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VERY casual Magic player's first Cube

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12 Aug 2013 05:53 #158308 by bendgar
Great guide Dragonstout. I am going to put one of those cubes together soon. I appreciate all the responses on this topic. They have given me some good ideas.

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12 Aug 2013 06:27 #158310 by bomber
what is the difference, bottom line between getting 2 or 3 duel packs
(I found Phyrexia/Coalition, Sorin/Tibault, Izzet/Golgari) playing them as duels and later mixing them up into one big pile later or getting what seems to be called

Return to Ravnica Booster Box (36 Boosters)

I think I'm right in saying that a booster is a pack, but how many cards? 5, 10, 15? I'm guessing 10? so thats 360 cards, you need 60 to play, so I suppose that is a "themed" pack that you can build a set or more of 60 out of????? And all the same colour, or mixed?

sorry for being clueless, I mean I can go and look this up but I'd prefer to hear it out of horses mouths.

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12 Aug 2013 08:15 #158315 by dragonstout
Damn dude, how many cards are in a pack? Use Google and/or Wikipedia, it's a brave new world!

But I'll be your mouthy horse.

Intro packs are different than duel decks in terms of two things that I kind of already explained: as you might guess from the name, "intro packs" are intended more for beginners. Duel decks are more complex. Duel decks are made specifically to play against each other repeatedly. Intro decks are made to play against random opponents who are just as noob-y, e.g. against other intro decks, but unlike duel decks where it's a VERY specific matchup. You are right that duel decks contain two decks and intro decks contain just one.

A bucket of eBay cards: will give you crazy deckbuilding headaches. Start smaller. And then continue SLIGHTLY larger if you want. A bucketful of eBay cards could kill the game for you. However, I do have a couple thousand commons & uncommons that I am looking to unload :-)

Okay, to cover your last post: if you got the duel decks, you probably *wouldn't* want to mix them up into one big pile later. They each are pretty focused and won't mix well.

Booster box: booster packs contain 15 random cards (the duel decks are completely fixed). 1 rare, 3 uncommons, 10 commons, 1 basic land. Booster packs are *far and away* the primary way cards are sold, I'd guess 99% of all Magic cards came out of a booster pack. Since a booster box is always from a specific set, and sets always have themes, the cards will work well together, much better than a bunch of duel decks mashed together.

The reasons to buy a booster box: 1) you want to play some form of Limited. Without a Cube of some kind, the only way to play limited is by opening boosters. "Limited" just means that each player, instead of building a deck out of some collection of cards they have at home, builds a deck out of some small random assortment of cards (and with only 40 cards, not 60 cards). It is awesome awesome awesome. This is why people build cubes, so that they can play limited forever without ever having to buy a booster pack ever again. 2) if you want a hefty but not overwhelming number of cards from the same setting/theme, with interesting interactions, to build decks from, with lots of options as to how to build decks. 540 cards from a booster box from a single set is MUCH less overwhelming than a box of 1000s of commons from a wide mix of sets.

Never crack a booster pack without playing *some* sort of limited with it.

I mostly don't recommend booster boxes, because: a Return to Ravnica booster box costs around $90. A complete Return to Ravnica set costs around $120. Additional common sets and an uncommon set would add around $15. So if you pay just about 50% more, you can make a Return to Ravnica Cube which lets you do everything you'd ever want to do with a booster box, *but without a finite lifespan*. Once that booster box's packs have been cracked, you can't play Limited with it anymore. With a Cube, you can play Limited forever.

But then, some people just love cracking actual packs.
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12 Aug 2013 10:23 #158316 by bomber
thanks, Id tip you geek gold if I could ;-)

OK, I'm almost with you now (I even googled cube). I guess I have not found in the shops here anything but those booster boxes, ie. "complete return to ravnica" sets do not show up in the list I checked, also I'd need to know which sets you mean that refer to the 15 dollars extra. certainly the way you describe it sounds like a good way to go!

and i may sound like a complete twat here, but Return to Ravnica, thats just a themed group out of a larger set that comes out in 2014 right, its not like some code word for all of the 2014 cards?

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12 Aug 2013 12:08 #158319 by Black Barney

dragonstout wrote:
Never crack a booster pack without playing *some* sort of limited with it.

.


I was going to post earlier that that OP shouldn't do anything until Dragonstout has offered his advice (he hooked my pals and I up with a great pauper cube and we loves it).

But yeah, the quote above is something really important to remember. Magic was MADE for limited, so opening a booster pack outside of a draft is almost like a sin for a wasted opportunity.

the end

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12 Aug 2013 14:16 #158330 by jeb
Honest question here--how does someone get lands now? Begging? Mooching off the FLGS? I have enough for 2p (so I can Winston Draft), but if I wanted to cube up for 8 I would need more Forests and shit.

Dragonstout--you and me, we're going to resurrect 5-Color Magic and run the format from this site.

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12 Aug 2013 14:40 #158334 by Sevej
CSI sells 400 lands at $10. 80 of each.
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12 Aug 2013 14:56 - 12 Aug 2013 17:55 #158338 by dragonstout
I've got literally 2000 extra lands I need to sell off. Let me know if you need lands.

Edit: I'd also expect that if you walk into a game store with Magic players playing and say "I NEED BASIC LANDS!", you'll get hundreds for free.
Last edit: 12 Aug 2013 17:55 by dragonstout.
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12 Aug 2013 19:46 #158387 by bomber
OK, come on I dont ask for help that often so hope you will indulge me (this is awesome by the way)

you mentioned "complete" sets and additional commons/uncommons 90 plus 15, but what are they? I have not found Return to Ravnica "complete" set, only these "booster sets", and what "additional commons/uncommons" for 15 dollars do you mean, remember Ive never bought a pack of this in my life, I have no idea

is Return to Ravnica "this years magic", or just a particular themed set from this years magic (or is it nothing to do with year).

If its possible to get this "complete set plus additional bits" to have a "cube" which is like a big bunch of cards you can just break out and what, draft between you or deal out between you and not have problems with lifetime (I didnt quite get that point compared to buying booster packs etc), are there other sets not return to ravnica, or is that a good one or?

I can take this to private mail if you want or you can just tell me to fuck off, youve already given me a lot of info.

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12 Aug 2013 20:00 #158394 by Black Barney
yeah, at this point you should just fuck off
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12 Aug 2013 20:33 - 12 Aug 2013 20:38 #158402 by dragonstout
The only reason I'd say to fuck off is because you've taken over bendgar's thread, so it's up to him. Otherwise I'll just keep answering questions so that I don't have to eventually answer them all over again in a million private mails.

Stores aren't going to sell complete sets. To get a complete set you've gotta go on eBay; if you try to go through some online retailer it'll be egregiously expensive.

To build a one-set Cube, I think I already covered earlier on: you need a complete set, a second complete uncommon set, and 2 additional complete common sets, minimum. Thankfully, websites like magus-of-magic and tcgplayer let you buy commons at 2 cents a piece, getting you additional common sets for like $2-3. Even if you aren't in the right country for one of those, serious Magic drafters usually have an excess of commons, and if you go to the end of a draft at a game store, I bet you can get LOTS of commons for actual free.

The whole idea of a one-set (similar to a "block" Cube) is yes, to draft or build sealed decks from. Normally, when playing, for example, sealed deck, each player opens up 6 booster packs and then makes a deck from that (they can add as much basic land as they want, so you typically end up choosing around 23 of your 84 cards to use), and then you play against other players who did the same.

The very obvious negative of this is that it costs each person the price of 6 booster packs every time you want to play like this. The other obvious negative is that you're not using 3/4 of the cards you just bought; hopefully you can use them later to make constructed decks, but if you're mainly a Limited player, they go to waste. So the idea of a Cube is that, instead of paying for and opening booster packs, you make "fake", or "simulated" booster packs with your Cube, shuffling it up and dealing out the right number of cards. That way, after you're all done playing with your sealed decks, everyone just puts their cards back in the Cube and then you can shuffle it up next time and play again.

Okay, now for your Return to Ravnica associated questions. First of all, the primary structure of Magic set releases is: a "Core Set" in the summer for beginners, titled "Magic 2014" etc. Then, fall, winter, and spring, three connected sets are released, which have a unified setting and theme; this is called a "block" of sets. Each set has its own booster packs. The first set is always a large set which sets the scene for the other year. The other two sets are typically smaller. It used to be the case that the fall set introduced the main new mechanics/ideas for the year, and then the smaller sets each introduced complications to those, but lately they've been playing around with the structure.

Return to Ravnica was the 2012 fall set. The 2012-2013 block was a return to the most popular Magic setting of all time, the Ravnica block from 2005-2006. Return to Ravnica was a very good set, you wouldn't go wrong with that. Ravnica's theme is the "guilds", which just means the 10 two-color pairs. So every color pair has its own theme and mechanics, some of which intersect and interact very interestingly with the other guilds' mechanics. There are a lot of cards which require you to play TWO colors to use, which is something you wouldn't have seen if you've just played Duel of the Planeswalkers. Some examples of mechanics in RTR include: "Unleash", for the red-black guild, which are creatures that, when you play them, you can CHOOSE whether you want to permanently take away their own ability to block, in exchange for being larger. Another one is "Scavenge", for the green-black guild, which lets you pay to permanently add the stats of a dead creature to one of your living creatures. Or "Overload", the blue-red mechanic, which are spells you can either cast on a single target, or pay more to "overload" and cast on ALL targets.
Last edit: 12 Aug 2013 20:38 by dragonstout.
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13 Aug 2013 15:44 #158454 by bendgar
Hey, I got what I needed and more from this thread. If anyone else needs questions answered feel free to ask. A big "thank you" to everyone who replied. I'm glad to not be the only one here that doesn't fully understand this game system.

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13 Aug 2013 15:48 #158457 by Black Barney
No problem. Yeah, there's lots of idiots here too so no worries there either.

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13 Aug 2013 16:37 #158472 by bomber
I'm getting kind of annoyed that this seems to be something pretty cool and worth looking into. I'm just not the kind of bloke that needs to be interested in a money sink hole like this so these tips are awesome. thanks

also, you might be an expert but youd never heard of a "trevor" which I hereby invent, and it seems we even have a feature monster

mtg.wikia.com/wiki/Treva,_the_Renewer

so there you go!
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13 Aug 2013 17:16 #158477 by dragonstout

ldsdbomber wrote: I'm getting kind of annoyed that this seems to be something pretty cool and worth looking into.

I'd sacrifice every other game I own to keep my Magic Cubes. In an instant.

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