The Prison, the Playables and the Pulls

On the peripheries of Kansas, on the bank of the Missouri River, there stands an imposing prison looming over a game shop. Is not this prison standing as a symbol of what TCG's have become, incarcerated to the flux of the secondary market and the ebb and flow of print runs taking priority over the experience of the game that we all know and love???

    Okay, this is an exaggeration, but the prison is very real, and the gigantic building is impossible to miss when you drive into Leavenworth, Kansas. As I mentioned in my introduction, Limited play will be an important part of making this adventure successful. I would love to get the cards I need to have a competitive Standard or Modern deck to win larger prizes, but this is a long way off. In the meantime, doing well at drafts will be how I gain prizes, and since my closest game store failed to gain enough people to draft MKM, I had to drive over an hour to Gators Games and Hobby. Talking to the owner, he said that the shop is in the same building that used to be a stable that Abraham Lincoln had once stabled his horse in. People talk badly about Kansas, but if you dig beneath the surface, you will find lots of interesting places in the state. 

 I was hoping to draft MKM to get some cards that I can use in Standard, but apparently, the set is quite unpopular, so we did a Mystery Booster draft instead. I am not altogether disappointed by this, as getting more cards for Commander, or staples that I can trade is fine with me as well.

  

The Draft

    I still haven't quite figured out the strategy for drafting Mystery Boosters, and there doesn't seem to be much advice online, either. However, I was still fairly happy with my draft. Some cards that I drafted were simply insane, like Bear with Set's Mechanic, which in one game dealt 16 damage in the first few turns. Thank goodness this isn't legal in constructed.

I ended up with a Green-White aggro deck with lots of pump spells and removal. But I simply had to splash Blue once I opened an iconic card, Sakashima the Imposter. 

I love this card, and he did some heavy lifting during the games that I played. When I opened it, I thought that it paired well with the Mimic Vat that I opened in my first draft, but I don't have enough cards yet to truly build an EDH deck around Sakashima. His value is quite high at the moment, and I think I will trade him when I get the opportunity.

Match 1:

While I was happy with my draft, my opponents simply had better decks, even though almost every game was close. In my first matchup, I got close to winning but was ultimately beaten back by Elesh Norn, a card that I had no effective removal for and something that Sakashima can, at best, equalize. Elesh Norn is a brutal card and a great pull in Limited, no wonder it is so expensive.

A card that I also had in my deck (though it isn't the best in Limited) is Mana Tithe. In this matchup, I likely would have won if I would have been more aggressive with this card. There were two times when my opponent was tapped out and was playing a creature, a creature that I could have countered. Both times I held my Mana Tithe in hopes of sniping a bomb. Of course, if I did this and eventually sniped Elesh Norn, I would be talking about the merits of holding onto Mana Tithe, but the way I see it, it is best to use it as early as you can in this sort of format. Lesson learned.

Match 2:

Match 2 was more interesting and ended in a draw. My opponent's deck was wild to play against, having both the test Tibalt and Sliv-Mizzet.

My deck was able to overpower this deck due to my pump spells, combat tricks and board presence, but unfortunately we ran out of time and couldn't play Game 3!  

Match 3

Match 3 was quite a bloodbath, with my opponent having both Draco and Sword of the Animist. Quite the combo! There was a funny moment where I had Sakashima copy Draco in order to myself from him, but this led my opponent to simply get too far ahead. 

But all was not lost! Even though I didn't win enough to get prize support, Gators Games did have a fun feature of giving players a spin on a type of wheel of fortune, giving cards or packs to you if you land on a winning spot. I got fairly lucky and got some nice cards, including a very nice Foil promo of Unclaimed Territory. Nice!

Improvements to the Wayta Deck 

I also got a few other cards that were just objectively better than some of the others that I had in the first edition of my Commander deck, and looking at the newest edition, I might dare say the deck might be half-playable now! A few new cards stand out:

Firstly, I drafted this card because I find it quite good in Limited in Krosan Verge. I always had this card in my old EDH decks that used white and green, and it certainly will help the mana fixing for the Wayta deck. I also drafted some actual ramp instants and sorceries  such as Natural Connection, though they aren't the best, they will work! 

Secondly, two cards that I drafted, not knowing that they are staples for "good" Wayta decks are Boros Reckoner and Frilled Death Spitter. It is obvious why these cards work with Wayta, as they do things when damaged, which Wayta can achieve through the fight mechanic. 

This deck is looking more and more like an actual commander deck with ramp, a win-con (Felidar Sovereign,) and synergy!

What's to come:

I am visiting family over Holy Week and Easter, so I won't have a chance to draft this week. But while rummaging through some of my old things, I found a box of my old bulk commons and uncommons from Dragons of Tarkir, along with Ixalan through War of the Spark. I mentioned before that I sold almost all of my old magic collection, and this is the only thing left of it. I plan to search through this collection to see what is left and see if anything can be added to any of my current decks. After this, I am hoping that next week, I can attend at least one MKM before the new set, Outlaws from Thunder Junction , which, I must admit, has me quite excited.

The First Fruits

 Having won my first value in trade credit, and there being no draft scheduled at my LGS, I decided to take the time to use my credit on some packs, which I used a few packs from the Lost Caverns of Ixalan set. I chose this set because I have a Standard deck in mind (Which you can find here: Desired Standard Discover (Standard) — Deckstats.net MTG Deckbuilder + Collection Manager ) that heavily relies on the Discover mechanic. I was very happy with some of my pulls.

The most notable card that I pulled was a Preacher of the Schism, which sees a lot of play in Standard, including the deck that Standard deck that I have in mind. Now, that deck is quite expensive (Around $300 as of March 2024, with a sub-optimal mana base), so it is likely that the $5-$7 Preacher of the Schism might be used as something to trade. 

But Preacher of the Schism wasn't the only interesting card I pulled, as I happily pulled a card that can be a reasonable Commander card for EDH, Wayta, Trainer Prodigy

Wayta is not the best commander, but she has a useable ability and gives me three colors for which I have playable cards from my draft and pack pulls. This allowed me to create a terrible, but legal EDH deck that even contains one win condition, being my Felidar Sovereign. You can find sub-$10 deck here Magic From Zero Commander (EDH / Commander) — Deckstats.net MTG Deckbuilder + Collection Manager

Reasons for playing EDH with MF0 Principles

Some might ask why I am interested in building a Commander deck when there are rarely any non-cEDH Commander tournaments that offer prize support. My reasoning is to allow me more opportunities to trade and to socialize with other players. EDH has become the most widespread format among Magic players, and I find that most players aren't at game shops merely to trade; they want to play Commander! Being able to forge relationships that will allow me to trade new cards in the future is key. This also gives me something to work towards and play with while I build up a Standard-legal collection.

Today I drove over an hour to go play in a Chaos Mystery Booster draft and got some really nice cards that can boost this commander deck, stay tuned for the tournament results and an updated EDH MF0 Decklist.

~MF0

The First Draft, and the First Pulls

    My first draft as part of the MF0 project was largely a success. I had been preparing on MTG Arena to draft the newest Murders at Karlov Manor set, but to my surprise, my LGS was hosting a chaos draft of Mystery boosters. I was very familiar with many of the cards from my former MTG days.

The Pulls

There was not a whole lot of value in the packs themselves, but I pulled a few notable cards that will certainly be able to go into a Commander Deck.

The most valuable of these cards is Felidar Sovereign. For obvious reasons, he is very good in EDH and will provide me with a win condition for a very early-stage deck. But this card only costs around $3. 

The Tournament

However, none of these cards ever saw play in the tournament. What really did the work was what might be my favorite card in Limited, one I remember well from Ixalan.

A two-drop 3/1 on the attack is already very good but being able to pay 4 lives to gain indestructible is very powerful. I forged a Boros midrange deck focused on making tokens and gaining life. The result was quite successful, as I made it to the finals. Unfortunately, in the final matchup, things soured, and I drew no lands, and then all lands with my mulligans. My final opponent had a powerful deck with a Liliana, Death's Majesty, and several other powerful black spells. My deck without being on curve and without good tempo ended up losing 2-0. However, I ended up placing in the tournament and gaining store credit enough for a few packs, giving me enough to cobble together a very poor but legal EDH deck!

Stay tuned for what came out of those packs and the resulting deck. 

~MF0

Introduction to Magic from Zero

    I started playing Magic the Gathering (MTG) in 2017. My introductory experience was my local game store's final draft of Hour of Devastation. Each card I drafted was a portal into a whole new world, each a treasure in my newfound collection. As I went on, I soon discovered that the most popular but still up-and-coming way of playing magic was Elder Dragon Highlander (EDH), and I soon cobbled together whatever I could to make a 100-card deck. Each draft then took on a new purpose, as it meant new cards to trade and play with and new cards for my EDH deck. 

    As time passed and I learned more from my playgroup, I soon realized that this was not the way to get into MTG at all. Most of the cards for EDH are incredibly old and rare, so you are unlikely to pull them in any new packs. The mantra from MTG "Influencers" and from local players to this problem was to simply "Buy Singles!" 

    Indeed, if you want to get into Magic as quickly and efficiently as possible, it would be wise to look up the staples for each format, find an optimized deck list, save up, and buy the deck from the heavily promoted Card Kingdom or popular TCGPlayer. There is obviously no fault in doing this, and for many who simply want to get in and play this game of dancing cardboard that we all love so much, this is the best way to go. However, something I will suggest, and what the premise of this blog will be, is that something is lost when going about the hobby this way. 

Magic as Trading Card Game

    I stopped playing Magic around the infamous year of 2020 AD, with War of the Spark and Core Set 2020 being the last two sets I remember intensely studying to draft. Shortly after those sets, I sold my EDH and Standard decks, each worth around $500 at the time. Throughout my years of playing Magic, I probably made three or four trades, and the rest of my card acquisitions were either from cards that I drafted, which I usually sold, or cards that I bought. The trades that I did make were some of the most exciting moments of my time playing MTG, and each card that I traded for took on a much more sentimental value. If we think for a moment about what the game is, this is rather odd and seemingly artificial. After all, Magic the Gathering is, at its core, a trading card game. Now, it is expected that with such a large and popular game like MTG, a market would form around the cards, reflecting the rarity and playability of each piece. But this deserves asking whether a core component of what makes this form of entertainment fun is taken away by an artificially imposed way of acquiring cards. 

    Are not the cards we play within a trading card game supposed to have some sentimental value rather than a mere monetary one? Surely our collections that we play with should remind us of our own personal journeys with the game, our different exchanges and stories forged with each card and the memories enshrined within each piece? Much of this is lost in our day when all a card has become is a type of fancy dollar bill, a monetary value attached to a pretty picture representing an action in the game. 

    To the competitive spirit, these musings may fall on deaf ears. I understand these types of people and consider myself a competitive player. I love the feeling that a high-level, competitive magic game can provide. However, this intense play can be found in the sleek online versions of Magic that are popular today. What exactly sets paper Magic apart from Arena or MTGO? If one was playing just for the feeling of competition, online Magic provides this and removes a lot of the annoying aspects of paper Magic as well. I can get a competitive rush similar to the one I get from Paper Magic by playing Standard on Arena. What paper Magic should provide, is exactly the sentimentality previously mentioned, the physical collection one can gain, and the social tapestry woven through trades and tales?

The Inspiration Behind This Blog

    I decided to get back into Magic the Gathering after my good friend (a person one would never expect to get into TCGs), as if randomly inspired by a dream, got obsessed with the game Lorcana. He soon amassed a collection worth over $3000 by simply pulling great cards in packs and strategically collecting and trading without buying any singles. His experience with this new game reminded me of my nascent days playing Magic and the original aspirations attached to it.  I decided to get back into MTG, but if I was going to, I would do so at a slower pace and with limitations that keep the original aspects of this form of entertainment intact. All of this has been my reasoning behind the following Magic manifesto dubbed "Magic from Zero," which shall show the principles guiding my journey starting back in Magic the Gathering from zero cards.

The Principles

#1- No singles may be bought with real-world currency or trade credit, whether that be from local shops, online stores, or individual persons.

#2- Each card must be either pulled in a pack, acquired by drafting/playing in events, obtained from another official sealed product, or traded for with another individual (no trading cards to shops as a way to buy singles for store credit)

This is excluding basic land editions that are commonly seen as having little to no value

#3-Packs can only be bought with real-world currency if:

I. For use in a Limited format (Prerelease, Sealed, Draft)

II. If bought with store credit won by winning an Event 

#4-Events can only be played with decks constructed by my own cards but can be in any format, from Standard to EDH to Draft.

~MF0