With the rise of 93/94 format being popular, but very expensive unless you already have the cards, does anyone know if there has been attempts or interest in doing a "classic" format? Think in a reverse of Modern, where cards from Alpha up to Scourge are legal, as well as the Portal and Starter type sets released at the time. The shorthand is cards originally released with the old frame are legal, and anything from 8th edition/onward in Modern is not part of the format. Banned list probably will contain relevant cards already banned in Legacy from these sets, but open to re-evaluation based on power levels to make it distinct, and may also consider pre-emptively banning cards from the 90's that were banned for power reasons at the time but modern legal sets have allowed to unban, on the flip side some engine cards are more than likely to come off the list because they can't interact with modern cards that made them powerhouses in legacy/vintage anyway.
I find myself constantly watching what 90's pro tour coverage is out there, looking at the old world champion decks that used to come in precon, and seeing the archetypes around when people like Budde and Finkel dominated the game at the higher level. Also because Legacy wasn't much around, and Vintage was almost entirely unplayed, it might be interesting to see what happens to the popular standard/extended decks of the 90's when you have a wider open pool to choose from.
Proposed banned list:
All Ante Cards
Ancestral Recall
Balance
Bazaar of Baghdad (consideration to remove)
Black Lotus
Channel
Chaos Orb
Demonic Consultation
Demonic Tutor
Divine Intervention
Earthcraft
Falling Star
Fastbond
Frantic Search
Goblin Recruiter
Gush
Hermit Druid
Imperial Seal
Library of Alexandria
Mana Crypt
Mana Drain
Mana Vault
Memory Jar
Mind Twist
Mind's Desire
Mishra's Workshop
Moxen
Mystical tutor (consideration to remove)
Necropotence
Oath of Druids
Sol Ring
Sharazad
Strip Mine
Survival of the Fittest (consideration to remove)
Time Vault
Time Walk
Timetwister
Tinker
Tolarian Academy
Vampiric Tutor
Wheel of Fortune
Yawgmoth's Bargain
Yawgmoth's Will
Considerations for banning:
Crop Rotation
Dream Halls
Mind Over Matter
Regrowth
Time Spiral
Windfall
Ideally I would like to keep the format away from degenerate cards and first turn combos that were a problem during urza block, but I'd like to keep the power level high as outside degenerate engines and combos, a lot of the decks at the time were quite skill intensive, and I feel the less cards banned, the more open a format is to possibly finding innovative changes to known archetypes, or promotion of completely new ones with the added tools.
Interested to hear thoughts, or if this format exists, any results from playing it.
So this week marks the beginning of the inaugural PPTQ season. Not sure how many have been run by the end of this weekend, but yesterday there was one close enough for me to travel to so me and a couple friends went. Here's a small report of how it went down. Hopefully this forum is appropriate.
The event was advertised with prizing basically being a payout from 100% of the entry fees collected, with of course the winner qualifying for the Regional PTQs in April. It was modern format as well. When the morning arrived, there was about 75 people in today's PPTQ. This meant 7 rounds with a cut to top 8. Only one person would come out with a regional PTQ invite. Among the players in attendance was a good number of locals of course (with this store in question getting about 16-32 players for their weekly modern events) but also included a number of players who traveled at least an hour away, and even some up to 2-3 hours. To put in regards to location, it was hosted in a small city with a local population of under 30,000 and about an hour away from any city with 100,000+ people in all directions, so I imagine larger areas will probably even get bigger turnouts.
Without doing a full report, which i feel is irrelevant and inappropriate, I did make top 8 but lost in the elimination rounds. I got enough store credit due to the attendance that I basically made back my entire cost to play/travel, so no complaints at all, however it makes me wonder how this will truly affect the PTQ grinding format. At 75 players that is already 1/2 to 1/3rd of most Modern PTQs we had in the area using the former format. It may be due to the fact this was the first one and the future ones will decline, but I feel this is not the case when 74 people walked out without an invite and may try to play in another one, so where I hold the biggest concern is the actual qualification process.
If a small city PPTQ gets 75 players, i'm going to imagine results in larger cities/demographical areas will attract even more, quite possibly over 100? This is nearly PTQ size already, but instead of getting a straight invite to the pro tour, they have set up more opportunities for these events and you qualify for a chance to travel to an event where you can qualify. My state will likely have 10-13 PPTQs hosted over the course of this season, but that still means about a dozen people in my state will go to a regional, and that's assuming people from neighboring states don't take down one or qualify here. I'm wondering if this is a huge bottleneck in qualification, and that if this event type continues to get those numbers it may be of better interest to procure invites based on number attended
Maybe something like:
32 or less: winner invite.
33-64: Top 2
65-128: Top 4
129-256: Top 8
and so on, rewarding players who grind at larger PPTQs instead of making them play 7 rounds and elimination just to have a shot at another event before thinking about the Pro Tour, while not making it easy to just spike the most out of the way place to host one and get a free ride in, especially given the invite is only to a larger PTQ and the qualified players still need to adjust their own travel arrangements and cover the cost to do so, it's less of a concern for Wizards how many are invited on this level compared to the actual Pro Tour. Depending on where you are located, it's already a huge deal whether or not all who are invited will actually be able to attend if that many invites are given out.
I don't think the new format is bad entirely. Making you need to win/top 4 at least two events (and possibly two formats) to get on the Pro Tour will reward greater consistency in general, but extending invites based on size could also reward the same type of consistency that someone who might end up topping multiple PPTQs they attend and still fall short of winning one of them with an invite.
If anyone else has gone to a PPTQ over the weekend feel like commenting on their event and the experience? Maybe my area is just more competitive in the first place, and this is not an issue in other parts of the US/world, but I wouldn't be surprisd if this happens in a lot of regions as well. Also any thoughts on the formatting or how it could be improved upon?
1) Most pro players sponsored/attached to stores like ChannelFireball/SCG etc and the cool dudes who wear shirts from large online retailers? Those same people hook them up with their decks. It's not well publicized and you might not catch it, but when you see things like "I wasn't sure what to play then (insert name here) gave me a list." basically means either the store they're attached to provided their deck for them, or they are networked with someone or a group they can pretty much get what they need from. It's a simple system and more or less why the pros always seem to have the cards they need.
2) There is a lot to grinding and it's all relative. Simply put, i doubt anyone here can reliably say how much someone like Brad Nelson or Patrick Chapin get for writing on SCG, or what other "benefits" come with being a big name in their ring. The Premium articles are subscriber based in the first place so one thing I can speculate is SCG does at least pay real money to those writers. Outside of that there is events, and i'm sure they have plenty of access to cards and can reasonably sell them. With how many financial sharks and tournament grinders exist in this game and make money, it's impossible to guess top players don't do this themselves to some extent.
3) A lot of "pros" also have other avenues for money. Game store ownership, real world jobs, who knows what else.
4) Grinders in themselves. Everyone likes to talk about how much value they get grinding trades, and how much they spike from their local store credit or MTGO Dailies and Queues. Yes, it is possible to make a decent amount of money, and yes after cost you can have profits. There's a difference from making a living off MTG and "Going infinite." the latter is actually reasonable. I have met a lot of players whose gains from magic basically offset their costs in the game in terms of tournament entries and travel costs. You may not make a living off the game, but I know plenty of players who have basically gotten ahead enough or get enough value from playing/trades they don't need to spend money on the game out of pocket from their regular job. My regular job pays the bills, my magic results pay to keep playing. That should be enough from a hobby.
There's 5 digits worth of cards in the game. There's millions of active players of the game. It's impossible for Wotc to give out everything everyone wants, or that would make most camps happy, so they balance it out. We get chase reprints that often sell product (thoughtseize? fetchlands? in my standard?)
On top of that, limited formats sell boosters, standard keeps a rotation that sells boosters. The business model is pretty strong. Wizards also develops plenty of extra products that are popular with every level of play and attracts all groups. Also a majority of players are actually the casual crowd, which cares less about reprinting Force of Will and Wasteland as they might with Phyrexian Obliterator or Doubling Season so the reprint argument is invalid regardless of other concerns.
I think they're doing a solid job giving a good number of players what they want. Opinion for sure, but Khans is probably what MTG needs right now n all formats. It shook up every format with plenty of new cards, it caused a player reaction as well that has been passionate, it brought back five lands that have been begged for reprints for at least a decade since onslaught rotated out. Times are good.
SCG does about 20something million a year in Magic. I can't say whether that's strictly singles or as a whole, or includes other outliers of income (whatever they net from the open series, gaming supplies, and so on)but put that in a number and there's a good idea potentially how large their stock of cards could truly be, as well as where other retailers can be.
Dan Bock is probably up there as well in the numbers, either monetarily or number of cards. Definitely a top dog in terms of number of black lotus owned by a person.
Didn't see Day 1 so not sure if it improved. The video quality is clear enough on my computer, and with LSV as part of the commentary I can't complain.
4/5. Trample. 5 Toughness is basically the threshold in most formats. At that point it gets very awkward to get it off the table. The "Dies to bolt/abrupt decay type dances don't apply."
Dodges most removal (Path, Dismember, Terminate being the most played, Pulse as a singleton and Combust out a sideboard being the only other common answers)
ETB Lightning Helix trigger means even if they go through the effort of removing it with the above cards, value is already there, and you don't care to trade it anyway. Then, assuming they can't remove it, 4/5 trample is a huge body that will put in some work unanswered on top of that.
Fits in Pod decks just fine and curves incredibly, has solid synergy with other cards in Pod already.
Gives a boost to Midrange Junk Decks that they need and a valuable top of curve choice.
Doesn't care about Tarmogoyf more often than not. Can be played in the same decks as Tarmogoyf is also a huge bonus.
Burn decks can't really deal with it and it basically blanks one of their spells simultaneously
With shocks and fetches everywhere, 3 life in either direction is a huge tempo swing.
Siege Rhino is definitely up there as one of the more efficient multicolored cards printed while still maintaining an approach of being a fair and balanced creature that can be handled and costed just right where it's both not too expensive to cast, but not cheap enough to be a serious problem.
Almost good enough, but 1WW is a high price and the deck that wants him most are either Abzan which is already fighting for 1GG and 1BB with a greedy manabase. I had a mardu list that ran him, but WW turn 3 is also very rare that you more often than not only need Rabblemaster anyway.
The high price of this card means I don't get to test it extensively, but I feel at $30 he's not worth investing too much into jamming into a build.
This applies to all formats currently, but with more standard events coming up posting here.
I've been running Abzan Midrange/Aggro/Reanimator variants since the format started. Tried G/B Constellation a bit. Overall I'm unhappy playing any lists i've tried out. In theory they're pretty solid and i've shown the deck to multiple local players and online players who also are questioning my poor performance. Until the past 2 weeks the deck was consistently going 4-1 at every FNM with minor sideboard tweaks to enhance my matchup. I bought the deck on MTGO and so far have consistently gone 2-2 in 6/7 dailies and 0-2 in the 7th.
I feel Abzan is slow enough the faster aggro decks beat it (Mardu, Jeskai, Heroic, Sligh, etc), while the other end of the spectrum with R/G and Temur monsters developing too much creatures to consistently handle, Control being an overall poor matchup, and speed wise decks like Whip and Constellation can get to their late game. The manabase is really greedy wanting double colors generally for Courser, Downfall simultaneously turn 3 and Wingmate Roc. Do I think the decks bad? No, in general like most midrange decks you're jamming the most consistent fair cards in the format, but after 2 months Abzan had a big enough target most decks have built around keeping a strong gameplan against it, and it's very easy for us to not curve out right or draw awkwardly enough, or stubmle in the early game. I think it's time for something else.
I'm just not sure what to run. Preferably something I can both build online and not break the bank too much to finish up in paper as well. My online account has next to nothing but Abzan color cards, so running Jeskai and Mardu automatically mean pooling a bunch of money (and having to throw down for Rabblemasters being the biggest hit in either) to be able to test the deck online (important as currently it's the only way I can play standard every week and i'm testing for upcoming PTQs) though a feeling tells me what I need to go is try out Mardu.
Paper i'm less concerned as my card pool contains enough high end standard cards, and enough Legacy staples I can trade/sell/buy into whatever deck I want to play so whatever I can jam online, I can probably get access to the cards in time to play in paper.
I have no particular play style other than a preference for fair decks. The decks I have played with a range of success include Jund and Junk decks in Modern and Esper Deathblade in Legacy. This was why I went with Abzan early in the format, but I feel it has been hated out and this format has enough diversity it's not about knowing a deck perfectly but metagaming and adapting your plan with the constant changes in it.
So convenient I joined in during a DragonShield discussion.
I have loved Ultra Pro opaque sleeves as a budget option but agree they can split and wear easily. I've tried both KMC regular and hyper Mat, and have a love/hate with them in general. Not sure if there's anything to note about them? pros/cons?
Either way, disatisfied with Hyper Mats at GP New Jersey i sleeved my deck up for the super sunday series using Dragon Shield Pink sleeves and I love how they feel and shuffle a lot. I'm wondering a couple things after a few google searches.
1) Can i get DS sleeves same color in bulk boxes (1,000 sleeves/10 100ct boxes)? And where?
I want to just bulk up and sleeve all my cards with DS pink, but would rather not have to pay $10+Shipping every time, especially as I resleeve once a month at the longest, and at every major event I travel to (SCG Opens, Grand Prix, PTQ, etc). I wish i had found the vendor i bought that box from, i believe they were selling them at $7-8 a piece which is just above Wholesale after shipping from what i have been told anyway. I could have stocked up a few more boxes.
Username: ElectricWizardry
Frequency: While not attending paper events 4-6 nights a week (EST).
Format: Standard, looking to do Legacy eventually as well when i've built up more cards.
Long term investments in sealed product has not been a great idea for a couple years. Yeah, Zendikar boxes are pretty insane but on top of being an awesome set, the lands alone are worth $36, not counting fetches, staples, foils, etc. Zendikar/WWK boxes also did not survive long because people were still cracking them long into SOM block probably until stock was getting limited everywhere and eventually sold out.
Speculation on sealed product is almost a moot point. Also much like the baseball analogy is irrelevant. Some values come from time, when something otherwise NOT valued becomes valuable simply because nobody thought it would be. Old sealed boxes of MTG were worth a lot because not everyone thought to store a box of Urza's Saga or Tempest underneath their beds, much less more recently in the past ten years with Ravnica: City of Guilds, Darksteel, Zendikar, Lorwyn, etc because the game has expanded. However, now it's very easy to buy a case, do what you will with five boxes and just sit on the 6th box that I doubt it's worth the investment in time unless you already made up the value elsewhere with the rest of the case anyway. however with everybody else doing it, the amount of time increases dramatically, even for a popular set, to really net anything more than what you would just getting rid of it now. Chances are sitting on Khans isn't worth it.
The article posted grinds my gears a bit regarding financial MTG these days. Someone understands how a buylist works, has money to buy collections, and then laments how he invested too much in speculation on sealed product that obviously would flood when he should have been buying reserved list staples? Who would have expected it?
1. Brainstorm
2. Jace, the Mind Sculptor
3. Baleful Strix
4. Chain Lightning
5. Flusterstorm
Will not be reprinted:
1. Snapcaster Mage
2. Abrupt Decay
3. Swords to Plowshares
4. Mana Drain
5. Scalding Tarn
I find myself constantly watching what 90's pro tour coverage is out there, looking at the old world champion decks that used to come in precon, and seeing the archetypes around when people like Budde and Finkel dominated the game at the higher level. Also because Legacy wasn't much around, and Vintage was almost entirely unplayed, it might be interesting to see what happens to the popular standard/extended decks of the 90's when you have a wider open pool to choose from.
Proposed banned list:
All Ante Cards
Ancestral Recall
Balance
Bazaar of Baghdad (consideration to remove)
Black Lotus
Channel
Chaos Orb
Demonic Consultation
Demonic Tutor
Divine Intervention
Earthcraft
Falling Star
Fastbond
Frantic Search
Goblin Recruiter
Gush
Hermit Druid
Imperial Seal
Library of Alexandria
Mana Crypt
Mana Drain
Mana Vault
Memory Jar
Mind Twist
Mind's Desire
Mishra's Workshop
Moxen
Mystical tutor (consideration to remove)
Necropotence
Oath of Druids
Sol Ring
Sharazad
Strip Mine
Survival of the Fittest (consideration to remove)
Time Vault
Time Walk
Timetwister
Tinker
Tolarian Academy
Vampiric Tutor
Wheel of Fortune
Yawgmoth's Bargain
Yawgmoth's Will
Considerations for banning:
Crop Rotation
Dream Halls
Mind Over Matter
Regrowth
Time Spiral
Windfall
Ideally I would like to keep the format away from degenerate cards and first turn combos that were a problem during urza block, but I'd like to keep the power level high as outside degenerate engines and combos, a lot of the decks at the time were quite skill intensive, and I feel the less cards banned, the more open a format is to possibly finding innovative changes to known archetypes, or promotion of completely new ones with the added tools.
Interested to hear thoughts, or if this format exists, any results from playing it.
Thoughts?
The event was advertised with prizing basically being a payout from 100% of the entry fees collected, with of course the winner qualifying for the Regional PTQs in April. It was modern format as well. When the morning arrived, there was about 75 people in today's PPTQ. This meant 7 rounds with a cut to top 8. Only one person would come out with a regional PTQ invite. Among the players in attendance was a good number of locals of course (with this store in question getting about 16-32 players for their weekly modern events) but also included a number of players who traveled at least an hour away, and even some up to 2-3 hours. To put in regards to location, it was hosted in a small city with a local population of under 30,000 and about an hour away from any city with 100,000+ people in all directions, so I imagine larger areas will probably even get bigger turnouts.
Without doing a full report, which i feel is irrelevant and inappropriate, I did make top 8 but lost in the elimination rounds. I got enough store credit due to the attendance that I basically made back my entire cost to play/travel, so no complaints at all, however it makes me wonder how this will truly affect the PTQ grinding format. At 75 players that is already 1/2 to 1/3rd of most Modern PTQs we had in the area using the former format. It may be due to the fact this was the first one and the future ones will decline, but I feel this is not the case when 74 people walked out without an invite and may try to play in another one, so where I hold the biggest concern is the actual qualification process.
If a small city PPTQ gets 75 players, i'm going to imagine results in larger cities/demographical areas will attract even more, quite possibly over 100? This is nearly PTQ size already, but instead of getting a straight invite to the pro tour, they have set up more opportunities for these events and you qualify for a chance to travel to an event where you can qualify. My state will likely have 10-13 PPTQs hosted over the course of this season, but that still means about a dozen people in my state will go to a regional, and that's assuming people from neighboring states don't take down one or qualify here. I'm wondering if this is a huge bottleneck in qualification, and that if this event type continues to get those numbers it may be of better interest to procure invites based on number attended
Maybe something like:
32 or less: winner invite.
33-64: Top 2
65-128: Top 4
129-256: Top 8
and so on, rewarding players who grind at larger PPTQs instead of making them play 7 rounds and elimination just to have a shot at another event before thinking about the Pro Tour, while not making it easy to just spike the most out of the way place to host one and get a free ride in, especially given the invite is only to a larger PTQ and the qualified players still need to adjust their own travel arrangements and cover the cost to do so, it's less of a concern for Wizards how many are invited on this level compared to the actual Pro Tour. Depending on where you are located, it's already a huge deal whether or not all who are invited will actually be able to attend if that many invites are given out.
I don't think the new format is bad entirely. Making you need to win/top 4 at least two events (and possibly two formats) to get on the Pro Tour will reward greater consistency in general, but extending invites based on size could also reward the same type of consistency that someone who might end up topping multiple PPTQs they attend and still fall short of winning one of them with an invite.
If anyone else has gone to a PPTQ over the weekend feel like commenting on their event and the experience? Maybe my area is just more competitive in the first place, and this is not an issue in other parts of the US/world, but I wouldn't be surprisd if this happens in a lot of regions as well. Also any thoughts on the formatting or how it could be improved upon?
1) Most pro players sponsored/attached to stores like ChannelFireball/SCG etc and the cool dudes who wear shirts from large online retailers? Those same people hook them up with their decks. It's not well publicized and you might not catch it, but when you see things like "I wasn't sure what to play then (insert name here) gave me a list." basically means either the store they're attached to provided their deck for them, or they are networked with someone or a group they can pretty much get what they need from. It's a simple system and more or less why the pros always seem to have the cards they need.
2) There is a lot to grinding and it's all relative. Simply put, i doubt anyone here can reliably say how much someone like Brad Nelson or Patrick Chapin get for writing on SCG, or what other "benefits" come with being a big name in their ring. The Premium articles are subscriber based in the first place so one thing I can speculate is SCG does at least pay real money to those writers. Outside of that there is events, and i'm sure they have plenty of access to cards and can reasonably sell them. With how many financial sharks and tournament grinders exist in this game and make money, it's impossible to guess top players don't do this themselves to some extent.
3) A lot of "pros" also have other avenues for money. Game store ownership, real world jobs, who knows what else.
4) Grinders in themselves. Everyone likes to talk about how much value they get grinding trades, and how much they spike from their local store credit or MTGO Dailies and Queues. Yes, it is possible to make a decent amount of money, and yes after cost you can have profits. There's a difference from making a living off MTG and "Going infinite." the latter is actually reasonable. I have met a lot of players whose gains from magic basically offset their costs in the game in terms of tournament entries and travel costs. You may not make a living off the game, but I know plenty of players who have basically gotten ahead enough or get enough value from playing/trades they don't need to spend money on the game out of pocket from their regular job. My regular job pays the bills, my magic results pay to keep playing. That should be enough from a hobby.
On top of that, limited formats sell boosters, standard keeps a rotation that sells boosters. The business model is pretty strong. Wizards also develops plenty of extra products that are popular with every level of play and attracts all groups. Also a majority of players are actually the casual crowd, which cares less about reprinting Force of Will and Wasteland as they might with Phyrexian Obliterator or Doubling Season so the reprint argument is invalid regardless of other concerns.
I think they're doing a solid job giving a good number of players what they want. Opinion for sure, but Khans is probably what MTG needs right now n all formats. It shook up every format with plenty of new cards, it caused a player reaction as well that has been passionate, it brought back five lands that have been begged for reprints for at least a decade since onslaught rotated out. Times are good.
Dan Bock is probably up there as well in the numbers, either monetarily or number of cards. Definitely a top dog in terms of number of black lotus owned by a person.
4/5. Trample. 5 Toughness is basically the threshold in most formats. At that point it gets very awkward to get it off the table. The "Dies to bolt/abrupt decay type dances don't apply."
Dodges most removal (Path, Dismember, Terminate being the most played, Pulse as a singleton and Combust out a sideboard being the only other common answers)
ETB Lightning Helix trigger means even if they go through the effort of removing it with the above cards, value is already there, and you don't care to trade it anyway. Then, assuming they can't remove it, 4/5 trample is a huge body that will put in some work unanswered on top of that.
Fits in Pod decks just fine and curves incredibly, has solid synergy with other cards in Pod already.
Gives a boost to Midrange Junk Decks that they need and a valuable top of curve choice.
Doesn't care about Tarmogoyf more often than not. Can be played in the same decks as Tarmogoyf is also a huge bonus.
Burn decks can't really deal with it and it basically blanks one of their spells simultaneously
With shocks and fetches everywhere, 3 life in either direction is a huge tempo swing.
Siege Rhino is definitely up there as one of the more efficient multicolored cards printed while still maintaining an approach of being a fair and balanced creature that can be handled and costed just right where it's both not too expensive to cast, but not cheap enough to be a serious problem.
The high price of this card means I don't get to test it extensively, but I feel at $30 he's not worth investing too much into jamming into a build.
I've been running Abzan Midrange/Aggro/Reanimator variants since the format started. Tried G/B Constellation a bit. Overall I'm unhappy playing any lists i've tried out. In theory they're pretty solid and i've shown the deck to multiple local players and online players who also are questioning my poor performance. Until the past 2 weeks the deck was consistently going 4-1 at every FNM with minor sideboard tweaks to enhance my matchup. I bought the deck on MTGO and so far have consistently gone 2-2 in 6/7 dailies and 0-2 in the 7th.
I feel Abzan is slow enough the faster aggro decks beat it (Mardu, Jeskai, Heroic, Sligh, etc), while the other end of the spectrum with R/G and Temur monsters developing too much creatures to consistently handle, Control being an overall poor matchup, and speed wise decks like Whip and Constellation can get to their late game. The manabase is really greedy wanting double colors generally for Courser, Downfall simultaneously turn 3 and Wingmate Roc. Do I think the decks bad? No, in general like most midrange decks you're jamming the most consistent fair cards in the format, but after 2 months Abzan had a big enough target most decks have built around keeping a strong gameplan against it, and it's very easy for us to not curve out right or draw awkwardly enough, or stubmle in the early game. I think it's time for something else.
I'm just not sure what to run. Preferably something I can both build online and not break the bank too much to finish up in paper as well. My online account has next to nothing but Abzan color cards, so running Jeskai and Mardu automatically mean pooling a bunch of money (and having to throw down for Rabblemasters being the biggest hit in either) to be able to test the deck online (important as currently it's the only way I can play standard every week and i'm testing for upcoming PTQs) though a feeling tells me what I need to go is try out Mardu.
Paper i'm less concerned as my card pool contains enough high end standard cards, and enough Legacy staples I can trade/sell/buy into whatever deck I want to play so whatever I can jam online, I can probably get access to the cards in time to play in paper.
I have no particular play style other than a preference for fair decks. The decks I have played with a range of success include Jund and Junk decks in Modern and Esper Deathblade in Legacy. This was why I went with Abzan early in the format, but I feel it has been hated out and this format has enough diversity it's not about knowing a deck perfectly but metagaming and adapting your plan with the constant changes in it.
I have loved Ultra Pro opaque sleeves as a budget option but agree they can split and wear easily. I've tried both KMC regular and hyper Mat, and have a love/hate with them in general. Not sure if there's anything to note about them? pros/cons?
Either way, disatisfied with Hyper Mats at GP New Jersey i sleeved my deck up for the super sunday series using Dragon Shield Pink sleeves and I love how they feel and shuffle a lot. I'm wondering a couple things after a few google searches.
1) Can i get DS sleeves same color in bulk boxes (1,000 sleeves/10 100ct boxes)? And where?
I want to just bulk up and sleeve all my cards with DS pink, but would rather not have to pay $10+Shipping every time, especially as I resleeve once a month at the longest, and at every major event I travel to (SCG Opens, Grand Prix, PTQ, etc). I wish i had found the vendor i bought that box from, i believe they were selling them at $7-8 a piece which is just above Wholesale after shipping from what i have been told anyway. I could have stocked up a few more boxes.
Frequency: While not attending paper events 4-6 nights a week (EST).
Format: Standard, looking to do Legacy eventually as well when i've built up more cards.
Speculation on sealed product is almost a moot point. Also much like the baseball analogy is irrelevant. Some values come from time, when something otherwise NOT valued becomes valuable simply because nobody thought it would be. Old sealed boxes of MTG were worth a lot because not everyone thought to store a box of Urza's Saga or Tempest underneath their beds, much less more recently in the past ten years with Ravnica: City of Guilds, Darksteel, Zendikar, Lorwyn, etc because the game has expanded. However, now it's very easy to buy a case, do what you will with five boxes and just sit on the 6th box that I doubt it's worth the investment in time unless you already made up the value elsewhere with the rest of the case anyway. however with everybody else doing it, the amount of time increases dramatically, even for a popular set, to really net anything more than what you would just getting rid of it now. Chances are sitting on Khans isn't worth it.
The article posted grinds my gears a bit regarding financial MTG these days. Someone understands how a buylist works, has money to buy collections, and then laments how he invested too much in speculation on sealed product that obviously would flood when he should have been buying reserved list staples? Who would have expected it?