Please please please tone down the contrast. The huge black bars above posts pull my eyes away from the posts and cause me to see spots after a while. It's like one of those black-and-white grid optical illusions.
The avatar borders could do with a few pixels of padding.
Who runs Vivid Lands and doesn't use them for mana of any color? Just run a basic...
Truth be told, if there's a part of my post I'm iffy about, it's that one. I figured I'm more likely to be looking for splash assistance with a deck centered on one color than to be looking for five-color lands. Though maybe pairing them with Reflecting Pool in the sort order might be the best thing to do!
Perhaps I should also mention that I don't use many dividers. Someone who has lots of dividers or uses labels on their dividers can kind of bypass the "brute force is sometimes faster than sorting" gist of my post.
Remember to only use as much sorting as you're willing to maintain. If you build and dismantle decks frequently, having a complex sorting scheme becomes very tiresome.
Some tips:
* Keep basics separate from nonbasics. Sort basics by WUBRG and leave it at that unless you're prone to building block-based theme decks or something.
* Group ability lands with the color(s) required to activate their abilities. Most people won't ever have a reason to look for colorless lands specifically, and would only use these over basics if they can activate the color-specific ability. Nephalia Drownyard goes in the same pile as Watery Grave.
* Group ability lands that are entirely colorless with the 5-color lands. In both cases, you're not looking for any specific color(s).
* There's no need to come up with a way to order all the ten-color pairs. You can thumb through your stack of cards from that section faster than you can recall a given pair's place in the sequence.
* Don't bother separating individual arcs and wedges unless you have a ton of lands like that (most people will have a handful of Alara trilands and/or lairs and maybe a Murmuring Bosk or two and that's it).
* For lands like the Vivid cycle, group them with nonbasics of just that color. They can make mana of any color, but how often are you really looking to do that?
* For cards you use often, keep those in a separate area. Got a favorite basic land art? Pull them from the basic box and put them here. That way when you need those cards, you don't have to spend much time at all looking for them. Don't put too many cards in this section though or it becomes less useful!
Basically, only sort to the extent that it'll help you find cards. Going beyond that will just have you coming up with excuses to put off the sorting until later.
It would be neat to hear from anyone who runs a singles shop on how they sort their inventory.
Having all the FTV cards marked mythic just adds a touch of visual uniformity. The cards are a set, after all. I think it's a good decision.
That said, at least in Pauper, if a card has ever been printed as common, it's legal. So, for example, Rancor is legal in Pauper because even though it's uncommon in M13, it was common in Urza's Legacy. I would expect it to be the same in other rarity-restricted formats?
Changelings, Adaptive Automaton, and any other such things are only acceptable if you alter the card art to make it match the tribe you're building a deck around.
It doesn't come up particularly often (at least not in Standard), but I've never been good at explaining APNAP to an opponent. Fortunately, that's what judges are for.
Guessing this means "Active Player, Non-Active Player". I've never seen the abbreviation before. It came up plenty in Standard around herewhen Jace, the Mind Sculptor and Lightning Bolt were around... people trying to bolt Jace before he can activate his +2.
I guess on that note, I'd say that the difference between cost and effect is something that comes up once in a while and I've seen people take some time to grasp it.
Mythics replace rares 1/8 of the time. There are 216 packs (36 * 6) in a case, so an average case should have about 27 mythics. Are you sure you didn't mean box?
Regarding emblem cards, I think they're kind of a stupid thing to put in the packs. In addition to people who open the planeswalker but not the emblem, there'll be plenty of people who open emblems but never get the planeswalker they're paired with. If it was possible to ensure that a planeswalker's emblem is always in the same pack as the planeswalker then it might be nice, but if you don't open lots of packs then that emblem would have been better off being a token.
As far as playing goes, do you think you'd enjoy playing them as much as the decks you already have sitting around? Also, you use sleeves, right? I haven't tried it but I would imagine a foiled-out deck would be a little annoying to play without sleeves.
Myself... I don't care for the decks themselves usually but there are some cards in there I like and I maintain a collection of every color spindown they release so I pick them up (also From the Vaults) as they release them.
I refrain from playing against random people for precisely that reason. Unless there's some speaking going on beforehand, chances are your definitions of "casual" aren't the same and you'll get a game that is pleasing for neither of you.
If you only play decks that aren't fun to play against, then I'll stop playing magic with you.
This is kind of how I roll, too. Generally speaking, anything goes as long as it's still a game. Once you turn 2 Stifle your Phyrexian Dreadnought against my silly theme deck or even regular deck, I just scoop. At that point it's turned from "a game of Magic" to "see if you can topdeck the thing to stop this extreme early-game threat" and that's not what I came to do.
I generally don't play at anything more competitive than FNM or Game Day so I have no reason to immediately have all the new stuff. And the presale prices are ridiculous. That said, I will overtrade for cards I really want. Today, that card was Grand Abolisher... about the only card I really want out of M12.
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The avatar borders could do with a few pixels of padding.
Truth be told, if there's a part of my post I'm iffy about, it's that one. I figured I'm more likely to be looking for splash assistance with a deck centered on one color than to be looking for five-color lands. Though maybe pairing them with Reflecting Pool in the sort order might be the best thing to do!
Perhaps I should also mention that I don't use many dividers. Someone who has lots of dividers or uses labels on their dividers can kind of bypass the "brute force is sometimes faster than sorting" gist of my post.
Some tips:
* Keep basics separate from nonbasics. Sort basics by WUBRG and leave it at that unless you're prone to building block-based theme decks or something.
* Group ability lands with the color(s) required to activate their abilities. Most people won't ever have a reason to look for colorless lands specifically, and would only use these over basics if they can activate the color-specific ability. Nephalia Drownyard goes in the same pile as Watery Grave.
* Group ability lands that are entirely colorless with the 5-color lands. In both cases, you're not looking for any specific color(s).
* There's no need to come up with a way to order all the ten-color pairs. You can thumb through your stack of cards from that section faster than you can recall a given pair's place in the sequence.
* Don't bother separating individual arcs and wedges unless you have a ton of lands like that (most people will have a handful of Alara trilands and/or lairs and maybe a Murmuring Bosk or two and that's it).
* For lands like the Vivid cycle, group them with nonbasics of just that color. They can make mana of any color, but how often are you really looking to do that?
* For cards you use often, keep those in a separate area. Got a favorite basic land art? Pull them from the basic box and put them here. That way when you need those cards, you don't have to spend much time at all looking for them. Don't put too many cards in this section though or it becomes less useful!
Basically, only sort to the extent that it'll help you find cards. Going beyond that will just have you coming up with excuses to put off the sorting until later.
It would be neat to hear from anyone who runs a singles shop on how they sort their inventory.
Rite of Replication and Mimic Vat are my other favorites. I love copy effects in general, and these are some of the coolest out there.
That said, at least in Pauper, if a card has ever been printed as common, it's legal. So, for example, Rancor is legal in Pauper because even though it's uncommon in M13, it was common in Urza's Legacy. I would expect it to be the same in other rarity-restricted formats?
Also lots of shortcuttish stuff like throwing the hand on the bottom and pulling 7 from the top when you mulligan.
Guessing this means "Active Player, Non-Active Player". I've never seen the abbreviation before. It came up plenty in Standard around herewhen Jace, the Mind Sculptor and Lightning Bolt were around... people trying to bolt Jace before he can activate his +2.
I guess on that note, I'd say that the difference between cost and effect is something that comes up once in a while and I've seen people take some time to grasp it.
Regarding emblem cards, I think they're kind of a stupid thing to put in the packs. In addition to people who open the planeswalker but not the emblem, there'll be plenty of people who open emblems but never get the planeswalker they're paired with. If it was possible to ensure that a planeswalker's emblem is always in the same pack as the planeswalker then it might be nice, but if you don't open lots of packs then that emblem would have been better off being a token.
Myself... I don't care for the decks themselves usually but there are some cards in there I like and I maintain a collection of every color spindown they release so I pick them up (also From the Vaults) as they release them.
This is kind of how I roll, too. Generally speaking, anything goes as long as it's still a game. Once you turn 2 Stifle your Phyrexian Dreadnought against my silly theme deck or even regular deck, I just scoop. At that point it's turned from "a game of Magic" to "see if you can topdeck the thing to stop this extreme early-game threat" and that's not what I came to do.