I have a coworker who bought a boat for $12k. He uses it once a year. Once. A. Year.
As far as expensive hobbies go, I'll happily pay a few hundred bucks to a grand or even two, to get entertainment out of something every single day for the rest of my life. Just because that something happens to be made out of cardboard doesn't magically make me get less value out of it.
in a toolbox deck running 4 enlightened tutors and 4 land tax(4 tutors and 4 deck-thinners)..would the 61st card be justifiable?
It would probably be a much better idea to ask this question via a new thread rather than necro an almost 2 year old one. And also not in the Modern Forum, since the cards you specifically mentioned are not Modern legal.
Alright, you guys dragged me in, one comment on the economy thing and then I'm out:
Find me another hobby where you can sell your stuff for even close to what you put into it.
The only one even close is music--when I got out of gigging, I was able to get 50-60% of the new price of most of my stuff on the secondary market. The difference though? I had to work for it! I was posting ads, taking professional pictures, dealing with moes coming to my house to try my amps and basses, etc. It was awful. And that was to make 50-60%.
I can make 50% off my MTG collection by taking it down to the most aggressive shop in town and haggling a little (and I can amp it up to probably 60% average simply by selling the high demand >$50 modern cards for 75% on FB).
There is just no hobby I have seen that compares. Go sell your golf clubs on Craigslist and let me know how that goes
What I see over and over again is people not being disciplined; oh, modern is too expensive, guess I'll buy some full retail packs at Walmart, guess I'll pick up off-color fetches and build half-assed budget decks. I know guys who have bought and rebought all kinds of garbage decks, been unsatisfied and sold them at 30% to the pawniest local stores, who bought 12 dollar temple gardens for their naya burn decks and then traded them back in for 6 bucks credit, blah blah, blah.
Magic is a remarkably affordable hobby if you have even a modicum of discipline. Set money aside, buy stuff when it's low, trade at equitable rates where possible, buy exactly what you need, and anyone with even a modest disposable income can play. There's a concept of delaying gratification that is very hard.
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And now for some banlist content:
Free stoneforge!
No, seriously, but I do think some kind of high profile unbanning of a fair-ish card is just what the doctor ordered to chill people out. There's a lot of sky-is-falling stuff; but damn if Sword of the Meek and AV didn't settle people pretty fast.
This is so beautifully said, I cannot agree more. I have argued against Magic being too expensive but as far as long term hobbies go, you really just can't do better. When Splinter Twin was banned, I sold out of my entire deck for $800. I had bought the entire thing for $1,200. That is absolutely mind-blowing when you consider that a few years ago, I bought a CAR for $4,000 and recently was only able to sell it for $600 when it was in essentially the same condition as I got it with only about 2,000 miles added, and even then, I had to go through about ten different people, several weeks of my time, and it was just a whole lot of stress.
And that's CARDBOARD versus a big metal, motor vehicle.
Also, I don't make a lot of money, but I was able to buy into a $1,000 deck for Commander over the coarse of a year and am now currently working on getting back into Modern.
Magic prices seem intimidating at glance, but when you really love something, it isn't hard to put some money aside and save up for something big. The only difference between this and some other expensive hobbies, is that I can count on being able to make a substantial amount of my money back if I decide to buy out for any reason.
Also, agreed; give me some SFM. Once the Cheeri0s phase is inevitably dealt with, White will go back to being the weakest color in Modern. SFM deserves a place in the format.
EDIT: Never mind, I've received a warning for this post anyway, so instead, I ask that nobody respond to it. Thank you.
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I'm curious to know what people think about this deck in terms of power and consistency.
I'm an ex Twin player, and I stopped playing Modern a couple months after Splinter Twin got the axe and started playing Commander exclusively. I'd really love to get back into Modern, and this looks like just the sort of deck I'd enjoy playing.
I really, *really* don't want to bring up Banlist talk, but I would like to know how *safe* people think this deck is? I've heard a lot of rumors about this deck and I'd just like to make sure I'm not about to invest into something that I'd regret.
And mods, I understand perfectly that ban talk needs to stay out of this thread, and I'm not trying to get into that. I don't want to talk bans, I just want to talk respective power level of this deck and why some might fear for it.
Regardless, if this question doesn't seem appropriate for this thread, then by all means, report it. I don't want to cross the line or anything, I'm just trying to be safe with my money and time.
What's your opinion on the Selvala, Heart of the Wilds + Umbral Mantle combo? The Mantle has applications with Sisay for multiple tutors when you need to just sink some mana, And Selvala is a better scaling Rofellos outside of mono-green. Given the sort of threats that are played here, she rarely draws cards for the opponent, and she simply ramps like no one's business. Throw in a Stoneforge Mystic, and you've got yourself a stupidly easy to find infinite mana combo that wins the game one the spot (since you can also use this combo to pull out all of the Legendaries from your deck).
I personally play this to great effect since it doesn't at all have to be a focus, being that Sisay is just great at answering problems, and it allows you to pull wins out of nowhere against opponents who either let their guard down, or who don't care to be interactive.
Also, before answering this question, assume you're playing a generally similar list minus a little of that artifact hate in exchange for something like Greaves for giving Sisay Haste, etc.
Selvala is incredible. She's the closest thing we have to Rofellos (who is banned by the way), and she goes infinite with a number of cards, like Umbral Mantle and Staff of Domination with just a few lands out and a bit of buffing (or just another big creature).
I think the absolute biggest thing about starting off in Commander, is actually figuring out which commander you want to play first.
https://edhrec.com/
is the site that I personally use whenever I'm deckbuilding. It shows you all of the possible commanders you could play in any color, and staples among those colors. It will also show you a great list of typical cards you could expect to see or want to run yourself in any given commander's arsenal (See what I did there? :P).
So for example, my personal Commander of choice is Captain Sisay, because I love combo/midrange strategies. Captain Sisay is great for this because she's in Selesnya colors, which are notorious for having bulky, great-in-combat creatures for the midrange aspect, and also because she can tutor for legendary cards, making her have extremely powerful applications for assembling combos together. So what I'd do here, is use EDHREC>Click 2-Color>Selesnya>Find Captain Sisay among her other Green White counterparts, and see what is popular to use with her as a general consensus among other like minded players.
It's a very useful tool, and like I said; I think choosing your Commander is the most importan aspect about starting into this format, and just when building a new deck in general. Your choice of commander will say a lot about you, and will let us all know just what sort of style you're likely to enjoy and in turn, helps us give you better suggestions.
I'm fine with the bans. I'm pretty disappointed about no unbans though. Maybe March will be the day... MM3 is right around the corner from that date as well.
I enjoy playing against good control players. Players who know exactly what they want to do and when they want to do it. Playing against inexperienced control players is a nightmare. Often, they just take way too long. Constantly staring at their hands before finally deciding to say, "Okay, your turn", or whatever.
A good control player can be a lot of fun to play against. I happen to like my Magic challenging, requiring actual, tight decision making and being rewarded for out-smarting someone who would otherwise be a quick thinking, powerfully reactive adversary.
For a lot of people, having a spell countered is just unfun. But to me, few things in Magic feel better than planning ahead and playing around that counterspell.
To me, it is much more fun playing against someone who cares about every move you make, rather than playing against, say, Bogles or Infect, who generally don't care what the hell you're doing so long as you don't have exactly the right kind of removal at exactly the right time.
So I've been getting a lot of Commander games in with a play group over Tabletop Simulator for Steam of all things... Anyway, each week we like to try a new overhauling theme. Last week, we played a few games where we decided "Every Legendary Creature has Partner". Needless to say, it was a fun, but hectic mess.
This week's theme is, "No Color Identity". Basically, just take any old Legend and toss it in literally any deck you want. This will probably not be the most successful session of Magic playing ever, but it should be interesting nonetheless.
If any of you had a limitless budget, and the power to do so, which Commander+Color combinations do you think could be the absolute, most broken there is? I ask this, because while we are definitely only doing this for fun, we DO want at least SOME amount of "fairness" involved, and would like to figure out which Commanders (and specific interactions, resulting) would be just too easily abused if they had access to colors outside of their own color identities, and avoid using them.
I think this could also just be a fun challenge to anyone who wants to figure out how far they can break the game.
Unless you're going for some cube-esque environment, this seems like a ton of money to be wasting on what could be an entirely "unique-to-you" Commander deck. I guess since I don't know how much of a Commander player you are or whether or not you have other, original decks, I can't say for sure, but I do think it's generally much better to use precons as a means to collect staple pieces for another deck, rather than using them as a template to build off of themselves. Otherwise, merely upgrading a precon just ends up being quite weak compared to tuned builds around something you could come up with yourself.
My biggest problem with the Splinter Twin ban was that it was obviously a last minute decision that had no real thought put into it. If it really was something Wizards was keeping an eye on and considering for a reasonable amount of time, the damn card wouldn't have been reprinting in Modern Masters 2 so close to that B&R Update.
The ban was a mistake, and they know it. Let's just see if they can let go of their pride and admit it. Twin did NOTHING wrong to format other than being a tad too popular in a time where popularity was only relevant thanks to the Pro Tour. Even the people who hated Twin were surprised. Sure they are happy with it gone, but the reactions in January were absolutely shown to be unexpected. So hate it or not, the deck doesn't deserve the sentence it received.
As far as expensive hobbies go, I'll happily pay a few hundred bucks to a grand or even two, to get entertainment out of something every single day for the rest of my life. Just because that something happens to be made out of cardboard doesn't magically make me get less value out of it.
It would probably be a much better idea to ask this question via a new thread rather than necro an almost 2 year old one. And also not in the Modern Forum, since the cards you specifically mentioned are not Modern legal.
This is so beautifully said, I cannot agree more. I have argued against Magic being too expensive but as far as long term hobbies go, you really just can't do better. When Splinter Twin was banned, I sold out of my entire deck for $800. I had bought the entire thing for $1,200. That is absolutely mind-blowing when you consider that a few years ago, I bought a CAR for $4,000 and recently was only able to sell it for $600 when it was in essentially the same condition as I got it with only about 2,000 miles added, and even then, I had to go through about ten different people, several weeks of my time, and it was just a whole lot of stress.
And that's CARDBOARD versus a big metal, motor vehicle.
Also, I don't make a lot of money, but I was able to buy into a $1,000 deck for Commander over the coarse of a year and am now currently working on getting back into Modern.
Magic prices seem intimidating at glance, but when you really love something, it isn't hard to put some money aside and save up for something big. The only difference between this and some other expensive hobbies, is that I can count on being able to make a substantial amount of my money back if I decide to buy out for any reason.
Also, agreed; give me some SFM. Once the Cheeri0s phase is inevitably dealt with, White will go back to being the weakest color in Modern. SFM deserves a place in the format.
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I'm curious to know what people think about this deck in terms of power and consistency.
I'm an ex Twin player, and I stopped playing Modern a couple months after Splinter Twin got the axe and started playing Commander exclusively. I'd really love to get back into Modern, and this looks like just the sort of deck I'd enjoy playing.
I really, *really* don't want to bring up Banlist talk, but I would like to know how *safe* people think this deck is? I've heard a lot of rumors about this deck and I'd just like to make sure I'm not about to invest into something that I'd regret.
And mods, I understand perfectly that ban talk needs to stay out of this thread, and I'm not trying to get into that. I don't want to talk bans, I just want to talk respective power level of this deck and why some might fear for it.
Regardless, if this question doesn't seem appropriate for this thread, then by all means, report it. I don't want to cross the line or anything, I'm just trying to be safe with my money and time.
I personally play this to great effect since it doesn't at all have to be a focus, being that Sisay is just great at answering problems, and it allows you to pull wins out of nowhere against opponents who either let their guard down, or who don't care to be interactive.
Also, before answering this question, assume you're playing a generally similar list minus a little of that artifact hate in exchange for something like Greaves for giving Sisay Haste, etc.
Seriously though, she's super fun.
https://edhrec.com/
is the site that I personally use whenever I'm deckbuilding. It shows you all of the possible commanders you could play in any color, and staples among those colors. It will also show you a great list of typical cards you could expect to see or want to run yourself in any given commander's arsenal (See what I did there? :P).
So for example, my personal Commander of choice is Captain Sisay, because I love combo/midrange strategies. Captain Sisay is great for this because she's in Selesnya colors, which are notorious for having bulky, great-in-combat creatures for the midrange aspect, and also because she can tutor for legendary cards, making her have extremely powerful applications for assembling combos together. So what I'd do here, is use EDHREC>Click 2-Color>Selesnya>Find Captain Sisay among her other Green White counterparts, and see what is popular to use with her as a general consensus among other like minded players.
It's a very useful tool, and like I said; I think choosing your Commander is the most importan aspect about starting into this format, and just when building a new deck in general. Your choice of commander will say a lot about you, and will let us all know just what sort of style you're likely to enjoy and in turn, helps us give you better suggestions.
Also, Kaysa. Affects only green creatures, but just look at that artwork!
A good control player can be a lot of fun to play against. I happen to like my Magic challenging, requiring actual, tight decision making and being rewarded for out-smarting someone who would otherwise be a quick thinking, powerfully reactive adversary.
For a lot of people, having a spell countered is just unfun. But to me, few things in Magic feel better than planning ahead and playing around that counterspell.
To me, it is much more fun playing against someone who cares about every move you make, rather than playing against, say, Bogles or Infect, who generally don't care what the hell you're doing so long as you don't have exactly the right kind of removal at exactly the right time.
This week's theme is, "No Color Identity". Basically, just take any old Legend and toss it in literally any deck you want. This will probably not be the most successful session of Magic playing ever, but it should be interesting nonetheless.
If any of you had a limitless budget, and the power to do so, which Commander+Color combinations do you think could be the absolute, most broken there is? I ask this, because while we are definitely only doing this for fun, we DO want at least SOME amount of "fairness" involved, and would like to figure out which Commanders (and specific interactions, resulting) would be just too easily abused if they had access to colors outside of their own color identities, and avoid using them.
I think this could also just be a fun challenge to anyone who wants to figure out how far they can break the game.
The ban was a mistake, and they know it. Let's just see if they can let go of their pride and admit it. Twin did NOTHING wrong to format other than being a tad too popular in a time where popularity was only relevant thanks to the Pro Tour. Even the people who hated Twin were surprised. Sure they are happy with it gone, but the reactions in January were absolutely shown to be unexpected. So hate it or not, the deck doesn't deserve the sentence it received.