Magic the Gathering (MtG)

Similar to gradyhawks here, I usually have 4-6 decks made up which are all sleeved, I also sleeve all my 'nice' rares for added goodness.

Whilst playing with all the shuffling and picking up cards I find sleeves makes it a bit easier, and means the cards don't get damaged really, but I know several people who play without sleeves, it's not really necessary.
 
cheers, i picked up 200 sleeves (100 blue, 100 pink) and i sleeved my deck after lunch.

chances are i will only ever be playing against my wife unless a friend comes out as a closet Magic player so i would rather us have competative decks 1v1 so the plan is to split any booster packs and not until we both have a better understanding will we start planning our decks more and looking into the possibility of buying singles or 2nd/3rd decks
 
Right, I've ordered a few cards to get me started and I'm heading down to Fan Boy Three in Manchester, bank holiday Monday. They have a 'casual and new players' open day, with reduced intro decks (£5 each on the day, from c. £15) and it's aimed really at new or returning players, with a casual league being set up.

As Jedi confirmed, they also have Friday night magic, alternating formats etc.. and it seems a pretty good place. I'm hoping it's not too cliquey!
 
so this has been far more of a hit then either of us expected it to be, both of us are loving the game and i would like to continue this trend.

what would be the best way to add/upgrade our decks and play with other factions? i have heard that Fat packs are a very good way (plus the land cards would be a big help) but should we stick to the most current fat packs? go to previous versions or wait until the new ones arrive soon?

i have heard intro packs are very bad value and the previous clash pack wasnt as good as the current one that we purchased.

ive modified my deck down to a black green deck and my wife is still playing mainly with her black/white/green deck that came supplied with the clash pack plus a few good cards from the boosters we opened.

neither of us have a planeswalker and i wouldnt want just one of us to have one so we wouldnt want just the 1.
 
GTanny said:
so this has been far more of a hit then either of us expected it to be, both of us are loving the game and i would like to continue this trend.

what would be the best way to add/upgrade our decks and play with other factions? i have heard that Fat packs are a very good way (plus the land cards would be a big help) but should we stick to the most current fat packs? go to previous versions or wait until the new ones arrive soon?

i have heard intro packs are very bad value and the previous clash pack wasnt as good as the current one that we purchased.

ive modified my deck down to a black green deck and my wife is still playing mainly with her black/white/green deck that came supplied with the clash pack plus a few good cards from the boosters we opened.

neither of us have a planeswalker and i wouldnt want just one of us to have one so we wouldnt want just the 1.
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Intro packs are great to play with initially and are decent value enough. You get 2 boosters, that's £7, along side a full deck to play. Sure you will only get one or two great cards, but the intro decks are designed to play against each other.

Every new block me and my mates do the following:

Every one gets a different starter deck along side 6 or so boosters. We get a prize pool going with the booster packs until we have 4 left each. We then do a best out of 3 tournament with JUST the starter decks, then a draft with 4 boosters each, then we trade cards and either buff up our starter decks or our draft decks and have another match.

As for how you want to take it, you need to decide if you want to carry on getting boosters and playing OR you get singles and build decks that way. What I would recommend is that you each get yourself a "Deck Builder's Toolkit" for Origins. These give you plenty of lands, a set of semi-random cards and several boosters. With this toolkit, you can pretty much build any deck if you supplement them with your boosters and such.

As for planeswalkers, they are powerful, but unless your deck is built for them, they have the same power ingame as having a high level monster. Just one of you having one won't make TOO much of a difference.

Oh, another thing... Duel Decks! These are great for couples. For £15 you get 2 decks that are meant to be played against each other. Not overly powerful decks, but they are great fun and good value.
 
Dual Decks and Clash Packs seem good value but, as someone who recently blew £40 on booster packs can attest to, I think you're far better off deciding which kind of deck you like, feel comfortable with and want to build. Then buy singles! £40 and there was one card I'd consider using in a deck, even then, I already had a couple of them because I'd also been buying singles. Lesson learned.

I've seen several reviews that say Fat Packs are a bad idea. That said, as a new or returning player, the pack of land you get can be useful and you get a nice spindown with a half decent box to use for storage. But, you can buy the land, spindown and box for less than £10 (at the most!) and use the remaining cash on singles that are less of a risk in the long term and provide something you immediately need for your deck.

Horses for courses really but seeing as you're both already settled on colours, with presumably a style of play, then I'd suggest looking at singles and buying playsets/combos etc.. and building. Plenty of opportunity to netdeck and see what's out there.

As a recent returnee who has spent WAY too much time recently reading up on the last 15 years I missed, I'm probably at a similar stage to you feeling my way back into it all. A lot of the game mechanics have changed and there are far more options out there now, particularly in the modern format, for fun deck ideas.

Would also love to keep this thread going! Signed up for a casual league in Manchester at Fan Boy 3 but, most people there seem to play Standard and I'm not sure how often I'll just be able to turn up and have a modern casual game.
 
cheers for the advice :)

the only reason we have decided on our current colours is we dont have the cards to try others yet, i like the idea of the counter play with blue (and the agression of red) as my wife loves the counters she has in her white deck but without a seperate deck its difficult to tell.

The main problem i have with the idea of buying singles is the deck suggestions i have seen are all aimed at more serious players and have 3-4 of each card in the hand so it feels like things would get very repetative with the same counters and creatures being played each round.

i know my local shop sells a fat pack box full of random cards for £10 but if they are all useless cards that people have thrown away from boosters it seems a bit of a waste (my wife has no interest in a spindown currently as we use an app on my phone)
 
GTanny said:
The main problem i have with the idea of buying singles is the deck suggestions i have seen are all aimed at more serious players and have 3-4 of each card in the hand so it feels like things would get very repetative with the same counters and creatures being played each round
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This is why I stopped with the singles route and just play with what I can get a hold of. I've bought a deck from singles (£25 worth) when I used to play at the store but I either got trashed by people who had proper decks made up (£100+ decks) or utterly beat down the majority of decks made by new players from boosters and starter decks.

I stopped playing in the store and now only really play with starter decks buffed up with boosters. We've enough in our group that you can almost always trade away everything aside from the colours you want. Have about 7 diferent decks now. Me and another mate did print off a couple tournament decks and stick them in sleeves (look really convincing) and we occasionally play with these decks that, if real, would be worth £300-£500 each and whilst its great, you DO get bored of playing the same cards over and over.

I'd get the Toolkit each, that will give you each a base set of cards that you can use for every deck as well as the land cards and just stick to boosters, starter decks and so on. Maybe do a draft between the two of you?
 
There are auction site (are we allowed to mention specifics in none computer related threads??) shops who can put together a cheap but effective deck in whatever colour combo you want. You could both pick up a deck for £10 (or less) each that would give you a taste of blue/red etc.. and probably provide a solid base to build on. Probably less expensive and wasteful than buying boosters.

You can also find people auctioning off bundles of common cards for a few pounds that can bulk out your collection and provide you with more options.

There is a format (don't know how widely played) called 'pauper' that uses only common cards and sounds really fun. I'd like to give it a go. Cheap and pretty well balanced, as everyone is on a level playing field in terms of the power of the cards etc..
 
Annoyingly, I wont make it to the casual league tomorrow night as i have a deadline to work to! Next week though, honest. I might have my deck complete by then, anyway.
 
The Magic Origins Clash pack 'Armed and Dangerous' got some good reviews by the way and is seen as good value in terms of card value while being well balanced and enjoyable. Might be worth a look, although it is around £25!
 
Just bought the cards for my group of players. There are 5 of us, so we each get a starter deck as well as a toolkit each to bring us up to date on top of getting a booster box to split 5 ways:

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Should do us nicely until next set. £35 each, but will end up with about 300 cards each :D.
 
I hope you get some of the new lands in foil! They'll be worth a fortune. I'm quite excited about the new BFZ set, looks like there's some good mechanics on the way and some of the cards just look ridiculous. I've pre-ordered the player's guide so i can get a good look at all the cards in the set before cherry picking what i want.

By the way, will they ship separately, if you pre-ordered BFZ boosters and intro packs? Might be a month or so before you get these, even the toolkit. The website i normally use doesn't part ship orders if a pre-order is included.
 
Here's a pretty good list of pauper decks someone posted last year, lot's of options available on the cheap, easy to adapt and a good base for something bigger (as they're usually watered down versions of more powerful decks). Just in case anyone is interested..

Link

Also, there is a cheesy but actually quite good intro to the colours and what they represent (with card examples to demonstrate the point), quite good i thought. Just cheesy! If you're interested though, this guy posts some good content and there is another, slightly less cheesy guy, called 'Tolarian Community College' who is also a good but light-hearted and informative you tuber.

Link
 
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@ Nedb37 - I asked them to split it up so that I get the stuff as it comes, toolkits should arrive soon. Will get the intro and boosters october 3rd or so when they are released.

Does look good indeed, some nice cards and mechanics. Should be able to get at least 1 expensive card between us all! The full lands look amazing! £10 for a full set of one colour.. might just have to!
 
im waiting until payday and i have agreed with the wife to preorder a booster box for zendikar if we have the funds :)

i would prefer to order at our local shop as they are really helpful but they sell their booster boxes for £100 and when they can be had for <£70 online i cant justify the extra cost... as that will be going towards a zendikar fatpack for the lands and more boosters :) (the storage box is a big + too as we got a deckbuilders toolkit but the fat pack box is much nicer.

i got the origins fatpack and managed to get 2 liliana planeswalkers in a single fatpack... both have now been sold on ebay though as its just not somthing we use and them along with a fetch dual land sold for more then the fatpack cost :)... so im ordering another esentially free fatpack :D
 
A fat pack is half a box of boosters. You can grab a box for £2 and land for next to nothing off eBay, then put the cash towards a booster box. I know i'd rather have 18 boosters than a box, land and 9 boosters. Horses for courses, though :)

That said, the basic land is stunning in BFZ and I'd like a pack myself.
 
Sealed fat pack basic lands are available for pre-order from various sites, for around £15-£20!! Wow. Usually a fat pack land bundle is about £3..

The original Zendikar basic lands are £2 each now.. Could be a sound investment getting the BFZ basic lands after all!
 
Nedb37 said:
A fat pack is half a box of boosters. You can grab a box for £2 and land for next to nothing off eBay, then put the cash towards a booster box. I know i'd rather have 18 boosters than a box, land and 9 boosters. Horses for courses, though :)

That said, the basic land is stunning in BFZ and I'd like a pack myself.
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i have just ordered another Origins fatpack as its pretty much free from the sale of the planeswalkers found in last one, i understand the point that a booster box is cheaper then a fatpack but for Zendikar i want the book and land, i will be pre-ordering a booster box also.

next time i am in my local shop i may ask about any beginners nights they are having and if im not working go along just to have a game with some new people.
 
Usually i think the point would stand but i actually agree the BFZ fat pack seems like a sound choice now.

You can currently pre-order the individual basic lands for £0.49 each (£39), or find people offering the set of 80 for £15-£20, so a £34 fat pack containing (apparently) £20/£39 worth of basic land, with 9 boosters which would cost you about £26 separately, plus a £1.50 guide, a box and spindown actually seems like very good value.

You also have the potential to pull something valuable out of the boosters also.

For c.£100 I'm very tempted to pre-order a fat pack and box of boosters myself!
 
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