No, that doesn't seem right. But the saying goes something like that.
"Chow down on some tasty dollars."
Still not quite right.
"Put some money where the food goes."
Eh, close enough.
With my schedule, playing one or two games of Commander per week is where it tops out. Saturday afternoon is when my friendly local gaming store puts on a Commander tournament. For good or for ill, calling it a tournament brings 20ish people out of the woodwork. But, calling it a tournament also brings out some pretty cutthroat decks. Otherwise, I am lucky enough to have a couple of friends that play Commander and are up for a game from time to time.
My FLGS is about 25 minutes from my house. Let's call it about 15 miles, one way. My car gets about 30MPG, so round trip is one gallon of gas. At $4 per gallon, it's $16+ a month to play Magic.
I'm not recommending that everyone should think this way. It's just the way I'm wired. Always has been. I end up comparing the cost vs. what I get and spending almost an hour in the car to play a few games of Magic per week is right at the edge of what I'm willing to do. My work commute has gotten longer recently, so spending an additional day driving an hour has me contemplating other approaches to getting my Commander game on.
Which brings me to MTGO.
Playing Magic online is simply not the same experience as playing in person. Like most things, it has its plusses and minuses. On the plus side, there's no travel time. On the minus side, it's less social.
Magic Forever!
I've always liked the idea that as long as I keep my cards, and nothing crazy happens, I can play Magic with these same pieces of cardboard forever. It's like a book you can read over and over, except way better. For this reason, I have been reluctant to buy digital copies of cards on MTGO. When the service goes away, the cards go away. Goodbye sweet, sweet Magic.
That doesn't mean that I have no digital cards. I'm one of the early adopters of the platform. And, the cards I bought all those many years ago are still right there, in my digital collection. But, I haven't spent nearly as much money or time on MTGO as I have on MTG. Plus, I do like my signed, foreign, altered, cards. There's not so much of that on MTGO.
The card economics between MTGO and MTG are worth some study. Since these are digital goods, there is no shipping cost to move them around. This means that sellers can provide cards for $0.03 each and still come out ahead. The bot system for selling cards is a little wacky, but it works. You can get just about any card you want, any time of day, sometimes for nothing.
That's right. Nothing.
There are several bots out there that give away cards as a promotion and a way to increase awareness for the cards they do sell. A good portion of my collection was acquired this way. You might be surprised how good the "free" cards actually are, especially for Commander. Just picked up a copy of Crystal Ball from a bot for free. I love me some Crystal Ball.
Most of the rares, especially the Legendary ones you would want as your Commander, are available for about $0.05 each. I just bought almost all of the three-color legendary dragons and a bunch of other eligible Commanders for less than $1, total. Plenty of deck-building potential for such a small amount of money. Plus, you can use the same card in more than one deck without having to fuss with desleeving and resleeving, sorting your cards to find that card you know for sure is in this box somewhere, and other time-consuming activities.
Because I don't like the idea of spending real money on digital goods, it's helpful if I think of it as a subscription for $16 per month. It's what I was spending on gas anyway, so I'm in the same boat financially. And from what I've seen, I'm going to rapidly run out of cards I want to buy if I plunk down $16 per month. With a few notable exceptions, like standard-legal planeswalkers, almost every card I want is less than $1 and most are closer to $0.05. Cards like Command Tower and Temple of the False God really are $0.05 each.
It's like Christmas!
Other than a less-social interaction online, another downside to playing on MTGO is the games are considerably more tedious. If you want to be on the ball, making technical plays, you end up having to acknowledge and pass priority all the damn time. The good part of this is that you can't be rushed, can't miss triggers, and there is no calling for a judge to figure out the crazy interaction you just blundered into. The game doesn't let people roll over you. They can disconnect and leave you sitting there, but that's about it.
The few games I've tried in the past week have been solid. There were no pedal-to-the-metal combo decks. It was interactive and fun. When I played the Singleton format on there years ago (before Commander was a thing), it was all overpowered decks. Not fun. Maybe the people who moved onto Commander got that out of their systems. Or, maybe I just got lucky. Time will tell.
I'm pumped about the possibility of quickly and easily playing a huge range of decks online. Being able to rapidly build new decks and new ideas takes the guesswork out of finding cards in your collection, sorting them, shuffling, self-testing, and whatever other voodoo you do when you brew. It doesn't quite have that hands-on feel, but I find that shuffling a deck of real cards while I think is similarly satisfying.
It also not quite as gut-wrenching to go into a pod on MTGO with an untested deck. When I would do it in real life, it was a real letdown if the deck didn't perform. It often ended up being my one chance to play all week. Not drawing lands is not a good way to spend a couple of hours. This promotes stale deckbuilding since going with what you know means you have some comfort that it will work.
I'm not saying that I will never play in person at my FLGS. I'm saying that it's a long way to go for what's turned into an explosion of powerful decks all trying to grab $5 of store credit. I long ago tuned all my Commander decks to this environment and somewhere along the way moved far, far from what the format is really all about. I'm hoping to recapture some of that again online.
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