Newcomer to MtG

Its just so expensive that unless you playedback then or have no problem dropping hundreds on individual cards then it is inaccessible. But fakes and proxys exist so.

The very most expensive magic cards are the power 9 which are banned in all formats but restricted in vintage

They are so powerful that every single vintage deck needs 1 of each for the most part, so every vintage deck is going to be around 10 thousand dollars

Thanks. This was really helpful. Seems like modern makes to most sense to start out.

Fuck me, how playable is magic on a budget. I know its a hobby and hobbies need at least some money thrown at them to be enjoyable but what am I looking at?

once you familiarize yourself with the free half decks you can buy the commander percons for like $40 they start off pretty good or you can get into drafting(around $15 a draft)

Actually no that's incorect

None of those formats are good for starting out, they are all horribly expensive

Standard is a little cheaper now than it was a couple months ago, but still not sure I'd recommend it

Modern is $1000 for a normal deck, $200-$500 for a very specific cheap deck or a budget version of a normal deck. Don't expect to win any games with budget versions of normal decks

Legacy is the same but even more expensive (but the format is better)

Instead noobs should play commander and draft

It's not.

>Standard
Has become fucking expensive. The price of good Standard Decks has risen over the past few years and the fact that Decks rotate faster now doesn't help. It's a fucking money sink.

>Modern
Was founded on the promise of possible reprints. Lots of people bought into it and it's expensive as shit now. And no, Wizards does not reprint, so it's stays expensive as fuck.

>Legacy
Do you like dropping a few thousand dollars on a Deck? If so, this is the format for you. It's so stable that the meta barely ever changes, and cards "keep their value". However, you also cannot fucking sell them, because everyone who wants to play already plays, which means you sit on a lot of potentially valuable cards that no one will ever buy.

>Vintage
Imagine two rich guys buying actual, authentic flintlock pistols from the 17th century and duelling for shits and giggles while dressed up in custom made armor.
Welcome to Vintage.

>Commander
It shares a cardpool with Legacy and depends heavily on rares and/or old cards. Unless you already have a good collection, it gets really fucking expensive really fast.

>Casual
Casual is "everything goes", and by that I mean it always goes like this:
First people start playing and they have fun
Then a few people start spending more than others
Then the arms race starts
And then no one has fun

>Limited
You pay a few bucks and draft a deck from random cards. Some people dig this, but you are at the mercy of Wizards. If they make a shit set, Limited is shit. And it's shit more often than not.
Also, prepare to get completely shitstomped for several months.

>Cube
Like limited, only that you build your own "set" and draft from that, so you have control over how good or bad you want your set to be. Not exactly cheap either most of the time, but some people like it.

Commander Precons have become shittier with every iteration, though.

Makes sense. I wasnt really aware what draft was. I'm also no where near delusional enough to expect to do well or even win at all in any serious context, but I'll need to start somewhere.

This is true

The 2011 decks had the best decklists and the commanders were generally quite strong

The 2013 had the most broken commanders of all but the decklists weren't great

2014 were hit and miss

2015 had some playables but nothing to crazy

I expect 2016 to be complete shit

Commander precons?

>The 2013 had the most broken commanders of all but the decklists weren't great
They were good and annoying as fuck, but I'm not even sure about being most broken. I've seen Derevi and Prossh do some stupid shit, but nothing as stupid as Ghave ever did. That guy is practically a one shroom combo machine.

The reason modern isn't a good place to start is the cost

It's not really about "doing well" it's about being in the same ballpark as the decks you're playing against

There's no way to make a truly budget (

This is very accurate.

My best advice for a new beginner is to meet other players, for example at your local game store, and try play with them borrowing their decks. Get a grip on the basics of the game. From there, attend drafts (usually 15$) and learn the basics of evaluating cards and constructing your own decks. Expect to lose a fuck ton, but that's how you learn. Eventually you'll have a card collection of mostly shit cards. From there you can either build into standard, or trade/buy your way into any of the other formats. For commander, the preconstructed decks at the store are great if your collection is small.

Why not just buy directly into a format like modern? Because if you don't learn the basics of playing and deckbuilding, you'll have no idea why a deck is built the way it is, and no idea how to pilot it efficiently. There's only a few noob-friendly decks in modern and legacy, such as burn where you flick red spells at your opponent until one of you are dead, but otherwise you need extensive knowledge to play those formats.

I disagree

Ghave is absurd in terms of the pure quantity of cards that combo with him, but he's definitely a tier below prossh for token combo decks, ghave is much easier to disrupt, prossh is almost immune to disruption

Derevi is more powerful than either

they're preconstructed decks designed to play with each other.

Makes sense. I would definitely want to build my own decks eventually and knowing how to put together things that work instead of "oh pretty card!" is probably important

i have a $60 pirate theme edh deck and with smart plays and politics i can win

noobs can do fairly well in edh as long as they're not socially inept

Is that the skeleton ship deck? I was wanting to try that it sounds fun.

Ahh ok. If I decide to sell my soul and branch out past the free starters, would the precons be the best rout to start investing money or maybe just learn up a bit and keep playing drafts? Ive also been recomended to buy a deck builders kit because iit's a good value. Also been recommended to buy an event deck (I think thats what they are called) of a color/style I like and build from there. Thoughts?

No, preconstructed decks are horrible. The Commander Decks are barely okay nowadays, sometimes.
The times of decent preconstructed product have come and gone, sadly.

Standard is a money sink if you insist on playing the latest GP winning decks and other tier 1 stuff. However its very affordable if you just build what you like. My Bant Investigate deck for example only costed me like 30 bucks and is fun as fuck to play.

At that point you are practically playing casual, though.
Yeah, you absolutely can play any format on a budget, but T1 Decks will still obliterate your anus.

I guess I can figure out eventually where I want to really focus if I get that far in. My main concern is, like I said here where should I start putting some money down?

If you base value on money vs useful cards than , no. If you base it on resale then also no. Based on value resale ovr time the duel decks have the most stable appreciation because they are self contained. You can also get the intro decks which come with 2 boosters. But never pay more than 10$ for the intro decks. When it comes to boostersn save some money that you would spend on boosters, go to the nearest casino and put it all on red or black, trust me; you have better odds, then take that money (if you win) and buy the singles.

>Good/cost effective ways to buy cards?
Uhm, I usually use MTGPrice to look up cards and see how much they're worth.
I guess buying in bundles would be the most cost efficient in terms of shipping (if needed) I guess?

>Advice on color(s) to play?
You have to figure out yourself what you like. WoTC have a page describing to a new player what the core concepts of each colour of magic are. Here's what they have to say, even more concisely than how you explain the colours:

>White: The color of Justice
White spellcasters use superior tactics, efficient creatures, and the power of righteousness against their foes.

>Blue: The color of Wisdom
Blue mages focus on using superior knowledge to gain control of a battle, and slowly gain the upper hand.

>Black: The color of Ambition
Black sorcerers are willing to do whatever it takes to win a battle, even if it means sacrificing everything to do so.

>Red: The color of Chaos
Red conjurers try to win as quickly and dramatically as possible, smashing and burning their way to a quick victory.

>Green: The color of Nature
Green shamans win duels through the brute force of mother nature, summoning giant creatures to squash their enemies.

This is just a rough and general "baseline" on the different colors. Like I said, you have to test out what you like, m8
I also suggest "getting into" casual at first. Play with some friends of yours, or at your local gamestore (if you have one, and they host play nights)
Best of luck user, and have fun!

There is only very few preconstructed lists, that are buyable, but all for the wrong reasons. One good idea is to buy Duel decks: Anthology (if it's still cheap in sense it's not specced overpriced) and keep them as separate boardgame to play with.

Other than that, it's either borrow a deck, play limited or buy singles. The issue with buying singles is you have to know about the game to find the cards you want/need.

The golden age to start playing magic was somewhere 5 years ago, when the game got a lot of hype and you still could buy good cards for somewhat reasonable price. Now every single card that is played even in a fringe shit lists are expensive.

Deck builder's toolkit is 99.9% full of useless cards. You are better off with using that 20$ for singles. Same goes with booster boxes, you will almost always lose money for not being even able to play anything.

Personally I have had the most fun with proxies and cubes.

Thanks! I had a thought of making something like a critter based deck. Something like a few bigger creatures that spawn smaller creatures and overwhelm in numbers, but that plan may go straight to shit after my first couple games.

Tell that to the Bant Company guy I was playing yesterday that had to forfeit because my life total wouldn't stop rising. I'm talking 80 lives m8.

Sure, my brews aren't gonna win a GP, but they are ideal for lgs play. Tier 2 is the funnest to play anyways. T1 decks are often so linear and unfair you could doze off in the middle of a game.

>Eggs anyone?

That's a very normal concern to have, you don't want to waste too much money on the game but you also want to put enough to win.

I'd recommend Standard against what other anons might say. The reasons:

>Its cheaper. It CAN be a money sink but only if you let it.

>The reduced card pool will let you get familiar with the game faster.

>The reduced power level will let you experiment with different brews while still standing a chance. And lets be honest here, you'll WANT to experiment until you find a deck/archetype you like.

It's true that the format rotates and that thus you'll have to get a new deck once in a while, but that's not really an issue. Rotation keeps things fresh and lets you get experience playing different metagames, which will result in you becoming a better deck builder an player overall. Plus, cards that were good in Standard always have a shot of becoming good in Modern at some point. Rotations also mean you get a larger card pool with which to brew your own Modern decks if you decide to male the jump from one format to the other at some point.

Honestly that colorpie is lie and bullshit as your decision to play any of those colors are based on which cards it has in it.

It should go something like this:
>White
Swords to plowshares
>Blue
Brainstorm, Counterspell
>Black
Tasigur, Thoughtseize
>Red
Lightning bolt
>Green
Tarmogoyf

...I mean just to list few, but it's like there are some very basic core cards that define a color in constructed formats. Limited is shitshow and have they really followed colorpie ever?

Makes sense. That was my main concern with buying singles. I dont know enough about the game to go construct and buy a full deck of individual cards so it would probably end with me buying a lot of the wrong things or just a bunch of cards tbat are decent alone but cant work together for shit.

That said, if you want something more concrete I'd start buying the Oath of the Gatewatch or Shadows Over Innistrad fat packs. They come with 80 lands (OGW's are full art) and 9 boosters.

If you don't want to do that, go online and buy a bunch of lands. The good thing about this is that you get to pick any artwork from any expansion in Magic's history. Be sure to buy 30sh of each basic land type, that should suffice for years to come.

Then buy singles online, its by far the most coat effective way to get your cards. Packs are for sheep like me that like the mystery of not knowing what you get (99% of the time you get jackshit).

If you can buy as many cards as you can from an individual seller so to reduce shipment costs (shipment isn't much but if you just buy 1 card from each seller its gonna add up fast).

Clarification: Don't buy both fat packs, only one.

Telling a newbie to pick a color by the cards it has is pants-on-head retarded. Most times they are unable to grasp their power and are better off with an abstract, flavour-y explanation of what each does and then letting them figure it out for themselves.

>You have to be a tryharding min/max'ing competitive faggot to enjoy MtG!!!
Come on dude.

But that's how it is. You can take your colorpie and feed it to jews, since it doesn't mean shit. And yes, newbies should pick a color based on cards the color has to offer..... because this is a card game and only relevant cards in that color matter, duh. It's just a matter to learn the minimum knowledge to know what are played in certain color.

Honestly, I wouldn't worry about that. If the card is considered shitty it'll be cheap enough not to matter if you buy it and if its good odds are you don't buy it because its too expensive for now.

Unless every card you buy is +5 bucks everything should be fine. And remember not to buy more than 4 of each. That's the max ammount of copies you can have in of any given card in a deck.

Honestly odds are your first deck will be terrible, but it's ok. Gotta get it wrong a couple times to get it right.

But even if the carda you buy are bad, why should you care?, You play what you like, there's not such thing as a 'correct' or 'wrong' purchase in that regard.

Yes, I'm sure your Legacy / Modern stapples are very relevant to a newbie who doesn't know where to begin and that certainly isn't willing to put down hundreds, even thousands of dollars to buy into those formats without even getting acquainted with the game first.

Hang yourself.

>Tell that to the Bant Company guy I was playing yesterday that had to forfeit because my life total wouldn't stop rising.
So a dude being a shitty pilot or having bad draws prooves what exactly?
If you show up with a pedal car to a drag race, you can still win when all the other guys blow up at the starting line.

You buy counterfeit Chinaman ones. (Passable quality of course.)

>Put them in plastic. No one should be touching your cards and from a quick glance you're not going to be able to tell they're fake.
>Much cheaper.
>Your money goes to hardworking Chinese labor instead of bastards over at cucks of the coast.
>Makes the fat nerds who take Magic way too seriously salty.

I did forget to explain that I am ok with funneling a lot of money into a hobby for my own amusment. I played paintball for years and sank thousands into it because it was fun. Id be fine with having a multi thousand dollar collection in the future if this is worth it to me. The thing that I dont want is to go in blind and waste hundreds getting started in the wrong direction. It would suck to find out 400 bucks later that everything I bought was overpriced/unplayable/doesnt mesh together.

Yes and I'm sure you telling a newbie "White spellcasters use superior tactics, efficient creatures, and the power of righteousness against their foes." will help so much more? Please be real, when even the definition in itself is complete bullshit.

Gvinig a 'a rough and general "baseline"' doesn't help anyone. Giving a simple tutorial on deckbuilding and information on specific topics is so much more productive and useful. So yes, me telling lightning bolt is a very good card is a better tip than colorpie humbug.

Ok, I would as a starter read up on basic tutorials on deckbuilding and reading some deck primers to understand why they are build the way they are. Then go to local lgs and just play what you can that being a draft, cube, casual, whatever. just borrow a deck, I'm sure people wouldn't mind.

You can check mtggoldfish, mtgtop8 for topping decks and check what they play. Primers can be found in forums like mtgsalvation and mtgthesource (latter being more active on legacy, but having a lot more knowledgeable playerbase)

You are bound to lose money anyway I presume. That's just how it is, but buying singles is pretty safe, as you are probably getting better cards anyway compared to boosters.

I have a feeling that standard without Zendikar is going to be pretty sweet, come rotation next year.

The only cards in shadows standard that strike me as overpriced nonsense are Avacyn and Declaration in Stone. Everything else seems reasonable to make

Is there a site somewhere that has a full list of cards? Like what is playable in certian categories and what isnt? That would be useful as shit

My advice then: don't spend too much money. Build a cheap, below 50 bucks deck (again, doesn't matter if its shitte) and go have fun at Friday Night Magic. Pay attention at the other players, what they play and how it works. THEN you buy the expensive pieces of cardboard.

This is because 99% of the time you are gonna play at your lgs, which has its own unique metagame. Some are literally the latest top 8, others are wildly different. Either way, if you want to win you gotta adapt your deck to your local meta.

The only surefire way to throw money is jumping into the pool without testing the waters first.

What makes you think the guy was a bad pilot?, Sure he wasn't a pro player but he wasn't shit either. Just your average player.

Is it so hard to believe that I'd beat a Bant Company deck anyways?, Even the shittiest of brews can have the upperhand against a good deck for any number of reasons. Mine isn't amazing but it did the job well enough to let me turn the tables in the lategame.

Because it comes down to
>Shit Pilot
>Shit Luck
Because the deck shouldn't just fold to Lifegain.

>Yes and I'm sure you telling a newbie "White spellcasters use superior tactics, efficient creatures, and the power of righteousness against their foes." will help so much more?

More than saying "White is Sword to Plowshares", that's for sure.

I don't like the other user's explanation either. You should explain the properties of each color, but summing them into a simple collection of cards does not allow for easy comprehension. You can't just point at some cards and say "this is x color", you gotta properly explain whats the common pattern between them.

It's like when you say white gets taxing effects, rather than just showing Thalia and Leonin Arbiter to a newcomer, because the fact that those effects are characteristic of that color and cannot be found in others (or can be found to a lesser degree / in a different aspect) will be lost to them.

It didn't fold to lifegain, it folded to the fact my health total went off the charts and that I was getting damage in. Not as fast as him, but I was steadily catching up since (like him) I had a very strong board that grew quicker and quicker the longer the game went. By that point I was just digging for a Confront the Unknown (getting 18ish lives by turn in the process) to finish the job, so when I got it he just folded.

That's what I'm trying to point out, most of the competitive decks have their unique synergy in them which distuingish them from the rest. But I'm just saying there is few very basic core cards that define the color in every single valudeck ever build in this game. In modern, those are things like bolt, PtE what not.... That's what makes the pool and what defines the powerlevel of the format, which any newcomer to modern for example has to know and understand. You have to have a reference point when evaluating new cards.

Colorpie isn't defined by bullshit wizards is feeding you, colorpie is defined by the cards they have in them. Of course you can't chump things like DnT, Naya burn and Soulsister/Norin together. But what is common in each and every of those? Path to Exile.

PD: it helps that I myself play my own Bant Company brew, so I'm pretty knowledgeable about the deck and its weaknesses.

That's just flavor, if you want to explain deck building to a newbie than you should still start by giving a brief overview of the colors since it is the single biggest decider of what cards you can put in your deck and also gives the new guy a good idea of where to start when he figures out what kind of deck he wants to build. Here.

>White
Color of cooperation, teamwork, and order. Likes to use lots of little guys that work well together. Usually prefers to either disable threats without killing them or go full nuclear on the entire board, also likes to use spells that restrict your opponents options. Pick this color if you want to command an army or like to whittle your opponent down slowly while tying up all his threats.

>Blue
Color of logic, intelligence, and knowledge. Likes to use spells. A lot of spells. Prefers to counter all your opponents cards and stop them from being played in the first place, also likes slippery creatures that are hard to block. Pick this color if you want to out think your opponents and dictate the flow of the game, or if you like to find ways to bypass your opponents defenses.

>Black
Color of death, selfisness, and power at all costs. They will do anything, pay any price to get what they want. Likes to sacrifice creatures and pay life for more power. Also likes graveyard shenanigans. Pick this color if you like zombies, skeletons, and things that just won't stay dead; or if the idea of tearing your own arm off and beating your opponent to death with it appeals to you.

>Red
Color of emotions, freedom, and passion. Also enjoys fire, preferably in very large quantities. Not very big on subtlety. Likes fast, aggressive creatures and spells, also likes cards that turn your opponents strengths against them. Prefers direct methods of dealing with problems, namely hitting it in the face until it's not a problem anymore. Pick this color if you like damage, damage, and more damage, or if you enjoy causing chaos.

Whoops forgot Green

>Green
Color of nature, life, and growth. Likes to use huge creatures to overwhelm the opponent, or use the power of nature to destroy their stuff. Prefers to outpace their opponents and drop big things then make then even bigger. Pick this color if you like huge creatures or if you like getting a shit ton of mana very quickly.

Wow thats a really helpful rundown of the colors. Is it a good idea to start with a solid one color deck first, then try mixing colors. Or should I just pick a couple that look fun, mix em, and dive in

Mixing is usually the way to go, because it gives you access to shit monocolor decks can't do.

For example, black is bad at destroying artifacts and enchantments, but green excels at both while being bad at killing creatures, which black is excellent at.

Combine both and they cover eachother's weaknesses and enhance their strengths. Same goes for all other combinations.

Just don't go tricolor. Too soon yet.

That's a lot better representation of colors by far. It's somewhat true as well. Well done. Although it still doesn't exactly say anything about deckbuilding, but gives a good idea about how they are presented. Now we only need to add exceptions and hybrid colors for it to be complete for newbs.

Whatever you feel like looks fun, I would say. But I will say, that while you can get away with cheap manabase with 2color decks, you have to pay a bit cash to make 3color decks to work. And that's because of Fetchlands and Dual lands they search for are a bit expensive. There is alternatives, but not as consistent or good for more serious games.

Might even save for the future use.

Play draft. Nets you cards and teaches the most about deckbuilding and card evaluation. If you can't afford it draft a cube.

I've been thinking about buying some fakes desu, after the emergence of Commander some cards just happen to be way too expensive for what they do.

>5-7 mana rare/mythic that nobody plays outside of EDH
>"Yup, that'll be 20-40$ a piece"

The thing about commander staples is that since the players need only one card they are much willing to pay a much higher price for said copy. That's also why the foils for those cards are on average more valuable than other foils.