Daily Discussion - That 60th Card

[JStephens]

Today we're wondering how you get your cards.

Do you buy packs and crack them? Do you just draft like crazy and get cards that way? Do you buy singles online? Do you purchase individual cards at your local store?

It seems like the options are endless, but we're wondering how you go about acquiring that 60th card for your killer deck!

[Lynnis]

I basically just buy packs or tourny packs unless the store has the card I need in which case I just buy it.

[TrainedChicken]

I exclusively draft them and trade for them. Occasionally I will buy a box, but I use that to draft, too (I just keep the cards or sell the packs to the participants).

I'm confused though, about the title of this post. What do you mean by the 60th card?

[rare oliver]

methinks the "60th card" is a magic idiom which means the most difficult card to obtain in your super deck.. cheapest way to get cards is to do heavy trading. alas, you have to have a lot of free time available to accomplish this. honestly, it's more cost effective to just buy the cards you need from a local trader. if you're really desperate, then go ahead and buy that card in the shop. you can even try booster drafting and design your game around the best rares that you get. opening packs IS the last option. time and again, i've regretted opening packs because chances are, i'd get a crap rare. i've noticed that most magic players also like playing other competitive games. that means a propensity for gambling but when the odds are against you, would you want to take chances? maybe when we go to the next 2 expansions, which will have a lower card pool... i got the pack-opening itch again with ravnica. from a box's worth, i got 1 dual land, 1 scarab, 1 circu, 1 putrefy, 1 cloak, 1 remand, 1 helix and 30 marginally useful rares. now i'm stuck with a couple dozen untradeable forever-in-the-binder rares. i would have fared better just buying the cards that i needed in the first place.

[HRRNightawk]

my local crowd doesn't almost zero limited play, so outside of a release event, there's no drafting. So i exclusively buy cards online and trade for cards that i need. The only time i buy packs is that i'll buy a box when a set comes out to get a 4x commons set because it's so inefficient to buy commons with shipping costs.

[twiddleman]

Buy the chase rares online, crack a few pack, which usually i end up opening discustingly junk rares, buy the uncomm and commons from the store or trade for them with peoples who tried their luck with packs. With Ravnica i also bougth 2x Golgari and Boros theme deck, their price was aproximatly the same has buying Putrefy/lightning helix times 2. I acquired all 4 of my Jitte by buying the pre-con Rats nest, 2 days after the expension came out for sale.

[SimUser]

I usually buy a box or two when they come out, and then trade for what I want for decks, sometimes I will buy that allusive card that no one will trade for, but I can usually talk someone out of even the best cards.

[NumbAllOver]

my local crowd doesn't almost zero limited play, so outside of a release event, there's no drafting.

Its funny how that varies so widely from region to region...I'd practically have to pay someone to test a constructed deck around here. Pretty much our area is exclusively draft, and you can't get a good player to even show you a constructed deck until PTQ.

Which brings me to the answer to the above question --> draft, win, trade your winnings.

[fatboy_rule]

I've been playing for awhile, done some seious playing back in the day and lately i've gotten back into it with Ravnica release. I live in Bloomington IN, and around here there aren't many people i know of to trade with. There are a few shops around here with the typical assortment of singles ranging moslty from boxes upon boxes of picked-through commons and uncommons to the colored binders full of rares that Shuffle and Cut will send you for free if you order from them. So for someone in my position, i've found that the best way to go about obtaining those last few cards for your "super deck" in a very inexpensive way is to go straight to the world's largest garage sale... Ebay. Sellers price fair (no overhead), shipping is a little slower than online stores, and if you understand and use the feedback system correctly, you shouldn't get screwed. Try it out, i hightly recommend it.

[mad`arab]

me and my group are usually pretty good at getting the cards we need through trading our stuff with other ppl...we buy online though if there are cards that we know are going to be really hard to trade for/come across, or that we all might want a set of (like the duals)

[TrainedChicken]

Oh! the meaning of the name of the article eluded me. I get it now. See, I always play 61 cards, so 60 isn't much of a magic number in my mind.

[Benobi]

I don't know that I could trust online singles purchases... I usually get packs. A lot of the time, I'll build a deck specifically around a card I can get easily.

[River Boa]

I mostly buy cards in packs. Then I try to trade what i need and top up by buying what i need for competition. Either from individuals with excess cards or stores that tend to cost more.
People who have bought stuff on ebay and the like- do you ever get ripped off. That is the thing that worries me.
I got a good piece of advice from my dealer when i and another were buying a case ie 6 boxes. That was buy tournament packs not boosters. You get 12 extra uncommons in a box, plus land. Its marginally better. That is my drug dealer not card dealer. :)

[Dommo]

Trained chicken I kinda know how you feel. I was playing cog control WAAAY before it ever became popular. I doubt I created the deck, but I loved it, because it was fun and it was mostly made up of my commons from the mirrodin block. Did pretty well in local tournaments(it's just to far for me to travel to go anywhere).

I loved that deck. It was so simple, cheap, and of course unusual and fun.

[shi.ar]

I think drafting is expensive, because I usually already buy two boxes + fat pack from a base set like Ravnica, and one box + fat pack from an expansion. And I go the pre-release before that. Afterwards I get extra cards from eBay or Cardshark.

I really resent trading, because I don´t know what I need or don´t want to give up what I have. For me every good rare has a potential future deck to go in. People don´t want your bad rares anyway.

I live in the Netherlands and I almost never draft (though there is a draft in a cafe near my house every monday). In my playgroup we do have the occasional reject draft. But we prefer constructed anyway...

eBay is absolutely the best way to get those extra rares. I think I´ve done 100+ transactions in which I was the buyer, and the cards didn´t reach my house only once. Sometimes mail does get lost. Me and the seller settled on splitting the loss (he gave me 50% refund.)

[TRIP0D]

I haven't bought a pack in over a year, however, I do win the packs via, Big tourneys, FNM, and casual drafts. I trade aggresively and don't play anything but type 2. I have every single card I need to play. I work on maby 2 or 3 decks at a time. If I have extras of rares I will give them to some new player, and usually they will remember me for it and hook me up in a trade later on.
It takes cunningness and manipulation, but it works well and I don't have to buy one meaningless gamble.

[Galvatron]

I tend to do a little bit of the same of what tripod dose.

[Anhihilus]

i usually will trade with the people at local stores, buy very expensive cards like Jitte, dual, etcc... on ebay and draft for new sets cards , cuz i'm a beast in drafts,.

[Galvatron]

people alway want chase cardz that is normal werever you go

[HeavyMetalKing]

Probably the best thing you can do is buy the card that you need from a dealer or an online store I used to crack boosters looking for 1-2 cards and after i spent $25 or more opening usualy junk I realized its just cheaper to buy the single, think about your definitly going to get that one card that you want and you only have to spend a couple of bucks on it.

[$teve]

I buy boxes, trade, buy singles, draft and go to prereleases to get my cards. I have bought so much RAV that i have 2 playsets of Water Graves, 1 and a half of Temple Garden and Overgrown Tomb and 3 Sacred Foundry

[atomsk77]

i buy 2 boxes of each big expansion 1 box of each small one, trade like the devil go to drafts prerealase come big torney bang my decks ready

[klingon_master]

Buy the chase rares online, crack a few pack, which usually i end up opening discustingly junk rares, buy the uncomm and commons from the store or trade for them with peoples who tried their luck with packs. With Ravnica i also bougth 2x Golgari and Boros theme deck, their price was aproximatly the same has buying Putrefy/lightning helix times 2. I acquired all 4 of my Jitte by buying the pre-con Rats nest, 2 days after the expension came out for sale.

That's funny cause when Jitte first came out it was only worth $3 on ebay and then a month later it was $5 and it kept going up to $15 like it is today. Depends where you buy cards. My store owner for the vauable cardas or certain ones like something like a Kokusho or P9 or any type of card people want he will go high Scrye or what he can get for cards like some months a go he was selling Gift's Ungiven for $15. I could get Jitte for $20 and Needle for $25. He did have a problem with a person or two though and had to kick them out of the stat the store for good who outside were selling cards and had done this before. If I buy packs or Draft and get crap rares I do care if I get good cards but if I get stuck with junk rares then I can use them to make repacks.

[Galvatron]

That's funny cause when Jitte first came out it was only worth $3 on ebay and then a month later it was $5 and it kept going up to $15 like it is today. Depends where you buy cards. My store owner for the vauable cardas or certain ones like something like a Kokusho or P9 or any type of card people want he will go high Scrye or what he can get for cards like some months a go he was selling Gift's Ungiven for $15. I could get Jitte for $20 and Needle for $25. He did have a problem with a person or two though and had to kick them out of the stat the store for good who outside were selling cards and had done this before. If I buy packs or Draft and get crap rares I do care if I get good cards but if I get stuck with junk rares then I can use them to make repacks.I dunno those guys out side of the store i think wer just tired of the store owner gouging them. Scryes pris values ar WAY inflated

[Urza's Son]

i usualy will by 1 pre-constructed deck for every set out at the time, de-construct them, and then instead of buyin oe or 2 booster sets i will buy a box wich is usually any where from 49.99-59.99 so that the extras i have i can go to a trading center and trade and ****, also the place i go to Masquerades, has a 10 cent common box, and ill jus go grab a hand full and buy them, i try to buy from the older sets now, like urza's, and ice age, 6th 7th and 8th, cuz im from the old school, and jus recently started playing, and alot of the times when the old man at Masqerades is re loading the 10 cent common box, he gives me what is left cuz he likes to start on empty boxes,

people underestimate commons, there are some great cards out there that should be uncommons or rares, like one of my favorite cards of all time is Stone Rain, for 2 and :r: u can destroy target land, so u put 4 of those in a deck say with 4 more Lava Axes and some other direct damge cards, and u got a nice burn deck,

well at least with type 1 and the way i use to play, now with this type 2 b.s. lol, a good old fashion burn deck prolly wont get me far

but yea thats how i get cards, if i wouldnt have stoped playin in 2001, like right after planeshift, i probably would have about 10,000 plus cards, now i got like 5,000 total plus...

oh yeah, if n e 1 ever visits Michigan, come to Masqerades, they have a Claw game, u kno where u have to grab objects with the claw to win them, except there is no teddy bears, there is a whole **** load of unbelieveable cards the old man puts in there, back in 99 i grabed me a black lotus...