r/TCG

So I’m pretty new to mtg, learned on Arena then bought a precon and am going to play my first game of commander tonight!

I want to build my collection and maybe try brewing a deck, but I don’t have a ton of money to spend on the hobby right now. One lgs near me has a box of bulk you can go through and buy cards for $0.25 each, and a different binder of cards you can go through for $2 each. I’m considering going through them to try and find cards there worth more than $0.25/$2 respectively to either resell and get money for singles I need, or keep for my collection.

Unfortunately, since I’m new and not very knowledgeable I would need to use a scanner like Manabox to check prices. My question is, would the lgs employees/other patrons find it rude to scan the store’s bulk looking for a good deal? I don’t know the social norms, and I’m not sure whether the store would feel like I’m taking advantage of them or just be happy that they sold bulk they didn’t want to sort and price out individually.

TLDR is it rude to scan/price check an lgs’ bulk?

EDIT: Seems like the consensus is that this would be useless at best and rude at worst. Understood! Thanks everyone for your advice, wish me luck at commander tonight!

I mainly play Gwent on PC. I am familiar with MtG's rules.

The reason I am looking to go into TCGs in 2026 is to get into an additional community, potentially make friends and honestly I kinda miss that feeling of opening boosters, trading, doing tourneys and the board game feel (without actually playing board games).

From what I've seen, the only viable candidates (I am in southern EU) are MtG, Pokemon, Yugioh, Star Wars Unlimited and Lorcana.

For now, I am considering only Pokemon or MtG, as Yugioh seems prohibitively expensive (and frankly a game I wouldn't like to play as I used to play it as a kid and it's so much different than what I am used to). The other 2 games seem nice, but have a very small community, and I doubt their staying power.

So for MtG, it seems that everything except Commander and Pauper is super expensive. I am an adult working with a job, but the idea of spending 100+ Euro on a meta deck seems absurd to me. Also, sets seem to rotate fairly often, leaving me with no cards to play in some formats, unless I get new ones.
The pros are that the art is awesome, game is more complex, community is the biggest and I think I'd enjoy deckbuilding more.

Pokemon on the other hand seems like a "kid game". I know it's for adults, but I've also played this as an even younger kid, and while I appreciate beautiful and whimsy nature of the artworks now more than as a teen, it's still cartoon at the end of the day. The gameplay seems simpler and less interactive, but the big advantage seems that to play, it's really cheap.

What do you think? What are your thoughts? This is just based off research, online and IRL and I might've missed a lot of things.

Hey there,

I don't know if this is the right place to ask but I'm not sure on where to ask this. Recently I got an Academic 266+ and it turns out its so big that I rather use another deckbox inside of it to carry decks. Does anyone know of any deckboxes that fit on it with space for toploaders as well?

Hello,

​In the past, I played a bit of Hearthstone, Gwent, Legends of Runeterra, and Marvel Snap. I didn't really like Hearthstone, but I loved both Gwent and Runeterra.

​I’m looking to get into a new online TCG to play on mobile/pc and I hesitate between One Piece Card Game and Star Wars: Unlimited.

​Which one would you recommend? (Sadly, neither has an official mobile app, so I'll be playing on websites).

​Here is what matters most to me:

• ​Depth & Strategy: A game with real decision-making and mechanical depth.
• ​Community & Resources: An active player base with plenty of tutorials, YouTube content, deck guides, and discussions.
• ​Long-term support: A healthy scene that won't die anytime soon.

Regarding the themes I really like the One Piece universe. I’ve seen the Star Wars movies without being a die-hard fan, but SWU’s alternating actions mechanic on the same turn looks amazing and reminds me of LoR. ​Between these two, which one has the better community, game design, and long-term support?

​(Please don’t suggest other TCGs—I’ve already narrowed my list down strictly to these two).

​Thanks for the advice!

[EDIT] I'm also interested in Kards (the ww2 tcg), it seems still active and it has an official app on mobile and PC. It doesn't seem as popular as the others

I think one of the weirdest things about collecting Pokémon cards is how different cheap and worthless actually are.

I had a bunch of cards sitting in a binder that I basically never thought about because none of them were obvious chase cards.

Then I started checking actual recent sales instead of just assuming what they were worth.

A few cards that I would've happily traded away for a couple bucks were actually selling for way more than I expected. JKindex actually made this kind of checking a lot easier for me because I could quickly get a better idea of where some of these cards were sitting.

And honestly, the interesting part wasn't even the price.

It was why they were worth more.

Some had low print numbers, some were from sets people stopped opening, some had artwork collectors really liked, and a couple were just weird promos that I completely forgot existed.

It made me wonder how many cards people consider bulk just because they're not popular right now.

Do you guys actually check the value of your older binder cards every now and then, or do you mostly pay attention to cards you already know are valuable?

Hello people. I have been looking for any pvp card game where resources stack, meaning that any left carries over to your next turn. Not +1 max mana like Legends of Runeterra for example, but I liked the idea of spell mana where you keep at least that.

Any suggestions?

(skip to second paragraph if you don’t want to read context)

The first time I played a tcg was in 2020 when I bought a precon magic deck and played few matches. recently I got Interested in playing a tcg again but my magic cards are out of rotation and I don’t have a 100 card deck to play commander. So now I’m thinking if I whether I should play magic or yugioh since not got my interest and I enjoy the digital version of both.

In the end I want to know which one is more of a beginner friendly experience where I can casually play and every once in a while go to a small tournament. Right now I’m indecisive because yugioh recently launched the legendary modern deck box and on the other side I’m more familiar with magic and I like the track fantasy aspect some of the sets have.

Hello Everyone,

My name is Omar. Over the past 6 months, I have been building a new platform for TCG collectors of all levels (new to expert). It is an intelligence platform for collectors. After months of research into what is missing in TCG apps, I believe I have found the best possible solution.

What this means for you: I am looking for someone within the TCG space who either works in or wants to work in the media and marketing side of TCG. You can apply your expertise to a startup that creates real impact in the TCG industry and grows in a rapidly expanding market.

If you're interested in joining as a Pokémon collector, let me know and I can send you more details about the startup.

The product is amazing. It just does not have the eyes that it deserves right now.

I always memorized the order of my deck after every search and I kept track of the search through identifying the type of shuffle my opponent used and keeping track of the amount of repetitions of said shuffling type this included pile shuffling if my opponent scattered the cards across the table and mixed them that way id go through my deck "making sure all my card's are right side up" when in reality I'm memorizing the order again this applies to whenever my cards are dropped or something like that

But thats just keeping track of the cards the actual cheating is slightly more advanced

When drawing my opening 5 cards I use a technique that is called under stacking

So whenever a card that I don't wanna draw is on top of my deck I press a finger on the side lifting the cards up and pulling the card underneath with my thumb and with this technique I can actually pull from any card from the top 10 card to be in my hand without anyone noticing even if they are looking directly at my hand watching out for me cheating

I can technically do top 20 or bottom 5 as well but it's easy to catch if my opponent knows I'm cheating

My cards aren't marked

Im not stacking my deck

I'm memorizing the order and pulling the card I need for specific duels

Witch is why anyone who has played against me knows I don't draw my opening hand until I know who's going first so then I can decide if I want a going first hand or a going second hand

I can identify 2 types of shuffle with hearing and identity the type of shuffle and how many repetitions but it's easier to do if I see the cards

🟥

Hey judges how would you catch and prove I'm cheating without this post

I've been working on this ruleset for a while, and I'm now about to move on to the testing phase to see how well it actually works and what can be improved.

The project is essentially a set of rules designed to act as an intermediary between Yu-Gi-Oh! and Magic: The Gathering, allowing players using decks from either game to play against each other with a few adaptations.

The goal is to both translate the rules and mechanics of the two games into a common framework and address some balance issues. Simply translating the rules wouldn't really work, since Yu-Gi-Oh! would be far too fast-paced and a standard MTG deck would have very little chance of keeping up.

I'll continue updating and adapting the system over time, but for now, what do you think?

I'd especially appreciate feedback on anything that seems unclear, exploitable, unbalanced, or simply doesn't work as intended (Even though a small part of the game is also about playing cards that are perfectly viable in their native game, but happen to shine even more when used against the other game).

Long time CCG player here. I'm a little bit tired of the MtG system and how luck based and powercrept it feels sometimes. What is the most fun and complex system you know? I am interested in Sorcery, FaB and Digimon.