Sixty-four is apparently a major number. This is my sixty-fifth article here at ManaNation, and to be honest, my creative juices have been running on fumes. I don't know why, but life has been unkind to my Magic time. As a result, I haven't been able to play, write, or read about Magic at all. Then, in what time I do get, MTGO calls to me. As a result, my friends at my local card store call me "Stranger Danger," and Trick thinks one of his writers has fallen off the grid.

Apparently #64 just tapped me out. I actually considered going into a Brett Favre type of retirement. When I notified Trick of my thoughts, he told me that I couldn't retire. So instead, I'm going to become an "irregular." What's an irregular? A regular writer is a person who will post consistently at the same time. So I'm just the opposite: a random poster. I was a weekly for the longest time. Every Friday right next to T:apped and This Week in Magic. For a time, it was awesome being next to such entertaining and helpful entries. But now, time just isn't there for writing. Honestly, the only reason I have time to write today is because of this blizzard. Multiple snow days are a teaching nightmare, but a time-strapped Magic player's dream.

How Far Can I Go with This?

Those of you who read my articles know that I was an MTGO virgin this past year. I was cautious, yet curious at first. Now I'm a full-blown fan. I actually like it better than real-life Magic. I admit that I dwell in the Casual Room and rarely play with the big boys. For me, Magic isn't about trying to win every game. It's about creating a deck and enjoying your creation. Even at this low level of competition, the online game is enjoyable and the convenience of picking up a game at the drop of a hat is golden.

When I do have time to sit and play, I'm a draft junkie. A few months ago, I wrote about drafting mono-Blue mill in M11 drafts. I had quite a run and was able to gain many packs. At that time, I talked about "going infinite." I got a couple of negative responses to this; people thought that I meant you could go infinite with my draft strategy. That was not what I was saying! Going infinite in draft is nearly impossible and requires more luck than skill. However, drafting is an excellent way to gather cards and build a collection. At the same time I wrote that article, I used my mono-Blue stratagem to gain a bundle of M11 cards. In fact, I gained so many that I'm now just three cards short of set redemption.

For those who are unfamiliar with MTGO, a player can convert digital cards to real-life cards if he or she has one of every card in a set. If you have at least one of each card in a set, you can pay $5 dollars and Wizards will take the digitals out of your collection and send the real-life cards directly to you. As a person, the whole collector concept appeals to me, so set redemption has become my main goal.

The problem was, I didn't track how much I had spent getting all of those cards. So when Scars came out, I quit my M11 hunt and focused on Scars. I had planned on diligently tracking my every move and seeing how much cash I eventually spent. I flipped to a blank page in my notebook and titled it "Scars Expenditures." Currently, there is only one entry: $64 – 2 release starter sets. I can't remember the actual title Wizards gave to these packages, but they come with 8 tickets and six packs with a bonus promo card. I bought two. I haven't spent money on anything else yet. Of course, I've bought a few singles to build deck ideas with, but in those cases, I have been careful to have one more copy than the number I use in the decks. I wouldn't want to attain my goal and not be able to play a favorite deck.

So what did I do with my $64 worth of goodies? I'll save that for later, but for now, let's just say I'm smiling.

Stage One – Bulking Up

Remember, my goal was to get set redemption. For that, I needed to get cards. Enter the draft. I didn't waste my time with sealed at all. You see, in a draft, 360 cards will touch your digital fingers, while a sealed pool will only yield you what you hit in your packs. Sure, you get to keep twice as many cards in sealed, but you have no choices as to what you get. If you keep your eyes open and a good mental list of cards you need, each early draft can fill 10 percent of your missing list.

I'm sure that many of you agree that draft is better than sealed for this purpose. But I'm sure that most of you will disagree with my next statement. Card numbers are more important to get than expensive rares. What I mean by that is that if I hit a chase rare in the early stages of set-collecting, I will sell it for tickets/packs so I can enter more drafts. In my second draft of Scars, I opened into a Koth. That was an easy pick, but once the draft was completed, I went to the bots to see what I could get for him. If you remember, Koth was a mega-value card early. I actually got more tix from that first Koth than I would need to buy him now.

On a side note, Cardhoarder.com is still the superior buyer/seller in my mind. I wish they would make a bot that you can trade with instead of selling to one then buying from the other. Cardhoarderbuybot gave me the best prices for cards every time I wanted to sell.

So, in the early stages, that's what I did. Drafted with a mind for what cards I was missing. I sold any card that would grab me a couple of tix. Then I drafted some more. As justification, I figured that the first Koth I sold actually gained me three drafts' worth of cards. Leaving one box on my checklist open to fill at least ten others is a good switch if your goal is redemption. Also, three drafts of fun for free is a bonus.

Stage Two – Finding Your Level

There are three levels of draft you can enter: 8-4 drafts only pay packs to the final two players; 4-3-2-2 drafts pay packs to the top four, but you have to win to stay in; and Swiss drafts have you play three rounds no matter what and pay a pack for each win. My appraisal of these types of drafts are as follows.

The 8-4 drafts are for the elite player or a rare-drafter. The best players go here, because if you score, you gain a significant number of packs. Someone who is just out for rares will also go here since rares are often passed in lieu of more playable cards. Toward the end of my hunt, I found myself more and more inclined to go 8-4. The one time I did, I scored ten rares but netted no packs. A lucky hit of a foil Elspeth kept my engine going. But I realized that I didn't have the skill to sustain 8-4 drafts for long.

The 4-3-2-2 drafts are probably the best route once you have the bulk of a set completed. The occasional win will net you more packs than it cost to play, and you can net a decent number of rares as most players will pass if a card isn't playable in their deck, regardless of rarity. In my own tale of Scars drafting, I hit probably five or six 4-3-2-2 drafts. My main issue was the couple of times I either grabbed rares that I needed and didn't win the first round, or actually had a very sound deck but ran into the eventual winner in the first round. The main reason I avoid the 4-3-2-2 drafts is that I am rarely the overall winner. My average winnings are at least a half a pack lower than they are in the Swiss.

The Swiss is where I prefer to play. Rares are harder to come by, but packs are significantly easier to win. Ultimately, winning packs is vital to continued drafting. I can't tell you the number of times that I was able to draft, lose the first round, and still win two packs, which is impossible in the 4-3-2-2 or 8-4 drafts. Sure, I can't get any more packs than I started with, but I rarely win the whole thing anyway. I'm willing to admit that I don't have the skills for the 8-4 drafts, and I can't stand relying luck as much as 4-3-2-2 drafts require, so it's the Swiss for me.

I would recommend every player should find a groove and stay there.

Stage Three – Diversify

When drafting M11, I made a vital mistake. I believed in mono-Blue mill and drafted it exclusively. I feel that I won more packs with this strategy than I would have anyway, but if you look at my binder now, you'll see more than a set of Jace's Erasure. In fact, I have so many Tome Scours in real life that I would let my kids put them on the spokes of their bikes.

So, when drafting Scars, I forced myself to play multiple avenues. I drafted Infect, went Metalcraft, did a White Weenie Equip, Myr's R Us, and all the classics. Fortune has it that Scars actually has many playable strategies, and each pulls a multitude of cards. By keeping my options open, I found my binder growing and my checklist shrinking.

Stage Four – All That Glitters

At this point, I discovered that you should always grab foils. Just as in real life, foil or premium cards have more value than their regular counterparts. Foil commons can be sold to bots for a pretty penny. Gather enough of these pennies, and you can gain a free draft. It does take a lot of these pennies to make my average restart cost, but the foils are worth it.

Foils have more value in bot trading than in human trading unless they're chase rares. One of the big breaks I got on my "journey to redemption" was a foil Elspeth. Unless you're collecting an entire set of foils, redemption won't work, so I marked her up for trade, planning on visiting a bot when I needed tix again. While trading another player, he noticed the shiny lady and offered ten packs for her. I didn't ask—he offered! I mentioned that this was like paying 40 tickets for a $20 card. He said he had extra packs from other winnings, so he didn't mind. By the way, most bots will buy packs for about 3 tickets each. So he could have sold those packs to a bot for 30 tickets and bought the card for 20. Some people just don't like to deal with bots. I personally like dealing with people more, but it requires more effort.

Stage Five – Working with People

After a while, my tix and packs grew thin, but my binder got thick. There were still tons of rares that I didn't have. It's not that I didn't want them; I just never saw them. Sure, I was missing things like Skithiryx, but I was also missing things no one wanted, like Cerebral Eruption and Dissipation Field. That's when I started working with humans. Nearly every casual game I played, I asked, "Wanna trade?" Many players say no, but occasionally you meet someone nice. I always open my binder up to others. Sometimes you can't make a deal, but it's still the cool thing to do.

Even if the other player said no, I would often type, "Cool, I always ask since I'm trying to collect the whole Scars set. I'm X cards away right now." If they knew I was trading for a purpose and not just trying to rip off noobs, many people would trade or at least ask what I was looking for. I have many players to thank for where I am now in my quest for redemption. One player actually gave me some commons and uncommons for free just to help.

The best part of human trading is that we all have immediate access to the cards' value. I always have Cardhoarder.com up in another window and will type a card in to see its relative value. Though I hate it when people do this in real life, it seems the norm while online. As a result, trades are almost always equal in value. I might give up three rares for one mythic, but the costs to buy those cards from a site are about the same. To me, the value of that missing slot makes the one card worth more and the extras worth less. But other than that, all things are pretty much equal. This is another reason you should bulk up as I described earlier. Extra rares could eventually become a Hand of the Praetors or an Indomitable Archangel that you never even sniffed during a draft.

The $64 Question

So, I'm sure you're asking: How much did I get for my $64? With a couple of final drafts during these snow days, your hero currently sits with 1 ticket, one pack, and 760 Scars of Mirrodin (non-foil) cards. In those cards, I am missing only four mythics: Mox Opal, Venser, the Sojourner, Koth of the Hammer, and Skithiryx, the Blight Dragon.

I went to see how much these would cost me if I just bought them. Cardhoarder.com shows them at a total of 47.40 in tickets. I have 0.59 credit at Cardhoarder, 1 ticket, and a pack I could sell, for a total of 4.59 tickets. So, when all is said and done, I could buy the cards and give Wizards $5 for redemption, and spend a total of $111.81 for the complete set of Scars. Coolstuffinc.com (the best paper-card store online) shows that I could buy the whole set from them for $129.99. That's a savings of a whopping $18.18. That isn't very much in savings. The smile I had earlier is much smaller now. I could swear that the entire set was selling for over $200 at one time.

My Thoughts

So I guess the real question is, was it worth it? Notice that I said I could buy the rest. I think I'm going to get more packs and tickets, and try to draft and trade my whole way there. It may end up costing more this way than straight purchase, but I don't mind since it'll be a major accomplishment. Of course, I'll always be looking for a trade. So if you want to trade with me, I'm MtgXman when I'm online. Right now, I figure that I can use the $47.40 for packs and tix and have at least six or seven drafts left with my current averages. If I hit a money card that I already have, like Elspeth, that number gets higher. The probability of finding one of four mythics that I'm missing in approximately twenty-one packs is pretty low. Still, it's the fun of going for it!

That'll be it for this Classroom. Remember, if someone asks you to trade, at least look at the binder!