If you’ve been playing magic for any sizable amount of time, you likely quit for a few months, a year, or in my case, a decade, only to return to the game grasping at what constructed deck you can play/afford while playing drafts to build back up your card collection.
Coming back into the game right before Avacyn Restored hit stores, I had a plan: draft to build up a card base and buy a box every couple of weeks until I had a trading base, trade those cards to get the cards I needed for whatever deck I was building. Solid plan, right? I thought so. I was dead wrong. Well maybe not dead wrong but there was a much more economically sensible way of getting myself a deck worth playing in constructed tournaments.
Let’s talk about my flaws in practice and what I could have done to minimize my financial output while getting more for my dollar.
Cracking Packs
The idea here is to pick a set (preferably the one you need cards from) and do what all card gamers love to do – open product. I remember back when I could only afford a few packs every couple of weeks. If one of my friends got packs we were all there to watch as he opened. Every card was important. Not a single … single went unnoticed. This was because most of the time we had no idea what the rare was until we looked them up (this was pre-Urza’s Block when they introduced the black/silver/gold set icon indicator). And sometimes packs didn’t have rares! They had levels of common uncommon and rare, so you got uncommon 1’s sometimes instead of a rare. That was disappointing. But I digress, if you want to build a deck cracking packs is a poor way to go about it. Mathematically speaking it’s the worst way. Let’s say you want a Huntmaster of the Fells (Let’s not mention you actually want four of them) so you buy packs of Dark Ascension. Dark ascension has 50+ Rares. That’s $200 ($4×50) for the one card you needed, versus spending the $25 on it as a single. Sure its not as glamorous, but you just saved $175. Thats extreme, but you get the point.
Now the argument with cracking packs is that you could trade off the stuff you don’t need and get the cards you do…
The Trading Myth
When I last played Magic, I could tell you the price of any card without a price guide (which in those days were primarily magazines). Dealing with the cards on a constant basis and having a dialogue with other players in different formats for the last three years, playing competitively gave me at edge in trading. No not the edge you’re thinking (I traded fairly, anyone trading in the same places all the time benefits from having that reputation), I just knew the prices. Trading sessions happened faster and you knew what you wanted who wanted what and that meant you could faster cycle through collections for cards that you either were looking for or that you could trade for those cards.
Ten years in solitary, and I’m like one of those guys you hear about from WWII they find on and island that didn’t know that the war was over. I’m like Donny in the Big Lebowski … I have no frame of reference. As a result trading is embarrassing and slow for me, I don’t have the social Magic skills I did when I was 20. Trading now isn’t as fluid as it was then. I suspect the same thing could happen to you.
Purchasing bulk packs with this intention in mind was not only wasteful moneywise but it wastes time you could spend playing and practicing with you new deck.
At the time I needed that skill. I didn’t have the income to pull off the next move. What that meant was that deck building took a while, months in fact. I’d often work on several decks at a time so I could switch decks between tournaments.
What I Learned
After purchasing a few boxes of Avacyn and realizing that trading wasn’t my thing so much, I decided I should have an idea of what kind of deck I’d want to make. Something cheap, that could be competitive against the best deck in the field (Delver) but could play well against the other decks. Thats a tall order right? The next big prerequisite for mystery deck was this: soon (October) M12 and New Phyrexia will cycle out. I want to get the most mileage for my money and be able to play these cards when Return to Ravnica bumps into Standard.
Delver doesn’t look so hot once we loose all the nutty “free” spells and cantrips (not to mention Ponder). Naya looks cool but that’s a lot of rares, and it seems a bit complex for me to just get right back into the game with. Zombies is what caught my eye. The deck is resilient, fun to play, it practically hates Delver, and it’s less rare intensive. Gravecrawler and Geralf’s Messenger are around $7. A lot of the deck is common and uncommon. And once we rotate out to RR we loose Cemetery Reaper and a couple utilities but I’m willing to bet we can find suitable replacements in that time.
I bought a couple of the Black Avacyn Restored Event Decks – DEATH’S ENCROACH.
For your $20 you get one Gravecrawler and a Geralf’s Messenger and a ton of other Zombie goodies. Now if you spend another $42 on singles you’ll have a set of your Zombie rares.
4x Gravecrawler
4x Geralf’s Messenger
4x Diregraf Ghoul
2x Dismember
This is a solid start to a playable Zombie Deck. For $62 thats a lot of work you have taken care of.
I choose to use blue as a secondary color for
4x Diregraf Captain ($1)
The deathtouch comes in handy but the secondary ability makes this card under costed not to mention he makes your horde bigger two of these in play is too much for most decks to stop.
3x Blood Artist ($1.50)
Blood Artist is great since it makes your opponent do three things: 1)panic because s/he has to do math 2) waste her/his removal suite on a zero power creature 3) it combos well with
2x Mortar pod ($1)
There’s nothing better than getting your opponent to 5 and then sacrificing your board to get that extra damage in. I’ve done it so many times, and it’s never going to get old watching my opponent declare, “REALLY!?” as he scoops up his cards for game two.
What are we at now… $72
4x Darkslick Shores
4x Drowned Catacombs
You can’t skip the mana fixing in this deck. The Geralf’s Messenger’s are too black intensive to support islands and you can’t cast blue spells without blue mana.
4x Mana leak (.75)
This deck has a few cards that shut it down, you save those leaks for real threats, not because Johnny Red-Deck just Pillar of Flames your zombie, cuz you can be damn sure a bonfire is just around the corner. Same goes for Curse of Death’s Hold and Witchbane Orb. You wait til the game switches tempo or you at least have a second manaleak in hand to use it … unless you need it to win you chill. That said Mana Leak is great in this deck because most B/U Zombies don’t run it, and that means your opponent doesn’t see it coming and plays blindly into it.
2x Fume Spitter
With ten one drops the hope is to be making moves bay turn two. Spitter’s not a Zombie but he acts like removal so he’s an honorary zombie in my book.
3x Tragic Slip
One toughness creatures are the meat and potatoes of Standard right now and this card kills them. You have plenty of ways of offing your own guys and killing something bigger too.
1x Island
You do need one Island it’s not ideal to draw it and there are better lands to have but that what we are working with here.
1x Evovling Wild
Hence the Island now you have 10 Blue “sources” without messing too much with the heavy black costs of a lot of your cards.
13x Swamps
Because Lake of the Dead isn’t legal in Standard anymore.
1x Nephalia Drownyard
It’s an alternate win condition in a stalemate just watch it when you play Delver and Reanimator style decks.
2x Forbidden Alchemy
2x Phyrexian Metamorph ($7)
Why not Phantasmal Image? The Metamorph can target artifacts, which is nice against Birthing Pod. This card is the one in the deck that kills Geist of Saint Traft (Legend Rule). It’s a Geralf’s Messenger, an extra Blood Artist … oh, and it kills Elish Norn, which is night night for this deck.
On a final deck building note: Yes, I know Cavern of Souls is $30. I don’t use them. Does my deck suffer from it? Maybe a little. Would my lifestyle and wallet suffer more? YES. So I left it out. There are times when you need to stop and think. Is what I’m going to spend worth what I’m going to gain? $120 vs a better chance to win (in the tournaments I’m playing) eight packs? Again, do the math. We used to worry about counter magic before Cavern of Souls, just play like you’re still worried.
In Conclusion
If you’re willing to make the cuts at critical points and you don’t mind playing a deck that isn’t winning every Grand Prix you can definitely build a deck that can win an FNM or similar event. There are plenty of other decks out there that will surprise your opponent without surprising your landlord.