If anyone picks up Dimir Charms, Simic Charms and Devour Flesh I'll buy them for too much (PM me).

Isn't better for you to wait for Release events as they are better EV? At least I am waiting on monday to play standard/sealed on twitch

Wow just decked a guy without playing a creature

Interested in tix via stars $1 for 1, PM me if interested, thanks.

Any way to buy besides Stars? American and all...

going to a sealed tomorrow (weather permitting) where you can mix and match 6 boosters from all the current standard sets...I figure most will be playing 6 Gatecrash

What's the optimal strategy? No sets are really more valuable at this point, right?

What is the info for the skype group? I've been playing online a decent amount lately after taking a few years off and could use a good place to chat.

Did just play a prerelease sealed and smashed with a pretty sweet Simic deck, which was fun.

Probably, but playing MTGO at all is definitely significantly -EV for 99%+ of players, all limited is definitely -EV, and the difference in EV from one limited format to the next is pretty marginal.

So I just play what I find fun.

I played Orzhov earlier and enjoyed it quite a bit, played Dimir later and it sucked... I liked the cards I got but I was just plain outclassed by the other guilds.

Orzhov is hard to beat. They gain life in so many little ways that a lot of the time it felt like I was racing even Boros with ease. Extort is the real deal.

I can say with a fair degree of confidence that if you are willing to pick and choose the most EV limited formats, with no regard for how fun they are, understand how the magic market works, and can maintain 1850-1900 level play, it is possible to break even or better at limited.

It's just very hard, not quite impossible.

jvs

I remember the good old days when you could actually make money at this game

You realize that probably puts you in the top 0.1% of players on MTGO, right?

Quite bluntly, if you're good enough to actually make MTGO limited +EV in the long term, you've very likely spent so much time playing M:tG that you could have made way more doing any number of different things instead.

A big part of it is the payout structure on MTGO. Wizards has a huge interest in making sure there are as few big winners and big losers as possible, so they make sure to keep the payout structures as absolutely flat as they can get away with.

Yea we used to have 9-5s and the cards we worth money

This is true of almost every leisure activity. Hell, this is true of like 99.9% of all things in life.

jvs

So we agree that your criticism of looking at M:tG as enjoyment rather than +/-EV is pretty silly, then?

For me? No. If I had to pay any real amounts of money for Magic Online, I would not play, so EV is clearly relevant.

For others? Only if they think "I am doing this for fun, I don't care how much I spend on it" is reasonable. Most, though not all, folks I know who play magic do make some decisions based on finances, both online and in paper. If a paper tournament has an awful prize structure, many people will not play it.

All of that said, the EV of the events now is not significantly worse than the release events will be. The value of the singles was at it's absolute peak the minute GTC was released online, and will only deteriorate for quite some time.

jvs

Cueball, delete some PMs.

As far as paper Magic goes, I think Dark Ascension is worth significantly more than the other sets. It's a 150 card set with three $20+ mytics (Sorin, Huntmaster, and Aristocrat), several $5-$12 rares (Predator Ooze, Gravecrawler, Geralf's Messenger, Hellrider, and Thalia), and a $2 uncommon (Lingering Souls).

Just don't expect your deck to be that great.

I don't see any problem making small profit or thinking EV while doing something you enjoy.

The original suggestion was choosing events for EV "with no regard to how fun they are." Presumably that would result, sometimes, in an unenjoyable experience.

Remind me again which limited formats are "unenjoyable" (as opposed to "less enjoyable than your favorite limited format")

I mean ok.. master's edition point conceded maybe I guess

fallen empires

ALICE

masques block

Well obviously that answer comes totally down to opinion, but given the option between playing AVR limited for free vs. doing something else, I would choose "something else" for sure.

Snagged my first 4-0 in sealed with Simic. Some things I noticed:

Fathom Mage wasn't as exciting as I thought it would be. It never really "went off."

The curve on Simic is just ridiculous. Experiment One and Cloudfin Raptor are spectacular one drops, and Frilled Oculus is way better than I gave it initial credit for.

I don't like Bloodrush as much as I thought I would. The creatures the ability are on are pretty fairly priced as guys (compare to scavenge and it's pretty embarrassing imo) and I can't use the spell half on defense, so there was never really a time I felt incentivized to use the bloodrush ability or hold the card back just in case.

So far I have to say I had a blast playing Simic and Orzhov, and disliked Dimir. It makes me a bit sad as Dimir was the guild I looked forward to playing the most, but all the guilds in Gatecrash have a sort of "natural pressure" to them where every spell is a threat (thanks to evolve and extort in the "slow" guilds) and it's just really hard for Dimir to keep up.

Observing Boros, it seems like a really "all in" sort of play style that I just don't enjoy. That is, in the games where I had a slow opening draw, Boros killed me with ease, but in the games I where I curved out, it never really felt like the boros player was in the game.

Yeah, I'm considering this just for the potential value--Huntmaster is sold out at $30, for instance and will prob hit $40 soon.

Seems like RTR might be a decent compromise overall as there are still some high value cards, I would have some Pack Rat equity, and I think the set is stronger than Gatecrash overall.

Any other thoughts?

Lol, so there is about 2K players at GP London, gl all.

I played Boros this morning and made it to the finals of a Swiss. Beat the mirror round one, round two lost game one to simic won game two with Gideon, somehow pulled out game three, got rolled in the final to gruul and mulling to 4. Boros seems high variance, sometime you are kicking ass and sometimes you run out of gas. I found it really hard to get enough creatures during the draft so I would prioritize them more than usual over removal.

Gideon, breeding pool and blind obedience meant I was free rolling so that was nice.