Magic is probably my fav board game, too bad that you have to put in so much time and money to have fun and the value of cards deprecates so quickly. I tried Hearthstone to scratch that itch but that game is just gutted MtG.
Another unlisted benefit of draft vs. pauper is that almost any store selling Magic cards will have a weekly draft.
That's exactly why I stopped playing it. It seemed almost rigged against poor people when I was in school. The guys with more money always had better stuff where we had to use cheap tactics to win. :)
My recommendation was doing it on computer with people choosing whatever cards they wanted. Eliminates that problem. Not as fun as holding the cards or being in person, though. Smartphones today give us another option where we could play it in person using our smartphones with two views: our cards and the board. Maybe even an extension where someone's tablet or monitor subscribes to the board people are playing on to have a constant, large display. What you think?
I still have cards from the 90s, I don't think I've bought anything in 20 years. Still fun game to play on board game night with friends.
What makes it fun is that you're playing against people with the same size card pool as you. Draft is cheaper ($7.80) but it's over and done in a few hours.
I wouldn't.
> spending under $7.50 per hour
That's absurdly expensive.
Flying a plane is $500 an hour.
Golfing a good course is $100 an hour.
Waterskiing can be $50 an hour.
Skiing is $20?? An hour.
Recreation is serious stuff in the US.
(Lots of citations with a Google search.)
Ha, I don't play with the Alpha stuff as much anymore, most of the cards I play with ate Unlimited and the expansions around that time.
I have a Shivan Dragon signed by Richard Garfield that he told me not to take out of my deck so I still play with that. He told me the value of these cards were in how much I enjoy them...
I do have a deck made entirely out of black border Nether Shadows that someone gave me as a joke during a tour of the WotC office years and years ago... most of them are Alphas.
Also, where's a good place to sell? Online or in-person?
You occasionally get Standard decks in your price range making top 8, but almost never in Modern. It's really stretching it to call the budget Modern decks "competitive".
But I can also just print 6 cards per page from my black and white laser printer at a cost of up to 8¢ per page, or about 1.3¢ per resulting card (plus cutting them out with scissors). And, this doesn't require an upfront payment of $150+.
So no, I would not say the cost of just buying the product is lower.
The only sane options I can see are:
* Play limited formats
* Play casual with proxies
* Buy individual cards
Don't be fooled.
Its fun crushing decks that have cards that are worth 4x my hole deck.
You can have fun with magic without spending that much money.
Two, over the course of two decades, there are a /lot/ of good cheap common cards so you're doing it wrong if you have a 3-cost 3/3 in there.