pix said:
Located in London, Ontario here. I guess I won't know how good of a chance I have to compete until I go there and play. I have no idea how good the competition is, haven't played in years, and this is not the city I grew up playing in.
Sealed/drafting won't be a problem it will just be constructed that will be tough for a bit.
BTW how is buying cards cheaper than boxing? Ive seen decks running $800 in standard constructed.
Standard constantly changes. Stupidly expensive cards like Jace, the Mind Sculptor inflate deck prices heavily, but everything rotates eventually. If you're smart about buying and trading, you won't have to spend that much. You will definitely still spend a couple hundred over time, but you'd be looking at over a thousand dollars of booster packs/boxes to get playsets of the money cards required for a tournament-competitive deck.
Let's put it this way: you could pay $125 for a booster box and get 0 of the mythic(s) you need for your deck, and a handful of the staples. Alternatively, you could buy playsets of that particular mythic (or a few of several mythics) along with supporting cards for $125 or possibly less, and you wouldn't have the extra cards that are useless to you taking up space. It's incredibly easy for a Magic collection to get to an unmanageable size.
Unless you're the type to spend $40-$100 on a single card without hesitation, it is going to be cheaper to buy singles than to buy boosters hoping to open said singles. How much cheaper is debatable, however, and like V_Arnold has pointed out, part of the thrill of Magic to myself and other collectors/players is in opening boosters.
As you play the game more, especially in the competitive environment, you'll begin to see what factors make a powerful card... which will then allow you to speculate on what cards will be popular in competitive formats and see rises in value. Take Spellskite, for instance: we all could've pre-ordered playsets for $2-$4, and they are now $8 each. I almost regret only pre-ordering 1 playset. But if you're able to develop a keen eye for this sort of stuff, it won't cost you that much to keep up with Standard. Granted, it's a bit of crapshoot to predict and you could easily make some bad calls, but it's fun.
V_Arnold said:
Takuan, I appreciate your advices, but you really do not seem to get the feeling of opening a booster box, huh?
Trust me, I do. I love the the feeling of buying boosters and opening a chase in your last pack. I love that new card smell; if there existed an air freshener that smelled like a newly opened Magic booster, I would buy it by the case. I would wear it on my body.
I'm simply recognizing that it is not an economical way to go about building a deck, that's all.
Should have been Sun Titan instead.
