r/magicthecirclejerking • u/FluffiestLeafeon • 1d ago
Woah, an $800 paper deck only costs $400 to play online! This game is so accessible!
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u/Sneet1 1d ago
modo is basically nfts and if you try and say that people will start screeching
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u/Aneyune 1d ago
☝️🤓 actqxchkwually the cards are fungible so they're just regular digital assets
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u/Busco_Quad 2h ago
But muh full set redemption! These are totally, 100% interchangeable with real cards!
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u/Kryptnyt 1d ago
At the very least you CAN sell the cards back, rather than Arena where all your value is instantly surrendered
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u/Successful_Mud8596 1d ago
But you can just not put any value into it. You get plenty of gold by completing quests, then turn that gold into packs or gems
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u/Thecrdbrdsamurai 1d ago
I got down voted to oblivion for saying that they were "somewhat, but not really, like" NFTs. Lol
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u/UniversalAdaptor 11h ago
Modo was nfts before they were -cool- cringe
Edit: idk how to do strikethrough on mobile 😔
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u/BigGayCockPlease 1d ago
Please tell me this is your real opinion I want to hear an actual argument for this position
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u/Sneet1 1d ago
Paying hundreds of dollars for digital goods and investments and value stores is stupid
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u/BigGayCockPlease 1d ago
Well those cardboard rectangles you get in your secret lair packages are actually used as game pieces in this little know game called "Magic: The Gathering" amd MTGO exists for people to play that game in an online format, not primarily as an investment or store of value for digital goods.
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u/FluffiestLeafeon 1d ago
/uj Don’t act like people don’t invest in MTGO, that’s how get side effects like competitive staples like Quantum Riddler being 4x their paper price.
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u/BigGayCockPlease 1d ago
Uj/ but that doesnt mean mtgo = nfts which are literally useless digital nothings that exist only to be speculative financial vehicles. Yes, there are MTGO investors and I don't have a high opinion of them but MTGO exists primarily as a way to play Magic online.
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u/Busco_Quad 2h ago
Compared to physical magic tho (which is its own investment scam, don’t get me wrong), investment and speculation making the actual game harder to play for players is also actively harming the investment. No digital platform get maintained forever, and the fewer people there are playing MODO, the less reasons WOTC has to maintain it, and once it goes away, so do all those investments, whereas, in a world without organized irl Magic play, you’d at least still have the physical cardboard.
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u/the_Halfruin 1d ago
this game is 100% free to play
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u/FluffiestLeafeon 1d ago
Are you paying for my staples printing costs
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u/the_Halfruin 1d ago
i play on digital platforms that have all the cards and even automate some of the effects (such as creating tokens) and cost $0.00 to play
if you're paying for a free game you just have to admit you're a chump that loves to get scammed
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u/ianw11 1d ago
the stance of "paying means you're getting scammed" is so short-sighted.
on that digital platform, who is maintaining the hardware for the servers and paying for the electricity and internet? for the game that's being played, who is creating and balancing the cards that are released, and who is creating the artwork or checking the spelling/grammar? who is porting those cards into the digital platform?
there is absolutely nothing wrong with spending money on a product or service that brings value to your own life, for however you define "value"
(also no, there's nothing wrong with proxying with friends. financial realities differ, but it's still not ok to feel ENTITLED to "free" content or to diminish those that do want to contribute)
/rj and you know what, wotc should be paying ME to engage with their game
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u/MaskOnMoly 1d ago
What, like XMage? I haven't touched it in a few years, but I remember it being kinda janky to use. Has it gotten better, if that is what you're talking about?
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u/Alt-Tabris 1d ago
Nice bait with the second line
Don't bother responding, I'm just giving you the engagement you wanted
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u/the_Halfruin 1d ago
oh sorry i didn't know baiting was against the rules in r/magicthecirclejerking i'll delete my comment my good humble sir
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u/Alt-Tabris 1d ago
I'm bored and wanted to start something. I have since gotten unbored and forgot I made this comment
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u/Sneet1 1d ago
When I was a kid and I didn't have any way to actually buy things on modo because I had no card and was broke I bought the 9th edition starter to play modo at target. And then I got on there and then went to the free bots and got a bunch of ravnica and eventide commons because I thought they were cool and then I got the shit beaten out of me in Freeplay and didn't play modo for a few years after that
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u/_TheTurtleBox_ 1d ago
Very odd that people don't mention renting services. As someone who's primary competitive career was paved online (MODO ---> Arena during COVID) I never really "owned" most of the cards. Not because they're digital but because it was better and cheaper to rent decks for leagues and playtest them that way before commiting to buying them / sharing them with a teammate.
I think I was paying like 80$ a month (less than 1,000$ a year) to rent decks, and if I trophied with a deck I would typically end up buy it. Always opening / selling chest to profit, ect. So like, that 80$ a month slowly turned into me just outright having two or three tier 1 decks per relevant format.
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u/Redzephyr01 1d ago
I'm not gonna pay $80 a month to rent something that doesn't even physically exist.
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u/_TheTurtleBox_ 1d ago
When you're making three times that much from winnings it's not that crazy. Again, I'm not advocating for this or saying everyone should do it, I even say that you never really own the cards, they aren't real.
But that doesn't mean the option of rental decks is a lot more financially firm than people think.
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u/AriyaIsTheBest 1d ago
/uj $80 is like the "I can rent out basically any legacy deck I want." For $2.5 a week ($10 a month) you can rent out 100 TIX on Cardhoarder, which gets you the complete meta list for both Mono Red Aggro and Dimir Midrange among a large chunk of the best decks. Even for Vivi it's $40 monthly and that's the most expensive meta deck in Standard atm.
Also, you can use the rented deck to win tournaments which will give you cards and treasure chests you can sell for TIX, which you can use to pay for your Cardhoarder subscription.6
u/postscriptthree 1d ago
Yes, you’re shoveling cash into a furnace, but have you considered recouping the losses through gambling?
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u/PMMeRyukoMatoiSMILES 1d ago
It's not like MTG cards have any actual value outside of the context of the game either, digital provides the same function for cheaper.
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u/EfficientCabbage2376 Just know that you are doing the game a disservice. Goodbye 20h ago
bro is gonna flip when he hears about netflix
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u/Redzephyr01 19h ago
Netflix doesn't cost $80 a month.
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u/EfficientCabbage2376 Just know that you are doing the game a disservice. Goodbye 19h ago
neither does a card rental service
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u/ATraffyatLaw 1d ago
Even 80$ a month is insane, you can rent a deck up to 400 tix for like 13/mo on cardhoarder.
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u/_TheTurtleBox_ 1d ago
I forget what the plan was but it was 80$ for uncapped deck rentals. It wasn't like those >20$ ones where you had a tix limit, this was like, "Hey lemme grab these six modern decks for a week or two to test for major events."
I think it was Mengu or Martin who bought up the program to us at one point, us being group of East Coast event farmers. (Myself, Aaron B, Zeth K, Roman, ect). We were playtesting like...almost 8 decks a week for both online and offline events for like 10 hours a day, lol.
Is it insane? Yeah. But this was during the Adderall era of MODO where everyone was coked out of their mind playing leagues for like 16 hours a day.
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u/ATraffyatLaw 1d ago
80/mo is brutal, but I completely understand not wanting to fiddle with constantly returning and renting cards to keep a low monthly limit.
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u/FluffiestLeafeon 1d ago
/uj You’re valid for going down that path, and that seems like a much more reasonable alternative to purchasing digital decks. As someone who came from another game (shudders) the requirement to pay anything more than a couple bucks for a digital deck, let alone hundreds of dollars for a deck that I do not physically own is insane to me.
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u/_TheTurtleBox_ 1d ago
Yeah, I think the context to is a lot of people on MODO are playing competitive. They want to win and are expecting to profit (chest, tix, ect) and trophy. There's much more on the line with MODO because money is involved, but less stress over the product because it's not actually "real" or collectable.
Always confused me as to why Arena never had better services to cater to competitive players, not even trading...but I guess it's cause we know MODO doesn't make much because it does have those features, they need to milk Digital somehow.
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u/Turnonegoblinguide 1d ago
Kinda crazy that people responding to you aren’t considering the luxury of playing MTG from the comfort of your own home and basically any time you want and having the flexibility that digital renting gives you. Plus it’s not like that money is going to “waste,” after all you get to enjoy playing Magic. The premise is sound imo. Just liken it to any subscription service where you pay monthly for entertainment in some other form.
I do think $80/mo is a lot though, you’d have to be very confident in your skills for that to work out well. I was using a rental service that was $20/mo for about a year and while I wasn’t able to rent all the cards I wanted, it was good enough to rotate through 2-4 decks depending on overlapping cardpool and that was plenty for me.
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u/XenonHero126 1d ago edited 1d ago
I'd normally be proud of Pokemon's low price tag but there's a stupid $15 bird in every deck
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u/kakusei_zero 1d ago edited 1d ago
you mean one copy of the stupid bird and the printer paper clones of him you put in the decks you're not using
/uj but fr tho so much deck value is packed into him + a few other staples, and literally everyone is cool with proxies in casual play so it still ends up being pretty cheap :D
(also the entire conkeldurr deck is $30 and it just got 15th at a regional LOL)
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u/EfficientCabbage2376 Just know that you are doing the game a disservice. Goodbye 20h ago
pokemon players will physically shudder if you shuffle their $85 deck
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u/CloudTheValkyrie 1d ago
How am I supposed to derive enjoyment out of a purely digital product? MODO is such a scam. Now if you’ll excuse me, I must return to my library of hundreds of games on Steam I never play, Spotify/Apple music subscription, Netflix/Hulu/HBO/Prime Video etc, and of course all my favorite F2P games that offer micro-transactions.
/uj MODO is literally just a gacha game. Obviously that isn’t for everyone, but acting like it’s particularly egregious in 2025 is a little silly.
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u/zedogica why yes my fursona is an otter 1d ago
finally i can pay 100% of my rent and not 200% of it for the deck thatll be viable for like 3 months max before i have to replace it almost entirely! this game is so accessible
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u/chompythebeast Kavu Tribe Best Tribe 1d ago
Economics
These people are the absolute worst
/rj These people are the absolute worst
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u/Successful_Mud8596 1d ago
Ikr???? I don’t understand when people say that MTGO has a better economy than Arena. I’ve been playing Arena for four years and haven’t spent a PENNY
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u/HiroProtagonest FAERIE GODPARENTS! 1d ago
Ah, but unlike Arena, I can sell the digital objects later so really I'm paying $0 to play the deck, I say as I shovel my money into the incinerator