Search options (Page 36 of 54)

I'm actually in the process of piecing together a vampire tribal deck myself.  (You can see the list at: http://deckbox.org/sets/279257).  Admittedly mine is a bit more expensive than what you're running here... but not too many of the big pieces are absolutely necessary.  You're welcome to take or leave any of my thoughts there, but it might give you some ideas.

To start off, I agree with everything HikingStick is suggesting.  The captains are essential and should be a 4x.  More burn would definitely be a welcome sight.

Now for some more pointed suggestions. 

First, while it might not fit the tribal theme, I would suggest some sort of a one-drop.  I know you're going for casual play but I cannot stress enough how useful that first turn play is.  Even something like Rakdos Cackler immediately puts the onus on your opponent to respond.  Obviously the ideal one-drop for a vampire deck would be Stromkirk Noble but a playset of those will run you roughly $10 while the Cacklers will likely run you $0.50.

Second, one card you should DEFINITELY spend the 50 cents to get two of is Rogue's Passage.  As I'm sure you're aware, this deck will sink or swim based on whether you're able to actually land some hits on your opponent early game to make the vampires grow.  Without those hits, well, none of the vampires are all that threatening on their own.  The passage will make them unblockable to guarantee they will grow (especially with one or two Rakish Heirs in play to compound the growing effects).

Third, if you're going for flavor, I would suggest tossing in Bump in the Night and/or Exquisite Blood.  The former lets you smack the opponent for three early and possibly another three later in the game (which can often be a game breaker).  Exquisite Blood can be a monster as it almost gives all your creatures lifelink (not quite, but about as close to as you're going to get here).  Another option would be Mark of the Vampire - why not pump and give lifelink?  That alone can be a game winner in the right circumstances.

Fourth, while I know triggering Falkenrath Noble was a perk to Bone Splinters, most of the time you really won't want to sack your board presence, especially if your position will improve with a free swing as much as it will (given the vampire +1/+1 counters).  Thus, I would suggest Tragic Slip, Victim of Night, Ultimate Price, or even Brimstone Volley.  You'll be killing THEIR creatures without costing your own.  Not as many triggers for the noble, but still, more creatures on your side will work in your favor.

Lastly, I can see where Sign in Blood needs to be in here.  The last thing any deck wants is to be topdecking, thus, any added drawing can decide the game.  Sure you lose two life, but that's a single hit from a Vampire Nighthawk to replace.

Anyway, best of luck to you with it.

I'm going to have to go with either Lazav or Prime Speaker Zegana... both of whom are just nasty and have potential to affect the meta.

So the site compiles a list of traders included in the groups that you're a member of who have cards listed in your wantlist (and it also identifies overlap in terms of how many cards in your tradelist that are in their wantlist).  Once you have things filled into your lists, you should apply to join the Reddit mtg traders group as it's probably the largest and most directed toward trading on the site - that will give you the best chances of finding quality trade partners.

With regard to the questions you asked:  When you look at a trade, the cards listed below the trader's name are the cards that they're giving in return for the cards listed under the other person.  You can also see the conversations between the traders in many instances and the feedback scores that have been posted after the trade is completed.

Before you begin trading I would recommend spending a few minutes to review the site's trading policies as they've recently changed.  Then, you're welcome to find traders and off you go.

As a forewarning, since you won't have any trade feedback yet, be prepared to ship your side of any trade first.  I would recommend looking to trade with people with at least 5-10 positive feedback to ensure you're not going to get scammed.  Eventually, you'll build up a decent trade rep and can find most cards you could ever want on here.

I hope all of this helps.  It's really a pretty friendly, good system here.  As long as you send what is agreed in a timely fashion and have decent communication with your trading partners and you shouldn't have any problem.

Stuff is already in another trade, sorry.

Bump.

I'd also go for a playset of Stromkirk Nobles.

We could get into a rather lengthy debate about the virtues of each price setting; however, as the original post was regarding a problem for the pricing of basic land and what that would do to the estimated cost of a deck, I stand by my recommendation.  The low price would result in the lands being valued at roughly 1-2 cents each, which I would imagine is likely quite fair.

For the other points that were raised:

This would be great if TCG offered a median price, as it would be more resistant to outliers skewing the price distribution.  However, as they only offer an average (which uses the arithmetic mean), you don't really have that option to run with.  Further, it's possible to dig around a bit on TCG and find all those cards at, or near, their low prices.  If you're buying a fair number of cards this way, it definitely can outweigh any added shipping cost.  This is why I, personally, use the low value as it doesn't make any sense to me to pay $0.15 for a common or uncommon that I could easily go buy for $0.01.  Heck, you could probably make money by buying up a ton of them and then trading them at the $0.15 value if others will let you (pending that someone actually wants them...).

Two things.  First, the low price would not be affected by the shipping costs of any of the retailers, given that shipping is not included in the prices provided for any of the cards.  To that end, if you dig around enough, you can find pretty decent shipping costs.  A lot of the smaller retailers actually run standard mail shipping for only $0.99.  Because of that I've managed to sit and shave $20 - $30 off of card orders by just digging around and looking through them.  Sure, you might end up paying a touch more than the lowest possible price, but in many instances you're still not even  approaching the mean value for the card.

Second, you illustrate my reasoning for using the low price for me with the last statement.  Until the pricing can be sorted out, I'd suggest going with the low.  Otherwise be sure to look and ensure that the value of each card in the trade isn't skewed - and sadly, a bunch of them are.  Go take a look at the non-planeswalker Nicol Bolas.  He's sitting at roughly $6, but in no way, shape, or form should you go by that price.

Obviously this is a preference issue, and you're welcome to go with the price setting you prefer (and that you and any trade partners agree upon), but for the purposes of addressing Wismac's land-pricing issue, the "low" price option is likely going to be your best bet.

Herein lies the problem.  If people are too lazy to enter in a few words here or there (I type something about EVERY trade I do), then how can we expect them to go through the trouble of sorting through a dozen feedback options?

I'm fortunate that I've never had cards I shipped get lost, but I have had issues where cards sent from other people were lost.  In each case they were more than willing to make up for it.

Regardless, it's not like we should expect Sebi to be building some sort of a searchable database of trade comments or some other weird set of options to choose between.  I'm all in favor of improved measurement, but, to this end it's really not worth the trouble.  The simple fact is if someone has overwhelming positive feedback, we should treat that individual as being worthy of trading with.  If they've had a few items lost in the mail, and they didn't make up for it, we should have no hesitation to give them a -1 trade.  But if they make up for the item being lost, there's no reason to penalize them for the failings of the USPS or whatever.

Overall, I get that this is a serious issue/problem, but I don't think it needs to be as complicated as people are making it.  The consensus that I've seen on this site is that if cards are sent and the sender cannot confirm they were sent, i.e. Delivery Confirmation, then they're still liable to get the cards to the other trader.  If they're lost, well, that's part of the risk of doing trades by mail. 

In either event, I'd prefer a quickly viewable feedback value like the site currently has (with possible comments like they currently are).  If they have some sufficient level of positive feedback to satisfy me, I'll start up a trade.  If they're new, I insist they ship first.  And if they have negative feedback, I likely won't trade with them.  I don't really think we need to bog the site down with options that won't be used, much like you've pointed out about the option of typing in comments.

I definitely hear you with regard to the Nevermore and Slaughter Games threat, and yet, nobody at my LGS seems to be running any (go figure).

I could easily imagine a U/W build that uses Etheral Armor, Righteous Authority, Tricks of the Trade, white removal enchantments, Curiosity and a few other options... but then I'm still vulnerable to the same two uber-removal cards, right?  I'm in no way tied to U/G and have run through my head countless options that focus on Inquisitor's Flail ranging from R/W (yes, a one turn kill with Gisela would be funny) to U/G (what you see here) to U/B (with exalted and Tormented Soul as the primary pieces)... but for whatever reason the idea of a hexproof, unblockable creature screams frustration for my opponent.  I guess I could run U/W and have Nevermores myself, so as to name their Nevermore or Slaughter Games... hrm... options...

To my knowledge there isn't a "one-click" solution that will do that all at once; however, if you open your inventory it's easy enough to just go down the line of them adding the same number to the blue "tradelist" field.

I do have a playset of them... the question is, what gets pulled to make room?  And do I need a full set or would maybe 2x work?

I had thought about flickering the Peddlers or about them getting stuck paired with the wrong creature; but then again, given that there are four Peddlers, I don't know how much of a problem that would be.  Pair it with a goblin token and you can either attack without any regard for the token or even blast it myself (pending that my opponent keeps it alive).  I could see where I'd be happy keeping the bond with the other creatures as almost all of them are able to fulfill the creature destruction objectives.

The question is, would some Ghostly Flickers be worth the slots simply to offer some protection for the Peddlers?  I can easily see where they'll become targets REALLY quickly.  After all, if you have to choose between killing a deathtouched 1/1 goblin token or a 1/1 human that is granting deathtouch to said token (and possibly other creatures later), you'd torch the token, right?

So should the board be mostly counter stuff?  I could see where Negates, Dispels, Mizzium Skins, and things of that sort would work well in there.  Even Curse of Echoes could be a useful board card given that my LGS has two players that are incredibly counter-heavy control players.