LotusRing

Around 2003 - 2004, a GR deck with perfect mana curve swept the meta with its ability to win in one turn. I remember the original version used Port, Plow Under and Avalanche Rider to disturb opponent's mana base. It could be super fast!

Needless to check, this deck is lower than 1 tix. With the VM cards, it's possible to let us feel one of the top decks in the 2004- 2005 standard. I remember the meta at that time was either GW Astral Slide

In our deck, we can afford 1 copy of Brainstorm which has dropped to 0.07. Counterspell is less then 0.05. The most expensive card in this deck is Upheaval, 0.17tix.

It's real, you are not dreaming and I am not bragging. I knew it eventually came true when I saw these prices: Yes, I built Reanimation for 1 tix!  As the prices of Reanimate and Anumate Dead are still over our budget, I decided to make a deck with Recurring Nightmare and Living Death first.

Who still thinks MTGO is an expensive hobby? Try out my first deck for 1 Tix Challenge: UG Madness . Tonight, I started to build decks with Vintage Masters cards for new players. With the 5 tix in their new accounts, now they can try at least 5 different decks representing certain milestones in the history of MTG. This green ramp deck I built was a deck storming the meta during the period from Marcadian Masques to Invasion. Although in this simplified version I didn't add  Rishadan Port and Plow Under , I found the deck perform quite well against other casual decks: Rofellos, Masticore and Cursed Scroll are respectively 0.06, 0.03 and 0.05. They make up 0.53 tix of the total cost. Saproling, Deranged Druid and Yavimaya Hollow are all under 0.04, so they are roughly 0.28 tix. The rest cards cost around 0.01 each. You can definitely bring home a competitive Green deck for 1 tix.

The market's boring right now, I don't want to buy Vintage Masters in large scale. I feel the bottom is not today, not in this month. Never can we predict the bottom of prices, we usually recall it with agonies, regrets. But as careful traders, we must also be patient - profits don't come with hurry. I so bored that I decided to give myself some tasks to do. The first one of those is "1 tix challenge". Everyday, I 'll try to build one Vintage deck with 1 tix. Then I'll put the complete deck list, playtest videos(after I sign up Twitch) and history of the decks here. Today, I did UG madness: You can get all the uncommons/ commons for 0.02 each in Goatbot, so they will cost you 34 x 0.02 = 0.68 tix; Sea Drake and Grand Coliseum are 0.04 in many bots, that's 7 x 0.04 = 0.28 tix.

Sad! I didn't hoard Power 9 two days ago. From 150, Black Lotus upsurged back to 270, other  P9 members have risen by 20% - 30%. How do we explain this tragedy? 1. Bots are buying - they usually start making waves two weeks after release events, but this time, 2 days. Dominating bots set the prices in MTGO: when they all buy at 130, the price is 130, when they rise to 270, players must accept 270. They are lords in MTGO. 2. Players are buying - I noticed a significant difference in number of drafters between the weekends and the week days. Initially, it's a simple supply-demand difference that drove the prices up. But the price movement was amplified by the over reactions of bots. Besides, bots are still not buying foils. Here are the reasons for their decision. First, their owners believe foils in Vintage Master are easier to open than in other sets(one foil per pack for Vintage Masters; one foil per 8 packs for other sets). Second, they consider foils as hard-to-sel

I witnessed the craziness of Vintage. In 3 days, Black Lotus fall from 270 to 100, other Moxes from 150 to 60 - getting a 50% off on all the cards you wish to buy is sweet, sweet, sweet deal. This is just the beginning of happiness, in my experience, only top cards can retain a stable price for two months after release. For rares, they drop unbelievably hard, for restricted rares(VM is full of restricted cards), they fall even further. As I want to avoid the risk of short term price turbulence , I will start buying regular cards much later, in the coming few weeks, I will only buy foils. But foils in Vintage Masters is perplexing itself. We don't know the the odd of getting the foil version of a particular mythic/rare as they only mentioned they give out one foil a pack but they 've never disclosed the probabilities of opening foils of the 5 rarities. Therefore, I set the buying prices low enough that I don't have much pressure holding them. If you don't buy foils, yo

At that moment, I felt nothing attracting me to MTGO anymore except a tix, some 0.05 rares, a pack of Urza's Saga. Selling it for 4 tix or cracking it into another pile of useless cards seemed equally paltry for me. Like a grain of sand in  Mojave, I thought there was nothing for me to lose. So, I cracked it open. I got this card: It was selling for 15 on supernovabots! After exploring tens of bots, I finally cashed out 15.6 tix. I swore I would do no more wasting on drafts/sealed, no more digging of penny cards from 100-for -1  bots, no more 5 days bot hunting for a tix profit. I wanted to be one of the wealthy traders, the celebrities on chat rooms, the players went infinite on MTGO. With my tix, I started 1 tix trades, which made me 100 tix in a week! 1 tix trade is very simple to do. What you need to do is going to a site, like Supernovabots.com, pick out standard cards worth from 10 tix to 20 tix, make some buying posts at prices 1 tix less than the buying price of the

I started MTGO with a $9.99 account. Playing with commons, free cards from bots was harsh for me  - just sold my paper MTG collection for several hundreds on ebay, I had been a veteran casual player for almost 10 years, I am not a serious player but I know how to win games, at least I believed so. To prove that, I put in some money, played one Master Edition drafts and one Tempest Block sealed. I had drafted twice in real life before starting MTGO. That day, I doubled my draft/sealed playing experience but, of course, I let all the $30 I spent turned into a digital pile of 0.05 cards.  My heart sank in agony, my eyes wells with hot tears. I crawled to my laptop browsing the classified for hours aimlessly, hopelessly. After a few days, I started to notice some people at that time posting selling and buying posts which remain active for hours. I wanted to join them but my collection was not sufficiently worth over 1 tix. Then, a miracle happened. I spotted a post from a player who must

1. Will MTGO Vintage be more popular than paper Vintage? Yes, I think so cause it's much much cheaper to play Vintage on MTGO. Take an example: On paper Volcanic Island is $200 or more but it's $20 on MTGO. We can apply the one tenth price discount not only to dual lands but most Vintage staples from old sets/rare sets. I tend to think the online prices of Power 9 will be discounted to one tenth or even less of  their paper version too. As Black Lotus and Moxes in power 9 can be found in most Vintage decks, if they are easy to open, we expect the format will draw new players or at least Legacy players to try it. Besides, Vintage is a competitive format that Wizards hold prized events. That's the main fascination for professional players. Another possible outcome is that paper Vintage players may buy online decks and play online as it's easy to find other Vintage players on MTGO than in card stores. 2. What cards should I collect if it is true that online Vintage form

Hearing that a collector sold his 20K collections and he would take a several month break, I was not so panic as the first time I checked out Vintage Masters spoiler. It's true he had reasons to stop playing MTGO and the reasons produced a conclusion of 15% fall in tix value, 70% loss in dual lands, Force of Will, Mana Drain...... And yes, it's also true that reprinting of old cards as special sets can drag the prices down for 70%( Cryptic Command in Modern Masters, for example) and for years. Besides, there are rumors that new MTGO program will drive players out of this game. Put aside weather they will happen or not, I see a chance. First, we have to assume the game, MTG itself doesn't fall in popularity. Then, the demand from front stores and online card shops doesn't disappear so redeemers won't stop buying full sets from MTGO. When the players sell their collections and leave the game, two things happen: redeemers will take the cards and the supply of sta

This articles is about buying cards from Theros Block. I listed the cards I picked with reasons, expectations and the possible events which signal further selling or buying. The THS cards are selecting by some rules below: 1. I don't pick gods - they are likely 1 of in most decks. 2. Cards not used in recent top 8 decks are not chosen. 3. Some decks are built with mainly Return to Ravnica cards, I avoid THS cards       in these decks The most likely profitable cards: 1. Elspeth, Sun's Champion Reasons: It's highly usable in control decks. Expectations: It should be as high as Sphinx's Revelation, say 35 if the standard doesn't change too much. Signals: you must sell if the next standard favors fast decks. 2. Courser of Kruphix Reasons: Most green decks need it. Expectations: The price may go up to Restoration Angel's (15 tix to 20 tix) Signals: It stops weenies, ramps mana, offsets life loss to Mana Confluence,  I don't see in what condition it