That's only like.. 1.5 tickets worth of cards and all really heavy casting cost. You're about to make a pretty classic mistake, methinks.

of winning games?

Hmm, idk other than the 3 bombs my deck is fairly well curved, doesn't have as much multicolor mana stuff as I would like but it seems to be doing pretty well. I'll post a screenshot in a minute so you can tell me if I actually do suck at drafting

I think you don't know what Lavalanche does.

Went 2-1 in swiss from getting completely manascrewed 2 straight games round 2 with no mountains. I think this deck is really good though, only bad part is a lack of dual lands, I ended up siding out the Undead Leotau in the last few games for an extra mountain.

Cardbuyingbot doesn't find most of my alara block rares when I try to sell them, does that mean they are just crap rares and I need to sell them in bulk to another bot?

Is Beacon Behemoth just too tough to cast to warrant inclusion, or is it just a subpar card? I'm still trying to get good at ACR drafting, so sorry if my question is ******ed.

Infectious Horror?

This deck is missing some Wild Leotaus imo. Or four-drops of any kind. No Rhox Brutes? Or Gorger Wurms?

Yeah basically got no chances to get them, third pack I was getting blades late so I was passing some bigger stuff. I was actually having a pretty bad draft from what was getting passed to me besides them though. I played infectious horror over beacon behemoth just to keep my deck a bit faster and to keep out a double forest casting cost since I don't have many mana searchers, is it really that bad?

Def would have picked up some better creatures given the chance. I think if I had them two good 4/5 drops over infectious horror and undead leotau would have been really good, maybe even one or two more over some of the cheaper creatures I have.

Probably. Check them here:

http://www.mtgolibrary.com/wiki.php

seriously, its absolutely ******ed

and the other 2 while expensive can easily win the game on their own

I think 2 forestcyclers means beacon is ok.

I'm looking to buy around 200ish tix through pstars. anyone interested?

How much money would one need to invest to play a few drafts from time to time?

Do you get to keep the cards you draft?

I've been thinking of getting into this, and have been trying out the free trial. After starting four or five games, I have not been able to start anymore. Every single time I try to start a game, I get an error saying all seats are full blah blah blah. It doesn't matter if it is 7pm or 4am, I always get the error now.

Do these kinds of errors pop up once you pay for the game as well? As much as I want to play the game, I am not going to waste my money if the software is really this bad...

Hey man,

Your deck is really quite powerful but I think you can build it better. With all of your two drops, you should definitley play the additional pump spell resounding roar, tricks are really vital in this format. The lack of good four drops in your deck can be countered by having lots of quick threats and backing them up. Plus you have soul's fire. The Druid of the Anima is essential in your (and any) deck, it accelerates to your bombs and fixes your mana, aditionally allowing you to cycle resounding roar. I have first picked him before. You should cut infectious horror for sure as it is pretty inefficent. I'd be temepted to leave the nactal savage or one of the hushblades in the board and cut the wretched banquet which is pretty bad in your deck adding the behemoth.

Yeah I probably agree about most of that, didn't include the druid because so many of my spells are 2-3 casting cost since I don't have much in the 4-5 range but it would def help get the bombs out faster. Infectious horror is also pretty bad since it's a late drop as a 2/2. IMO I'd always rather run a hushblade over the behemoth.

So yeah probably drop the infectious horror for the behemoth, def use the resounding roar and possibly the druid if I can take something else out.

I'm pretty sure wretched banquet is still fine though, basically every draft deck in the block runs with 2/x creatures in the first few turns so there was never a time I couldn't use it (esp since its so cheap it can be an early play when everything is setting up).

The problem with wretched banquet is that you have a 0/1 in your deck that wants to stay in play and a creature that creates 1/1s. Also most of your creatures have 2 power and at best 3 power making your banquet highly situational. If you opponent makes any guy that's four power or more (even three) then you will find yourself with a dead card in your hand most of the time. It may be ok in the early game in some situations but you may find it a dead card as a topdeck.

I bought in for $25 at the start of RRR and I'm still playing on that. Not sure how many drafts, but quite a few. I'm pretty nitty about maximizing value for the cards I trade away though (some bots are more aggressive in the buy prices and if possible trade with people for the best deals) and I did quite well/ran good when RRR first started and that really helped. If you have some idea what you're doing and look for "bargains" (ie; nix tix tournaments which are effectively like rake free tournaments - 10E was just on nixtix which was awesome) you can get the cost per draft down to a couple bucks or less (this includes selling off your good cards) without being a great player or drafter (ie; me).

Yes. Initially I was selling all my cards but then I started keeping all my commons and playing pauper decks matches (free, no prizes, just for fun) where the playing field is much more level and you can make competitive decks just with whatever you draft. (not a lot of value in dumping your commons anyway).

Try starting a new match instead of joining an existing one and change the default settings (ie; time limit). What's happening is a game gets hung and when you keep trying to join it, it gives you an error (if you start a game with the same parameters as a game that's waiting, it just has you join that game so there aren't 20 people all trying to start the exact same game). Alternately, figure out which game is giving the problem and join a different one (if there are others available). I used to play the free games all the time and once you understand what's happening it's easy to get around it.

I haven't had any technical problems but there are complaints about crashes, etc on the "real money" side..

CMAR how much does each Draft run you including Packs, Land and tickets?

I didn't know you can play for free fun matches with your cards, that makes me much more likely to sign up with 50 bucks or so and give it a shot.

How do you sell cards back to shops and such? Are there stores inside of the MTGO program itself?

Thank you CMAR :-)

If only the MTGO forums were as helpful as you, I would have been playing three days ago.

Regular drafts are product+2 tickets. So an Alara Block draft is 1 pack of Shards, 1 pack of Conflux and 1 pack of Reborn plus 2 tickets.

Tickets are $1 in the store and packs are $3.99 each (You can also get all of the above from trading).

When constructing a draft deck you can "borrow" as much land as you need. You also get a bunch of land when you pay for a new account (basic land is worthless and not a problem).

Yeah, you can play free constructed games with people in all the various formats. I've played a bunch of pauper because it's pretty easy to put something competitive together just with whatever you've drafted (mostly Alara block and 10E for me). (actual pauper events with prizes are pretty rare). There are tons of other constructed events if you want to put together a "real" deck, schedule is here:

http://www.wizards.com/Magic/Digital...ine/eventsmain

Wizards runs the real store where you can buy packs and tickets and charge it to a credit card or Paypal. You can't buy singles from Wizards or do any sort of trading with them.

You can trade with any and all players. In addition, there's a section where you can post buy/sell notices. A bunch of players run bots which only do trades. That's mostly where you do your trading. But for example when Reborn first came out I did a lot of trades with people looking for the big rares (Meddling, Maelstrom, etc) and that's generally a much better deal for both parties (ie; bots are looking to buy at a price where they can hope to resell for profit). Different bots have different buy/sell prices and it often pays to shop around though once you find a bot with good prices (either buy or sell) you'll usually keep going back to them. Not all bots will take all cards, etc (some specialize in rares, some don't want crap rares, etc).

You can always post your own ad trying to sell your cards, but unless you've got really hot cards you could be waiting a long time...

This link:

http://www.mtgolibrary.com/wiki.php

Lets you search bots for the best prices (I think it only does one brand of bot but it gives you a good idea what something is worth). When selling your cards you're often going to want to shop around a bit (there's no website for buy prices that I know of) and as mentioned a lot of bots only want select cards, or have a ton of stock already so they only buy really cheap, etc.

FWIW I think it is highly unlikely for someone new to go infinite off $50 unless you are already experienced with live drafting or something. There is a good chance you will get crushed in your first drafts at the beginning even playing swiss.

Also, they usually have a couple formats of "nixtix" drafts running at any given time. These don't cost any tickets, just packs. Obviously this is a really good deal if you know the sets. Currently SHM/EVE and TE/ST "nixtix" are running. MED/ME2 are supposed to be running but have been delayed until next week.

All drafts are 8 player, there are three formats; 8-4 (winner gets 8 packs, 2nd place gets 4), 4-3-2-2 (winner gets 4 packs, etc) and Swiss (everybody plays 3 games, each game you win gets you a pack).

Yeah, I started playing when Reborn was released, playing RRR and I really benefited from all the goofyness going on - People raredrafting and sitting out, people with no idea what the good cards were, etc. It's def more difficult now.

I'd also think you should play a bunch of "play money" first on the free server to get used to the mechanics of online and all that. They're 10E preconstructed decks on the free server so you're not gonna get a ton of card knowledge but def much better than just going in cold. If you draft live you're probly fine but otherwise you probly wanna read up on drafting, etc, and this site:

http://draft.bestiaire.org/index.php

Is pretty good for mock drafting though you need to take it all with a grain of salt since it just ranks cards overall and doesn't consider how they actually fit in a deck together (ie; it's possible to draft well and still get a low score because you locked yourself into certain colours and couldn't pick the better cards later).