I recently have started to play Magic Online (MTGO), which is basically just a digitized version of MTG. It cost me 10 bucks to get an account, and I bought one extra pack of cards, so I have invested about 15 dollars so far, which feels like a fairly low entry fee considering how much I've spent on physical cards. The client you play on allows you to buy cards from the main store, trade with other players, play casual games in various formats (I only play Standard), and join online tournaments.
When I first started playing I had to figure out what deck I was going to try and make, since cards essentially cost the same as their physical counterparts, and there's no realistic way to get digitized copies of cards I already own. So with the cards I started out with I began looking at trading bots that are run by players, when you start talking to one it is similar to downloading files from an IRC bot:
It took me quite awhile to hunt through a bunch of bots to find the cheapest versions of all the cards I need, but once I was done I had constructed a cheap version of my RDW deck that I talked about in my last post. (pretty much identical, just missing about 8 rare cards that I didn't want to spend the money on)
Once I had my deck constructed, I started joining casual games to test it out, below is a screen shot of the casual game finder window. One of the nice things about MTGO is there are hundreds of players online all the time, so it's really easy to play test a deck.
Once in a game you just click through the phases (playing cards and using abilities where needed) as the game progresses. Below are some pictures of me stomping on a random player pretty hard, and an example of my RDW deck winning on turn 3 (the fastest that it can win).
Do you find it more fun to play MTG in an online setting or to actually go to a game store and play people? Also which is easier to obtain the online cards or the actual cards since MTG has been around for a long time are some of the cards still worth a lot of money?
ReplyDeleteI only play Standard, so I only use newer cards, but cards see play in older formats and will still have value. Cards also go out of print and become even more valuable, there's a set of 9 cards called "Power Nine" where most of the cards are worth hundreds of dollars, and the Black Lotus is worth between $1000 and $2000 if it's from the right set and in good condition.
ReplyDeleteI think getting cards online is a bit easier because you have access to all of the trading right there, and you don't have to go anywhere. That's not to say it's very much harder to obtain cards in real life though.
Playing in real life is a lot more satisfying, I love going to the same shop for FNM every week and talking with the people there, you get to know the people in the area and kinda make some friends. Online you just play anonymously and never talk to anyone ever, but it's a lot easier to get practice games in online, so it's kinda a trade-off.
I would imagine it's also cool to have the actual cards as well, instead of just electronic representations of the cards.
ReplyDeleteMost definitely! It's also a lot cooler to trade with real people, and even more so with people you see regularly. Just yesterday I made a trade where I technically lost about 5 dollars in card worth, but we both knew that I probably wouldn't use the card I had, and a friend had a card I really wanted. I still feel like it was a good trade (not to mention they were both cards from a set that doesn't technically release until Mat 13th, the card values we used were speculations, so who knows.)
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