Yikes. Now you guys have me scared. I'm looking for a few chase rares to round out my nearly-finished cube, so I'm trying to buy my first cards from this forum. The seller said he can only accept money orders, which I think is a little strange, but I've never had a bad experience with eBay or trading boardgames on boardgamegeek.com.
If the seller doesn't have any on-site references and is asking for a money order, should that be a red flag? I already responded that I was okay, as long as I could send via signature / delivery confirmation.
I'm surprised there are so many bad experiences here. On the BGG forums I've completed more than 50+ trades and never run into anything but politeness. I guess Magic has a different audience / more money?
I played a W/R/b deck (sealed) that had a Magma Phoenix, Fire Servant, Lightning Bolt and 2x Fireball. The Fire Servant doubled a Fireball twice, although the Magma Phoenix never did a whole lot. The Earth Servant had a lot of board presence when he hit the table. I was happy with how red played in my deck. I went 3-1, and it was my first prerelease.
Well, as a first-time pre-release attendee, I can say I had a lot of fun! I read several threads in this forum that had lots of useful tips for first-timers like me. Thanks to everyone who took the time to answer the questions. The "BREAK" tip really helped me when constructing my deck.
Our local store had a 6-pack sealed tournament, and I wound up going 3-1, despite having what I thought was a mediocre deck. I didn't pull any big bomb creatures. I wound up playing Red / White with a splash of Black. Despite not having any bombs (I relied on Magma Phoenix, and Fire Servant), I had a ton of white flyers (Griffins). Remembering the "E" in BREAK meant I had a lot of evasion, and remembering the "R" made me splash black for more removal.
For going 3-1, I got 4 boosters of M11, and pulled a Liliana Vess and a Demon of Death's Gate. Nothing crazy, but with the Steel Overseer and the Vengeful Archon I'm pretty happy with the cards I won. Nothing crazy-good, but solid playable cards I can build with.
So anyway, a big thank you to all the helpful replies that gave me and the other pre-release newbies some tips on deckbuilding. It was much appreciated!
Try sliding the perfect fit into a different kind of sleeve. If it fits into those sleeves, the kmc mattes are bad. If it doesn't, the perfect fits are bad. But if the perfect fits are off, you should be able to tell. They're tight as can be. If they slide around inside the perfect fit at all, the fits are the bad sleeves.
Good idea. The cards slide into the perfect fit very snugly - it doesn't seem like they're a problem. I'll try the perfect fits into some Ultra Pros tonight and see if that works.
Antknee42 wrote a how-to (with pictures!) on perfect fits over at the SCG forums. Check it out here, I think it is very helpful!
Thanks for the link to the how-to. I was expecting some kind of "trick" that I could try, but that's not really different from how I'm trying. My biggest problem is that when the perfect fit gets partway down into the sleeve, it gets caught up on one of the sides of the sleeve, and gets stuck. I have to wiggle it back the other way to get it to slide more. I wind up having to wiggle it back and forth, until it's so far down into the sleeve, that it just won't go any further. If I try to force it, the card itself slips out of the perfect fit and comes to rest at the bottom of the KMC sleeve.
It's very frustrating. Maybe I have a bad pack of perfect fits? I can try opening up another pack. Or maybe it's too humid here in Texas? (not kidding, maybe this is a problem?)
i just picked up some perfect fits and kmc matte blue sleeves. i can't get a card to fit into the sleeve with the perfect fit on for the life of me. they fit fine into ultra pros and every other sleeve i have.
any tips? (i have the card going upside down into the perfect fit, then the normal way into the sleeve.)
I have the same setup - perfect fits and KMC matte black sleeves. I can't get the perfect fits to go inside the sleeves. I have to sort of wiggle the card back and forth to get it down into the sleeve, but it seems like the last 1/4", the perfect fit gets stuck in the sleeve, and the card winds up sliding down to rest on the bottom of the sleeve, hanging out of the perfect fit by 1/8", and the perfect fit hanging out of the top of the sleeve. I've tried numerous times, with sleeves from different packages, no luck. I finally gave up tonight, and started sleeving into the KMC sleeves, without perfect fits.
Thanks all. Lots of differing opinions on the topic! I did get a couple of notes from Craigs list and was able to find about $100 worth of cards cheaper than the online stores I mentioned. (so that's good!)
I will do some research on MTG Chicago, thanks for the warning.
I'll also troll the for-sale forums here and see if I can source any more cards for a good price.
I'm looking to buy a large number of singles to construct a powered cube. (~$700 worth) I've priced the singles at 3 major online vendors (MTG Chicago, Adventures On and ChannelFireball), and I plan on placing 3 orders, picking the best price on each card from that vendor. (I haven't been able to find a deckbuilder utility on the Troll & Toad site, so I haven't included them)
I am also looking on Craigslist to see if there are some local collectors that might have some of the cards, who want to sell singles. But I'm not sure if I should expect competitive / lower prices from local collectors than from the online vendors.
Not really. Although he has made major overhauls recently I'd still rate the cubes here as being better. Usman's is usually held up as 'the' example of a small cube, and I'm arrogant enough to think that my cube is pretty decent too.
Great suggestion. It's good to hear some constructive criticism on Evan's cube, and get suggestions on cubes here that meet my needs. I'll take a look at yours, Usman's and wtwlf123's.
The smaller the cube, the higher the power level, and the more consistent the draft experience will be. Combos and linear strategies will be more viable because you will be more likely to see both parts in a draft. The larger the pool, the more interesting cards you can add, and the higher the variability of the draft.
If you are primarily drafting 4 player, then this means that aggro (aggressive 1 and 2 drops) will be weakened as a strategy. You should consider either abandoning it or making it even *more* heavily represented than it is in most medium size cubes.
So it comes down to personal preference on whether we want to see the same cards come up in each draft, or whether we want variety each time? I guess if the law of averages evens out the colors to make sure each color is strongly represented in each draft, I would enjoy seeing some variety. I'll take a look at some of the medium-sized cubes and not worry so much about only having 4 players.
Again, great links - I appreciate you pointing me to some useful threads.
a good thing to do is check the site that cards are linked to from here. for example: loxodon warhammer
it gives you a list of any cards printings, sites that have them, for how much, and the condition of the cards.
I'm looking at the site (magiccards.info), and I see "MOTL Price Lists" which gives average prices, but I don't see anything that compares prices against online stores. Am I missing it?
Greetings, all. I've been lurking around the cube draft forums for a couple of weeks now, and am determined to put together a cube of my own. Here's my situation.
I got into Magic during Unlimited and played through the Tempest block, so the majority of my cards are from that era. I sold off my moxes a couple of years ago, but I've still got a few high-value cards to sell. (namely Mishra's Workshop, Time Vault, 11 duplicate dual-lands, and a few others) Based on the going rate, I can make enough from card sales to buy my way into a power cube. I will have to proxy most of the Power 9, and a handful of the high-dollar lands & singles, but I'm okay with that. Since I haven't played much (other than some CoK and Ravnica a couple of years ago), I don't know enough to construct a cube on my own, so I'm looking to clone someone else's cube.
As for my playgroup, we're currently sitting at 4 players, all of which are old-school Magic players (let's say, pre-Invasion), so we enjoy seeing some of the older cards in play. I expect most of our drafts will be 4 players, although I could see us growing to 6 eventually. We also really enjoy playing as a group, but I haven't read much on how cube drafting works for multi-player.
I like the idea of a powered cube, but I do wonder if the quick mana will lead to a lot of turn 4 kills, which aren't much fun. I'd consider having an option to slow the game down, but I'm not sure.
Summary:
- Group of 4-6 drafters
- Budget of about $800
- Don't mind proxying ~10% of cards, especially ones >$15
- Enjoy power cards, but a little worried about too-quick matches
- Want the option to play multi-player (2-Headed Giant?)
- Looking to clone an existing cube to start with (due to limited knowledge of modern day Magic)
So here are some of my questions.
1) I've been eyeing Evan's cube over at Cubedrafting.com. What's the consensus here on how that cube stacks up? I've priced out buying his cube from singles, and it's in my budget. Would you recommend it?
2) Are there any good articles on the forum about doing multi-player cube draft? Everyone seems to be playing 1-on-1 matches, but I'd like to know if it's important to consider multiplayer when constructing my cube.
3) Considering I may be dropping several hundred dollars on singles, are there any recommended vendors for this sort of thing? I've been looking at mtgfanatic.com, which seems to have competitive prices and a lot of stuff in stock. (plus, they have good prices on "played" cards, which I don't mind)
4) For sleeves, what's the general consensus on the Ultra Pro Magic sleeves? I like the idea of keeping the original card backs, so I was looking at the sleeves that have it printed on the back. I haven't seen them in person, do they look cheesy? What about clear sleeves?
5) Evan's cube has 530 cards. With 4 drafters, that's only 180 cards - lots leftover. With only 4 (maybe 6) drafters, is that cube size too large? Does it skew drafts when only a small pool of cards from the cube are used?
6) Any other recommendations or advice you can give me?
Thanks in advance for any help / guidance you can give me. I'm really enjoying reading the forums, and can't wait to finish building out my cube.
If the seller doesn't have any on-site references and is asking for a money order, should that be a red flag? I already responded that I was okay, as long as I could send via signature / delivery confirmation.
I'm surprised there are so many bad experiences here. On the BGG forums I've completed more than 50+ trades and never run into anything but politeness. I guess Magic has a different audience / more money?
Our local store had a 6-pack sealed tournament, and I wound up going 3-1, despite having what I thought was a mediocre deck. I didn't pull any big bomb creatures. I wound up playing Red / White with a splash of Black. Despite not having any bombs (I relied on Magma Phoenix, and Fire Servant), I had a ton of white flyers (Griffins). Remembering the "E" in BREAK meant I had a lot of evasion, and remembering the "R" made me splash black for more removal.
In hindsight, I think my removal won me a couple of key matches. I had 2x Fireball, 1x Lightning Bolt, 1x Condemn, 1x Pacifism and 2x Assassinate.
For going 3-1, I got 4 boosters of M11, and pulled a Liliana Vess and a Demon of Death's Gate. Nothing crazy, but with the Steel Overseer and the Vengeful Archon I'm pretty happy with the cards I won. Nothing crazy-good, but solid playable cards I can build with.
So anyway, a big thank you to all the helpful replies that gave me and the other pre-release newbies some tips on deckbuilding. It was much appreciated!
This piqued my curiosity. Why is that? A blue finisher with evasion / shroud? Do you think it's overcosted?
Good idea. The cards slide into the perfect fit very snugly - it doesn't seem like they're a problem. I'll try the perfect fits into some Ultra Pros tonight and see if that works.
Thanks for the link to the how-to. I was expecting some kind of "trick" that I could try, but that's not really different from how I'm trying. My biggest problem is that when the perfect fit gets partway down into the sleeve, it gets caught up on one of the sides of the sleeve, and gets stuck. I have to wiggle it back the other way to get it to slide more. I wind up having to wiggle it back and forth, until it's so far down into the sleeve, that it just won't go any further. If I try to force it, the card itself slips out of the perfect fit and comes to rest at the bottom of the KMC sleeve.
It's very frustrating. Maybe I have a bad pack of perfect fits? I can try opening up another pack. Or maybe it's too humid here in Texas? (not kidding, maybe this is a problem?)
I have the same setup - perfect fits and KMC matte black sleeves. I can't get the perfect fits to go inside the sleeves. I have to sort of wiggle the card back and forth to get it down into the sleeve, but it seems like the last 1/4", the perfect fit gets stuck in the sleeve, and the card winds up sliding down to rest on the bottom of the sleeve, hanging out of the perfect fit by 1/8", and the perfect fit hanging out of the top of the sleeve. I've tried numerous times, with sleeves from different packages, no luck. I finally gave up tonight, and started sleeving into the KMC sleeves, without perfect fits.
I will do some research on MTG Chicago, thanks for the warning.
I'll also troll the for-sale forums here and see if I can source any more cards for a good price.
I am also looking on Craigslist to see if there are some local collectors that might have some of the cards, who want to sell singles. But I'm not sure if I should expect competitive / lower prices from local collectors than from the online vendors.
Thoughts? Thanks,
- Jeff
Great suggestion. It's good to hear some constructive criticism on Evan's cube, and get suggestions on cubes here that meet my needs. I'll take a look at yours, Usman's and wtwlf123's.
Killer threads. I looked for something like this a couple of days ago and couldn't find it. You've just set my reading list for tonight.
So it comes down to personal preference on whether we want to see the same cards come up in each draft, or whether we want variety each time? I guess if the law of averages evens out the colors to make sure each color is strongly represented in each draft, I would enjoy seeing some variety. I'll take a look at some of the medium-sized cubes and not worry so much about only having 4 players.
Again, great links - I appreciate you pointing me to some useful threads.
Thanks for the input. It's tough for me to look at a big list of cubes and determine what best matches my needs. I apprecaite the help.
I'm looking at the site (magiccards.info), and I see "MOTL Price Lists" which gives average prices, but I don't see anything that compares prices against online stores. Am I missing it?
I got into Magic during Unlimited and played through the Tempest block, so the majority of my cards are from that era. I sold off my moxes a couple of years ago, but I've still got a few high-value cards to sell. (namely Mishra's Workshop, Time Vault, 11 duplicate dual-lands, and a few others) Based on the going rate, I can make enough from card sales to buy my way into a power cube. I will have to proxy most of the Power 9, and a handful of the high-dollar lands & singles, but I'm okay with that. Since I haven't played much (other than some CoK and Ravnica a couple of years ago), I don't know enough to construct a cube on my own, so I'm looking to clone someone else's cube.
As for my playgroup, we're currently sitting at 4 players, all of which are old-school Magic players (let's say, pre-Invasion), so we enjoy seeing some of the older cards in play. I expect most of our drafts will be 4 players, although I could see us growing to 6 eventually. We also really enjoy playing as a group, but I haven't read much on how cube drafting works for multi-player.
I like the idea of a powered cube, but I do wonder if the quick mana will lead to a lot of turn 4 kills, which aren't much fun. I'd consider having an option to slow the game down, but I'm not sure.
Summary:
- Group of 4-6 drafters
- Budget of about $800
- Don't mind proxying ~10% of cards, especially ones >$15
- Enjoy power cards, but a little worried about too-quick matches
- Want the option to play multi-player (2-Headed Giant?)
- Looking to clone an existing cube to start with (due to limited knowledge of modern day Magic)
So here are some of my questions.
1) I've been eyeing Evan's cube over at Cubedrafting.com. What's the consensus here on how that cube stacks up? I've priced out buying his cube from singles, and it's in my budget. Would you recommend it?
2) Are there any good articles on the forum about doing multi-player cube draft? Everyone seems to be playing 1-on-1 matches, but I'd like to know if it's important to consider multiplayer when constructing my cube.
3) Considering I may be dropping several hundred dollars on singles, are there any recommended vendors for this sort of thing? I've been looking at mtgfanatic.com, which seems to have competitive prices and a lot of stuff in stock. (plus, they have good prices on "played" cards, which I don't mind)
4) For sleeves, what's the general consensus on the Ultra Pro Magic sleeves? I like the idea of keeping the original card backs, so I was looking at the sleeves that have it printed on the back. I haven't seen them in person, do they look cheesy? What about clear sleeves?
5) Evan's cube has 530 cards. With 4 drafters, that's only 180 cards - lots leftover. With only 4 (maybe 6) drafters, is that cube size too large? Does it skew drafts when only a small pool of cards from the cube are used?
6) Any other recommendations or advice you can give me?
Thanks in advance for any help / guidance you can give me. I'm really enjoying reading the forums, and can't wait to finish building out my cube.