Back in the day it was frowned upon. Is it still now? I don't think so but I am not sure. Clearly WOTC tacitly endorses it since they enabled the ability to do so with Tourneys online. If they didn't I believe that would have quickly been "fixed."
Mike Long is reputedly a past master of tricky play and shenanigans and if I was playing him I would watch my wallet, my watch and my cards very closely to ensure he wasn't pulling a fast one somewhere. That said, he is an excellent player too so I can see someone conceding prematurely to a fake out on his part. That is just good playing by him and not so good by his opponent (who was probably exhausted by that point.)
I know what you mean by cascade getting your goat from personal experience but I don't quite understand that. Part of the game is anticipating what your opponent can do. If you fail to take into account how powerful a cascade can be then you get what you paid for.
being that opponent I have to say this is what is starting to irritate me... as I said in game I sold 35k cards in order to just get singletons of the duals.. 35k cards and all I got was 600 bucks.. thats a ton of drafts and years of playing worth of cards sold there and why should I feel bad for running the cards I got from that? yes I used to feel sympathetic to the point because there are more cards that I want to have that I don't, but you get to a point where I am now where it's no longer sympathy I feel and instead I feel frustrated and angry that people not only try to make me feel bad for playing the cards I own, but that in multiplayer it causes people to single you out... in a FFA event with a 500 card deck I'll put out two duals and people assume I'm a big threat because I have "money cards".. it's also unfair to assume that I went out and spent 100 bucks on each of my FoWs, because truth is I spent nothing on those outside of the cost of the packs to draft, I played ME a lot to get those FoWs because I knew at some point they'd get ridiculous like this, not because I wanted to play them because counter control isnt my style, why should I be made to feel bad about having a card in my deck? My Tarmo? when I got it was worth at least half of what it is now, a lot of the "money" cards now weren't always this way, just because they are now doesn't mean I spent a weeks paycheck to get it
sure the prices are getting more outrageous on std cards, I only have a single Baneslayer and no neo Jace, during releases they start at 40+ and yes that's insane, but sometimes these drop in price after Std rotates out or you can find deals early, but just because someone has one doesn't mean they spend a lot of money... I've seen players with a bunch of junk in a UB deck and one neo-Jace he opened in a single pack and having that doesn't auto win for him.. I understand cut backs, I've been unemployed for a year, but manage to continue to do what I can to enjoy the game and shouldn't be made to feel bad about playing... if I come across someone who foiled their deck completely I don't complain about how much money went into it instead I compliment the person and probably get as much enjoyment seeing it as they do playing it, I admire it and they get what they wanted through the simple compliment it makes their investment worthwhile
Now granted I've had those moments where I get frustrated in a loss, I did during the pauper event because I had let all of the mornings irritations get to me so I can understand that.. I'm not perfect, but with so many players everywhere giving me crap it's annoying, people even go as far as to say I shouldn't be playing duals or other expensive cards in the casual room and it's quite ridiculous
But in tribal apocalypse we tend to run sub optimal decks not just because we don't own the cards (some do) but because we are trying new things all the time.
And absolutely path to exile(4?), swords to plowshares (1?) etc are solutions to Tarmo (60?) but they require specific types of builds. In tribal wars apocalypse you can see the Grade A tier 1 cards all stuffed into a deck, or you can see totally odd, but interesting tribes that no one usually plays with or a combination of the two or something else entirely (Pauper Tribal for example) and without a sideboard, building a deck with answers only goes so far. I am not saying it is in anyway my opponent's fault that I lack the 4x Underground Sea (or good fetches for them even). It is merely a sad fact. Eternal formats can be too expensive to play in if your ops bring their A decks. I have to give Just Sin credit for taking Snakes and building a credible 3 color version that did much better than mine. I hope my comments don't detract from that. But when you run into something like a deck where each land they play costs more than your whole deck and thus rolls you quickly it is demoralizing. You need to ask is it worth while to even bother?
Ah isn't it nice to have a sunny perspective! :D I agree if your income allows you to put a little aside then that is perfectly reasonable to do. However many people in my own boat are unable to do so and also live. Not to get into the nitty gritty but not everyone has the ideal situation or even a good situation in this humongous economic "downturn" aka Recession.
=EDIT= Also in response to this "Money is amoral" I have to disagree. Money itself has no existence except as a medium of exchange and has no soul/conscience or personality so it can not even be amoral. (Though I am quibbling with your semantics, it is important to acknowledge that money itself is not an end but a means to an end.)
And because of the way our cultures/communities (world wide) have grown in the last millennia the exchange rate is often unfair between work and pay. Some people do nothing and get oodles of cash, others scrape to get by and work hard every day only to end up putting all their money into paying bills. A lot of people are some where in between. It is unfair but it is also the reality. The thing about the eternal formats is they all cost SOME money. I personally put 0 $ into MTG/MTGO. I do put some time into it in the form of articles which fees go towards my collection. But even if I did a weekly article (I don't) it would still take a few years to catch up.
"The fact that my opponent was using a deck he tweaked from my own list just pissed me off even more since I could never afford the Taigas and Volcanics without selling off the core of my collection, and after that..what's the point?"
I totaly understand that. But what is the point ? The point is that in your example, you are running a deck with sub-obtimal ressources in your collection to feed it. In other way, you dont own the cards required to build it competitively in that format. . It is like running a thresh build without FoW or dual : you could try but there is no doubt that a Fow+dual powered deck would always be superior. What is the colution ? Dont play thresh without Fow a dual! You are not disavantaged because you dont own the dual. You are disavantaged because you deceided to run a deck that needs dual to be competitive, but you dont own them. That's the unavoidable rule of competitive play : mtg is before all a game of ressource optimization => if your ressources are sub-optimal to build a specific deck, dont play it in a competitive game. Yeah, it is frustating, but the players able to run all the deck they like is pretty rare... In a competitive view, you have to choose the deck you'll play because you like it (reason 1) and because it is competitive with the card you own (reason 2). Otherwise, it becomes a casual view which is pretty enjoyable also btw but doenst fill the same role regarding tourney.
About to deal with T2 tarmo, ask him how does he like swords, path to exile at the end of opponent's T2, or how does he deal with a T2 hungry jotum grunt ... he wont smile that much.
I am not sure that eternal formats are making cards more expansive by themself : firstly, the supply is much weaker for significant part of the cards (in paper especialy with old sets like ABU, A.Nights, Legend... that's also true online with some MVW/IPA/ME/TSE cards but much less in a general approach); secondly, eternal formats are also suffering of the hype of other formats (tarmo isnt expansive only because of eternal formats, it is expanse firstly because this creature is a key card in extend format) and in that, rotations are often a pretty good news for eternal players because a lot of cards are decreased (figure of destiny @ 30 or more was an absurd investment for an eternal player but to buy it @ 10 today begins to be something to think about). Now that's clear that eternal formats "eternal staples" will keep their price, but as I said previously, these cards are not all required to build competitive decks.
Don't take it personally when people give you crap about that. You know you are going to run into situations where your expensive cards are what save your deck. That is just the way it is. Just as when I run Volrath's Stronghold and some guy with a $1.00 deck (each card worth .02 or so) looks at it and says "No fair!" I have to sympathize with them. IF you feel bad despite knowing all this then that is on you. If you merely sympathize, well that is human. As is not being sympathetic. Just a matter of choices. Personally I get irked when I lose because of $ cards. But the irkedness goes away, eventually. If you don't like people getting irked then don't play the uber expensive cards. If you want to anyway then don't get upset about people getting irked. My 2.5cents. (see? Even thoughts inflate.)
I have to say I questioned the article until you got to the section about online cards that are more expensive, that solidified this as fantastic
It is quite amazing to think how expensive it is to play and people who constantly give me crap for playing with "expensive" cards online, trying to make me feel bad for playing with what cards I own, when truth is paper would be worse in many ways
tho with FoW reaching 130 now I can't help but trade away at least one copy.. you can't resist that kind of price and I'm never going to run a deck that needs 4 FoW any ways, not my play style
i have been playing the Unearth combo with slightly more luck than your opponent had against you. Epecilly post-sideboard. Though I didnt see much of a change in his deck betwen matches and personally I dont run corpse conniseur as it seems far too slow and clunky.
Personally I dont see scouting a problem at all. I dont understand why its looked down on by some players. I remember back in my heyday at PTQ's everyone was scouting decks beforehand and between rounds. Its no different than doing it online in my opinion. If it's legal and grants an advantage why not. Another example is the great mind screw by Mike Long when he had discarded his sole win condition but his opponent conceded because he went through the motions anyways.
As for tilt, sometimes against hated archetypes or horrible misplays i will lose my focus a bit and agree its something i need to control. However somethings like being blown out from a winning position b some ultimate cascade trick is highly annoying...
I think when most people complain about prices they often spit out false information or information based on emotion. Let's face it, money is often times attached to emotions. While money is amoral, it certaintly has effects on people in different ways. I have often said that you make time in life for the things you enjoy. I also think you take the time to buy things you enjoy. While Legacy or Eternal formats aren't for everyone, they can be with a little patience.
One could easily start off with one of the #2 decks mentioned above at under 300.
Having a budget of $30 per month isn't unreasonable and with a little patience and skill you could build up enough resources to buy duals and stuff.
For example...In the last Apoc I ran with Noxious Bidding (a well tested and played uB version of Zombies starring Noxious Ghoul and Patriarch's Bidding) and my very first opponent had 3 duals out in 3 turns to basically win on turn 4 with brainstorm on lorescale coatl. I am not saying that deck couldn't do that anyway but life is so much easier when your mana is fixed so well. 4x Underground Sea would have given me some ability to fight back instead of just lapsing into frustration. The fact that my opponent was using a deck he tweaked from my own list just pissed me off even more since I could never afford the Taigas and Volcanics without selling off the core of my collection, and after that..what's the point?
So yes if you want to play tiered decks you can settle for cheaper alternatives but you still have to deal with turn 2 Tarmogoyfs etc which are expensive just because they are so good. All magic has this problem to some extent but in the eternal formats it is exacerbated by the fact that the cards will never cycle out and thus lower demand. If anything as the sets become more and more scarce compared to the players online the cards will sky rocket into car buying range...(Already you could finance a junker with FOWx4 assuming you took some serious mileage hits.)
I wrote about the Herd+Inversion combo in an article. I use the Herd as a finisher that's hard to answer (since it replaces itself in your hand), but obviously you can't depend on it for removal since it's not online until about turn 5. But it's easy to survive the early turns with stuff like Tribe Elder and Firebolt. The addition of one important card from RoE makes the deck semi-viable. I'll have to write it up soon.
The two big factors in price are, OBV, supply and demand.
Supply is a factor of how many were printed (paper) and how many opened (online). Adding to that is the question of how many were lost or destroyed. Destroyed is mainly a paper function - washign machines don't kill online cards - but lost happens online, too. Every time someone abandons the game without selling off their cards, or forgets how to access an old storage account, those cards are effectively lost.
Old sets, like Legends, had much smaller print runs than recent sets. The total number of copies of something like Tabernacle of the Pendrel Vale ever printed is relavtively small. Motre importantly, the card was last printed a long time ago. (Legends was last in print in 1994.) It was also a "bad" card, one that saw almost no play in either casual or competitive decks, for over a decade, so few people put them in trade binders. I suspect a lot got used as proxies, bookmarks or left on tables after drafts. That happens now with a lot of bulk rares, like Archmage Ascension.
The demand side is mainly driven by tournament and casual play value, and - to a much lesser exxtent - by collectors. In Paper, collectors drive sales of most very old bulk cards. Tournament playability is a much stronger driver, but only for cards in good decks. Casual play is also a powerful driver, but only for some cards.
While once Tabernacle's demand was mainly driven by collectors, Tabernacle is now used in a very competitive Legacy deck, 43 Land, so the demand is real. That deck does not yet exist online, since neither Rishadan Port nor Maze of Ith has been printed. Right now, demand for Tabernacle is almost all speculative, waiting to see if 43 Land is still good enough if and when it finally appears online.
So: Tabernacle of the Pendrel Vale
in paper: Played in a Tier One deck now, last printed 15 years ago in small numbers. Price = very high.
online: played in nothing at the moment, last sold (in NIX PAX as least) a few months ago, reasonably high numbers. Price = low.
In paper, sets from the Legends and earlier era are the equivalent of Invasion block online. At one point, Invasion cards were an order of magnitude more expensive online than in paper, although that is getting better.
Good article, but you missed the really big multiplier: basic land.
Excellent article Danger. It reminded me why I love MTGO so much (among many other things, I love it because it's cheaper (in general) than the paper version). Thanks for that. There are a few other cards that are expensive on MTGO and less expensive as paper (such as Vindicate, Pernicious Deed etc...) but I get the point you're making; there's no need to compare each and every card that exists.
hi paul. I agree with about the price of some non-staple/niche card which are way overevaluated in eternal format, that's a fact (collective Restraint in example which is a niche card, is around 4!).
But I dont agree with you about this statement :
"Outrageous in the sense that when I think about them I know I will NEVER be able to gain entry to competitive Legacy or Classic tourneys (Not that Id want to, mind you...) and will always be severely disadvantaged in all eternal formats online"
Some decks :
Category #1
> Thresh / Bant series
> Survival
> Merfolk
> Zoo
> ANT
> Reanimator
No one of the category #2 decks are running any dual (except belcher ... maybe 1). No one is running FoW. They are all competitive (they dont have all the same level of competitiveness but still competitive). So there is no reason today to argue that you could never come back to competitive legacy. The point is that you probably wont be able to play all the decks, and probably all the decks you want to play. Exactly the way I feel with STD where I would like to play a UW, and I cant because I dont own baneslayer/jaces (it could be also outrageous to count 330 tix to get 4 angel + 2 jace) ...
But one still could participate & win events (death & taxes did it recently, and it is probably not the less interesting to play, neither the less efficient in tourney). If one participate, one could win. Then one sell the packs won to get more staples (dual in example) and then extend our deck choice possibilities... Nothing unfair or unusual in that mechanic.
Yes some staple are unreachable due to hype of Legacy, but that's exactly the same case in any format, paper or online.
And that said, this article demontrates that it is much less expansive than irl : if you wanted to join legacy in paper today with a defined budget, you would have a very little choice of competitive deck compared to what online allows with the same defined budget. In example, you to forget immediatly to run painter in a budget view, as a set of paper recruiter is sold at the same price than twice the entire deck online...
I had accidentally sent it in before reviewing it as such - and I spent most of the time formatting the article :(
As for duals, online they are 2x - 3x cheaper than offline for those interested.
I do think it's funny that people (mostly on other, paper-oriented sites) complain about the price of something like Survival of the Fittest online when the single Loyal Retainers in their deck is more expensive in paper by double the amount than the difference in the entire playset of Survival (online - 35, offline - 20, $60 difference for the playset).
What card I'd really be interested to see is Library of Alexandria. I'd love to see if it's low play (worse than Mana Drain - it's almost never used and it's restricted) would give it a pretty high ridiculous factor, depending on the method of it's release.
It is nice to see such a vast improvement in your articles Rene. Keep up the good work. (You still need a proof reader but the flow was so good I almost didn't notice the typos.) The Cruel Treefolk deck looks interesting and the aurochs combo is indeed good for casual. Not sure how well it would do in PDC but I am curious to hear if you do enter that. I may have to build some variant of that myself and take it for a spin.
RE: the zombies deck, can't say I love the card choices but zombies can be very fun and occasionally can be good. (Weren't so good for me this weekend vs Just Sin's improved Snakes (based loosely on my snakes deck that failed a previous event. But that's what happens when you draw a god hand only to have it disappear in a remake of the table.) Of course Tribal gets no sideboard so you'd have to take that out to run that deck in the apocalypse.
yea all the ones in classifieds are over 130, just traded one away to finish my set of Tarmos
Back in the day it was frowned upon. Is it still now? I don't think so but I am not sure. Clearly WOTC tacitly endorses it since they enabled the ability to do so with Tourneys online. If they didn't I believe that would have quickly been "fixed."
Mike Long is reputedly a past master of tricky play and shenanigans and if I was playing him I would watch my wallet, my watch and my cards very closely to ensure he wasn't pulling a fast one somewhere. That said, he is an excellent player too so I can see someone conceding prematurely to a fake out on his part. That is just good playing by him and not so good by his opponent (who was probably exhausted by that point.)
I know what you mean by cascade getting your goat from personal experience but I don't quite understand that. Part of the game is anticipating what your opponent can do. If you fail to take into account how powerful a cascade can be then you get what you paid for.
being that opponent I have to say this is what is starting to irritate me... as I said in game I sold 35k cards in order to just get singletons of the duals.. 35k cards and all I got was 600 bucks.. thats a ton of drafts and years of playing worth of cards sold there and why should I feel bad for running the cards I got from that? yes I used to feel sympathetic to the point because there are more cards that I want to have that I don't, but you get to a point where I am now where it's no longer sympathy I feel and instead I feel frustrated and angry that people not only try to make me feel bad for playing the cards I own, but that in multiplayer it causes people to single you out... in a FFA event with a 500 card deck I'll put out two duals and people assume I'm a big threat because I have "money cards".. it's also unfair to assume that I went out and spent 100 bucks on each of my FoWs, because truth is I spent nothing on those outside of the cost of the packs to draft, I played ME a lot to get those FoWs because I knew at some point they'd get ridiculous like this, not because I wanted to play them because counter control isnt my style, why should I be made to feel bad about having a card in my deck? My Tarmo? when I got it was worth at least half of what it is now, a lot of the "money" cards now weren't always this way, just because they are now doesn't mean I spent a weeks paycheck to get it
sure the prices are getting more outrageous on std cards, I only have a single Baneslayer and no neo Jace, during releases they start at 40+ and yes that's insane, but sometimes these drop in price after Std rotates out or you can find deals early, but just because someone has one doesn't mean they spend a lot of money... I've seen players with a bunch of junk in a UB deck and one neo-Jace he opened in a single pack and having that doesn't auto win for him.. I understand cut backs, I've been unemployed for a year, but manage to continue to do what I can to enjoy the game and shouldn't be made to feel bad about playing... if I come across someone who foiled their deck completely I don't complain about how much money went into it instead I compliment the person and probably get as much enjoyment seeing it as they do playing it, I admire it and they get what they wanted through the simple compliment it makes their investment worthwhile
Now granted I've had those moments where I get frustrated in a loss, I did during the pauper event because I had let all of the mornings irritations get to me so I can understand that.. I'm not perfect, but with so many players everywhere giving me crap it's annoying, people even go as far as to say I shouldn't be playing duals or other expensive cards in the casual room and it's quite ridiculous
But in tribal apocalypse we tend to run sub optimal decks not just because we don't own the cards (some do) but because we are trying new things all the time.
And absolutely path to exile(4?), swords to plowshares (1?) etc are solutions to Tarmo (60?) but they require specific types of builds. In tribal wars apocalypse you can see the Grade A tier 1 cards all stuffed into a deck, or you can see totally odd, but interesting tribes that no one usually plays with or a combination of the two or something else entirely (Pauper Tribal for example) and without a sideboard, building a deck with answers only goes so far. I am not saying it is in anyway my opponent's fault that I lack the 4x Underground Sea (or good fetches for them even). It is merely a sad fact. Eternal formats can be too expensive to play in if your ops bring their A decks. I have to give Just Sin credit for taking Snakes and building a credible 3 color version that did much better than mine. I hope my comments don't detract from that. But when you run into something like a deck where each land they play costs more than your whole deck and thus rolls you quickly it is demoralizing. You need to ask is it worth while to even bother?
Ah isn't it nice to have a sunny perspective! :D I agree if your income allows you to put a little aside then that is perfectly reasonable to do. However many people in my own boat are unable to do so and also live. Not to get into the nitty gritty but not everyone has the ideal situation or even a good situation in this humongous economic "downturn" aka Recession.
=EDIT= Also in response to this "Money is amoral" I have to disagree. Money itself has no existence except as a medium of exchange and has no soul/conscience or personality so it can not even be amoral. (Though I am quibbling with your semantics, it is important to acknowledge that money itself is not an end but a means to an end.)
And because of the way our cultures/communities (world wide) have grown in the last millennia the exchange rate is often unfair between work and pay. Some people do nothing and get oodles of cash, others scrape to get by and work hard every day only to end up putting all their money into paying bills. A lot of people are some where in between. It is unfair but it is also the reality. The thing about the eternal formats is they all cost SOME money. I personally put 0 $ into MTG/MTGO. I do put some time into it in the form of articles which fees go towards my collection. But even if I did a weekly article (I don't) it would still take a few years to catch up.
"The fact that my opponent was using a deck he tweaked from my own list just pissed me off even more since I could never afford the Taigas and Volcanics without selling off the core of my collection, and after that..what's the point?"
I totaly understand that. But what is the point ? The point is that in your example, you are running a deck with sub-obtimal ressources in your collection to feed it. In other way, you dont own the cards required to build it competitively in that format. . It is like running a thresh build without FoW or dual : you could try but there is no doubt that a Fow+dual powered deck would always be superior. What is the colution ? Dont play thresh without Fow a dual! You are not disavantaged because you dont own the dual. You are disavantaged because you deceided to run a deck that needs dual to be competitive, but you dont own them. That's the unavoidable rule of competitive play : mtg is before all a game of ressource optimization => if your ressources are sub-optimal to build a specific deck, dont play it in a competitive game. Yeah, it is frustating, but the players able to run all the deck they like is pretty rare... In a competitive view, you have to choose the deck you'll play because you like it (reason 1) and because it is competitive with the card you own (reason 2). Otherwise, it becomes a casual view which is pretty enjoyable also btw but doenst fill the same role regarding tourney.
About to deal with T2 tarmo, ask him how does he like swords, path to exile at the end of opponent's T2, or how does he deal with a T2 hungry jotum grunt ... he wont smile that much.
I am not sure that eternal formats are making cards more expansive by themself : firstly, the supply is much weaker for significant part of the cards (in paper especialy with old sets like ABU, A.Nights, Legend... that's also true online with some MVW/IPA/ME/TSE cards but much less in a general approach); secondly, eternal formats are also suffering of the hype of other formats (tarmo isnt expansive only because of eternal formats, it is expanse firstly because this creature is a key card in extend format) and in that, rotations are often a pretty good news for eternal players because a lot of cards are decreased (figure of destiny @ 30 or more was an absurd investment for an eternal player but to buy it @ 10 today begins to be something to think about). Now that's clear that eternal formats "eternal staples" will keep their price, but as I said previously, these cards are not all required to build competitive decks.
Don't take it personally when people give you crap about that. You know you are going to run into situations where your expensive cards are what save your deck. That is just the way it is. Just as when I run Volrath's Stronghold and some guy with a $1.00 deck (each card worth .02 or so) looks at it and says "No fair!" I have to sympathize with them. IF you feel bad despite knowing all this then that is on you. If you merely sympathize, well that is human. As is not being sympathetic. Just a matter of choices. Personally I get irked when I lose because of $ cards. But the irkedness goes away, eventually. If you don't like people getting irked then don't play the uber expensive cards. If you want to anyway then don't get upset about people getting irked. My 2.5cents. (see? Even thoughts inflate.)
I have to say I questioned the article until you got to the section about online cards that are more expensive, that solidified this as fantastic
It is quite amazing to think how expensive it is to play and people who constantly give me crap for playing with "expensive" cards online, trying to make me feel bad for playing with what cards I own, when truth is paper would be worse in many ways
tho with FoW reaching 130 now I can't help but trade away at least one copy.. you can't resist that kind of price and I'm never going to run a deck that needs 4 FoW any ways, not my play style
i have been playing the Unearth combo with slightly more luck than your opponent had against you. Epecilly post-sideboard. Though I didnt see much of a change in his deck betwen matches and personally I dont run corpse conniseur as it seems far too slow and clunky.
Personally I dont see scouting a problem at all. I dont understand why its looked down on by some players. I remember back in my heyday at PTQ's everyone was scouting decks beforehand and between rounds. Its no different than doing it online in my opinion. If it's legal and grants an advantage why not. Another example is the great mind screw by Mike Long when he had discarded his sole win condition but his opponent conceded because he went through the motions anyways.
As for tilt, sometimes against hated archetypes or horrible misplays i will lose my focus a bit and agree its something i need to control. However somethings like being blown out from a winning position b some ultimate cascade trick is highly annoying...
a bit late for the PRE :P though my Zombie deck was quite similar if I hadn't lost my USB drive its what I planned on running
I had also had a pauper Auroch tribal deck together too for the same reason of fetching Namelesses, but found the Bulls were a bit too fragile
it's interesting that you mention Goblins/Teachings to be favorable matches and combo to be unfavorable, yet in your test games it showed the opposite
I love the deck idea and if I had a second Garruk deck then I'd love to run this
Excellent article Danger.
I think when most people complain about prices they often spit out false information or information based on emotion. Let's face it, money is often times attached to emotions. While money is amoral, it certaintly has effects on people in different ways. I have often said that you make time in life for the things you enjoy. I also think you take the time to buy things you enjoy. While Legacy or Eternal formats aren't for everyone, they can be with a little patience.
One could easily start off with one of the #2 decks mentioned above at under 300.
Having a budget of $30 per month isn't unreasonable and with a little patience and skill you could build up enough resources to buy duals and stuff.
Nice, last time I checked AN Mountains were $5. Goes to show how long ago that was.
I suspect Library would never go over 10.
For example...In the last Apoc I ran with Noxious Bidding (a well tested and played uB version of Zombies starring Noxious Ghoul and Patriarch's Bidding) and my very first opponent had 3 duals out in 3 turns to basically win on turn 4 with brainstorm on lorescale coatl. I am not saying that deck couldn't do that anyway but life is so much easier when your mana is fixed so well. 4x Underground Sea would have given me some ability to fight back instead of just lapsing into frustration. The fact that my opponent was using a deck he tweaked from my own list just pissed me off even more since I could never afford the Taigas and Volcanics without selling off the core of my collection, and after that..what's the point?
So yes if you want to play tiered decks you can settle for cheaper alternatives but you still have to deal with turn 2 Tarmogoyfs etc which are expensive just because they are so good. All magic has this problem to some extent but in the eternal formats it is exacerbated by the fact that the cards will never cycle out and thus lower demand. If anything as the sets become more and more scarce compared to the players online the cards will sky rocket into car buying range...(Already you could finance a junker with FOWx4 assuming you took some serious mileage hits.)
I wrote about the Herd+Inversion combo in an article. I use the Herd as a finisher that's hard to answer (since it replaces itself in your hand), but obviously you can't depend on it for removal since it's not online until about turn 5. But it's easy to survive the early turns with stuff like Tribe Elder and Firebolt. The addition of one important card from RoE makes the deck semi-viable. I'll have to write it up soon.
The two big factors in price are, OBV, supply and demand.
Supply is a factor of how many were printed (paper) and how many opened (online). Adding to that is the question of how many were lost or destroyed. Destroyed is mainly a paper function - washign machines don't kill online cards - but lost happens online, too. Every time someone abandons the game without selling off their cards, or forgets how to access an old storage account, those cards are effectively lost.
Old sets, like Legends, had much smaller print runs than recent sets. The total number of copies of something like Tabernacle of the Pendrel Vale ever printed is relavtively small. Motre importantly, the card was last printed a long time ago. (Legends was last in print in 1994.) It was also a "bad" card, one that saw almost no play in either casual or competitive decks, for over a decade, so few people put them in trade binders. I suspect a lot got used as proxies, bookmarks or left on tables after drafts. That happens now with a lot of bulk rares, like Archmage Ascension.
The demand side is mainly driven by tournament and casual play value, and - to a much lesser exxtent - by collectors. In Paper, collectors drive sales of most very old bulk cards. Tournament playability is a much stronger driver, but only for cards in good decks. Casual play is also a powerful driver, but only for some cards.
While once Tabernacle's demand was mainly driven by collectors, Tabernacle is now used in a very competitive Legacy deck, 43 Land, so the demand is real. That deck does not yet exist online, since neither Rishadan Port nor Maze of Ith has been printed. Right now, demand for Tabernacle is almost all speculative, waiting to see if 43 Land is still good enough if and when it finally appears online.
So: Tabernacle of the Pendrel Vale
in paper: Played in a Tier One deck now, last printed 15 years ago in small numbers. Price = very high.
online: played in nothing at the moment, last sold (in NIX PAX as least) a few months ago, reasonably high numbers. Price = low.
In paper, sets from the Legends and earlier era are the equivalent of Invasion block online. At one point, Invasion cards were an order of magnitude more expensive online than in paper, although that is getting better.
Good article, but you missed the really big multiplier: basic land.
Mountain(Invasion online): $0.02
Mountain (Arabian Knights): $19.99
Ridiculousness factor 999.5
:)
Excellent article Danger. It reminded me why I love MTGO so much (among many other things, I love it because it's cheaper (in general) than the paper version). Thanks for that. There are a few other cards that are expensive on MTGO and less expensive as paper (such as Vindicate, Pernicious Deed etc...) but I get the point you're making; there's no need to compare each and every card that exists.
Good job.
LE
hi paul. I agree with about the price of some non-staple/niche card which are way overevaluated in eternal format, that's a fact (collective Restraint in example which is a niche card, is around 4!).
But I dont agree with you about this statement :
"Outrageous in the sense that when I think about them I know I will NEVER be able to gain entry to competitive Legacy or Classic tourneys (Not that Id want to, mind you...) and will always be severely disadvantaged in all eternal formats online"
Some decks :
Category #1
> Thresh / Bant series
> Survival
> Merfolk
> Zoo
> ANT
> Reanimator
Category #2
> RDW series (burn, beat ...)
> Elves!
> Monoblack series
> enchantress
> dredge
> stax
> stompy dragon
> Goblin
> Death & taxes
> Imperial painter
> Affinity
> Belcher
No one of the category #2 decks are running any dual (except belcher ... maybe 1). No one is running FoW. They are all competitive (they dont have all the same level of competitiveness but still competitive). So there is no reason today to argue that you could never come back to competitive legacy. The point is that you probably wont be able to play all the decks, and probably all the decks you want to play. Exactly the way I feel with STD where I would like to play a UW, and I cant because I dont own baneslayer/jaces (it could be also outrageous to count 330 tix to get 4 angel + 2 jace) ...
But one still could participate & win events (death & taxes did it recently, and it is probably not the less interesting to play, neither the less efficient in tourney). If one participate, one could win. Then one sell the packs won to get more staples (dual in example) and then extend our deck choice possibilities... Nothing unfair or unusual in that mechanic.
Yes some staple are unreachable due to hype of Legacy, but that's exactly the same case in any format, paper or online.
And that said, this article demontrates that it is much less expansive than irl : if you wanted to join legacy in paper today with a defined budget, you would have a very little choice of competitive deck compared to what online allows with the same defined budget. In example, you to forget immediatly to run painter in a budget view, as a set of paper recruiter is sold at the same price than twice the entire deck online...
I had accidentally sent it in before reviewing it as such - and I spent most of the time formatting the article :(
As for duals, online they are 2x - 3x cheaper than offline for those interested.
I do think it's funny that people (mostly on other, paper-oriented sites) complain about the price of something like Survival of the Fittest online when the single Loyal Retainers in their deck is more expensive in paper by double the amount than the difference in the entire playset of Survival (online - 35, offline - 20, $60 difference for the playset).
What card I'd really be interested to see is Library of Alexandria. I'd love to see if it's low play (worse than Mana Drain - it's almost never used and it's restricted) would give it a pretty high ridiculous factor, depending on the method of it's release.
It is nice to see such a vast improvement in your articles Rene. Keep up the good work. (You still need a proof reader but the flow was so good I almost didn't notice the typos.) The Cruel Treefolk deck looks interesting and the aurochs combo is indeed good for casual. Not sure how well it would do in PDC but I am curious to hear if you do enter that. I may have to build some variant of that myself and take it for a spin.
RE: the zombies deck, can't say I love the card choices but zombies can be very fun and occasionally can be good. (Weren't so good for me this weekend vs Just Sin's improved Snakes (based loosely on my snakes deck that failed a previous event. But that's what happens when you draw a god hand only to have it disappear in a remake of the table.) Of course Tribal gets no sideboard so you'd have to take that out to run that deck in the apocalypse.
I didn't realize how bad some of these paper prices had gotten.
Middling to expensive decks there. I get that it is standard but...ouch.