u/Hot-Swordfish-7608

Hiya! I’ve been thinking a lot recently about the TCG market and when to optimally buy cards. I wanted to extend this and ask you all what are some weird things about your main game!

For this let me use an example of a game I played for a long time Cardfight Vanguard. The market for vanguard is very strange where cards are known to be good in Japan before we get them in English. Cards are also revealed months in advanced before we can get our hands on them. This makes the market really fluctuate older cards a lot. It mostly boils down to:

- FOMO culture, Vanguard doesn’t often reprint cards so after a set is out of print cards will only go up if they become good/relevant. The moment something is revealed buyouts of older cards happen frequently. The earlier you buy, the better off you will be typically.

- non meta decks have cheaper cores. You can often build decent decks that won’t win events for $100 or less. Once you start including generics that’s when prices for a bad deck can sky rocket (there are some generics that are $50+ atm and there usually is some at any given time).

- Upkeep cost can be quite high since they slowly stop supporting decks enough to where they soft rotate. You will generally have to buy a new deck and generics at some point. In exchange though, the upfront cost isn’t horrible. Once you get your staples you can play without the generics for most decks. Often, older generics are slightly worse than newer ones and can be serviceable instead.

Overall, buy earlier or waaay later. Budget options can be a problem, but be worked around. If you focus on one nation, you spend less on staples/generics so building new decks is cheaper.

What are some things for your TCG? High buy in/low upkeep? How does power creep play a role? Do buyouts happen? Is there enough product for demand? When building meta what should you expect to spend? I’m really interested!

Hello! I’m pretty new to commander, been playing consistently for a little over a year now. I mainly play in bracket 2/3. cEDH is not my cup of tea.

I’m a competitive player in other TCGs I play, but enjoy commander as a casual way to kill time with friends. However I knew from the jump seeing posts online that I would struggle with building fun decks to face. I’m primarily a Johnny player and a chronic brewer where I like winning, but doing it with specific interactions I enjoy instead of the meta. Because of this and the expectations/rule 0 of the format, I’ve struggled a lot with fine tuning decks to my desired power level that feel satisfying to play as or against. I’m also someone who doesn’t like following the norm of a format, and in commander’s case I really don’t like the midrange slop we often see (ramp, card draw engine, commander, win cons). Battlecruiser esque decks are also not a fun play pattern because it forgoes the most attractive part about magic to me which is the interaction and the stack. Nothing against people playing them, just decks I don’t care to play myself.

So that’s all the ground work, what is actually my issue? Well a lot of times when I play TCGs I like thinking in terms of problems. “How can my deck deal with this problem, or this problem? How does my deck become the problem and demand answers?” This is something I constantly ask myself and due to the “rule 0” of casual commander, a lot of different answers to these problems are seen as unhealthy, unfun, pubstompy, etc., this can include theft, mill, stax, edicts, storm, so on. Now I know this isn’t the case everywhere but a lot of players (at least at my only locals in a 2 hour radius) see these and start complaining instead of asking “how do I deal with this?”.

Sub consciously this affects the decks I end up building, or I have an idea and stop working on it because it’s “too mean”. A recent example is [[savra, Queen of the golgari]]. I wanted to make her as an aggro deck that utilizes her edict ability to open up the board easier to hit through, and life gain to make sure I stand more of a chance to 1v3. Well okay how much do I want to embrace Savra? I could easily build an aristocrats route to repeat these sac triggers multiple times, well that’s too mean. Okay how about using cards like [[accursed marauder]] or [[plaguecrafter]] to make everyone double sac? Well that’s too mean. Okay how about focusing on black and green tokens and saving those to get both triggers? Well that’s too mean. Okay so Savra is probably too mean? But I want to use her where I can effectively use both sides in a fashion that other players at the table will want to play with me again. “Just change the commander to something else then.” Well no I want to use Savra.

My brain subconsciously keeps trying to fight between what I want to do and what is socially acceptable at the average pod. I know this is more of a me issue atm, but it has been really hard to find a balance with things I want to do that don’t just conform to making a midrange pile. Which makes it even worse since a lot of interactions I’m interested in are seen negatively by the wider community.

So I guess the questions are:

- How do you build a deck that genuinely feels different from the “normal” midrange way to play that feels satisfying for everyone?

- How can you incorporate “being mean” into a deck without it being obnoxious to play against?

Thanks for reading! I think this problem gets easier once I get a better grasp of power levels, but it’s put me in a lot of choice paralysis on what type of deck I want to build recently. I constantly make first drafts and move on to the next deck due to this.