Magic Deck Vortex gets a mini review!

[Tynion]

That writer is so right about MTGO. I had stopped playing it back while drafting Onslaught and Legions. I logged back in during the block after Mirroden block (cant remember the name of it at this moment) and it was exactly the same. Same jumbled bazaar, same crummy graphics, same bad sounds and music, same cheesy combos, and same overly expensive cost for fake **ERRRR** proxy **ERRRR** digital cards.

What a rip off, but hey, one day I will be spending my hard earned dollars on digital cards again.

nice to know that they are raking in cash, while not even producing a product, and still do not improving the program. Dirt balls.. Wonder if they are in leagues with the makers of Ultima Online.

[lionden_56]

I encourage you to go back and read some of Bennie Smith's articles. MTGO is getting a MASSIVE face-lift soon (I can't remember exactly when). And while I agree that buying online cards is a rip-off, there is a redemtion option, although I've never used it and am not sure how it works. I play MTGO, however, at least twice or three times a week. It beats the free softwares because there are no rules questions; the game handles them all. I've had more than one rules question pop up on MWS. I also like the drafts, as I rarely get to draft competatively in real life.

[Tynion]

Last I knew, it was that you needed to have a complete set, then redeem the complete set, which is pooey :)

[Rift]

How much is it per card online? Expensive? Are you essentially buying a digital deck instead of a real one?

[lionden_56]

Everything is the same online as it is in real life. $3.69 for boosters, and so on. Singles aren't sold by the server, but they have a marketplace and ebay has a bunch. The prices for singles are generally a lot more inflated for online than in real life, just for availability reasons (Pernicious deeds go for like $70).

There is one thing to know about MTGO, though. You don't actually own the cards. Wizards could chose to shut it down tomorrow (they won't but go with me), and you would never see any cards in your collection online, and you would never get your money back.

[Cashew]

Packs run the same price as regular cards generally from the MTGO shop. Tix act as a virtual money or entry to events to win more packs, avatars (which also have their own affect on games in certain formats), and other random prizes). Crashes invariably happen, but not that often. You could play all day for a week and see maybe 1 crash, unless you play against a guy who likes to make 500 tokens at once in which case you'll probably see a server crash.

You are buying digital cards. They can be redeemed to paper if you have a complete set.

Card value is weird.

Standard cards tend to be much cheaper, and as a card ages its price goes up alot. The IPA block which are the fewest in number for online actually became amazing investments seeing cards like Undermine rise in value from say 5 tix to around 32 tix in 5 years. So cards online end up rising in value faster than real cards. Especially desired cards like Circular Logic, Flametounge Kavu.

People who say magic cards online are super expensive most likely are looking at IPA cards. This is a bad comparssion as very few people played online so the card pool for these highly sought cards is much smaller, making the price unnaturally inflated. If they were to resell IPA block online the card value would most likely dip lower than real life versions.

Newer cards however are cheaper generally after they've been out for a 3 months or so and the initial buying onslaught is over. The only exception is if a pro-tour guy plays some kind of new deck that rethinks how cards interact you may end up seeing a card jump from 1 tix to 8 tix overnight. You might look around for something as simple as a Temple Garden IRL and only find it for 10-15 dollars while its easy to find it at 5-6 tix online.

Short Point: Standard Cards are much cheaper online while Extended cards run higher than real life. Read: A faster muturing investment.

Why its nice?
1. You can always find a game of just about anything. Tribal, 2hg, 3hg, emporer, rainbow stairwell, 1v1 tourney practice. Anytime of the day.
2. Its like a city where everyone plays magic. Your town may not even have a magic shop, in which case the level of play is ultimately lower, and the card pool is small. In MTGO, you will face anything from super casual opponents, to people practicing tourney decks. If there's a card online you can probably find it. No need to resort to ebay, although you can ebay as well.
3. Events and clans bring some fun to it. Real life you may have a Friday Night fun event, MTGO there's events all the time, leagues running non-stop for prizes and tickets. A fun clan can get your level of play up and introduce you to alot of new things.

To answer your question though. For around 20 bucks you could set yourself up with a strong fun deck that you may struggle to create with low card pools at home.

[Tynion]

Cashew, you might consider taking what you just wrote here and expand on it, and send it over to Streetz, as you just gave a really good review of MTGO. Seriously! While it was simple and easy to read, it gave all the proper information needed, and even someone like myself is fairly familiar with MTGO learned something from it... I didn't realize that digital cards increased in value faster than actual cards.

Good stuff :)

[boiwithteeth]

yeah if ur write an article expand on the redeeming cards for a complete set cuz it would be sweet if some how you could send real life cards to wizards and they would put it in ur Mtgo account and at anytime you could pay a small shipping fee for your collection