Should I buy in MTGO?

[fsecco]

I know there are a few topics on this, but I thought revamping any of them was worse than posting again. So, I'm thinking about buying in. How's the frequency of tournaments now? And the v4 client is full of bug or is it ok?

I think buying in (1 deck, full power), should be around U$ 1500. Am I right?

I never used MTGO and would install a VirtualBox on my Mac solely for that...

[Smmenen]

Prices on goatbots and Supernovabots are pretty good right now.  I think you can buy a deck for less than that.

I think it's enormous fun, and recommend folks buy in. 

[fsecco]

I'm thinking the time is now, right? I guess I'll sell some of my paper collection. There's probably 1500 or more buried here into Commander or Modern staples I'm not using anyway...

Smmenen, can you help me (maybe via private message) understand how to deal with bots and buy this stuff? I mean, I'm a total newbie when it comes to MTGO, so any help getting cards for a lower price would be greatly appreciated. I actually don't even have an account right now.

I'll probably spend a few days installing the client and feeling confortable with it.

[Twiedel]

Hey there,

I can only tell you I'm feeling great with my onlie collection. Prior to MTGO, I had the opportunity to play like 30-40 Games of Vintage a year, maybe 100 in the "high time" for my area. Now I play a match a day minimum (early in the morning, before I go to work) and I can play for something at stack (though not much, like 6 $) whenever I want and how much I want. With Modo, you can literally play at any time of the day, for as long as you want and if you set up a decent friend list over time you'll have strong and nice opponents as well.

As for the price, I'd plan around those 1500 $ you stated. You will get away a bit cheaper for one deck or the other, but especially in vintage it only takes a few different cards to slot and you are playing another variant of that deck. Ususally, the interchangeable cards in Blue or Workshop decks are mostly cheap, so you can usually have another variant of your deck for around 50-100 $ easily. Most of the time, this is much less, as commons and uncommons for the most part cost absolutely nothing.

You surely need to allow yourself some time to get used to the client, and I mean playing AND trading. Both are not really intuitive, but once you figure it out, it works quite well. I personally bought all the cards I needed to kickstart my collection from an online vendor (there are several big ones, almost all have the same prices). This was a premium of about 10%, but I ordered a rather huge collection and you really want to do this for a t least all the commons you need, as tracking them down at bots and dealing was really a pain for me from the start.

For the cards a bit more expensive (where the premium from online traders hurts) check out mtgowikiprice.com. This site tracks all the bots that have the card you entered in their stock, and lists you their respective prices. Really neat if you want to pick up at the lowest bots. For special cards, like P9 and everything north of 30-40 ticks, I'd suggest trying to find some real person to buy it from, this will safe you some ticks (but not as much as you might be used to from paper Magic!) and you can deal with them just fine.

If you need more info, just ask around. There are plenty of people here who have bought in recently and that can give you tips!

[fsecco]

Thanks for the input, Twiedel. Do you guys think it's worth to play a few Vintage Masters drafts? Or (like IRL) is it just better to buy singles?

[AmbivalentDuck]

Unlike IRL, folks online sell off the value cards they draft in order to buy more drafts. That creates a lot of downward pressure on the prices of high $$$ cards from sets that are still open to draft. In addition, the market is very very liquid.

The drafting experience is supposedly great (aside from the crappy UI), but remember that because people sell off their high $$$ cards pretty much immediately after drafting them nobody can really make money doing it. The whole thing is arguably a pyramid scheme and it's certainly paid off handsomely for early adopters, but the future of Vintage is probably online. It's just a matter of time before they find a way to get rid of Cockatrice, so MTGO is probably the future of Vintage.

[rickster]

First see if the client works on your computer. There are people that report lots of crashes. And it might not be worth it if you have to keep restarting the client every X amount of time. I believe you get some free new player m15 drafts when you buy an account for $10.

There's also a free trial download, but I have no idea what that includes, and i'm too lazy to google it (a quick google search brought up links from 2008, so i don't know how helpful those will be in 2014). WotC's website probably has zero information on it, because that's how they roll.
https://accounts.onlinegaming.wizards.com/

It's always better to buy singles than to crack packs. But if you enjoy drafting, then paying a $4 fee to crack VMA boosters with the chance to win more is a fine deal. VMA drafting costs 3 boosters + 4 tickets.

You can find practice games of vintage every 10-60 seconds (during peak USA hours). And obviously if you have friends you can challenge them.

[fsecco]

Unlike IRL, folks online sell off the value cards they draft in order to buy more drafts. That creates a lot of downward pressure on the prices of high $$$ cards from sets that are still open to draft. In addition, the market is very very liquid.

So maybe if I offer to buy cards from a player right after a draft I can buy them cheaper?

[bactgudz]

Unlike IRL, folks online sell off the value cards they draft in order to buy more drafts. That creates a lot of downward pressure on the prices of high $$$ cards from sets that are still open to draft. In addition, the market is very very liquid.

So maybe if I offer to buy cards from a player right after a draft I can buy them cheaper?

You can either search the postings in the trade tab for humans or post a buy ad yourself...or you could go to a bot...you can find prices for some bots at:
www.mtgotraders.com
www.supernovabots.com
www.goatbots.com
www.mtgowikiprice.com
If you open a trade with a bot you select the cards you want, it tells you in chat how much each one is, and it saves any fractions of tickets leftover as credit with the bot.  Much more convenient than dealing with human for lower end vma stuff, and on higher end vma stuff you will generally only save 0-2 tix if you post a buy ad and wait a couple days vs buying at the cheapest price you find amongst those websites and posted on the classifieds.

[fsecco]

Inside MTGO I can only buy cards paying in Tix? So there comes the issue of finding cheaper Tix, right? Any tips for that?

I'm trying to be thorough with this, since I'm selling a part of my paper collection to buy in MTGO. So right now I have a huge excel worksheet calculating taxes, dollar currency value, and other modifiers. I guess since Tix is almost always more expensive than a dollar, I should count that too, right?

[bactgudz]

Inside MTGO I can only buy cards paying in Tix? So there comes the issue of finding cheaper Tix, right? Any tips for that?

I'm trying to be thorough with this, since I'm selling a part of my paper collection to buy in MTGO. So right now I have a huge excel worksheet calculating taxes, dollar currency value, and other modifiers. I guess since Tix is almost always more expensive than a dollar, I should count that too, right?

Some bots sell cards or credits for cash.  For buying tix, as a new player you likely will want to go through the wotc store(unless you are in a region that is charged tax for store purchases) which also will give you the store activity promo.  If you are paying well over a dollar for tix in the store due to taxes, you can buy tix for cheaper from a reputable bot chain for 0.99-1.03.  Once you are experienced and trusted online you may be able to find tix from reputable sources for .94-.95; but these generally don't sell to brand new accounts, and don't always have tix available.

[TheKidsArentAlright]

If you want to get your finger on the pulse of MTGO a bit before committing any money, Pete Jahn writes a weekly column entitled "State of the Program".  He covers MODO related news, upcoming events and set releases, confirmed and reported bugs, decks that have done well in the past week, an opinion section about one or more hot issues, and card prices and changes.  This week's edition can be found here.  It's worth a read if you want a synopsis of what's going on with the game in general in addition to the more specific responses you're getting here.

On the subject of card prices, while things online are generally cheaper than their paper counterparts, there are a few exceptions.  These are mostly cards from older sets with poor Limited play.  The big one is Wasteland.  Coming in at just north of $150 a piece, it is the 2nd most expensive card online right now behind only Black Lotus.  Other notables include Misdirection ($80), Liliana of the Veil ($95), Grislebrand ($50), Hurkyl's Recall ($60), Tezzeret the Seeker ($25), Tangle Wire ($40), and Daze ($15).

Also, while $1500 is a pretty good ballpark, what deck or decks did you have your eye on?  I ask because the total cost can go up or down by a few hundred dollars depending on exactly what it is you want to get.

[yugular]

@fsecco

Another way to buy cards is to put your money from the paper cards you sell to paypal and use paypal to buy cards from mtgotraders or other bots who have sites. For example paying with paypal will save 5% from you in mtgotraders.

Anyways. Now is definitely right time to buy in! Fetchlands and Wastelands are pretty much the only cards that will lose a lot of value when they put more of those into the system.

[fsecco]

Good to know about PayPal. I was planning on using that to make purchases anyway

I'm using this to calculate deck prices: http://www.mtggoldfish.com/tools/deck_pricer#online

Of course I know there's a variance there, but I'm still not sold on any list yet, but studying a few.

[rickster]

Make sure mtgo works before you buy your deck. You don't want to be this guy.

https://twitter.com/MTGOTraders/status/493762620835373057

[Juni0r]

I'm thinking the time is now, right? I guess I'll sell some of my paper collection. There's probably 1500 or more buried here into Commander or Modern staples I'm not using anyway...

This is how I bought my mtgo power and I am still satisfied with the decision. Being able to play vintage whenever I want has more value to me than the pile of cards I traded in.

I can't recommend enough playing some before you buy in to make sure the program works for you.

[TheKidsArentAlright]

Make sure mtgo works before you buy your deck. You don't want to be this guy.

https://twitter.com/MTGOTraders/status/493762620835373057

Agreed, especially since you're going to be running it on a Mac and not a true Windows OS.  Each new account comes with a few new player tickets or something to that effect which will let you enter special Phantom events, which are free to play Sealed Deck tournaments where you do not get to keep the cards.  Burn through those to see how your machine handles the client before making any purchases.

[yugular]

I use VirtualBox with Mac to run mtgo. Have done it few years already and haven't had any issues. But the new client is still going under serious work and I have also heard that some setups just wont run it. So yeah, test first!

[fsecco]

Oh, I'm definitely testing first. I played a few trial matches and everything went fine. I'm making an account these days and playing with the cards I get for a while. I just tried to make an account but had a billing issue I have no idea what was, so the nick I wanted is now unavailable (they locked it out).

I'm waiting for an answer from them to see if the nick could be unblocked. I'd like to use the same nick I use here and on other sites...

I use VirtualBox with Mac to run mtgo. Have done it few years already and haven't had any issues. But the new client is still going under serious work and I have also heard that some setups just wont run it. So yeah, test first!

I'm also using VirtualBox and a Windows 7 SP1. What's your hardware? I'm on a 2010 Macbook Pro (2.4GHz dual-core Intel Core i5, 4GB RAM, NVIDIA GeForce 320M 256MB). Until now if feels fine.

EDIT: Oh, and what's the number of the new client? I see people calling it v4, but I guess mine is 3.4 something. Is that it? It probably is, right, since I guess you can't even connect with the old one anymore, am I right?

[yugular]

I'm also using VirtualBox and a Windows 7 SP1. What's your hardware? I'm on a 2010 Macbook Pro (2.4GHz dual-core Intel Core i5, 4GB RAM, NVIDIA GeForce 320M 256MB). Until now if feels fine.

I have late 2009 MacBook which works fine, and 1-month old very high end iMac which runs like a dream

[fsecco]

So, my experience with MTGO so far: I played one New Player Draft and 2 Momir 2-player queue matches.

Unfortunately I feel the problems of the lag. The draft went smoothier, but Momir was a pain, probably because I was more impatient. The problem is that I never know if the game understood my command or not.

For example: I mulliganed once without wanting to - I clicked YES to begin playing and, since the game took AGES to give me a hand of cards, I clicked again, thinking I could have misclicked. But no, it was just general slowness and so I started the match with 6 cards. More than once I ended my turn with a F4 or F6 thinking I still was on my opponent's turn.

And I also lost a match because of time (since I have to triple check every command, I spent a lot of time waiting to avoid double clicks - and that takes all my time).

Are these the issues people are complaining about the new version? Or is this an issue with my computer? Any hope this will get better after Aug 6th?

So... I dunno. I guess I'll play a few more Momir and I still have player points to 3 New Player Drafts... let's see how it goes.

[Vennie]

Somehow I had an error during sideboarding today. I was playing a legacy 2 man with UB reanimator. I lost game 1 and went to sideboarding. As I was choosing what to board out I had a bit of lag.
During the procces of boarding out I somehow got a 5th carefull study in my sideboard (was trying to board 4 of them out) and had 61 cards in my main deck... Result was that if I submitted my deck it just went back to sideboarding because the sideboarding was illegal somehow. So I tried boarding another card out to get to 60. Still no result.

As a result I had to play game 2 unboarded because time was up b4 an ORC could help me with the problem.
Naturally my opponent started t1 with a cage for which i have no answers b4 boarding essentially i just lost to the sideboarding error I could do nothing about.

[Coopes]

Somehow I had an error during sideboarding today. I was playing a legacy 2 man with UB reanimator. I lost game 1 and went to sideboarding. As I was choosing what to board out I had a bit of lag.
During the procces of boarding out I somehow got a 5th carefull study in my sideboard (was trying to board 4 of them out) and had 61 cards in my main deck... Result was that if I submitted my deck it just went back to sideboarding because the sideboarding was illegal somehow. So I tried boarding another card out to get to 60. Still no result.

As a result I had to play game 2 unboarded because time was up b4 an ORC could help me with the problem.
Naturally my opponent started t1 with a cage for which i have no answers b4 boarding essentially i just lost to the sideboarding error I could do nothing about.

Bugs like this coupled with terrible payouts for 3-1 ( ~12 tickets for 3-1 in legacy/vintage vs ~20 tickets for 3-1 in modern/standard ) make it harder and harder for me to enjoy playing tournaments online. If I didn't enjoy the format so much I would not be playing the daily events right now.

[The M.E.T.H.O.D]

MTGO still has its problems because they released an unfinished (pretty badly designed client). With that being said I enjoy the in game changes just dislike the windowing and lag. But to be honestly maybe 1 out of every 50-70 games for me bugs out but im cool with it because its a lot more fun than it is problematic. The cards will get debugged the memory leaks will be fixed and every week the client will get better. So far this week I haven't encountered any problems playing all three formats and limited. The client is has also been faster in the last two weeks. This is not an excuse but the previous client was more unplayable than this one and it tooks months of updates to bring it up to speed (once again they released it too early).

Is it fair to you to have to wait out till it gets better? nope.  For the most part gaming is going strong on MTGO but for those who can't handle the bugs it will get better so if these problems really do bother some of you like that I wouldn't sell your cards just take a break. The client will catch up with self and even if you dont like it in the future it also gives you the best chance of getting your cash back maybe even plus some.

If your willing to quit but hold onto your online cards show and tell and wasteland are the only ones I wouldnt hold.

[fsecco]

Yeah, I'm trying to figure out if the problem is on the client or on my computer not being able to handle it. If it's the client, I'm willing to buy in and wait. I guess I'll test this week and hope I can get the money in time for Aug 10th

[fsecco]

Can I ask you guys one more question? Is it worthy to play VM drafts? Maybe that'll reduce a little my cost of entry... or not?

[Chubby Rain]

Can I ask you guys one more question? Is it worthy to play VM drafts? Maybe that'll reduce a little my cost of entry... or not?

EV on these events is really quite low as the majority of rares and tickets are worth much less than the 25 ticket entry. Just going by MTGOTraders, there are 11 cards worth more than 20 tix: the power 8 (no Timetwister), Force of Will, Jace TMS (almost exactly 20), and Underground Sea (a little less actually). This is out of the 105 rares, 30 mythic rares, and 9 special cards in the set.

[yugular]

Can I ask you guys one more question? Is it worthy to play VM drafts? Maybe that'll reduce a little my cost of entry... or not?

For the price of a one draft you can get a playset of some of the cheaper duals. I wouldnt draft if I dont have extra tix to burn and specifically enjoy the limited format.

[rickster]

If you like drafting you should probably try it at least once. But keep in mind drafting is negative EV. This site says you have to have a 58% win rate to break even on 8-4s

http://www.magicev.com

[fsecco]

I hate drafting and I'm bad at it