I see a lot of posts and threads from time to time complaining about how expensive it is to play this game. And sometimes there are responses along the lines of "find a cheaper hobby if you don't like it." What is never actually said from either perspective is how much people think is a fair amount to play Magic.
I am specifically referring to people who are interested in playing at events like PPTQs and Grand Prix. I know that there are many players who focus on casual as well as EDH/Commander, and that has a completely different price expectation I think. So I'm just focusing on two formats, Standard and Modern, and you would have to account for playing both since PPTQs switch back and forth in format (right now it's on Modern). Also include the cost of entry to events in your consideration. Assume that you are not able to top 8 large events like Grand Prix (since that's a tiny minority of the competitive players) but you do often get some cash there, and maybe top 8 PPTQs half the time. Therefore you are picking the deck you want and not choosing a sub-optimal deck for financial reasons, and the amount of cash won is not significant to offset the cost of playing the game, although it might reduce it a little bit. I am not sure what a typical frequency is for events per month for most competitive players, but let's say 3-4 events per month.
I am not asking what you specifically are able to pay. I'm trying to think about the overall health of the game, where it is important that enough players can participate in events to make them worth running. So even if you are not having any problems affording the cards you need, consider if you would prefer that players who have less financial resources than you should be able to compete on the same level (i.e. have the same access to cards). Should only people who have your financial resources or greater be able to compete? Conversely, if you have problems getting the cards you need, probably for some people the answer really is that this hobby is too expensive. But I'm not sure where that line is drawn. That's what this question is about.
the short answer is if you drop $2-3k on a deck to win tournaments you're going to need thousands more set aside to take time off work and buy hotels/plane tickets to keep going to the next tournament if you're so lucky to qualify. So you've gotta ask at that point just how "pro" you wanna go
At this price point I think the competitive portion of the game (e.g. playing at highest level at local LGS) would be reasonably accessible to enough people such that other factors (e.g. style of gameplay available in the format, distance to nearest LGS, time, etc.) would be the main reasons not to play instead of cost. Cheaper competitive decks would also better enable the meta to shift as altering one's deck or acquiring a new one wouldn't be as costly. One of my competitive EDH playgroups has already switched to allowing complete proxy decks so everyone can play at a similar level, the meta can easily shift and friends don't seriously harm themselves financially just to competitively enjoy a hobby with friends. My other playgroup is also becoming open to proxies and my friends who play modern are as well. I think having too high a price point to play MtG competitively pushes more and more people towards proxies and/or accepting the use of proxies by others.
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Modern:UB Taking Turns Modern:URW Madcap Experiment Pauper: MonoU Tempo Delver
Standard: Price of 2 booster boxes to get in then 1 booster box per set to stay competive
Modern: $1000
Legacy: 2000,
Standard should be a cheap throw away environment, you should be able to get a top teir deck $200 OR LESS! since with very few exceptions nothing will hold any value anyway, basically you are renting a deck for 2 years. (or 1.5 years or whatever they have changed the dam rotation format too) Modern is good forever but is also (or SHOULD also be) flooding the market with repritns of things to keep it from being too crazy, 1K is resonable (and likely less since people tend to go from Standard TO modern where over time they likely have afew of the higher priced items from their standard days. Legacy is like modern EXCEPT the reserve list hobbles it. Play a deck with 4x underground seas and you will find your budget is gone, (but it is also good forever) but no reprints are comming you should expect heavy investments and little carry over from moder/standard. Most of the good stuff you are going to have to buy from scratch.
No, but really it will probably be around $2,000-5,000 for various decks, travel, and fees, depending on how well you do. If you are already an established good player, it may not cost much after you calculate winnings.
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Legacy - Sneak Show, BR Reanimator, Miracles, UW Stoneblade
Premodern - Trix, RecSur, Enchantress, Reanimator, Elves https://www.facebook.com/groups/PremodernUSA/ Modern - Neobrand, Hogaak Vine, Elves
Standard - Mono Red (6-2 and 5-3 in 2 McQ)
Draft - (I wish I had more time for limited...)
Commander - Norin the Wary, Grimgrin, Adun Oakenshield (taking forever to build) (dead format for me)
Too bad this isn't actually true (in my time of playing Modern: Birthing Pod, Summer Bloom, Treasure Cruise, Dig Through Time, Gitaxian Probe, Splinter Twin)
Too bad this isn't actually true (in my time of playing Modern: Birthing Pod, Summer Bloom, Treasure Cruise, Dig Through Time, Gitaxian Probe, Splinter Twin)
Thats fair counterpoint, bannings suck pretty hard, (and never a good creature is banned only combo/control stuff) Typicly the LESS wizards screws with a format the better said format is.
Too bad this isn't actually true (in my time of playing Modern: Birthing Pod, Summer Bloom, Treasure Cruise, Dig Through Time, Gitaxian Probe, Splinter Twin)
I played twin, then switched to jeskai harbinger, then to grixis shadow (prob. getting banned too since the internet hates it). Modern is not forever and is really expensive, right now I'm enjoyng grixis shadow a lot but I don't know what will I do when it gets the banhammer, probably going to give up with the format and just build a rogue deck like blue moon :/
Standard should be cheap, it is a throw-a-way format whose whole point is to constantly change and evolve. 400-500 bucks is RIDICULOUS for a deck that will only be legal for a max of two years (usually less, sometimes a lot less).
Standard should be cheap, it is a throw-a-way format whose whole point is to constantly change and evolve. 400-500 bucks is RIDICULOUS for a deck that will only be legal for a max of two years (usually less, sometimes a lot less).
Not really.
Just mind that 75 cards that cost you at lest 1$ per card is already 75$ , and thats an extremely cheap kind of deck.
If you have just a single 4x 20$ card, these alone cost you 80$ , while the rest of the deck, even cheap, might cost you easily 150$ in total then and that is a cheap deck to build.
"Good-stuff" decks usually opt to play the best cards and they are expensive, so if you deck packs multiple "top" cards, these alone cost you 200$ easily (say 4 times Gideon, 4 times Liliana, such stuff).
However, what makes modern expensive is more the manabase and especially legacy is pulled by its lands.
But that said, the land base is something you buy just once and then you are invested enough that building decks with them doesnt cost you much anymore (and its much easier to trade with friends to get cards you want, if you have the lands you all need).
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I wouldnt even consider these super essential cards a cost, its a barrier you have to buy at some point and you can fairly easily sell them for just that price again and they wont really lose value too.
In standard the worst you can do is buy the cards with cash and sell them when they lost value at the end of the life-cycle , that will just throw all your money out of the window.
If you are slightly smarter and sell the cards to get you a pool of money into cards from the new sets, its not expensive, just much more work, than for a older format, which just gets a tiny amount of cards that matter from a new set.
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500$ for standard to get a pool of necessary cards is quite realistic, but you have to buy/sell the cards to not lose your money over time (you can even make money, if you buy cards in advance if you play test with them and see the potential, before they finish strong in a tournament).
Modern and legacy, you pretty much have to buy into the lands if you want to build a deck with fetchlands / multiple colors, thats easily ~800$ to get modern lands (but again, fetchlands you need for pretty much anything, so thats an investment thats just essential).
Snapcaster, Goyf, Mox Opal and the like are all investments for specific decks, so you buy them if you feel confident you will run these decks for some time (and they carry enough value that you can sell and buy the other deck specific cards if you are "again" confident enough that exchanging them is worth your work).
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Legacy is especially expensive if you have nothing to begin with.
However, if you have a bunch of cards from playing standard / modern , the big money cards are just again the lands.
You dont need 4 times duals of any combination, you can get away by playing more fetchlands often enough and just 1 dual of the combinations you need to fetch for (its a reasonable approach).
But investing in legacy cards is again something that you really dont "lose" money with, cards tend to become more expensive over time, so it can even make you a profit and if you have the big cards, buying new cards is really cheap, as theres almost nothing expensive that suddenly makes an impact in older formats.
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The best part about magic is that all the money you spend in cards isnt wasted, as long as you sell and buy the cards at least smart enough.
If you can't make back your plane ticket, stay and deck's cost by winning a GP. It costs too much (also Magic prize money is *****, specially with the CEO saying he wants it to be an esport and twitch phenomenon).
Well, the problem with eternal formats is, that wizards can´t make them cheap without banning or reprinting reserved list cards. The first will hurt the format, the second might hurt the whole game.
The second might be the only way to save the formats, and we have a lot of evidence lately that reprints don't actually hurt the perceived value of original printings.
As for what it "should" cost, I tend to agree with you for prices: a new console for a Standard deck (assuming you start from 0, which is seldom the case), maybe $200- $300. For a Modern deck, again assuming a buy-in from nothing, somewhere between $400 and $600 for a top-tier deck. Legacy, I'd start at $600 and go up from there, but should it really cost several thousand dollars? Hell, should it cost $500 for a single land since SCG has the ability to manipulate prices?
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Cards are game pieces, and should be treated as such, easily replaceable.
Cards are not money, investments, or a retirement fund, and should never have been treated as such.
Wizards made a mistake caving to speculators once, and we still pay for that mistake 2 decades later.
"Entitled:" the entire ad hominem fallacy condensed into a single word. It doesn't strengthen your argument to attack motivations, it just makes you look like you don't understand the argument.
In standard the worst you can do is buy the cards with cash and sell them when they lost value at the end of the life-cycle , that will just throw all your money out of the window.
If you are slightly smarter and sell the cards to get you a pool of money into cards from the new sets, its not expensive, just much more work, than for a older format, which just gets a tiny amount of cards that matter from a new set.
What I used to do is, when a rotation was coming up in like 5 months, trade everything off that was rotating, for only high-demand cards from the newest block. Well, except what I needed to continue playing. This strategy isn't as easy as it was like 15 years ago since it seems everyone aims to do this now. But you can still do it to some extent.
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Legacy is especially expensive if you have nothing to begin with.
However, if you have a bunch of cards from playing standard / modern , the big money cards are just again the lands.
You dont need 4 times duals of any combination, you can get away by playing more fetchlands often enough and just 1 dual of the combinations you need to fetch for (its a reasonable approach).
But investing in legacy cards is again something that you really dont "lose" money with, cards tend to become more expensive over time, so it can even make you a profit and if you have the big cards, buying new cards is really cheap, as theres almost nothing expensive that suddenly makes an impact in older formats.
Yeah, I was intentionally not including Legacy (or Vintage) in my question, because of the problem with reserved list cards.
Standard deck: twice the prices of a AAA video game
Modern deck: the above + twice the price of two major expansion packs of the above game
Formats that allow reserved list cards while reserved list still exists: price can't be controlled
I'm basing these prices off of video games because of wanting the prices to still be a thing when considering inflation and such later on, and because the comparison is key for entertainment purposes when one is 'shopping' for entertainment. Most video games don't last you too long before you complete them and their replayability and shift to other ones, which is comparable to standard rotation, you pay a bit of a premium here (the double price I put in) because magic cards are also a physical collectible playable without the aid of a computer or console. The Modern deck is likely to last you longer than a Standard one, which justifies adding the cost equivalent to a game that gets expansion packs (doubled for the physical collectible without a device requirement), but it isn't a sure thing with card bans and shifting metagames or simply getting bored of the deck to remain valuable to you as a deck you'd be using and play, so it can't be too much more expensive.
Under the current prices, I'd put things at roughly:
$120 for a Standard deck
$280 for a Modern deck
Any more expensive, and you are going to have trouble competing with other potential forms of fun and hobbies unless a person has reasons to like Magic in particular over the others by a significant degree, as well as justify things like Standard rotation or the potential threat of card bans or theft of your valuable cards while carrying them around to play locations and such.
Higher prices than that in Standard I'd blame on unfair market manipulation in the secondary card market that would be illegal in normal markets that face normal government regulations, and in Modern partially on WotC having an insufficient reprint policy if they want to actually consider Modern an actively supported competitive format (rather than partially supported).
I'd say if the price of a modern deck could get cut down to 500 usd on the top end we are in a good place. Standard is probably always going to be rough as they are printing for limited and draft, so I'm not sure they have a way to keep decks from going into the 150+ dollar range. This is especially true for control.
Also, historically I think we are in one of the lowest cost standards ever thanks partly to standard being almost like extended right now. 8 sets are currently legal.
1. (Ravnica Allegiance): You can't keep a good esper control deck down... Or Wilderness Reclamation... or Gates...
2. (War of the Spark): Guys, I know what we need! We need a cycle of really idiotic flavor text victory cards! Jace's Triumph...
3. (War of the Spark): Lets make the format with control have even more control!
I say this for the best comparison. look at Hearthstone as the best example. A very fun game with "semi-complex" mechanics, and somewhat beginner friendly.
The cost to entry, for a total noob, to really start playing in "standard", if say you miss the promotional, would be say $50 to $150/$200 MAX - this let's one buy a set of classic and two of the latest sets (all one needs). Since this is a digital product, the player can simply disenchant or breakdown duplicates and "craft" the remainder cards to complete a top tier deck.
Best of all, all cards are accessible ALWAYS
Wizards needs to get real and really see where the competition is kicking their butt... start with MTGO!
Standard should be cheap, it is a throw-a-way format whose whole point is to constantly change and evolve. 400-500 bucks is RIDICULOUS for a deck that will only be legal for a max of two years (usually less, sometimes a lot less).
Not really.
Just mind that 75 cards that cost you at lest 1$ per card is already 75$ , and thats an extremely cheap kind of deck.
If you have just a single 4x 20$ card, these alone cost you 80$ , while the rest of the deck, even cheap, might cost you easily 150$ in total then and that is a cheap deck to build.
"Good-stuff" decks usually opt to play the best cards and they are expensive, so if you deck packs multiple "top" cards, these alone cost you 200$ easily (say 4 times Gideon, 4 times Liliana, such stuff).
However, what makes modern expensive is more the manabase and especially legacy is pulled by its lands.
But that said, the land base is something you buy just once and then you are invested enough that building decks with them doesnt cost you much anymore (and its much easier to trade with friends to get cards you want, if you have the lands you all need).
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I wouldnt even consider these super essential cards a cost, its a barrier you have to buy at some point and you can fairly easily sell them for just that price again and they wont really lose value too.
In standard the worst you can do is buy the cards with cash and sell them when they lost value at the end of the life-cycle , that will just throw all your money out of the window.
If you are slightly smarter and sell the cards to get you a pool of money into cards from the new sets, its not expensive, just much more work, than for a older format, which just gets a tiny amount of cards that matter from a new set.
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500$ for standard to get a pool of necessary cards is quite realistic, but you have to buy/sell the cards to not lose your money over time (you can even make money, if you buy cards in advance if you play test with them and see the potential, before they finish strong in a tournament).
Modern and legacy, you pretty much have to buy into the lands if you want to build a deck with fetchlands / multiple colors, thats easily ~800$ to get modern lands (but again, fetchlands you need for pretty much anything, so thats an investment thats just essential).
Snapcaster, Goyf, Mox Opal and the like are all investments for specific decks, so you buy them if you feel confident you will run these decks for some time (and they carry enough value that you can sell and buy the other deck specific cards if you are "again" confident enough that exchanging them is worth your work).
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Legacy is especially expensive if you have nothing to begin with.
However, if you have a bunch of cards from playing standard / modern , the big money cards are just again the lands.
You dont need 4 times duals of any combination, you can get away by playing more fetchlands often enough and just 1 dual of the combinations you need to fetch for (its a reasonable approach).
But investing in legacy cards is again something that you really dont "lose" money with, cards tend to become more expensive over time, so it can even make you a profit and if you have the big cards, buying new cards is really cheap, as theres almost nothing expensive that suddenly makes an impact in older formats.
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The best part about magic is that all the money you spend in cards isnt wasted, as long as you sell and buy the cards at least smart enough.
for magic world maybe, 1$ is already stretching it for a card(it's just cardboard..). and that's never the case,many cards cost 5$ a pop, or 20..or more.., other cards games have each card 0.20 or even less (netrunner,mage wars,got) so comparing mtg prices and calling it fair or cheap is ridiculous, if with a card you can buy a whole new board game then the hobby costs w ay much..
tcg model is a huge rip off imo in other models, you can buy a game fully for 500$(lcg), and have every deck available(in magic, 1-2 decks), something you can never do in magic. i bought my mage wars collection for 150$
not to mention these games are much more skill based than self piloting decks and p2w
calling 75 $ cheap, and in reality a 75$ deck is pretty mediocre non competitive except few monocolored cases, just dont try to justify the prices of the game , we all love the game, but the prices are ridiculous
for magic world maybe, 1$ is already stretching it for a card(it's just cardboard..). and that's never the case,many cards cost 5$ a pop, or 20..or more.., other cards games have each card 0.20 or even less (netrunner,mage wars,got) so comparing mtg prices and calling it fair or cheap is ridiculous, if with a card you can buy a whole new board game then the hobby costs w ay much..
tcg model is a huge rip off imo in other models, you can buy a game fully for 500$(lcg), and have every deck available(in magic, 1-2 decks), something you can never do in magic. i bought my mage wars collection for 150$
not to mention these games are much more skill based than self piloting decks and p2w
calling 75 $ cheap, and in reality a 75$ deck is pretty mediocre non competitive except few monocolored cases, just dont try to justify the prices of the game , we all love the game, but the prices are ridiculous
To simply play magic, you certainly do not need to buy the expensive cards.
Its a collectable card game after all, and thats the value of the cards.
If you had more cards than players, they would be worth nothing, just like other card games are that cheap as nobody really will put money into them.
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If you simply look what a booster display costs , you easily get an idea that an entire constructed deck should never realisticly cost just 50$.
If you want expensive hobbies theres plenty that offer you no money in return.
For magic, if you invest in cards and sell them, it will not cost you money at all, or even make an profit, it all depends on how you want to play the game (which in my case means playing FNM each week, just like others go out and buy them an overly expensive drink and that alone provides for any cards i need in constructed, simply by playing the game for 20+ years).
If you have nothing and want to buy into an expensive format of old cards, of course you will pay dearly and bleed for it, just like in any other market of collectable stuff.
Expensive cards in magic are pretty solid money investment if you look at it from a 20 year perspective and theres no denying that.
The biggest deal simply is that you put money in the game and you can sell your cards fairly easily if you need the money back.
If you put all your money in terrible cards, well, you probably shouldnt be trusted with money
The price point you choose is based on what kind of crowd you want playing the format, how many people you want playing and how much profit you think WotC needs to make to sustain itself.
If you want a solid core audience, then we should continue down the road we have right now. 200-500 bucks for a top tier deck. Your deck will likely need to be adjusted, rebuilt or abandoned every 3 months (when a new set comes out).
If you want lots of casual players flooding into stores, then you need to make the game as a cheap as possible. You can have power decks filled with mythics and rares but you also need equally viable decks that run mostly on commons and uncommons. You need ways to get casual players into stores, and give them effective tools to win games. You cannot expect casual players to drop 200 bucks on singles for a new deck every 3 months.
Consoles life span lasts between 5 and 7 years. Even at 400 bucks, that is a minimum investment of 80 dollars a year. Casual gamers likely buy a game every other month. So 60x6=360. So per year, a casual player would probably look to spend around 450 dollars.
Perfect, you say, buy the best deck and be done with it!
But casual gamers will not want to blow their entire budget on a single deck. No way, no how.
Casual players also like buying packs. It is an inefficient means of buying cards but it is also fun (and kind of addictive). They also like to do limited events. Both of those are going to drain their yearly budget.
Even if they only attend the pre-release for each set, that still represents a significant drain on the budget. Locally, it costs 30 bucks per pre-release. That means per year, you are looking at 120 bucks for pre-releases.
Most casual players also buy a fat pack per set (or the equivalent in individual packs). So that is 160 bucks (40x4).
160+120=300
So now we just have 150 bucks for a top deck (450 total - 300 = 150).
A casual player can probably get a good deck in this standard environment, especially if you get a few choice pulls in your packs but... Casual players don't just want to play 1 deck. They need money left over to support other decks. They do not have to be top tier competitive but decent, for sure.
Then you have the real worry that WotC will ban a key card in your main deck or release new cards that completely squash your main deck. Now you will be out the money you spent on your top tier deck and not have the funds to buy a new one.
This is greatly exacerbated if standard becomes expensive again.
Remember, casual players are going to pilot their main deck maybe once or twice a week three or four hours a shot. Probably 10-15 games in total.
Is it really worth it to invest into competitive Magic? No. Not it is not.
If standard is more for bleeding edge players, then it is fine as is. If standard is for the masses, then it needs to be cheap. If you want to grow this game and make it really hip and cool where lots of people feel like they can pick the game up and play (like Hearthstone, LoL, Overwatch etc.), then you need to go cheap.
Also, not going to lie, if you want to make magic have wide appeal, you need to completely overhaul Magic Online. It needs to look hip and modern. It needs to be on tablets. It will appeal to a younger generation, it will look better on stream and you will capture the imagination of people far more effectively.
As far as deck costs themselves go, I can't give a definite number but I'd still say magic is too expensive, atleast compared to its competition. There was actually an article written by MTG-Goldfish a little while ago, where he was exploring how cheap Magic has become. And standard right now is the cheapest standard we had in years. At the time of writing the article the top decks were priced around 200$, maybe slightly less. And Saffron was ecstatic about how Magic is getting cheaper and what a great job Wotc is doing at it. BUT there was also a second part of the article, where he compared Magic's prices to other popular card games, namely YGO, Pokemon, Hearthstone and Force of Will. And basically magic is still more expensive than all the other card games... And this is a format where your deck can potentially become useless every 3-4 months. Saffron then kinda handwaved away the problems, saying something like ''it's okay magic is more expensive because it's the best game''(which kinda ruined the whole point of the article but w/e).
Pokemon is actually cheaper than the article gives credit. It focuses on the cost of top decks being only about $100 cheaper than a Standard Magic deck, but what it doesn't note is the fact that the bulk of the cost of any deck will be comprised of a very specific group of cards that will go into most decks, namely Shaymin EX and Tapu Lele GX. Those cards are fairly expensive and together will make up more than half the cost of any given deck. But what this means is that if you make one deck, you've effectively cut the cost of almost any other deck in half because you already have the most expensive parts. I say almost because there are a few decks that don't run them (such as Sylveon and Greninja), but ironically those are some of the cheapest decks to make anyway because they aren't running those expensive cards.
Though it is incorrect about something in Yu-Gi-Oh: It notes the decks actually cost more than Magic, but considers it cheaper because the main format, like Legacy, doesn't rotate. The problem is that Yu-Gi-Oh may not have rotation officially, but bannings and power creep cause it to happen anyway, so you have the same kind of upkeep as in Standard. So it might actually be even more expensive to play it than Magic, at least on a competitive level.
Awkward question- if you pay for your deck by trading/selling existing cards, it costs you little, whilst a new player may have to buy the cards outright.
I suspect the OP is referring to a new player buying cards outright, but it is not how most Modern players get their cards now.
I have 20 Modern decks- a few tier ones, mainly lower tier decks like Skred, Merfolk, Tron, Insta reanimator,Ad nauseam or the RW Prisons but all recognisable and good Modern decks with zero budget choices- I bought into the format at the start by selling out of Standard- I mean totally out- turning all those bobs, cliques etc. into 6$fetches, shocks etc. I actually had 35 at one point- the effort on keeping them up to date was huge, and eventually my services of deck loans were no longer needed as the format grew, so I sold out of the ones that changed a lot and had expensive cards in- and built Legacy decks, which unsurprisingly have increased in value. So my Legacy collection was basically funded by Standard sellout at the beginning of Modern followed by strategic selling of decks like Infect and Affinity when they were near their highest price points, combined with selling what used to be 20 p junk rares to those lovely commander players, who turned all the unplayable shoesboxes of chaff left over from last picks in draft over the years into 10-50$ cards. Wizards also sent those promos through the post and yeah, sure enough people paid handsomely forthose full art damnations or FNM Brainstorms and finks, and I did some buying of Modern Boxes in other languages at the start- buying F sight etc. boxes in ITA for £70-90 and flogging the single boosters. So how much did that cost me? Its impossible to say- I draft weekly and have done for years- 7.50+ 2 boosters entry- boosters effectively prize support from £3 fnms and draft itself, but all the expensive cards I obtained I have basically largely done so by speculation and trading, with my time being taken up- how much do you pay yourself for that? All those hours on Ebay or trawling through European distributors for cheap boxes of OOP stuff that might be worth something in five years? What about the food when you are out at an event? In the end it is just impossible to say.
I wish in many ways that expensive Mtg cards had values of 100-200$ or £. 200 for a Lotus, Workshop, Tabernacle, 20$ for a PW. But things become worth what people are willing to pay, and there is nothing you can do about that.
Mtg markets are like housing markets- those who have a lot can gain a lot, those at the bottom struggle to get on and pay the most for their mortgage.
The problem with magic has been the lack of price control on singles more than the price of magic itself. The game hasn't really gotten all that more expensive on the booster pack front for ages and while boosters have been creeping up, it's more so due to inflation and time than trying to make more money. The fact is most people who play commander or constructed formats deal in singles and that has been the domain of the secondary market for ages, which has been as anti-consumer as markets come for eons.
The only way the market will improve is if Wizards of the Coast starts dealing with the shortages on mythics and rares that leave standard. There is simply no other way to deal with the problem. They could easily do monthly promos that could be ordered through their main site like pre-orders and once the period is over, send orders to a factory and print the number needed to fulfill those orders. That would likely work out better than trying to depend on masters sets all the time to shore up the reprint issues.
1. (Ravnica Allegiance): You can't keep a good esper control deck down... Or Wilderness Reclamation... or Gates...
2. (War of the Spark): Guys, I know what we need! We need a cycle of really idiotic flavor text victory cards! Jace's Triumph...
3. (War of the Spark): Lets make the format with control have even more control!
Masters set make them huge amounts of cash, remember.
Remember also who pays for premium events and sponsors players- the big single vendors- CFB et al. They make money off the sales of singles- and at inflated prices they partially determine.
What we have is WOTC in bed with SCG/CFB etc. all happy to sell the hype train, all happy to keep those OOP prices high. On this site you sure will get more than your fair share of complete strangers saying arrogant garbage like "you must chose this because I am right " or " this wrecked my FNM and thus is the correct build" and "the pros know nothing", but tell me does how many actually believe it when say, for example, a Luis Scot-Vargas writes a content article and previews the latest 20-30$ pre-order card that he says is going to dominate standard? Most of pros have the decency to put a couple of caveats, but we all know that only 1 in 10 of the cards they are "excited" or "hyped about" make it anywhere near predictions, and I will bet good money they they are not remotely excited or hyped abou anything other than the pay packet. How many pros rattle off "the next big deck articles" when they know full well their own team is playing something completely different? Or talk about a deck to "dominate" standard that will, in fact, do nothing. Talk about comedy value- with the joke being on the poor sods driven by fear who believe them and pre-order at inflated prices or invest in a dud deck. There are a few pros who have a bit of honesty in their writing- Craig Wescoe is one I always feel is being honest when he assesses new cards or decks, but overall the whole show is a self-perpetuating sham of symbiosis between the company that makes the cards and the companies that put on the events and drive single and bulk sales with supposedly independent content, with pros doing the writing for them most of whom would not be "pro" if it were not for the sponsorship of the companies they write for, given that even the very best Mtg players maybe bring in 300K prize money over a few years, which once you add in pensions is no better than a middle-class job would bring in, and less security and worse holidays.
WOTC is not going to do anything that hurts ChannelFireball's profits or hits SCG in the pocket, even if it makes WOTC money, they won't be altering the secondary market any time soon unless they themselves are hit really, really hard by single prices being OTT.
I am specifically referring to people who are interested in playing at events like PPTQs and Grand Prix. I know that there are many players who focus on casual as well as EDH/Commander, and that has a completely different price expectation I think. So I'm just focusing on two formats, Standard and Modern, and you would have to account for playing both since PPTQs switch back and forth in format (right now it's on Modern). Also include the cost of entry to events in your consideration. Assume that you are not able to top 8 large events like Grand Prix (since that's a tiny minority of the competitive players) but you do often get some cash there, and maybe top 8 PPTQs half the time. Therefore you are picking the deck you want and not choosing a sub-optimal deck for financial reasons, and the amount of cash won is not significant to offset the cost of playing the game, although it might reduce it a little bit. I am not sure what a typical frequency is for events per month for most competitive players, but let's say 3-4 events per month.
I am not asking what you specifically are able to pay. I'm trying to think about the overall health of the game, where it is important that enough players can participate in events to make them worth running. So even if you are not having any problems affording the cards you need, consider if you would prefer that players who have less financial resources than you should be able to compete on the same level (i.e. have the same access to cards). Should only people who have your financial resources or greater be able to compete? Conversely, if you have problems getting the cards you need, probably for some people the answer really is that this hobby is too expensive. But I'm not sure where that line is drawn. That's what this question is about.
GL
http://www.mtgsalvation.com/forums/magic-fundamentals/magic-general/334931-what-is-the-most-pimp-card-deck-youve-seen-or?comment=5361
Commander
RGOmnath, Locus of Rage Grenades! EDHGR
UWSygg's Defense, EDH - Voltron & ControlWU
BUGMimeoplasm EDH ft. Ifnir Cycling-discard comboBUG
WBTeysa, Connoisseur of CullingBW
BWSelenia & Recruiter of the Guard suicice combo EDHWB
UBRWGO-Kagachi - 5 Color Enchantments - EDHUBRWG
Modern: ~$200-$300
Legacy: ~$400-500
At this price point I think the competitive portion of the game (e.g. playing at highest level at local LGS) would be reasonably accessible to enough people such that other factors (e.g. style of gameplay available in the format, distance to nearest LGS, time, etc.) would be the main reasons not to play instead of cost. Cheaper competitive decks would also better enable the meta to shift as altering one's deck or acquiring a new one wouldn't be as costly. One of my competitive EDH playgroups has already switched to allowing complete proxy decks so everyone can play at a similar level, the meta can easily shift and friends don't seriously harm themselves financially just to competitively enjoy a hobby with friends. My other playgroup is also becoming open to proxies and my friends who play modern are as well. I think having too high a price point to play MtG competitively pushes more and more people towards proxies and/or accepting the use of proxies by others.
Modern: URW Madcap Experiment
Pauper: MonoU Tempo Delver
My EDH Commanders:
Aminatou, The Fateshifter UBW
Azami, Lady of Scrolls U
Mikaeus, the Unhallowed B
Edric, Spymaster of Trest UG
Glissa, the Traitor BG
Arcum Dagsson U
Modern: $1000
Legacy: 2000,
Standard should be a cheap throw away environment, you should be able to get a top teir deck $200 OR LESS! since with very few exceptions nothing will hold any value anyway, basically you are renting a deck for 2 years. (or 1.5 years or whatever they have changed the dam rotation format too) Modern is good forever but is also (or SHOULD also be) flooding the market with repritns of things to keep it from being too crazy, 1K is resonable (and likely less since people tend to go from Standard TO modern where over time they likely have afew of the higher priced items from their standard days. Legacy is like modern EXCEPT the reserve list hobbles it. Play a deck with 4x underground seas and you will find your budget is gone, (but it is also good forever) but no reprints are comming you should expect heavy investments and little carry over from moder/standard. Most of the good stuff you are going to have to buy from scratch.
No, but really it will probably be around $2,000-5,000 for various decks, travel, and fees, depending on how well you do. If you are already an established good player, it may not cost much after you calculate winnings.
Premodern - Trix, RecSur, Enchantress, Reanimator, Elves https://www.facebook.com/groups/PremodernUSA/
Modern - Neobrand, Hogaak Vine, Elves
Standard - Mono Red (6-2 and 5-3 in 2 McQ)
Draft - (I wish I had more time for limited...)
Commander -
Norin the Wary, Grimgrin, Adun Oakenshield (taking forever to build)(dead format for me)Too bad this isn't actually true (in my time of playing Modern: Birthing Pod, Summer Bloom, Treasure Cruise, Dig Through Time, Gitaxian Probe, Splinter Twin)
Thats fair counterpoint, bannings suck pretty hard, (and never a good creature is banned only combo/control stuff) Typicly the LESS wizards screws with a format the better said format is.
I played twin, then switched to jeskai harbinger, then to grixis shadow (prob. getting banned too since the internet hates it). Modern is not forever and is really expensive, right now I'm enjoyng grixis shadow a lot but I don't know what will I do when it gets the banhammer, probably going to give up with the format and just build a rogue deck like blue moon :/
Not really.
Just mind that 75 cards that cost you at lest 1$ per card is already 75$ , and thats an extremely cheap kind of deck.
If you have just a single 4x 20$ card, these alone cost you 80$ , while the rest of the deck, even cheap, might cost you easily 150$ in total then and that is a cheap deck to build.
"Good-stuff" decks usually opt to play the best cards and they are expensive, so if you deck packs multiple "top" cards, these alone cost you 200$ easily (say 4 times Gideon, 4 times Liliana, such stuff).
However, what makes modern expensive is more the manabase and especially legacy is pulled by its lands.
But that said, the land base is something you buy just once and then you are invested enough that building decks with them doesnt cost you much anymore (and its much easier to trade with friends to get cards you want, if you have the lands you all need).
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I wouldnt even consider these super essential cards a cost, its a barrier you have to buy at some point and you can fairly easily sell them for just that price again and they wont really lose value too.
In standard the worst you can do is buy the cards with cash and sell them when they lost value at the end of the life-cycle , that will just throw all your money out of the window.
If you are slightly smarter and sell the cards to get you a pool of money into cards from the new sets, its not expensive, just much more work, than for a older format, which just gets a tiny amount of cards that matter from a new set.
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500$ for standard to get a pool of necessary cards is quite realistic, but you have to buy/sell the cards to not lose your money over time (you can even make money, if you buy cards in advance if you play test with them and see the potential, before they finish strong in a tournament).
Modern and legacy, you pretty much have to buy into the lands if you want to build a deck with fetchlands / multiple colors, thats easily ~800$ to get modern lands (but again, fetchlands you need for pretty much anything, so thats an investment thats just essential).
Snapcaster, Goyf, Mox Opal and the like are all investments for specific decks, so you buy them if you feel confident you will run these decks for some time (and they carry enough value that you can sell and buy the other deck specific cards if you are "again" confident enough that exchanging them is worth your work).
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Legacy is especially expensive if you have nothing to begin with.
However, if you have a bunch of cards from playing standard / modern , the big money cards are just again the lands.
You dont need 4 times duals of any combination, you can get away by playing more fetchlands often enough and just 1 dual of the combinations you need to fetch for (its a reasonable approach).
But investing in legacy cards is again something that you really dont "lose" money with, cards tend to become more expensive over time, so it can even make you a profit and if you have the big cards, buying new cards is really cheap, as theres almost nothing expensive that suddenly makes an impact in older formats.
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The best part about magic is that all the money you spend in cards isnt wasted, as long as you sell and buy the cards at least smart enough.
WUBRG#BlackLotusMatterWUBRG
👮👮👮 #BlueLivesMatter 👮👮👮
The second might be the only way to save the formats, and we have a lot of evidence lately that reprints don't actually hurt the perceived value of original printings.
As for what it "should" cost, I tend to agree with you for prices: a new console for a Standard deck (assuming you start from 0, which is seldom the case), maybe $200- $300. For a Modern deck, again assuming a buy-in from nothing, somewhere between $400 and $600 for a top-tier deck. Legacy, I'd start at $600 and go up from there, but should it really cost several thousand dollars? Hell, should it cost $500 for a single land since SCG has the ability to manipulate prices?
Cards are not money, investments, or a retirement fund, and should never have been treated as such.
Wizards made a mistake caving to speculators once, and we still pay for that mistake 2 decades later.
"Entitled:" the entire ad hominem fallacy condensed into a single word. It doesn't strengthen your argument to attack motivations, it just makes you look like you don't understand the argument.
What I used to do is, when a rotation was coming up in like 5 months, trade everything off that was rotating, for only high-demand cards from the newest block. Well, except what I needed to continue playing. This strategy isn't as easy as it was like 15 years ago since it seems everyone aims to do this now. But you can still do it to some extent.
Yeah, I was intentionally not including Legacy (or Vintage) in my question, because of the problem with reserved list cards.
Modern deck: the above + twice the price of two major expansion packs of the above game
Formats that allow reserved list cards while reserved list still exists: price can't be controlled
I'm basing these prices off of video games because of wanting the prices to still be a thing when considering inflation and such later on, and because the comparison is key for entertainment purposes when one is 'shopping' for entertainment. Most video games don't last you too long before you complete them and their replayability and shift to other ones, which is comparable to standard rotation, you pay a bit of a premium here (the double price I put in) because magic cards are also a physical collectible playable without the aid of a computer or console. The Modern deck is likely to last you longer than a Standard one, which justifies adding the cost equivalent to a game that gets expansion packs (doubled for the physical collectible without a device requirement), but it isn't a sure thing with card bans and shifting metagames or simply getting bored of the deck to remain valuable to you as a deck you'd be using and play, so it can't be too much more expensive.
Under the current prices, I'd put things at roughly:
$120 for a Standard deck
$280 for a Modern deck
Any more expensive, and you are going to have trouble competing with other potential forms of fun and hobbies unless a person has reasons to like Magic in particular over the others by a significant degree, as well as justify things like Standard rotation or the potential threat of card bans or theft of your valuable cards while carrying them around to play locations and such.
Higher prices than that in Standard I'd blame on unfair market manipulation in the secondary card market that would be illegal in normal markets that face normal government regulations, and in Modern partially on WotC having an insufficient reprint policy if they want to actually consider Modern an actively supported competitive format (rather than partially supported).
The same amount as it costs to play the Pokemon TCG competitively.
Also, historically I think we are in one of the lowest cost standards ever thanks partly to standard being almost like extended right now. 8 sets are currently legal.
1. (Ravnica Allegiance): You can't keep a good esper control deck down... Or Wilderness Reclamation... or Gates...
2. (War of the Spark): Guys, I know what we need! We need a cycle of really idiotic flavor text victory cards! Jace's Triumph...
3. (War of the Spark): Lets make the format with control have even more control!
The cost to entry, for a total noob, to really start playing in "standard", if say you miss the promotional, would be say $50 to $150/$200 MAX - this let's one buy a set of classic and two of the latest sets (all one needs). Since this is a digital product, the player can simply disenchant or breakdown duplicates and "craft" the remainder cards to complete a top tier deck.
Best of all, all cards are accessible ALWAYS
Wizards needs to get real and really see where the competition is kicking their butt... start with MTGO!
Cube on Cubetutor
Come trade with Puca Trade!, the best place to get those hard to get cards no one else will trade!
for magic world maybe, 1$ is already stretching it for a card(it's just cardboard..). and that's never the case,many cards cost 5$ a pop, or 20..or more.., other cards games have each card 0.20 or even less (netrunner,mage wars,got) so comparing mtg prices and calling it fair or cheap is ridiculous, if with a card you can buy a whole new board game then the hobby costs w ay much..
tcg model is a huge rip off imo in other models, you can buy a game fully for 500$(lcg), and have every deck available(in magic, 1-2 decks), something you can never do in magic. i bought my mage wars collection for 150$
not to mention these games are much more skill based than self piloting decks and p2w
calling 75 $ cheap, and in reality a 75$ deck is pretty mediocre non competitive except few monocolored cases, just dont try to justify the prices of the game , we all love the game, but the prices are ridiculous
Δε φοβάμαι τίποτα...
Είμαι Άνεργος.
Grimstringer on Cockatrice, add me if you wanna
To simply play magic, you certainly do not need to buy the expensive cards.
Its a collectable card game after all, and thats the value of the cards.
If you had more cards than players, they would be worth nothing, just like other card games are that cheap as nobody really will put money into them.
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If you simply look what a booster display costs , you easily get an idea that an entire constructed deck should never realisticly cost just 50$.
If you want expensive hobbies theres plenty that offer you no money in return.
For magic, if you invest in cards and sell them, it will not cost you money at all, or even make an profit, it all depends on how you want to play the game (which in my case means playing FNM each week, just like others go out and buy them an overly expensive drink and that alone provides for any cards i need in constructed, simply by playing the game for 20+ years).
If you have nothing and want to buy into an expensive format of old cards, of course you will pay dearly and bleed for it, just like in any other market of collectable stuff.
Expensive cards in magic are pretty solid money investment if you look at it from a 20 year perspective and theres no denying that.
The biggest deal simply is that you put money in the game and you can sell your cards fairly easily if you need the money back.
If you put all your money in terrible cards, well, you probably shouldnt be trusted with money
WUBRG#BlackLotusMatterWUBRG
👮👮👮 #BlueLivesMatter 👮👮👮
If you want a solid core audience, then we should continue down the road we have right now. 200-500 bucks for a top tier deck. Your deck will likely need to be adjusted, rebuilt or abandoned every 3 months (when a new set comes out).
If you want lots of casual players flooding into stores, then you need to make the game as a cheap as possible. You can have power decks filled with mythics and rares but you also need equally viable decks that run mostly on commons and uncommons. You need ways to get casual players into stores, and give them effective tools to win games. You cannot expect casual players to drop 200 bucks on singles for a new deck every 3 months.
Consoles life span lasts between 5 and 7 years. Even at 400 bucks, that is a minimum investment of 80 dollars a year. Casual gamers likely buy a game every other month. So 60x6=360. So per year, a casual player would probably look to spend around 450 dollars.
Perfect, you say, buy the best deck and be done with it!
But casual gamers will not want to blow their entire budget on a single deck. No way, no how.
Casual players also like buying packs. It is an inefficient means of buying cards but it is also fun (and kind of addictive). They also like to do limited events. Both of those are going to drain their yearly budget.
Even if they only attend the pre-release for each set, that still represents a significant drain on the budget. Locally, it costs 30 bucks per pre-release. That means per year, you are looking at 120 bucks for pre-releases.
Most casual players also buy a fat pack per set (or the equivalent in individual packs). So that is 160 bucks (40x4).
160+120=300
So now we just have 150 bucks for a top deck (450 total - 300 = 150).
A casual player can probably get a good deck in this standard environment, especially if you get a few choice pulls in your packs but... Casual players don't just want to play 1 deck. They need money left over to support other decks. They do not have to be top tier competitive but decent, for sure.
Then you have the real worry that WotC will ban a key card in your main deck or release new cards that completely squash your main deck. Now you will be out the money you spent on your top tier deck and not have the funds to buy a new one.
This is greatly exacerbated if standard becomes expensive again.
Remember, casual players are going to pilot their main deck maybe once or twice a week three or four hours a shot. Probably 10-15 games in total.
Is it really worth it to invest into competitive Magic? No. Not it is not.
If standard is more for bleeding edge players, then it is fine as is. If standard is for the masses, then it needs to be cheap. If you want to grow this game and make it really hip and cool where lots of people feel like they can pick the game up and play (like Hearthstone, LoL, Overwatch etc.), then you need to go cheap.
Also, not going to lie, if you want to make magic have wide appeal, you need to completely overhaul Magic Online. It needs to look hip and modern. It needs to be on tablets. It will appeal to a younger generation, it will look better on stream and you will capture the imagination of people far more effectively.
Though it is incorrect about something in Yu-Gi-Oh: It notes the decks actually cost more than Magic, but considers it cheaper because the main format, like Legacy, doesn't rotate. The problem is that Yu-Gi-Oh may not have rotation officially, but bannings and power creep cause it to happen anyway, so you have the same kind of upkeep as in Standard. So it might actually be even more expensive to play it than Magic, at least on a competitive level.
I suspect the OP is referring to a new player buying cards outright, but it is not how most Modern players get their cards now.
I have 20 Modern decks- a few tier ones, mainly lower tier decks like Skred, Merfolk, Tron, Insta reanimator,Ad nauseam or the RW Prisons but all recognisable and good Modern decks with zero budget choices- I bought into the format at the start by selling out of Standard- I mean totally out- turning all those bobs, cliques etc. into 6$fetches, shocks etc. I actually had 35 at one point- the effort on keeping them up to date was huge, and eventually my services of deck loans were no longer needed as the format grew, so I sold out of the ones that changed a lot and had expensive cards in- and built Legacy decks, which unsurprisingly have increased in value. So my Legacy collection was basically funded by Standard sellout at the beginning of Modern followed by strategic selling of decks like Infect and Affinity when they were near their highest price points, combined with selling what used to be 20 p junk rares to those lovely commander players, who turned all the unplayable shoesboxes of chaff left over from last picks in draft over the years into 10-50$ cards. Wizards also sent those promos through the post and yeah, sure enough people paid handsomely forthose full art damnations or FNM Brainstorms and finks, and I did some buying of Modern Boxes in other languages at the start- buying F sight etc. boxes in ITA for £70-90 and flogging the single boosters. So how much did that cost me? Its impossible to say- I draft weekly and have done for years- 7.50+ 2 boosters entry- boosters effectively prize support from £3 fnms and draft itself, but all the expensive cards I obtained I have basically largely done so by speculation and trading, with my time being taken up- how much do you pay yourself for that? All those hours on Ebay or trawling through European distributors for cheap boxes of OOP stuff that might be worth something in five years? What about the food when you are out at an event? In the end it is just impossible to say.
I wish in many ways that expensive Mtg cards had values of 100-200$ or £. 200 for a Lotus, Workshop, Tabernacle, 20$ for a PW. But things become worth what people are willing to pay, and there is nothing you can do about that.
Mtg markets are like housing markets- those who have a lot can gain a lot, those at the bottom struggle to get on and pay the most for their mortgage.
The only way the market will improve is if Wizards of the Coast starts dealing with the shortages on mythics and rares that leave standard. There is simply no other way to deal with the problem. They could easily do monthly promos that could be ordered through their main site like pre-orders and once the period is over, send orders to a factory and print the number needed to fulfill those orders. That would likely work out better than trying to depend on masters sets all the time to shore up the reprint issues.
1. (Ravnica Allegiance): You can't keep a good esper control deck down... Or Wilderness Reclamation... or Gates...
2. (War of the Spark): Guys, I know what we need! We need a cycle of really idiotic flavor text victory cards! Jace's Triumph...
3. (War of the Spark): Lets make the format with control have even more control!
Remember also who pays for premium events and sponsors players- the big single vendors- CFB et al. They make money off the sales of singles- and at inflated prices they partially determine.
What we have is WOTC in bed with SCG/CFB etc. all happy to sell the hype train, all happy to keep those OOP prices high. On this site you sure will get more than your fair share of complete strangers saying arrogant garbage like "you must chose this because I am right " or " this wrecked my FNM and thus is the correct build" and "the pros know nothing", but tell me does how many actually believe it when say, for example, a Luis Scot-Vargas writes a content article and previews the latest 20-30$ pre-order card that he says is going to dominate standard? Most of pros have the decency to put a couple of caveats, but we all know that only 1 in 10 of the cards they are "excited" or "hyped about" make it anywhere near predictions, and I will bet good money they they are not remotely excited or hyped abou anything other than the pay packet. How many pros rattle off "the next big deck articles" when they know full well their own team is playing something completely different? Or talk about a deck to "dominate" standard that will, in fact, do nothing. Talk about comedy value- with the joke being on the poor sods driven by fear who believe them and pre-order at inflated prices or invest in a dud deck. There are a few pros who have a bit of honesty in their writing- Craig Wescoe is one I always feel is being honest when he assesses new cards or decks, but overall the whole show is a self-perpetuating sham of symbiosis between the company that makes the cards and the companies that put on the events and drive single and bulk sales with supposedly independent content, with pros doing the writing for them most of whom would not be "pro" if it were not for the sponsorship of the companies they write for, given that even the very best Mtg players maybe bring in 300K prize money over a few years, which once you add in pensions is no better than a middle-class job would bring in, and less security and worse holidays.
WOTC is not going to do anything that hurts ChannelFireball's profits or hits SCG in the pocket, even if it makes WOTC money, they won't be altering the secondary market any time soon unless they themselves are hit really, really hard by single prices being OTT.