MTG - Building a collection
TL; DR: how do I start building a collection cheaply with versatile/staple cards?
A couple of friends have started playing Magic: The Gathering with a virtual tabletop, and while I have learned a lot from playing Arena and reading cards (and watching the Prof) there's just something not working for me in the digital space; Archidekt is tough for me to read through, and even something like Tabletop Simulator doesn't work for me for learning the game (or rather...it's not sticking). I know that I do pretty well with physical objects, so I wanted to get some physical cards to get the hang of the game but immediately ran up against the cost.
I don't know if you guys know this, but Magic: The Gathering is expensive. Way more expensive than I can justify for a hobby I've just started and haven't really gotten the hang of. My question is: how do I start building a collection without breaking the bank?
The things I know, but might need to be corrected on:
"Don't buy bulk"; apparently most boxes of bulk have a bunch of repeats and are generally the cards left over when the good ones have been extracted. I would love to be wrong about this, because even getting common/uncommon cards in enough volume to play in a physical space would be neat.
"Buy singles"; it seems like this is a good way to spend $50-$1000 blindly in the dark if you don't know what you're doing.
"Play what you enjoy"; I've played some jump-start decks and those are neat, but I haven't played enough to know what I like, making this difficult. I also haven't played enough to know the difference between what I enjoy because it's neat and what I enjoy because I won with it one time.
"Buy a precon deck"; from what I've read the commander precons would be a good way to get a lot of single cards, but I've read/heard mixed things about them: reviewers discussing how to "fix" them to be good.
"Buy jump start packs"; I would love to grab a bunch of the jump start decks to mess around with and find synergies, but how do you avoid getting repeats of the packs?
"Buy the Foundations Starter Collection"; Foundations Starter Collection is apparently sold out (or only being sold used/resold at a higher price?), but seems exactly what I'm looking for: a decent collection of classic/useful cards that you can build with and supplement as you learn the game.
"Look for garage sales or ebay for collections"; I'm pretty sure my chances of edging out an experienced card hunter on a good deal is slim to none, especially in my area.
I would, in an ideal world, like to have a small collection with 300-500 of the cards that "everybody knows" for kitchen table Magic (fake draft/jump start, casual commander, casual...modern?), but this seems out of reach. Any guidance would be appreciated!
As stated I agree that this seems out of reach. A loose interpretation of "everybody knows" will help, as the most well known cards tend to carry a little value.
MTG can be a cheap hobby, it just requires a code of sorts between the playgroup.
I might end up doing something like this just to learn the cards in grayscale (like flash cards); I wonder where the cutoff is for when that's more cost-effective to print vs buy. 50 cent cards? $1 cards? I'm not a huge fan of color inkjets, but that's a different rant about a different kind of corporate bullshit.
Someone else mentioned cubes and I think pauper cube is a great idea, I'll just have to see where to source them.
Out of 1000 cards? as long as they're not all the same blue card I guess I'm going to learn about blue :)
Heh, yeah. I'm glad there's no push to "collect them all" from WotC or my own brain, because that's a nightmarishly large set to know anything about, let alone everything.
The proxy game is well beyond ink-jet now. I now proxy all the cards that I use in paper, because Hasbro sucks and I'm done giving them money. I use a site called MPCFill which lets you load up to MakePlayingCards.com. I order in a small consortium - me and a few like minded friends - and the cards end up costing something like 30 cents CAD with delivery. The quality of the cards is quite noticeably better than the quality of a standard magic card. You can also get the cards foiled for about double the cost.
I really recommend proxies, especially if you get into making lots of decks at lots of power levels. I primarily play EDH, so think of things as EDH brackets; I have a fair number of bracket 2, 3, and 4 decks, at various power levels within the brackets, so that I can match the power level of the table with relative ease.
I was in this thread before any comments because i knew about about both your links here, but couldn't remember the names-- I don't really play MTG anymore but have a friend that has gone full-bore on those links.
He even doubles his money by printing double-sided cards-- there is no "back", just a separate card on each side. Then, he slides them into card sleeves so only one card is visible at a time.
This is really nice for many obvious reasons, but basically for him it boils down: zero interest in the "value" of the card beyond it's utility in the game. He isn't looking to sell them as a retirement plan, and the cards are obviously marked as counterfeits (beyond being double-sided). He doesn't play in any actual championships, and he is open about it with his circle of friends who play. He can pick and choose any card he wants to play the decks he wants, without playing a game of lottery or paying exorbitant sums for "rare" cards.
Well, what did you win with one time? Also, probably as importantly - what do your friends play?
If you're casually playing and learning, Jumpstart is pretty great. You're probably not going to get a terrible amount of repeats; just enjoy it and don't worry about it. The main appeal is figuring out synergies and getting it to work on the fly, pretend the buy-in price is for the couple of games and not the cards.
Don't buy bulk, unless you're doing draft/sealed. Ask friends if they have leftover bulk cards they wouldn't mind giving you. Never know when some random uncommon blows an environment up, and the "why isn't this card good?" questions help you learn.
If you want to play Standard, take a look at some budget decks on forums or in the meta and see if there's a deck in a throwaway budget for you. Throw it at your LGS, see how it goes - probably bad, but you'll learn. If you enjoy it but want more edge, start splurging on staples.
If you want to play EDH, this is where research can really help. There's a shitload of card selection, and there are obvious "answers" to which card does a certain job the "best" in the most situations. Those cards tend to be pricey. See where people make substitutions online and swap some of those expensive support cards out so you can invest a little more in the main skeleton of your deck. (If you do see a precon that fits the mold of what you like to play, fuck it, grab it at MSRP.) Play some, then buy some of those staples that you're really missing. Then, if you start itching to play a different deck in similar colors, you'll have some of those staples and it won't be as pricey to get some of the missing stuff.
As importantly, for any format you play with your friends, check with them about power levels and price estimates to see how much everyone else invests. People may want to do a jank night and make something that isn't particularly optimized. Your time to shine, baby.
IMO, though, if you want to either make the easiest AND hardest way to quickly learn and build a collection, jump in the deep end and play Limited. You'll learn a lot of deckbuilding lessons quickly, you'll learn about tempo in a specific environment, and you basically pay the entry fee and get at least something out of it even if you don't do well. I started playing in 7th Edition, I've been in and out of MTG dozens of times, but what always reeeeels me back in is a good draft environment. Everyone starts on the same level, and that differential gets wider with every good or bad draft or deckbuilding pick. Any skill bit you can eek out and learn from is a step above everyone else at a future table who doesn't get it. Can't recommend it enough.
Green cat/walls deck with probably a perfect draw (3 walls into a towering titan at turn...5?). Friends have a bunch more knowledge, experience, and cards at their disposal, but we play mostly online because post-college/high school nobody lives in the same state so they play...whatever they feel like that day.
Sorry, this might be a terminology mistake on my part; I think I mean "bulk lots" like on eBay, 1k cards and such.
I think the thing I've noticed most is that even people that play this game a lot are surprised by cards, but they can immediately relate it to other classic/staple cards ("that's just 'Sol Ring' At Home"); I have no illusions that I'll be able to learn/memorize everything about the game, but I've noticed that the game has repeated themes and elements that I'm trying to get a handle on, and I'm not picking it up in the digital space in a very useful way.
Whoops, yeah sorry! I was conflating bulk and sealed product. But hey, same answer - don't buy bulk and don't buy sealed unless you're getting game use out of it. (just win it instead. ez!)
Main boon for learning in cardboard play is opponents you can actually talk to, obviously assuming they're good people. I haven't really found a good LGS since the one from my youth burned out, but give yours a try, you never know.
Seconding cube as a good format for learning draft. 360 cards, buy once, and you can always play it again.
Depends what you want to get out of it. Some of my friends and I play MTG, but I’m probably the least invested, both measured by deck quality and collection size.
Option A is to go competitive. Best bet there is to buy good singles and this will get expensive quite fast. Depending on the format costs differed, but I wouldn’t recommend diving in competitively right away without knowing you really like the game.
Option B is to acquire bulk for deck-building. You can get cards that are bad for cheap and put together decks in your free time that are about evenly matched for a group to play with. This is very cheap and probably the best option for those without cash to invest.
Option C is to make a couple strong decks so you can play w friends. Format will depend on the group, but I and most people prefer Commander. You’ll probably have to spend some cash on a good commander and strong cards, but because it’s singleton you can fill out the deck with mediocre cards so it’s not too bad for the wallet. This is what I do; I have good commanders and win conditions and fill out my decks with leftover from drafts or by trading cards with friends. I don’t spend money on cards anymore generally.
Option D is to play pay-to-entry events like drafts or sealed. Even better if you find someone who will pay for you in exchange for the cards you pull. Good if you like those formats but want to maintain no or a small collection.
Option E, which might work for you, is to build a cube. A cube is a collection of cards separated into packs that you can use for a mock sealed or draft depending on your group’s size. You can look at cubes that people have built online and just buy the contained cards. If you don’t want to dump too much cash, look for pauper cubes (only have common cards so are naturally cheap).
Welcome to the hobby! Hope you enjoy!
Hmm, I'll take a look at cube lists, I don't think I've heard the term. Ty for the keyword!
This is the option that I did. I got enough cards from some 2nd hand chaff tubs on ebay that when I had a friend come over and explain deck building (more of the why he was making the choices he did than the basics which I'd read online) we were able to build 4-6 decks of similar quality. These decks would all have lost had I played with them against any one who'd put money into their decks but it meant that we could play with them against each other on an even playing field and soon I was able to rebuild the pile of cards into other decks depending on what I felt like playing and how much time I had to prep decks before playing.
I've just started playing with my partner. We started off getting the Bloomburrow Starter Kit, that was some $20 for two 60 card decks with a cute woodland theme.
I picked up the Foundations Beginner Box off Amazon for $25, that has 10x 20 card packets, 2 of each color highlighting different themes. Also has a quick start game and some other stuff that's decent for brand new players.
https://mtg.fandom.com/wiki/Magic:_The_Gathering_Foundations/Beginner_Box
We also got MTG Game Night, an out of print "board game" with 5x 60 card decks for $50, one of each color. It's basically set up for 2-5 folks to pick up and play together, including folks that haven't played before. I think it's out of print though, they sent mine internationally but I just got it a couple days ago.
https://mtg.fandom.com/wiki/Game_Night
Those have given us decently balanced decks to play one another while exploring the different color themes and letting us dabble in deck building. I've never cared too much for commander so I can't comment on getting into that, I don't think these sets are terribly great for that, but otherwise I think these pretty well do what you're looking for. You get goblins, elves, vampires, angels, undead, big beasts, wizards, dragons, healing... Lots of classic MtG sorts of stuff.
Offtopic:
I prefer using https://mtg.wiki/ as it is ad free and not bloated as the fandom wiki. It's hosted by the same team as https://scryfall.com/, which is s great resource to find specific magic cards.
Thanks, I knew there had to be one but it wasn't popping up in my mobile searches!!
The out-of-printness of beginner/boxed magic sets is consistently fascinating to me; the Game Night set is appealing in the same way as the Foundations Starter Collection (also out of print). Maybe the market just isn't there for that sort of thing? I might wait to see if they reprint or come out with something similar.
You can still get Game Night from Amazon's warehouse new, I think they just have overstock that isn't moving. The Foundations Beginner Box -- distinct from the Starter Collection -- is in print, mine came from the local game shop.
They used to do core releases and had basic starter decks of those widely available. I didn't see anything in print like that when I was looking though. The starter kit deck pairs for each set are still a thing, but that's more intro to that set than onboarding new players.
I would suggest picking a commander deck that seems to fit themes you like playing around and go with it. As someone else mentioned, pretty much all recent commander decks are quite powerful, even though they are not fully optimised. After some play time you can figure out what you want, do you want lots of decks? only a few but very powerful? Are you just interested in rare prints of cards? Do you like not knowing what you're going to play and try to create a deck out of boosters? All very valid options.
With that said, it really depends on what you want to do. I found, after spending a bit of money, that purchasing booster packs is not worth it for me. There's way too many cards that end up being useless whereas buying singles is much better for me. But I play commander almost exclusively, I don't play other formats much, just personal preference. I like mid powered decks so I tend not to spend a lot of money on singles anyway, but some of my friends like not just to juice them up, but also buy the prettiest version of each card which tends to make them very expensive.
One way to test out decks or to play pretty much any format is to use Forge. You can build decks and play against AI (Not the best enemy as it can be predictable and there's some cards it can't work). There's even a single player campaign where you play random NPCs and can build your collection that way and purchasing cards in game (Not using real money). The downside of Forge is that it can be pretty hard to understand what's happening at times because it doesn't always give you a clear story of why something happened.
The one warning I would give is that playing Magic can become very expensive very quickly as you've realised, but also depends who you play with. If you find a group that wants to do it on the cheap, you can always do proxies instead of using regular cards (I saw someone suggested this already).
I wanted to thank everyone for their feedback, I got a lot of good stuff for more research (cube was particularly interesting, I didn't realize what it was). Thanks all!
Longtime MTG nerd here.
For any INFORMAL / kitchen-table type play, just use proxies. There is no reason you should have to give Hasboro thousands of dollars to play at home with your friends. Just don't try to play in an official tournament with them.
For MTG: Arena - you can actually build up to having any deck you want if you are willing to be patient and spend some initial time grinding. I have a huge collection on Arena and play in drafts whenever I want - and I've spent exactly $15 ever on the game - bought the new player pack I think it was called? It seemed like the best 'help me get started' value, then never spent another dime. Grind out 4 wins a day to build up gold - play whatever the good winrate budget deck of standard is (usually mono-red is viable with few rares). Other than that, use your daily re-roll on quests for any 500 gold quest to statisically maximize the frequency with which you upgrade them to 750 gold. Accumulate gold. If you are good at winning drafts, spend the gold there. If you tend to not do well in drafts you can just spend it to buy packs at worst. Opening packs builds up your wildcards which you can use to craft whatever cards you want. Best / most efficient way is to get reasonably good at draft, spend your gold to win packs and gems, and wait until you're done drafting that particular set, then open all the packs you won (this order of operations maximizes your set completion and minimizes rare duplication).
People already answered with tons of useful information so I won’t repeat. Instead I’ll share my experience with MTG. I started by buying bulk second hand cards people sold on Kijiji. Soon enough I had so much bulk I didn’t know what to do other than sell it off myself. I tried playing at stores and mostly got trashed even by kids become this game is pay to win when you play competitively. Worse, I picked “modern” which I didn’t know was one of the more expensive formats as it used older cards. I stopped all that and ended up playing only with friends. We played commander and that was good for the most part. The older preconstructed commander decks were kind of weak. The newer ones are better. I found commander to keep things a bit more balanced. I still play this and you can even use SpellTable, the MTG online platform. I do this to play with a friend in a different city.
The other format I still play is sealed. With my friend, we both buy 6 packs of the same set, we open it up and each of us build 2 sealed decks from the cards (much like draft decks - 40 cards). This, again, keeps the game more balanced and free of the pay to win aspect.
Those are the 2 formats that I settled on after years of trial and error with this game and spending far too much money both on paper cards and Arena. To me, this game’s charm is the paper cards. Arena is fun, bit not for me. I’m old school. I like tangible cards.
For what it's worth, if you like constructed formats like Modern, check if there are any groups by you that don't mind playing constructed with proxies. Even some shops don't care, they just won't give out the same prize support since it's not sanctioned.
Thanks, that’s a good idea.
Magic is my primary hobby and I'm glad to see more people want to play it! Going through your list, I'llgive my 2 cents.
Definitely this. You'll get enough of it anyway if you buy packs as lotto tickets, or enjoy drafting.
Also definitely this. I build all of my decks on Moxfield, play test a bit before committing to any purchases.
Magic Arena's tutorial and color challenges are a great onboarding tool, and having a computer "help" with the rules is a godsend. You'll get exposure to playing different strategies and colors this way.
I would also just recommend asking friends for decks to learn different play styles!
Any precon made after 2021 is playable straight out of the box with few exceptions. If you go this route find a commander or colors that speak to you and go for it. Honestly, can't go wrong for $40-$50 and gets you playing Commander.
My hot take here though is if you are new, learn the game in ways OTHER than commander. Arena, draft, etc. It will help you with the mechanics of the game tremendously. I find it very valuable to have before coming to multiplayer.
Honestly my favorite way to play with my wife! We'll buy 4, and shuffle up and play.
Others have already said, but Cube! The point of it is to curate a draft environment for your group. My group has a Commander cube, others have Pauper (only commons), etc.
I think I've capped out what I can comfortably learn in Arena's digital space; the decks make sense, I can understand how to play them and what they're trying to do, but trying to pull them apart in the app...it just feels very disconnected, like I can't build the spatial connections that I want to build. It might be a personal/moral failing but I find the haptic feedback and physical space a lot more helpful for building understanding (kind of like reading a book vs an ebook).
JumpStart seems to be fairly common as a recommendation, so I might try that.
JumpStart is great fun. Building off of another recommendation you could build a JumpStart Battle box/Cube.
Buy and play JumpStart as normal, but at the end, re-seperate the packs back into their original piles and store them that way. You get a bunch of reusability out of the same decks!
Filling a gift bundle is 12 JumpStart half decks is great casual fun!
I think these points were touched on briefly, but I wanted to add a bit.
In general, when I'm crafting a deck, I use Moxfield. I find it to be a much more intuitive user interface than Archidekt. It's prettier, simpler, and still has sufficient tooling to do what I want to do. Part of it is just that the layout of the site is more friendly, in my opinion, on the eyes; it is not as chaotic as the default Archidekt view.
Moxfield give a pretty good idea of the cost of purchasing decks that you are putting together.
I would also recommend as you purchase cards that you have some kind of card inventory. There are various methods of keeping track of your collection - as simple as a spreadsheet, or you can use a database or scanning tool. This makes it so that when you are putting together a deck, you can check your inventory to see if you already own the card or not. I believe that Moxfield and Archidekt both support this, though I have a custom setup for tracking what I own.
If you are playing with friends, I definitely recommend borrowing decks if that is an option. Playing a borrowed deck can give you an idea of the sorts of things that you enjoy doing. I try to put a little writeup with my decks so that when I loan them to people (or, honestly, play them myself) the player knows what they're generally trying to do and what the lines of play are, but not a lot of people seem to do that. But even something like "it's an izzet deck that aims to play a lot of spells on other players turns and wins by pushing a storm count" can be enough of an idea of how to play a deck.
And I left a comment about this above, but if you are aiming to get into collecting for the purpose of playing then I think proxying is a very good call. If you want to get into collecting for the collection, it obviously isn't viable. But I want to say that there's nothing noble about spending money to play a game, and removing "pay to win" from the game has really improved the state of play for me and my friends group, but there are always people who will just proxy a crazy cEDH deck and play it at the wrong bracket. It's a real concern that really happens, but that's not really a problem with proxies it's a problem with buttheads, because that problem exists with or without proxies.
For tracking what cards you own, Manabox is pretty great on mobile, it's what I use.
I like the scanning function though it is quite annoying that they want to charge a subscription to have more than a handful of binders or collection decks. So it's been pretty fiddly for me to scan my decks, get the list of cards and then copy and paste across different tabs in the app just to manage the decks without paying. AM I doing it wrong?
Edit: this friction has halted my cataloguing. I did a couple binders and commander decks. But haven't started on my "playable and high value" binders, modern/legacy decks, or my boxes containing several thousand random draft chaff.