While my experiences with MTGO have been solely around the Planeswalker format, it doesn't mean that's all there is. While this statement may seem obvious, when I actually started to look over the formats available, the list I could spill here is far too extensive.

But every journey begins with first steps, this one being no different.

Getting cards that can be played outside of Planeswalker isn't the clearest of processes. While there are preconstructed products and booster packs, there are also bundled packs and tickets, the latter leading to the market of singles purchases.

Which is where I'll be heading.

Digital Sifting

The Classifieds are a strange place. As a complete newbie looking in on a well-established system, I was a bit apprehensive about jumping in. However, there are a few easy things to do right off the bat.

The first is searching up the bots that will allow you to take free cards. Really, just like a common bin or older player donation, riffling through piles of bulk commons to dig up a few treasures is always useful when you're starting with so little.

The Magic Online interface permits up to seventy-five cards per transaction and, therefore, the wells of free cards will give you just seventy-five. This is up from thirty-two a few years ago (when I did the exact same thing), and some of the collections reach back quite a bit thanks to the dealers taking in vast quantities of stock over time.

Now, getting free cards didn't turn out as sexy as I had hoped, but I was able to muster up quite a combination of items. The first thing I did when I wanted to trade was to wait. Users, even bots, can only allow one other user to trade at a time. That is, I had to wait to initiate trade until the bot was open.

Once into the trading interface, I had no issues; it's exactly the same as the Collection interface.

You can right-click on a card to select adding one, four, ten, or thirty-two of it to the trade. In most cases, I selected four, but I also grabbed plenty of singletons (see below). Once you fill your bin up (as you can see I did in the example above) you hit the "Confirm Trade" button at the top, then again on the following screen after reviewing the trade.

This should protect you from any "Oops!" moments. Review your trade!

In order to maximize my approach, the first thing I did was set the overall filter to “Standard” as you would in Deck Editor or Collection. This ensured that the only cards I saw were Standard-legal and that I could focus on anything that would be useful for casual Standard first. This worked out nicely, as I was able to snag playsets of several potentially useful cards:

• Arrest, Pacifism

• Copper Myr, Silver Myr, Gold Myr, and Leaden Myr

• Disperse

• Gravedigger

• Naturalize

Not terribly exciting, but many can serve as utility or removal. "Generally handy" is much better than "narrowly useful," and it wasn't all I was after. Knowing that someday I'd likely get into Commander, I took the time to grab some singletons that I've found very useful:

• Boros Signet, Sol Grail, Terrarion, Ur-Golem's Eye

• Syphon Mind

• Drift of Phantasms, Gaseous Form, Train of Thought

• Borderland Ranger, Civic Wayfinder, Farseek, Deconstruct, Nantuko Vigilante, Reclaim, Three Visits, Tranquility, Traproot Kami, Wood Elves, Rampant Growth

• Pyromatics

• Temporal Isolation

And with the idea of Pauper Deck Challenge on the horizon (one of the easiest competitive formats to get into), I snapped up playsets of a few other choice cards:

• Boomerang, Eye of Nowhere, Reach Through Mists

• Dead // Gone, Goblin Shortcutter

And with a few extra picks, I grabbed some Ally creatures to potentially play with:

• Stonework Puma

• Tuktuk Grunts

My goal wasn't to be able to build an all-powerful deck from nothing, but instead to pick up a few things that seemed nice. Since I didn't have a firm plan, I felt free to experiment and find what was out there.

Which brings me to my two tickets.

Avatar Hunt

I recently had the privilege to try out Momir Basic, the completely basic-land-laden decks using the Momir Vig, Simic Visionary Vanguard avatar, and I loved it. The combination of randomness and combat strategy was refreshingly different (if entirely inconsistent). It's a "once and done" up-front cost of $10 for the avatar through the online store.

While I'm willing to pony up for it, there's something beyond Momir Basic that can be explored: MoJhoSto, the format Robby wrote about not too long ago. You can get the rundown on it there, but, in a very general summary, you get even more random stuff of an even greater variety than creatures.

It didn't take too long to track down the two avatars I'd need in addition to Momir. The problem was that it came up to a grand total of $0.23. That's right, each one needed was just fractions of a ticket. So what is a player to do?

There were two strange things I found during the process:

1. Without the ability to list a price before I queue it up into the trade, I found it impossible to get to an even ticket total.

2. Some bots kick you out for just taking "too much" time.

3. While I love the fact that clever people found ways to work within the system in place, leaving 0.03 behind after finding what I wanted was disappointing.

Slowly building up both staples, like Lightning Bolt and Wayfarer's Bauble, and Commander tools, aiming for mono-Green with Kodama's Reach, is still the order of the day. However, I'd have parted with another ticket had I been allowed to finish my trade with one bot.

I had reached the 0.955 threshold when I was unceremoniously dumped out of the trade. I wasn't jerking around, just browsing; I had an entire stream of cards selects, commons, and uncommons of both the Standard and Commander variety, and I lost it.

And that bot lost my ticket.

Sure, I could jump back in and move a little more swiftly to snap up everything I wanted, but with sale ethics like that, I'd rather pass. Just for funsies, I waited to see if it was trading again right away.

Nope.

After a few minutes (writing and other stuff in the meantime) of checking, it still hadn't engaged another trader. I don't know why, specifically, the timeout feature was implemented like that. Other bots would reset the timeout if I was actually trading: pulling cards, checking prices, and generally behaving like a trader. I kinda wish I had been able to finish out that trade, as stopping and leaving half of my trade credit to just try and jump in and finish it off doesn't seem like the safest plan.

Let's just swap as close to full value—my ticket for your cards—and keep it at that.

And after all that mucking through online card bots, I finally settled in to do my favorite activity: crack sealed product.

This Is Complete Awesomeness

Since I had a Magic 2011 booster pack sitting around, I gave it a tear:

Mitotic Slime and Mind Control! Two Commander cards in a pack seemed like a fine pull, except for the fact that I'm sure I could have converted the pack into both of those cards along with a few more I wanted.

But, hey, it was still a pack I liked!

Then, with a heavy heart, I headed to the store to pick up my Momir Basic Event Deck. Momir avatar acquired!

And here's where I'll end, like so many weeks before, with a call for direction. What do you want to see next:

• Momir or MoJhoSto action?

• Tickets sunk into a mono-Green Commander creation?

• Taking a preconstructed deck, like The Adventurers, and tuning it up a level?

• Something else entirely, like building a Pauper Deck Challenge deck?

From as casual as it gets to as close to competitive as I'm willing to go, I'm willing to take the hit and be your cost-free exploration.

It only gets deeper from here!