) unless you are ignoring the hundred or so fair offers posted in the classifieds by bots who deal exclusively in boosters.
Just way to much exaggeration, or inaccurate information that conveniently exaggerates your point.
BTW here is a paragraph I wouldn't have left out of this, it really paints a picture.
Say 1,210,000 packs of SOM are opened on MTGO. This will result in 10,000 of each and every mythic in the set, and 20,000 of each and every rare in the set. A 2 to 1 ratio in rarity! Now let's say 8,000 sets get redeemed. What remains? 2,000 of each mythic and 12,000 of each rare. A 6 to 1 ratio! Redemption eats and eats away at the mythics, and the ratio just climbs and climbs, and the arres become more and more easy to find.
I kind of see what you're saying, but what I'm saying is, if I can use an analogy, if you set up a lemonade stand in front of your house and are selling for 25 cents a cup, and someone comes by and wants to buy all of it, are they wrong? If they set up a stand elsewhere with your lemonade for 50 cents per cup, are they stealing your profits or are they taking a risk? If you would normally be happy to sell the lemonade and your goal was to sell it all, and you did, does it matter what they did with the lemonade?
I mean, at the very least I would hope there is some kind of warning and/or announcement about what is and is not an acceptable buying practice through the bots. Sure, on MTGOTrader's website they say 4 copies max, but the bots don't say that. It should be in the bots' message or something.
Re: Classic = unpowered Vintage, it's wrong because the card pools are more different than just 9 cards due to larger restricted list in Vintage. For example, Classic allows 4 Lion's Eye Diamond, Mystical Tutor, etc. while Vintage doesn't. So, just saying unpowered Vintage is an oversimplification.
Well Mtgotraders are a business. If they see someone raid them over and over. ANd thats all they buy...then yeah ban them.
If a regular customer does a little speculatin. Im sure they have no problem with that. Your part of their customer base. Not someone that is looking at mtgotraders as someone to be exploited when theres that "window".
I stand corrected. I had searched Morphlin.de and Manadrain.com, but I didn't find any searching the T8 lists, and it was absent from the Vintage World Champs T8 last summer. In a couple recent European lists, though, and in the semi-finalist's deck in a recent PA event, there it was. It seems to see play mainly in Oath decks. I generally play Workshop decks in Vintage, and haven't played Oath since 2003, so I don't play my copy.
I have played a lot of online Classic casual games, but only 2 DEs. Guess you weren't watching.
Still, regardless of the reason someone is buying, if you are selling and someone is buying, I don't see the problem.
After Evan Erwin Tweeted during Worlds to buy as many Necrotic Oozes as possible I did just that. I had no idea I had the potential of being punished for getting in there first. =/ I must say that speculation is always a risk. I still have my Oozes but no one wants them. I just don't think it ought to be a punishable offense.
The new Necrotic Ooze combo deck in Extended to be more specific.
I was trying to inform the population that has not noticed the "sink" that is drafting at the moment. A person could play $200 worth of drafts and have nothing to show for it in their collection. The article was on the complainy side because it sucks being priced out of current set drafts. If there was no mythic rarity, then regular rares would increase in price. Allowing for more drafts and the possiblity of going semi-infy. As of right now, only the great magic players are making money on drafts.
I do appreciate the criticism and will strive to do a better job with my serious articles.
I actually thought it wasnt going to get published. I was used to waiting a day or two for an article to get published. Have hope, more of your articles are on the way