My advice for starting out on MTGO EDH is try to avoid blue decks. There seems to be a massive (much more than IRL) prejudice towards blue. My Noyan Darr deck is far from threatening, definitely not optimized, but I have been focused as "the threat" on multiple occasions, including an all out attack on my empty board when another player had Solemn Sorin ready to ult.

That's not to say you shouldn't play blue at all, just be prepared to work some politics and try to get people on side early, jamming a counterspell in the first 4-5 turns might earn you enemies, and not just the person who's spell gets countered.

Over all it's been a good experience, MTGO has always had the advantage of being pick up an play any time and it can be very cheap. I played a shards draft last week and scored a sedris and a malefegor, so I'm going to see about building grixis zombies, which should be good with the new set coming out.

I'm back playing, usually around the hour of this post.

Been some solid games so far.

I have a few of you added, but never see you online.

1:30 AM my time is usually when I'm asleep. Also I haven't played online in almost 4 years, I think.

Extract from Darkness became available online, though, so maybe I'll give it another go. I was so disappointed that they skipped that one when the first Conspiracy set came out; it was one of my absolute favorites from that whole set for this format. Garbage like Academy Elite, Plea for Power, and Dack Fayden got an online version but they skipped Extract from Darkness; boy was I upset.

I can see how both those statements would be a issue for us playing together.

Well, I'm on nights right now, so if I get on MTGO, it's my one day a week off (which is rarely the same day two weeks in a row) and usually around 0000 EDT / 0400Z (everyone can time convert to/from Z/GMT, right?). Though, on a day off I can probably plan to meet any time btwn 0200-1500Z if we set something up. If I am going to try to get on before or after a work day, then it will generally only be for an hour or so (trade, playtest) and btwn 0100-0300Z and 1300-1500Z.

All that is this month, my work hours will likely change in Sep.

If anyone wants to meet up on MTGO, today is my night off this week, and I think next week is Either Tue or Wed.

I had an account in 2011, and decided to look and see what I had, I have an Ezuri, Renegade Leader so figured why not build that? I only have about 10 cards that are even decent for an Elves deck. So... I gotta trade or something I guess.

Let me know when you are on and I can give you a bunch of stuff as a starting base.

Sweet, I should be on in 30 minutes or so. Username is wooten22

@inkeyes22
Thank for meeting up and I hope that deck works out for you (or you have enough goodies to make more than one option).

Thanks a ton! I have started building another deck (Jarad tribal elves) so next time I will have more than just a lot of 1/1s, lol!

Hey, MRHBlue - nice meeting up with you. Maybe we can test that Talrand deck when you get it together...

All it would take to get me to play MTGO would be for WOTC to graciously duplicate every single paper card I already paid dearly for into the online medium. Been playing since The Dark/Fallen Empires, and have a considerable investment. I and am not about to pay (for the electronic version) all over again.

I have been doing MTGO for a little bit now (again) and I have noticed that people will quit really fast. I have had things come up too and had to run unexpectedly as well so I understand it happens on occasion. The reason I even bring it up is it has happened 3 games in a row this morning. I go t1 Inquisition of Kozilek, quit. T2 (different game) I drop a Pentad Prism, quit.
Third game got to t3, but he drops Rhystic Study, my t3 I drop Commander's Sphere letting him draw, and he quits.

I mean, none of those are The Locust God with 4 Wheels, or Gaddock Teeg level ragequit, right?

IoK is a break of Gent's rules (slang from MTGO V2, 2.5 and 3) and I would expect people to drop with that on T1. The other two examples could just be:
1) personal dislikes
2) double tables - Some idiots will join more than one queue, and plan to drop whichever doesn't fire first - except when two or more fire almost the same time.
3) MTGO issues - I've noticed more crashes in the last 2 weeks or so, I usually send a GG in PM, cause if they were client dropped it will tell me they are no longer logged in.

All these are reasons I am trying to build the clan (when it works) so more "known" players overlap and we can get games of players we know will actually play.



Only when Jhoira has an Eldrazi exiled and about to enter next turn, I'm sure...

I tried MTGO a couple of years ago and had four things against it. I'll go through those. Information in here might be slightly out of date since I haven't revisited MTGO recently.

(Heads up, after I wrote this, I realised it was also at least half motivated by wanting to vent about what MTGO did and what I feel is wrong with their design decisions. So, it'll read as a bit ranty. My frustration is not, however, directed at you.)

First: The interface felt genuinely unpleasant to use. Unlike Duels of the Planeswalkers it had no atmosphere to it, and it was confusing and burdensome and clunky to interact with the interface. (Googling shows me they might have improved the atmosphere, but not the rest.)

Second: The primary method of gameplay I'm met with is tournaments, not casual gameplay groups (unless I create those outside of any of MTGO's mechanisms). I play the game for fun and to relax and socialise; competitive tournaments are a rarity and not my main mode of play. This is a mismatch to what I'm looking for.

Third: No faces or verbal chat, and in-game chat was clunky (see first point). I like being able to relate to the people as not just PC opponents but real individuals with lives and personalities, so that I can relax and chitchat with them. This has its time and place though; in tournaments that could just have intimidation and trash-talk on the other end and I'd probably play with this feature disabled. (If I'm playing casually with real life friends, I can at least use Skype though, so this one isn't entirely a deal-breaker -- it's just something I feel MTGO ought to provide as an option.)

Fourth and the biggest deal-breaker: Wizards was stingy with MTGO. They're entering a market saturated by games like Hearthstone which will give away lots of cards in great numbers for no real life cash, ones which you can keep forever. You earn them as quest rewards, and you are given in-game currency merely for playing which you then buy digital booster packs with. All the booster packs I obtain in-game are just like any other bought with real money, and can equally contain exceptionally rare and powerful cards. It's a market full of generosity which doesn't ask for money, but if you like the game enough, it gives you the option of handing them real life money for in-game boosters -- and people will hand over the money because all the generosity makes them love the game enough they want to do that and support it.

Inside this market, this the treatment I was given by MTGO:

• I could buy an entry pack promising a huge chunk of cards to start me off for $15. Nice! This was why I joined at the time I did: a friend told me the entry packs were on special so now seemed like a good time for me to start. When I signed up and opened my pack, it was an enormous batch of commons without a single uncommon or rare among them, which meant I couldn't really make any sort of competitive deck without first obtaining more booster packs (which would each include 10+ commons anyway, so I'd already have all the commons I needed).
• If I wanted to play with others I had to buy and use tickets. I'll say that again: each time I wanted to participate in the gameplay, I had to spend a dollar. I can open up Hearthstone and hit a button and I'm away having fun; in MTGO I had to put a coin in the slot. That seriously detracted from my fun. "But winning tournaments gives you more tickets", says my friend, to me the person with only junk commons, when my friend themself with their competitive decks has to regularly buy tickets anyway because you can't win every tournament. I don't want to buy permission for each gameplay session of a video game I'm playing for fun, sorry.
• If I didn't want to spend a dollar, anything I got was "ghost" cards (or whatever the term was) which I didn't get to keep.

So they entered into a super-generous medium to use it to sell more booster packs. Here's what they could have done instead:

• Give me a bunch of decent useful cards to join with which I can make a semi-competitive deck.
• Make participation in gameplay, and tournaments, cost no real life money ever. (Not even "you get a limited number of free tickets" -- it shouldn't cost tickets, or anything, ever, to play.)
• Give me quests with rewards of cards and/or booster packs and/or in-game currency.
• Give me in-game currency for free with which I can purchase booster packs.
• Give me the option of giving them real money for booster packs.
• All freely obtained cards and booster packs are exactly just as good to me as booster packs (and cards in them) that were obtained with real money. (With the exception they can't be tied back to real-life rewards, such as how you can exchange an entire MTGO set for the real-life cards from that set, because that's fine.)

All of that would have drawn me in, given me opportunity to play, and earned good will with me which would have made me feel comfortable spending real life money on the game buying more boosters. I don't even play Hearthstone that much and I've invested about a hundred dollars in it. MTGO by comparison nickled and dimed me the whole way and asked me to pay money just to have a basic experience. That's so completely, utterly, entirely unacceptable in a digital card game I just turned and left and wrote off that $15 payment as a loss.

Sure, MTGO is a digital equivalent of a real life card game, but it's digital -- the monetisation models of a digital game doesn't have to correlate 1:1 to the monetisation models of a real physically printed game, because the sources of cost work wholly differently. They can give things away for free in a digital card game, and MTGO should be doing that.

---

If I ever hear they fix these things, and actually become generous in connection with any of their peer digital card games, I'll give MTGO a try. That's on Wizards though, not on you.

I'd really like to play MTG online, but I can't and won't with all of those reasons above.