Anyone playing Magic: The Gathering Online? [Archive]

Legolas Greenleaf

06-30-2002, 07:40 PM

So I was bored, and I found the demo disk from Computer Gaming World lying around, and decided for no good reason try this thing out. But the thing that I can't get past is the buying of cards that are just pictures on your computer screen. You go to the Wizards of the Coast store, and click on a deck, and it's $10 for a theme deck and $4 for a booster pack. Plus it looks like there are about a million variations (7th Edition, Torment, Odyssey, and a bunch of stuff I don't even remember). These prices seem kinda high for something you never get to actually touch. Oddly, I would be more willing to pay several hundred dollars for a MMORPG character than I would be to spend several hundred dollars on virtual trading cards. I have to say, the setup they have is really slick, and a breeze to play.

Union Carbide

06-30-2002, 07:50 PM

Mark Asher

06-30-2002, 09:32 PM

I was hoping that for about $50 we'd get a generous selection of cards. In fact, I was hoping for a base set of cards that would be identical so that the games would be more decided by deckbuilding and gameplay than the willingness to fork over $$$ for more cards.

That was the nice thing about the Microprose version. Everyone had the same cards.

Andy

07-01-2002, 01:08 AM

I downloaded it more to exercise my DSL muscle than out of any real enthusiasm. I'll probably want the HD space back soon and never actually fire it up. would love to have seen AI opponents and free access to cards for single-player after a registration fee, basically similar to what was in the MicroProse game a few years ago.

Tyjenks

07-01-2002, 08:04 AM

I would have played MtG:O in a heartbeat if they had announced a pricing plan that wasn't COMPLETELY FUCKING INSANE. The whole reason I stopped playing MtG in the first place was due to the fact that you had to spend several hundred dollars a month just to not be a speedbump, let alone be competitive.

Same here. I played in some tournaments and held my own back in the early days. I simply could not keep up with the kids (and adults) with never emptying pockets. Why in the hell would I go back to it for something I cannot even touch? I mean, I guess you can still call it "collectible" if you are collecting bytes, but it certainly is not a CCG anymore.

And wowweee!!! They are going to let you exchange for real cards.... if you get a WHOLE SET! They really do care about their customers after all.

The nearly constant release of expansions, I am sure, has nothing to do with gouging customers. It is all about expanding the MtG universe and enriching the player's experience.

Garfield came up with a great game which has been ruined by the ever present need to bilk folks.

Mark Asher

07-01-2002, 08:18 AM

WotC obviously was worried about the online game sucking away revenue from the physical card game if the pricing was different.

It's a shame they had to treat it like that. I guess you could buy one theme deck a month for $10 and build up a nice collection of cards that way and contain your expense somewhat. I'd be worried I'd have the urge to start buying boosters, though.

Kevin Perry

07-01-2002, 08:35 AM

Yeah, but there were signs of this problem in the beta, even before the pricing issue. Since all cards were free in the beta, I grabbed some 4000 of them to build my decks.

I *still* got stomped by people who had built decks out of extremely rare combinations of cards.

I really think they nailed M:tG online. The interface, the cards, the playability is top-notch. I especially enjoyed the multiplayer aspects (more than 2 players). It's a shame that the card availability issues will prevent me from ever playing it online again.

Tyjenks

07-01-2002, 08:51 AM

I'd be worried I'd have the urge to start buying boosters, though.

Yep! I tried to only purchase cards with cash when I was hooked to ensure that I did not go overboard. It will simply be too easy for kids with their parent's credit cards and me with mine to click "purchase" another five times to get some "good" cards that I did not get in my first ten packs and 3 starters.

James Galimo

07-01-2002, 09:23 AM

I wonder if you can get Fallen Empire boosters for $.50 a pack like in real life. But four bucks a pack! I don't think I'm about to spend another $1000 on cards, when (a) they're not even real and (b) they'd pretty much be the same cards I play with my buddies. No, if I'm gonna play cards, I'll play cards. If I'm going to play online, it'll be a "real" computer game.

It seems on average I've been buying about two games a month, last month it was AOW2 and NWN. This month it'll probably Warcraft III (as if there was any doubt) and UT 2003 when they come out. Anyone else excited about the new Unreal this month? (Assuming, of course, it doesn't get pushed back.)

Erik

07-01-2002, 09:44 AM

Why does .001 cents worth of cardboard seem so much more valuable to people than .00001 cents worth of diskspace on WOTC's servers? They're both about equally worthless. I guess if you bought a million cards, a difference worth noting might emerge. Although the monetary imbalance in that case would clearly be outweighed by how much easier the online version makes it to hide the embarrassing fact that you own so many magic cards.

Rob de los Reyes

07-01-2002, 09:58 AM

I think the difference is the feeling kicking around in the back of your head that someday the current version of MtGO will be obsolete or otherwise terminated. Then what have you got? At least with cardboard, you can shove them in a box and look at them years after you stop playing. Even if you could retain the virtual cards on your hard drive, would you find it as interesting to flip through them later on? Would you specifically save those files as you upgraded your home rig or would you not think it worth the trouble? Both cardboard and disk space may be worth a fraction of a cent, but gamers (particularly those who buy a game a month or more) know how transient disk data is.

James Galimo

07-01-2002, 11:48 AM

I started playing Money:The Squandering back in '93, it was just after 3rd ed. was released. My buddies and I played for about two years, then we all got bored. The cards all were packed up. Last year, I come from work and there my roommate and a friend of ours were going the boxes of boosters they had just bought. I sighed.

"You've gotta be fuckin' kidding me." I said. I resisted, for about a day. Then I went and blew $90 on a box myself. We played for about eight months. We started buying boxes of boosters on Ebay, usually for under $60. Eventually, we stopped playing regularly again. Now it's sort of a once a month deal.

I imagine there are a lot folks out there with similar situations. Personally, I can't see the online game doing too well. There's too much competition from other "real" games. (As opposed to a simulated card game.)

Mark Asher

07-01-2002, 12:14 PM

You can also play Magic online via Apprentice. It's freeware and doesn't support graphics, as I recall, but if you know your stuff you can play.

Anonymous

07-03-2002, 10:11 PM

We used to sell Fallen Empires boosters for $0.19 or so at EB when they really fell out of favor. Picked up a whole box or so for cheap.

Is Apprentice still going? Always thought WOTC would crush it, way back when. 96 I guess.

Let's face, this pricing scam of WOTC sucks giant cow teats. Yes, let's make the player pay the exact same for virtual cards he won't ever get to hold in his hand. Now if WOTC would send you real versions of the cards you buy online (plus a generous shipping cost so they can make a few extra bucks) now THAT might make it well worth the effort to spend money to play online.

--- Alan

Rob de los Reyes

08-01-2002, 06:19 PM

Anonymous

08-02-2002, 05:25 AM

Well, I have to eat my words. The more I play Magic the Gathering Online, the more I like it. It took me a little while to get over the hump on the real money/virtual cards thing, the interface, the database (don't get me wrong--I still like holding real cards), but I'm getting those old-time Magic feelings again. I'm cutting up my credit cards in a preemptive move.

Agreed. The interface is flawless and friendly, and the leagues (and to a lesser extent the sealed deck tourneys that run 24/7) allow people to compete on a fair level without dropping hundreds of dollars. I've found myself sucked in like a crack baby, buying more cards without thinking about it because I want to sign up for 'one more league' (I am in or have been in a total of 4 in this short time.. sigh).

I've only played one or two constructed matches and got schooled in them, so leagues do me just fine for now.

Tyjenks

08-02-2002, 06:21 AM

The interface is flawless and friendly, and the leagues (and to a lesser extent the sealed deck tourneys that run 24/7) allow people to compete on a fair level without dropping hundreds of dollars. I've found myself sucked in like a crack baby, buying more cards without thinking about it because I want to sign up for 'one more league' (I am in or have been in a total of 4 in this short time.. sigh).

I've only played one or two constructed matches and got schooled in them, so leagues do me just fine for now.

Your points are exactly why I am not playing. If I get the notion to start up, I just open up my closet and pull out the dusty binders and boxes with my "real" cards in them. Then I think, "Oh yeah, that is why I quit."

Erik

08-02-2002, 06:49 AM

By the end of my Magic career, our group had pretty much given up on constructed decks. We'd get together ten or so people every couple of weeks, all pitch in fifteen or twenty bucks, buy a box of boosters, and have a sealed deck tourney. Twenty bucks for a long evening of entertainment was a good deal. At the end of the evening, most of us just gave the cards to whoever was still hording them. Sealed deck play creates a spending cap and helps keep the casual players competitive with the hardcore people.

I wish the online version would make some sort of budget-priced sealed deck option. Maybe pay three of four bucks to enter and get your cards, but you don't get to keep the cards afterwards.

Dave Long

08-02-2002, 06:57 AM

So sealed deck works like it would in the "real" world? You have to buy a new deck each time you want to enter a tourney? With the whole virtual thing, it makes complete sense that I should be able to pay five bucks to play in a tournament but not get the cards to keep when it's over. That's how this whole computer thing differs from the real thing. It should be a strength of the online game but instead it sounds like a hinderance?!

--Dave

Mark Asher

08-02-2002, 10:26 AM

Tyjenks

08-02-2002, 11:07 AM

If you have restraint and treat Magic Online like an MMOG, you can buy one premade deck each month for $10. After a few months you'll have a nice selection of cards, and you've paid what you'd pay for EQ or another game like that. Of course it's very difficult not to buy boosters once you're hooked.

Not me. Those pre-made decks are like a gateway drug.

They say, "Look heeeere. Magic does not cost much. Just by one or two of these handy pre-made decks." You then see some cards you like and decide to get a couple of booster packs. A $500.00 credit card bill later, you are pulling your hair out. Meanwhile, the folks at WotC are rolling around naked with super models on piles of cash.

Ugh!!! Clicking a button online to get booster packs and decks is pure evil. I have restraint and think I could keep a cool head. I can just imagine, though, these teens and college kids with their astronomical credit card limits hovering close to their max limits. If I am in a store and have to hand over my hard earned cash or even sign the MC/Visa receipt, I realize what I am spending. OTOH, left clicking 5 more time looking for the card you want is going to be waaaay too tempting for many I am afraid.

Bottom line: I really do not have the time or money to get back into it. The same reasons I got out of the real thing are the same reasons I am not getting started again. MtG was fun for a while. Once it became a cash cow and the expansions began to be churned out, it lost it's luster as I could not keep up with the suitcase players. Plus, in 5 or 10 years I would have to boot up an archaic computer to gaze at my collection. I would save money on binders and plastic sleeves, though. :wink:

Dave Long

08-02-2002, 11:30 AM

Are real world Magic cards worth anything these days? I started playing and collecting around the time of The Dark expansion pack (which I think was the first). I imagine I've got some useful and probably rare cards in the boxes of them I have at home. I know I've got some dual lands, that kind of thing. Anyone know a link to a guide of some kind?

--Dave

Wader

06-24-2009, 06:07 AM

LionelThompson

06-24-2009, 07:02 AM

So, I am bumping this thread because I dont want to clutter the XBLA game thread with some questions.

The XBLA game has (fortunately or unfortunately depending on my wallet) gotten my interest in Magic back, but unfortunately, I dont have local contacts to play here. Is Magic Online functional yet? I heard that things went really badly around the latest major update, and I havent played since version 2 was released.

Is it worth investing some time/money into? Would there be a way to set up a QT3 draft/sealed deck competition/league?

It's functional except for leagues which was my big draw before. Because of that, I speaking from last month's credit card bill, have discovered that sealed decks and booster drafts are way too addicting. That, combined with the fact that you cannot get the online cards at a discount like you can the paper version, has me telling you to stay farrrr away. Oh, did I mention that I spent $172 on stupid ass Magic cards online last month, yeah, stay the hell away.

Wolff

06-24-2009, 07:03 AM

I don't know about our own personal drafts or whatnot but the newest client works fine. I've sunk tons of money into it in the past for both my gf and I. It is a perpetual money sink because you have to choose the format you are gonna play in.

Standard = latest cards so all those cards you did buy can't be used anymore also enjoy playing nonstep net decks

Extended = suffers from the same rotational blues as standard but at least you see a variety of decks

Classic = hooray you get to play all your cards, oh wait you are almost always playing some broken turn 3 win deck

The community has tried making other formats but those suffer from power-creep as well. In pauper you play all commons but some commons are of course insane and cost more than most rares.

What I would really like to do is be able to make a cube with a bunch of online folks and just play drafts from there.

What is the cube you ask?

http://www.cubedrafting.com/what-is-the-cube/

It is made of awesome and win and takes away the I spent more money then you so I win, which frankly ruins MTG for me. Even though I am often on the winning side simply because I have a card that does the same thing as yours at half the cost and instant speed.

Xemu

06-24-2009, 07:22 AM

The MTGO 3 client is finally usable compared to the 2 one (which wasn't true for quite a while IMO). It still doesn't have drafts, but they do have a bunch of other new-ish formats I like, such as Swiss Drafts (where you get to play 3 games with your drafted deck even if it sucks) and "2-player queue" which is basically constructed matchmaking with a small wager.

I spend most of my time with it doing Drafts (Swiss when they fire, otherwise regular ones or the Nix Tix ones they run periodically) or just making wacky decks that get crushed in the Casual room.

metta

06-24-2009, 07:27 AM

I'm just here in case Legolas Greenleaf comes back.

rossm

06-24-2009, 07:29 AM

My brother seems to love magic online. He spends his left over money after alcohol and weed on it, which isn't very much (I'd estimate $20-40 a month). If I were going to get into magic, I'd probably play magic online. As far as I know, he mostly does draft tournaments.

André Costa

06-24-2009, 07:56 AM

Cubit

06-24-2009, 07:59 AM

rossm

06-24-2009, 08:18 AM

Your brother is truly living the American Dream.
I finally convinced him to go to college! He is enrolled for the fall, and plans to study horticulture. I shit you not, he wants to learn how to grow the best weed in the world.

LionelThompson

06-24-2009, 08:33 AM

I'm confused now ... does it have drafts or not? :)

It has drafts, but not draft leagues.

Wendelius

06-27-2009, 06:38 AM

I downloaded the client and logged in. But I must say MTGO3 confuses me a tad. No leagues anymore? I used to enjoy the sealed deck ones.

Anyway, I'm Wendelius there. I apparently own 1233 cards. And because I only used to play SD tournaments, I have 0 decks built. :)

Wendelius

Wader

06-27-2009, 06:45 AM

I logged back in, have all my cards from 7th and 8th edition era. I am agpolec.

Vesper

06-27-2009, 07:15 AM

I'm Vesper6 if anyone wants to add me. Since apparently, WotC's trojan horse of Magic XBLA has worked on me... sigh.

Lorini

06-27-2009, 07:43 AM

I applied for a QuarterToThree clan, but I never heard anything back from them. Also, don't expect leagues back before 2010 (the year, not the release) apparently.

Wolff

06-27-2009, 09:24 AM

I'm danielwolff

Wolff

06-27-2009, 09:28 AM

I applied for a QuarterToThree clan, but I never heard anything back from them. Also, don't expect leagues back before 2010 (the year, not the release) apparently.

The clan exists invite me i'm danielwolff

Bill Dungsroman

06-27-2009, 11:25 AM

http://i44.tinypic.com/fktiwz.jpg

Lorini

06-27-2009, 06:31 PM

Yes I got the message that the clan was approved. What would work best for me is to decide on a time to be on and then I'll invite folks. It doesn't have to be one single time, but the fewer the better :)

Wolff

06-28-2009, 07:31 AM

In the old client you could invite folks when they were offline and they would get the message when they logged in.

Lorini

06-29-2009, 11:30 AM

Customer support just said that the person has to be online for me to invite. So far, I have requests from Wolff and Vesper.

Vesper

06-29-2009, 11:33 AM

I should be on tonight around 9-11ish CDT.

Wader

06-29-2009, 01:17 PM

I would like an invite as well... my name is Agpolec. I should be around at around 9 eastern tonight, but I can be on other times if you know when you will be on Lorini.

Skipper

06-29-2009, 01:34 PM

Lorini

06-29-2009, 02:33 PM

From everything I can see, you cannot have a sealed deck tourney or a draft. Clans are basically chat groups.

Wendelius

06-29-2009, 02:38 PM

From everything I can see, you cannot have a sealed deck tourney or a draft. Clans are basically chat groups.

Pity. One of those 2 would be awesome.

Wendelius

Ryan Markel

06-29-2009, 03:19 PM

You guys need to stop. I'm on the verge of installing this.

Lorini

06-29-2009, 03:33 PM

FlamingSheep

06-29-2009, 03:54 PM

So what does the clan give as far as say, QT3'ers being able to have their own tourney? Leagues are out from what you guys said (which is sad) but could we form a group and say, have a QT3 only sealed deck tourney?

You can do a casual 8 player draft, I believe.

As for converting tickets to cash, you can only do it through ebay.

mouselock

06-29-2009, 04:13 PM

Curious, how do people (the bots I guess) redeem tickets for money? Sometime in the next few days I'm going to trade away most of my old cards to a bot to get some tickets to get some Alara block cards.

Are the old cards actually worth money? That's my big issue with MTG:O, I popped back into my account after a couple years (I have mainly IPA block cards) and it didn't seem like anything I had was really worth anything any longer, because the cards are all old and not in the majority of the active play these days. (Maybe they're just not worth anything because IPA block isn't worth anything though; when I got them there was lots of to do about how powerful they were, but compared to what I've seen of Alara this may not be the case any longer.)

Right now I think if I get back into things I may wait for 2010 or even the new set this fall.

Lorini

06-29-2009, 05:23 PM

There were some bots that would give you a ticket for any 250 commons so that's worth something I guess. I doubt if any of mine are worth much more than 10 for 1 ticket.

Lorini

06-29-2009, 06:06 PM

Do this to add a bot that will let you know who is selling what for how much: (taken from the MTGO forums)

Your buddylist is at the right of your screen, in your dock.
At the bottom, there is a button labeled "Add Buddy"
Click it and type in "infobot" (without quotes)
Now, infobot is on your buddylist (I'd also add bots that you have credit saved on (you can right click their name to add them to your buddylist as well)
Right click infobot's name and select "Private Message"
In the message box that will appear type in "pc cardname"
It'll be self explanatory from there.

Xemu

06-29-2009, 09:03 PM

Ooh, a QT3 clan would be awesome. I'm "Xemu" and would love an invite.

Vesper

06-29-2009, 09:07 PM

So is it worth keeping older cards around? How much casual extended play is there? I tried to sell a few older rare foils, and had trouble finding any bots interested in buying.

mouselock

06-29-2009, 09:20 PM

Would anyone talking about getting into the clan or just into MTG:O be interested in setting up a league of our own since the official ones don't work? I was thinking the following setup:

Everyone sets up a new (league only) account. Initial cards would be 2x Shards, 2x Conflux, 2x Reborn, plus basic land to taste. (Or we could wait for M2010 and start there with the core set and a bit less metagame pre-worked out.) The league master (see below) would be responsible for getting the basic land necessary to supply for the league.

The setup would be as follows:

People open their packs, choose cards to make a single deck of 60 cards and a sideboard of 15 cards. They then give all the non-chosen cards to the league master. The deck (and sideboard) should be saved out to a .dek file for tracking purposes.

Matches are played, best 2 of 3. At the end of the match, the players open a trade and the winner of the match is allowed to pick from the loser's sideboard one card for trade. The loser is then allowed to pick one card from the winner's sideboard for trade. (This is designed to allow some dynamism in deck construction as games are played, but doing it this way ensures that the person who lost the match doesn't get a card he considers crucial removed from his sideboard/deck.)

Every week (or two depending on logistics) league members can trade out any number of sideboard cards for the same number of cards from the league master. (This is designed to prevent folks from having stagnant decks that just can't win and/or allow less experienced players to tune their decks as time goes on.)

At the end of the league, the total standings based on wins are calculated, and the remaining cards in the league pool are drafted in a top-to-bottom,bottom-to-top fashion. (So if there are three people, then the draft order in order of league standing is 1 2 3 3 2 1 to empty out the card pool).

A couple of thoughts:

This format doesn't work if people don't trust the league master, so it's important for the league master to be available, willing to handle the card logistics, and be someone that folks trust. For the first go-round, any long-time forum denizen would work fine.

This format doesn't work if players get uptight about opening a high value rare. If you're interested in the format you have to be able to let go of cards perceived values (or, more accurately, value a dynamic but balanced play environment more than $25 worth of cards).

The reason for the new account discussed above is it's far, far easier to track league only cards on a clean account than trying to make sure you set them aside properly on a main account. At the end of the league the league master can easily help folks to trade cards to their main accounts to get them into main collections.

Generally when I've run similar paper leagues like this, the lifetime of the league seems to be about 2-3 months; after that time everyone's decks are about as tuned as they'll get and relative win/loss orders get fairly locked, plus people just get bored.

So, all that being said, if at least a few folks have interest here, we could open up a specific thread and see about signing people up. I don't know how hard it is to get a Clan set up, but it might make sense to set up a league specific clan to try to easily tell if folks are around to play. It would also probably be good to denote at least one specific time to try to be available for league play, probably two times or a longer time span would be better still.

Ryan Markel

06-29-2009, 09:33 PM

I would do that.

(Guys; seriously. I have to install Boot Camp to run MTGO and I'm *still* thinking about doing it. You are all enablers.)

Vesper

06-29-2009, 09:44 PM

I'm definitely interested in a league idea. We could a similar setup (and even the same accounts) for sealed deck tournaments, as well. Crack open boosters online, immediately send the contents of them to the designated organizer person, and track the actual tournament brackets on the forum.

Nathan Phoenix

06-30-2009, 02:17 AM

Wendelius

06-30-2009, 02:44 AM

I'd be interested and would set up an account for this. Main issue is I'm in UK. Not sure how much of a pain it would be managing to hook up with any of you guys for games. I'll sign up if I think there is a good chance of that working out.

I think waiting for M2010 might not be a bad idea. But open to either.

Wendelius

Wader

06-30-2009, 04:14 AM

I'd be interested in participating, but not sure about wanting to set up a new account specifically for it. You can't run two instances of MTGO3 on the same PC so I couldn't integrate my leftovers into my main account's collection easily if I made a new account just for this.

Yes you can, but I had to have a tech support person show me how. You cant use the start menu launcher shortcut, because it runs a .exe called renamer, not the actual MTGO program. If you have one instance running and then go to the MTGO folder on your hard drive, you can start the actual MTGO program a second time without getting the error from renamer. I did this last weekend to move all the cards from my old account to a new one.

As for the league, I would be interested, but I tend to dislike playing for ante, because I tend to play really wacky decks that are fun for me but never win consistantly, and if my past track record at card games is any sign, I would be funding the rest of the group out of my card pool. That said, I did the same thing with my tournament entries at my old card store, so it wont be that much different.

I also kind of agree with waiting for Magic 2010 to start this thing. What I might do is say 3 packs of 2010 and 3 (your choice) out of the Alara block.

If anyone wants to get some group drafts going, I would be into that as well, because thats my favorite format for magic.

So sign me up for the league as well.

Nathan Phoenix

06-30-2009, 04:24 AM

Gotcha. I tried to figure it out and my google-fu failed to turn up a way to do it. Thanks for the heads up.

André Costa

06-30-2009, 04:46 AM

Portugal MTG population is almost extinct outside the capital and Oporto so it seems that i'm up for this too.

Lorini

06-30-2009, 05:40 AM

I would be interested in a league but not interested in the card picking part. I'd have no cards left in less than a month.

extarbags

06-30-2009, 06:06 AM

I'm in if you guys do a league.

extarbags

06-30-2009, 06:20 AM

Also, for the format described, Shards-Conflux-Reborn is probably better than waiting for M10. The block is more or less completely designed for limited play.

Lorini

06-30-2009, 06:32 AM

Actually as I think about this, maybe the league would not be best for me. It sounds a little more than I would like to deal with. I will be happy to play some casual constructed with folks in the clan however (as soon as I get some Shards cards), or join a sealed deck event from time to time.

Send me a tell in the game if you want in the clan. I don't see a need to have a separate clan for the league, and I'm also happy to promote someone else to be clan head. I just wanted to get the clan going.

Skipper

06-30-2009, 06:34 AM

I'm in if you guys do a league, and kudos for posting the dual account thing. I haven't played in a while (last MTGO version) but I could fire it up and at least feel like I have my old stuff if I want to get my butt kicked in an open game.

A league of any type would be fine for me. I'm not opposed to losing cards but I would play with whatever the majority choice is.

mouselock

06-30-2009, 07:05 AM

mouselock

06-30-2009, 07:16 AM

As for the league, I would be interested, but I tend to dislike playing for ante, because I tend to play really wacky decks that are fun for me but never win consistantly, and if my past track record at card games is any sign, I would be funding the rest of the group out of my card pool. That said, I did the same thing with my tournament entries at my old card store, so it wont be that much different..

It's an odd sort of ante though. It never comes from your main deck, only your sideboard, and you don't lose a card, you only trade one.

Now it is true that the cards you open are not the cards you're likely to leave the league with. This is intentional; when we developed this format way too many of us were collectors who'd open a high value rare and never play with it because we could sell it instead. In the paper format we combatted this by having everyone initial every card they opened. Clearly we can't do this in digital, but the underlying idea is the same: The cards are game pieces and should be treated as such, not investments.

mouselock

06-30-2009, 07:19 AM

Seems like there's enough interest to warrant a seperate league post with a better description of the rules. To folks who've expressed concern, please note that you always have 75 cards to choose from at any given time, and you get an opportunity to switch them with the mass undrafted pool at regular intervals.

Anyone with more free time wanting to be league master? If not I will, but:

a) My schedule means it wouldn't make sense to start this until around July 15th.

b) I'm not sure I can be available to facilitate the pool trades for more than a couple hours every week.

extarbags

06-30-2009, 08:12 AM

I can be the league master as long as I can still play, and as long as the interface is simple to use, because I've never used Magic Online before.

Nathan Phoenix

06-30-2009, 08:31 AM

I could donate some basic lands, but I don't have a huge amount - I can provide about 40-50 of each.

mouselock

06-30-2009, 08:34 AM

I can be the league master as long as I can still play, and as long as the interface is simple to use, because I've never used Magic Online before.

The league master is a seperate account again the way I've envisioned stuff. Since you have to pay to set up an account, I'd assumed that the league master would set up two new accounts, and just use the credit you get from the league master account to buy some of the necessary boosters and trade them over to their play account. If you want to play you'll have to figure out the play interface anyway, but the only interface issues for the leaguemaster account is to make sure that the cards are marked tradable which is simple enough since everything for them is always tradable. We'll also have to make sure you're hooked up with sufficient basic land; I'll post up a league post here sometime this afternoon and ask if folks who sign up would please donate basic lands they don't need to the league master. I suspect we probably have enough established players that this shouldn't be a problem, but if it is my normal account has enough tickets that I'm sure a bot would be happy to take good money for digital lands. :P

I think I'll also suggest a reasonably standardized naming scheme for the new accounts such as QT3L<Username> or <Username>QT3L so it's easy to search for folks.

extarbags

06-30-2009, 08:44 AM

Basic land isn't free? Jesus.

Explain this, though, please:

just use the credit you get from the league master account to buy some of the necessary boosters and trade them over to their play account.

So when you make an account, you get some sort of credit towards product?

Vesper

06-30-2009, 09:00 AM

I have quite a bit of extra land and can donate some.

mouselock

06-30-2009, 09:13 AM

Basic land isn't free? Jesus.

Explain this, though, please:

So when you make an account, you get some sort of credit towards product?

You have to pay to set up an account. It's $10 or so. But for that $10 you get $10 of credit at the MTG:O store. (I think it's basically a way to make sure that they don't get flooded with random trial accounts and crush their database.) So what I had figured was whoever was the league master would end up setting two new accounts. That's $20, which kind of sucks. But the cost of 6 boosters is $24. So if you use the $10 credit from one account to buy half the boosters (with an additional $2 of money) and the $10 credit from the other to buy half the boosters, there's no real net loss. You just need to trade the boosters over from the league to the play account. If you have the tech savvy to do it you can run both accounts concurrently, if you don't (or your computer balks) you can find a trustworthy league member to help you move the boosters over to your play account from the league master.

extarbags

06-30-2009, 09:22 AM

Oh ok, that's not so bad then. Yeah, I'll be happy to be the LEAGUE MASTER.

mouselock

06-30-2009, 09:44 AM

Cool. The only thing I'd like to do is try to set a standardized template for the name based on the league master. So if you have a chance sometime today Extar, create the league master account with something like the following template:

QT3L_Master
Master_QT3L
QT3L.Master
Master.QT3L
QT3LMaster
MasterQT3L

Etc.. Basically I'd like QT3L in there so that it's easy to identify a league player, but I don't know if underscores, periods, etc are allowed in account names. If so I think the underscore is easiest. Then players would name similarly (QT3L_Username or Username_QT3L)

Once we have that name we can try to get a clan attached to it and people can begin making their accounts. I'm thinking that we should start the league "officially" next weekend (the 11th of July) to give folks plenty of opportunity to get in, make decks, and playtest them a bit before it counts to get used to the cards.

Wendelius

06-30-2009, 10:20 AM

I can use my regular account to send my league account some basic land. so that should not be a problem. don't think I've got tons to spare to offer the league though. But I will check.

Wendelius

Vesper

06-30-2009, 10:24 AM

I think I like XXXXX_QT3L the best.

mouselock

06-30-2009, 10:59 AM

Looks like part of an account setup gives everyone some basic land, so all of that may be moot. And I prefer XXXX_QT3L as well if we can do that.

Tortilla

06-30-2009, 11:09 AM

This league idea intrigues me as well, Can someone answer some n00b questions for a guy who hasn't touched magic cards, recently XBLA dabblings aside, since the mid 90s?

1. All told, how much is the league going to actually cost a participant?

2. How much time is going to be spent on actual games and how strictly scheduled are such activities?

3. How disadvantaged is a new player up front in this type of league? I don't mean in actual play, I mean in knowing what's good and what's not out of the available cards in order to make the right decisions on what boosters to get and what cards to keep? If this is something where the pro players who are up on current Magic events are going to leap out to an insurmountable lead right at the beginning because they knew which awesome cards to snag out of the common pool, then I'm not interested in making the commitment.

Reldan

06-30-2009, 12:18 PM

I'd be down for giving this a go.

Kraaze, my understanding is that this will cost:

1) $24 per person - 6 booster packs at $4 apiece.

2) I'm assuming the games will happen organically - anyone playing in the league can play anyone else whenever they both have the time and will to do so. I'd also assume there'd be some set times where "league events" would occur which would just mean everyone would try to get online at or around the same time on these nights.

3) Everyone buys the same boosters - 2x of each of the three sets in the Alara block. If you have absolutely no idea how to construct a deck you may want someone with some experience to help you at first, but learning these things is a large part of the fun of this game.

mouselock, are you or extarbags going to start a list of everyone participating? Before I drop $25 I'd like to know if we're expecting at least 8+ people to be involved.

Kyrios

06-30-2009, 12:18 PM

mouselock

06-30-2009, 12:29 PM

I'd be down for giving this a go.

Kraaze, my understanding is that this will cost:

1) $24 per person - 6 booster packs at $4 apiece.

Plus an additional booster every, say, ~2 weeks. Just to keep the environment from getting stale. Though if folks really don't want to do this we could skip this.

2) I'm assuming the games will happen organically - anyone playing in the league can play anyone else whenever they both have the time and will to do so. I'd also assume there'd be some set times where "league events" would occur which would just mean everyone would try to get online at or around the same time on these nights.

Yeah, the games are organic. You just need to keep track of who you played and who won/lost the match. I'd like to set a "league day" time during the weekends when people can log in and look for others.. attendance isn't required, but tryng to organize a time will up the odds of folks finding other folks.

3) Everyone buys the same boosters - 2x of each of the three sets in the Alara block. If you have absolutely no idea how to construct a deck you may want someone with some experience to help you at first, but learning these things is a large part of the fun of this game.

This is right. Everyone has the same potential card pool, though some people will invariably get luckier than others with what they pick. So it goes in Magic, though. I think a lag between getting people in and getting them their cards and actually starting to play games for "ranking" whre people can play without tracking wins/losses should help with some of the new player problems, but part of the process is learning cool tricks/plays from having them come over and bite you in the ass.

mouselock, are you or extarbags going to start a list of everyone participating? Before I drop $25 I'd like to know if we're expecting at least 8+ people to be involved.

Sure.. I'll post a thread tonight when I get home and after we know what the name format is to take sign-ups. (Extar, if the league somehow falls through I'll reimburse you for the master account in some way.) But I think the stated interest here should be around 8 people as is.

mouselock

06-30-2009, 12:32 PM

I would definitely be interested in a league like this, especially since it seems like the monetary outlay could be limited. All of these threads have given me a desire to play some Magic, and this seems more fun than finding my old CDs for the Microprose version of the game and trying to get them to work on Vista. It also won't leave me with (another) closet full of crap that I haven't looked at in 10-15 years...

This is basically why I thought I'd see if people were interested. Going through all my cards and such has me wanting to play (hell, I already bought $20 of cheap cards when I found them on sale) but realistically I'm never again going to want to play enough to brave the cesspool that is my local gaming store scene. And I just don't want to play in the shark pits that normal MTG:O seems to be. This is a much more controlled, generally much more casual environment for playing in that focuses on enjoying the game rather than spending lots of money, getting obsessed with collecting, etc. Since the influx of new cards is a controlled process in a league it helps a lot in resisting the urge to spend* more to make your deck better and keeps the playing field relatively even.

*(Note: The QT3 MTG League is not responsible for rekindling your addiction. Those with low resistance to just picking up a box or two of magic to see what's cool should probably stay away.)

Vesper

06-30-2009, 12:36 PM

Isn't it cheaper to get an Alara tournament pack as part of the cards we buy? This is the equivalent of 3 boosters, plus extra land, and costs less than buying the boosters separately.

Tortilla

06-30-2009, 12:36 PM

3) Everyone buys the same boosters - 2x of each of the three sets in the Alara block. If you have absolutely no idea how to construct a deck you may want someone with some experience to help you at first, but learning these things is a large part of the fun of this game.

If I'm understanding the format, everyone buy the same boosters and opens them and then has to pick some subset of the opened cards to keep and the rest get released to some common pool. Sounds to me like choosing the keepers there is a very key decision that will strongly affect the competitiveness of the player for the duration of the league. If the big opportunity to fuck up is right up front then this sounds like a very n00b unfriendly idea. I'd hate to sign up for a three month league and discover a month in that I gimped myself out of contention on the first day.

mouselock

06-30-2009, 12:37 PM

Isn't it cheaper to get an Alara tournament pack as part of the cards we buy? This is the equivalent of 3 boosters, plus extra land, and costs less than buying the boosters separately.

I didn't see one on the store last night when I looked. My original plan was going to be 1x Alara Tourn. pack and 1each of the boosters. But I didn't see the actual (75 card) tournament pack.

Edit: Aha.. here's the problem

On February 18 all Shards of Alara and core set Sealed Deck events will switch over to the new booster-only Sealed format, with the Conflux release events later using this change.

So apparently when they started putting lands in the boosters they killed the tournament pack entirely. Back to boosters only it is.

mouselock

06-30-2009, 12:41 PM

If I'm understanding the format, everyone buy the same boosters and opens them and then has to pick some subset of the opened cards to keep and the rest get released to some common pool. Sounds to me like choosing the keepers there is a very key decision that will strongly affect the competitiveness of the player for the duration of the league. If the big opportunity to fuck up is right up front then this sounds like a very n00b unfriendly idea. I'd hate to sign up for a three month league and discover a month in that I gimped myself out of contention on the first day.

There are periodic opportunities to trade out cards. We could also ask folks to pick their cards and give things, say, 2 weeks of play before we ask folks to throw back into the common pool if that'd work better. The rules are mutable as long as we do them up front. (When we came up with these rules we'd all played long enough that complete n00bness wasn't an issue, but trying to figure out how to tweak your deck to work best is part of the fun until you can get some fresh cards in to shore up the areas that it works.)

I think in general with a very limited card pool if you follow a few simple rules like not trying to run too many colors for your mana base, you're not going to end up with people at hugely disparate ends of the power spectrum. But I'm fine with giving folks a while to get the feel of their decks before pooling the cards. (The card pool idea is designed so that you can evolve your deck over time without having to buy a new booster every X amount of time; the chance that stuff someone else didn't use won't be more useful than some of the stuff you have already is very, very slim.)

Vesper

06-30-2009, 12:58 PM

So apparently when they started putting lands in the boosters they killed the tournament pack entirely. Back to boosters only it is.
Boosters include land now? Is this in addition to the 15 other cards?

Reldan

06-30-2009, 12:58 PM

If I'm understanding the format, everyone buy the same boosters and opens them and then has to pick some subset of the opened cards to keep and the rest get released to some common pool. Sounds to me like choosing the keepers there is a very key decision that will strongly affect the competitiveness of the player for the duration of the league. If the big opportunity to fuck up is right up front then this sounds like a very n00b unfriendly idea. I'd hate to sign up for a three month league and discover a month in that I gimped myself out of contention on the first day.

Magic is a pretty deep and strategic game that is based entirely around "duels" and competition. To be honest, the league format laid out here where you'll be playing with other Qt3 folks who are likely to be helpful and friendly is about a 10x better introduction to the game than what most people have to work with.

Basic limited deck construction in Magic is no where near as complicated as full constructed. You really just need two things:

1) A basic understanding on how to play the game.
2) A basic bullshit-meter you can apply to sort cards into "Good", "Average", and "Bad" piles.

To be honest, it's going to go down something like this. You'll buy and open 6 boosters - 90 cards total. You'll probably have something like 16 cards of each color and 10 lands/artifacts.

To build a 60 card deck (and 15 card sideboard) out of these, assume you add 20 basic lands to your pile. Now you're working with about 110 cards. You're going to "give" 35 of these to the league master because you'll need the other 75 to play with. You basically are going to be playing 3 colors, so what's really going to happen is that you'll pick the two colors that you got short shrift on, which will again probably be about 32 of the 35 you need to give away, and then you'll make up the difference with a handful of the other truly awful cards you're bound to have, and that's really it.

Ryan Markel

06-30-2009, 01:07 PM

I am so in on this.

I'm a little short on the money at the moment, but give me a week or so and I should be good to go.

mouselock

06-30-2009, 01:20 PM

Boosters include land now? Is this in addition to the 15 other cards?

No, they swapped out one common for a land. Which makes a lot more sense if they're no longer making tournament packs.

Vesper

06-30-2009, 01:33 PM

But the equivalent of a tourny pack is 3 boosters.. so I get 3 land? Seems kind of silly.

Wader

06-30-2009, 01:54 PM

Given all the accounts that people have, we can probably find enough land for everyone. My main account (in the QT3 group as of last night thanks to Lorini) probably has 30 to 40 of each color that could be distributed if people need it.

Also, I am in for the league as well.

Tortilla

06-30-2009, 02:09 PM

There are periodic opportunities to trade out cards. We could also ask folks to pick their cards and give things, say, 2 weeks of play before we ask folks to throw back into the common pool if that'd work better. The rules are mutable as long as we do them up front. (When we came up with these rules we'd all played long enough that complete n00bness wasn't an issue, but trying to figure out how to tweak your deck to work best is part of the fun until you can get some fresh cards in to shore up the areas that it works.)

I think in general with a very limited card pool if you follow a few simple rules like not trying to run too many colors for your mana base, you're not going to end up with people at hugely disparate ends of the power spectrum. But I'm fine with giving folks a while to get the feel of their decks before pooling the cards. (The card pool idea is designed so that you can evolve your deck over time without having to buy a new booster every X amount of time; the chance that stuff someone else didn't use won't be more useful than some of the stuff you have already is very, very slim.)

I'd love the league with the proviso that we could do some screw around playing with all our cards before we had to throw anything in the common pool. I was just afraid this was starting to sound like there was all this pressure for participants to make some big decisions in a very tight up-front timeframe before they could even fool around with their deck or playtest it at all. If we are being flexible and relaxed on that up front decision making I'm so in!

mouselock

06-30-2009, 03:05 PM

If we are being flexible and relaxed on that up front decision making I'm so in!

Well, my overarching goal is to have a relaxed, fun environment to play magic because I like the game under those conditions, but not so much when I have to deal with ubercompetitive jerks who feel like their deck didn't do well if they kill me after I play land 4 instead of land 3. There's a place for those type people, and should I ever care about competitive magic I'll deal with them, but that's certainly not my goal.

I always found that you could get some cool games from even the competitive players in a limited card environment, and most of the people I knew who went in to crush you at a tournament seemed to be able to lighten up and see the joy in killing (or being killed) by carrier pigeons in a limited league environment, so that's what I'd hope to recover here.

I'll post up some initial rules and setup tonight and folks can sign up so we know who's interested. At that point if there are any other glaring stress points in the rules, we can address them in that thread to the satisfaction of those involved.

ravenight

06-30-2009, 03:25 PM

I have tons of basic lands, so let me know if some are needed. I'm still on the fence about whether I'll have time to get involved in this, but I'm quite tempted.

I'd suggest that you stagger the removal of cards to supply the "pool". Like, let everyone open their cards, build decks and play whatever games they can for a week or two, then have them choose 5 cards each to contribute to the pool. Then, you could hold a tournament (like, say, a week or two over which everyone gets points for their first 5 "ranked" matches), and at the end let people swap cards with the pool in the order of their finish in the tournament. Then everyone contributes 5 more cards to the pool, and you hold another tournament, and so on until people are down to some fixed number of non-basic-land cards.

wigglestick

06-30-2009, 03:56 PM

I'd love to play some Magic with you guys. I just downloaded the client and I'm in the process of running an update right now. I guess I'll post my account name in the new league thread when it gets created.

Vesper

06-30-2009, 04:09 PM

If any of you newbies need any help with Magic, look for me online and I'd be happy to spend some time helping you through the interface and rules. MtGO name is Vesper6.

Hans Lauring

06-30-2009, 04:18 PM

My MtGO name is Hanzii.

I would absolutely be up for making a new account for this - question is whether I can be online at the same time as you guys.

wigglestick

06-30-2009, 04:19 PM

If any of you newbies need any help with Magic, look for me online and I'd be happy to spend some time helping you through the interface and rules. MtGO name is Vesper6.

Cool. I'm definitely a newbie to the online version of the game, and a lot of the jargon that gets tossed around is totally mystifying to me.

Vesper

06-30-2009, 07:27 PM

Hey guys- Lorini made me Captain of the clan for now, since we thought I'd be online more to invite people. I'll try to keep it running every night this week even if I'm not actively playing. Send an in-game message to Vesper6 and I'll get you added to the clan.

Reldan

06-30-2009, 07:31 PM

When is this starting up? I'm getting anxious with anticipation and want to dig in, get my packs, and get this going!

It doesn't sound like there's really much of a barrier at all against making this happen. Can someone start a special League Clan or something that we all can join in order to make finding each other easier?

Vesper

06-30-2009, 07:32 PM

Why not just use the same clan for everything? That way we can locate each other for casual games as well.

mouselock

06-30-2009, 07:45 PM

Why not just use the same clan for everything? That way we can locate each other for casual games as well.

Hmm.. no reason we couldn't I guess if people still use the league naming schemes for their league accounts. This would at least let people know if they wanted to play and they didn't initially see a league player on or vice versa, that there was someone around to play.

ChrisPal

06-30-2009, 08:12 PM

Downloading now, see if my old account still exists. Pray for me, that I may fight the urges.

wigglestick

06-30-2009, 08:48 PM

I'm on the "My Clan" tab but it seems like no one is paying attention to it. :)

Who wants to play a game? :P

mouselock

06-30-2009, 08:49 PM

The league signup page is up (http://www.quartertothree.com/game-talk/showthread.php?t=53395). Go and post if you're interested in signing up. Also be sure to vote on the rules which are still in flux if you have a preference.

mouselock

06-30-2009, 09:28 PM

The league should be.. interesting.. all basic lands, tons of multicolored cards. Should be amusing, and at least people will be playing varied decks!

wigglestick

06-30-2009, 09:30 PM

mouselock

06-30-2009, 09:32 PM

I think it'll be pretty fun. I feel like I have a total scrub deck, trying to slap something together with only 6 boosters worth of cards. But hey, everyone will have to deal with the same situation, so it'll be very neat to see what kind of decks people put together.

Yep yep. Last time I did this was Mirage or Ice Age, but I remember some absurd win conditions. "I carrier pigeon for one, then I carrier pigeon for one and you die."

mkozlows

07-01-2009, 07:14 AM

So with all the QT3 league talk, I decided to try this out last night, and... wow, PC gaming, huh?

Between the download helper, the 30 minute download for the full installer, having to google to find out why the installer wouldn't run (have to "Run as Administrator"; just double clicking results in nothing happening), spending another 20 minutes downloading a mandatory update ("Downloading file 13 of 4379"), and then having to google to find out why playing a free trial match wasn't working ("EM701: Server Not Full" is super-secret code for "You have to uncheck the "Allow watchers" box that is checked by default"), I felt like I should have earned an achievement by the time I actually got to play.

On the plus side, the game itself seems functional, if a bit awkward (I can see why the XBLA people wanted to eliminate all the "Click OK to pass" prompts, because I think I had to click about 20 times per turn if my opponent did anything), and certainly hideous and graceless. But obviously it does let you do all the full Magic stuff that the XBLA game elides for simplicity, which is not nothing.

I am retroactively more impressed by the design decisions behind the XBLA game, because it would have been pretty easy to come up with this sort of awkward, naive card game port.