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Fran-tic Search: Getting the Cards

A vast number of Magic articles address Constructed Magic in depth, but not nearly enough articles address how people attain cards necessary to play in Constructed tournaments. For some, money isn’t an issue, and those people are able to purchase whatever is needed for any given tournament. However, for those of us with smaller Magic budgets, smart manoeuvring is needed to obtain the cards for Constructed.

Magic is a much more expensive to play than it once was. Believe it or not, there was a time when the more expensive Standard cards cost around $20. Now, however, Magic is no longer as cheap a game to play as it used to be. Mythic rares, [card]Jace, the Mind Sculptor[/card], the SCG Open series, Commander, and Modern are all factors contributing to the all-around increase in the cost of playing the game we all know and love.

For some, obtaining cards is one of the biggest barriers for playing Magic. In this article I’m going to map out the different methods by which one can obtain the cards to play Constructed Magic, as well as the positive and negative aspects of these methods. What can be done to obtain cards changes with how big your collection is, how big your budget is, and how many people you can borrow cards from. Here are some different scenarios:

Starting at square one

It’s never easy to start from square one, to build up your connections and collection from nothing, but we all have to go through it. Starting up is different from person to person. Some people are lucky enough to be taught to play by competitive players, and will immediately have connections and be thrown into the competitive scene. Most of us, though, start casually with friends, and ease our way in to the competitive crowd via tournaments like FNM, Pre0releases, and Champs.

In my experience, people with similar mind sets tend to gravitate together. To an extent, Magic is a game of cliques. For example, the casual crowd sticks together, judges stick together, and competitive players tend to stick together. The best way of going about gathering connections starting from ground zero is play tournaments, be social, talk to new people, and make friends. Eventually people who get along and want the same thing will gravitate together.

As for building up a collection from nothing, entire articles could be written on that subject, so I’ll leave that for another day.

People without a collection

There are a few people out there who are able to get by playing Constructed without a collection of their own. The main way a person could do so is by borrowing nearly everything they play, renting decks, or ponying up the cash to build a single deck.

Borrowing everything

I’ve known quite a few people who have gone down this path. These people don’t own a collection, and borrow the cards needed to play any given tournament.  Doing this usually means you need to know a lot of different people that you can borrow cards from, or a single person that has an extensive collection.

The huge upside to this option is that it can be one of the most cost-effective methods of playing Constructed. Without actually owning a collection, a person wouldn’t have to dump cash into a card they are only going to play in one tournament, or risk losing value when buying newer cards that have inflated price tags.

This option may not be open to players still breaking into the Magic scene because they just don’t have the necessary connections borrow the cards they want.

Usually if one borrows an entire deck there is a catch. To repay the person lending the cards, it’s common for the borrower to commit a certain percentage of his winnings to the person lending the deck, or repay them somehow in money or cards.

Some of the issues with borrowing entire decks is that you won’t have the actual cards to playtest with. A lack of physical cards can be remedied, to an extent, via online platforms such as Cockatrice, Magic Workstation, or MTGO, or by playtesting with 100% proxies.

The main problem with solely borrowing, and not having your own collection, is that you are completely at the mercy of the people lending the cards. There will be times where the person, or persons, you plan on borrowing cards from just doesn’t have the cards for the deck you want to play, and you may have to make due with whatever you can get.

Investing in one deck

People without a collection who choose this path will generally invest in one deck per PTQ season and stick with it throughout the entire season. Generally, they will then trade away that deck in order to build a deck for the next season.

Playing one deck for an entire season can get you extremely familiar with one deck, which can be a huge advantage, and can also be way of playing constructed Magic for cheap. However, you are at the mercy of the metagame. If a shift in the metagame makes your deck terrible, you may not have any other choice than to roll with the deck you chose to play at the start of the season.

Financially, the issue with building one deck a season, and then trading away the cards from that deck to build another the next season, is that you can potentially lose a lot of money cannibalizing one deck to trade for another. Not to mention the loss in value if the majority deck you invested in is no longer Standard legal, and the cards you purchased for the deck drop in value.

People with a collection

By collection, I mean the kind of collection that doesn’t contain all the cards necessary to play any deck you want. This is the boat that I used to be in*.

Without a doubt the most cost-efficient method for getting cards for a deck is to borrow them. The best way to convince people to let you borrow cards is to lend them your cards. Lending out cards is a great way of getting others to lend cards to you, and is mutually beneficial in most cases. It’s extremely important to have written down all cards you’re are borrowing or lending out at any given time to avoid any sort of mix up. A bad mix up could greatly hurt a person’s chance of being able to borrow cards in the future. Personally, I always sharpie on the backs of scrap cards what I’m lending out and what I’m borrowing, and put those cards in the back of my binder as a reminder.

My approach, when it comes to getting the cards for Standard, is that I don’t want to buy or trade for all the cards for a given deck unless I’m quite certain I’m going to be playing it a lot. I try to borrow cards for decks that I just want to try out, before I fully invest in a deck whenever possible.

When owning a collection, especially when you’re playing Standard, there is always a risk of losing value if you’re not careful. When cards are about to rotate from Standard it’s important to be on the ball as far as dumping cards that are about to lose value with rotation. Be aware of which cards are going to lose value post-rotation, and try to trade away those cards before the season is over and no one wants them anymore. It’s also advisable to avoid buying, or trading for, overpriced, inflated rares and mythic rares out of new sets when they are first released if at all possible, because they almost always drop eventually. For example, people who coughed up the full $70 for Liliana of the Veil when she was hot are probably not too happy with her drop to $45.

Conclusion

The main thing to take away from this article is that the best way of making constructed Magic as cheap as possible is to have connections. Have plenty of people that trust you enough to lend you cards, but at the same time be willing to lend out cards to others. The next most important thing to remember, as silly as it sounds, is to be smart. There are a lot of ways to lose value when it comes to Magic, and you have to be on your toes just to not lose value. That’s all I’ve got for today, thanks for reading!

Francis Toussaint

*Before getting a job at Phoenix Comics, this was the boat that I was in. Now, however, I’m able to borrow cards from the store, so getting cards is no longer an issue.

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