Quiet Speculation: So Many Ways to Play!

With Legacy becoming a format on MTG Online, Magic players now have more options than ever when playing online. If you’ve ever wanted to play Trini-Stax in your skivvies, this is clearly a dream come true. I’ve gotten a lot of reader questions about starting up on MTGO, so I want to address them this week. I covered bankroll management in the past, which will help guide you towards building up a healthy ticket reserve, but today’s all about playing the game.

Recently, you may or may not know, I missed out on Top 8 at the Star City Games 5k Standard Open on tiebreakers. My final record was 8-1-1, and in each of my non-win matches, I could identify a stunningly amateurish mistake that cost me the game (and thus, the match). This in turn led me to decide to play more MTGO, since I can fit in games around my schedule. Slow day at the store? Fire up MTGO. Running an 8-man draft? Why not draft myself? Clearly, this approach isn’t for everyone, especially drafting. If you’re new to the game, you might want to look at one of these other ways to play.

Standard

Upfront Cost: * * *
Recurring Cost: * * * (* * if you draft a lot)
Potential Return: * * * *

Standard is frustrating to some, who do not want to acquire a collection online that just mirrors their paper collection. Since the Standard cards I play with are usually just on loan from my own store, I don’t really have that issue. In fact, it’s nice to have some cards, digital or not, to call my own. Standard can be expensive to get into, but some speculating should get you a foot in the door. If you’re buying 2 playsets of everything and doubling up, you can just leave one playset aside. That way, you’re building towards a nice well-stocked account and breaking even. Standard can be expensive, especially if your deck requires Blue or White cards, but other decks, even Jund, are affordable. Jund is well under 200 tix without Maelstrom Pulse, and just over 200 with a playset of the elite removal spell. Since you won’t often need to buy entire playsets just to finish a single deck, you can pick and choose what types of decks to target. This way, you can keep the recurring costs low.

In Standard right now, there are a few types of decks that all come from the same card pool. At the moment, building Jund, Valakut Ramp, RB Aggro and Mono-Red all use a very similar pool. If you build Jund, don’t go off and immediately try to build UW Control! That’s a surefire way to waste money.

They payouts on Standard tournaments are usually pretty good. The 2-man queues can vary based on the packs given out, but the Dailies are a great source of income if you can consistently x-1 them or better. Given the fact that Standard is now a year-round relevant format due to the myriad of independent 5k tournaments, having more practice in the format is as important as ever.

Extended

Upfront Cost: ****
Recurring Cost: **
Return: **

Now that PTQ season is winding to a close, the rate of return on Extended is going down. Simply put, since there’s not a relevant Extended tournament after the Grand Prix in Houston, you won’t get as much margin on your experience as you will in Limited or Standard. The prize payouts are roughly the same as Standard, except that starting around May, you’ll have Standard PTQs. Now’s a good time to sell Extended stuff, especially that stack of staples from Mirrodin block you’ve been coveting for ages. They’ll never be worth as much as they are now, or if they ever are, it won’t be for years.

Since you can’t really draft Extended staples easily, and there aren’t often a lot of new cards rotating in, the format is pretty easy to keep up with once you have the core cards. Since the format’s relevance is waning, it would not be my choice of focus.

Legacy

Upfront Cost: *****
Recurring Cost: *
Return: ??

We’ve seen Legacy cards shoot up in value lately, but we have no idea what the return will look like. These ratings are based on a snapshot of the format right now, online, not what they will be in a few months. We haven’t got Saga or Masques blocks online yet, and those have some key cards to the format. Still, the recurring cost of Legacy is much lower than the upfront. Force of Will is now an $80 card on MTGO, which is totally insane. Other such staples have gone through the roof as well. It should prove popular with pros in the long run, as they can now practice online for the 5k Legacy events and the few Grand Prix in the format. Now is not the time to be buying Legacy cards. Their recent price spike is unprecedented, and might be a sign of a bubble.

The good news is that if you have your Legacy staples, or you have just recently purchased them, you’ll be playing for a long time. The recurring cost is very very low, excepting the months when Urza’s Saga and company debut. There, you’ll want to learn to draft the format.

Booster Draft

Upfront Cost: *
Recurring Cost: ***
Return: ***

Drafting is great for many reasons. It tightens you up as a player, teaches you how to evaluate cards in a vacuum and in real situations, and it gets you familiar with a new set. Not irrelevant is the fact that you acquire cards. If your goal is to “go infinite”, you’ll need to be an exceptionally good player. There’s too much variance involved in Draft to go infinite if you’re less than elite. Thus, draft to learn, draft to acquire cards, but don’t draft to make money unless you’re already doing that at a high level.

If you plan to play Legacy, learn to draft Urza’s Saga and Mercadian Masques. That will be the easiest way to get them, and if you’re a talented drafter, you can usually shark out some of the release party queues. If you really want to have some fun, try to dig up old articles on the subject.

Pauper (all formats)

Upfront Cost: *
Recurring Cost: *
Return: **

If you’re really, really good, you might turn a profit playing Pauper. Then again, you could also be like Rostom Bagdasarian, and make an unholy fortune by selling your insane talking squirrels to Hollywood. Google him if you’re confused. In both cases, you should be going into the endeavor with a sense of fun, not profitability. If you turn into the Next Big Thing in Pauper, no one will care.

My god is it fun. It’s got its own little metagame, some 2-card Combos that are really unfair, and its got archetypes from linear tribal decks to slow, plodding Control decks, and everything in between. You won’t have this much fun in Magic for under $10 anywhere else. Winning 2-man queues is hardly big money, but if you have a sick deck, go for it. It’s mainly a good way to blow off steam or try goofy deck ideas.

Singleton

You’d do better to read one of the many talented Singleton writers on this site than to ask me about it. Standard can be a free-roll if you know what you’re doing and already have the cards, but Legacy/Classic can get expensive. Now that Dual Lands are actually relevant to the tournament crowd, they’ve shot up in value. What a shocker. Standard Singleton is the only one I’d suggest to start out, but as you get more comfortable, feel free to learn more about the older formats.

Wrapping it Up

If you’re a Magic player who’s just trying to get better, I’d say that your best bet is a $200 investment in the Jund deck. I tell this to everyone who will listen because too many people get caught up brewing and not enough time gets spent in-game, testing. Jund will win you some games by being Jund, but there are a lot of games in which you can truly earn wins. You’ll win more, have more fun, and you’ll be more prepared when it comes time to play a paper tournament, if that’s your thing. Drafting is not as cost-effective, but the luxury of a draft any time of day or night is very nice to have. Starting with Jund as your Standard deck, you can build many offshoots of the deck and still play a good variety. I highly recommend Valakut Ramp as your secondary pile. The deck requires more precision than I would have expected, and is much more fun to play than Jund by far!