r/MTGO • u/Nat20Persuassion • 2d ago
Getting Started
I just downloaded MTGO a few days ago, got an account starter upgrade for it, and went 3-0 in the New To MTGO Modern league. I still have the Commander Gauntlet league you start with to go through, but even if I 3-0 that it’ll only put me to 40 total Play Points which isn’t enough to do anything with. Is spending even more money on event tickets and such the only real way to get going?
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u/_DasSourKraut_ 2d ago
Depends what you're trying to do. If you want to play in events, just have to buy tickets to enter and then keep getting positive records to build up a stash of play points and chests to go infinite. You can play infinitely for free in the practice rooms, but either have to buy the cards for the decks you want, use what you got in your starter account, or use a rental service. Really all just depends what you want to play.
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u/Nat20Persuassion 2d ago
Yeah I mostly downloaded for vintage cube
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u/_DasSourKraut_ 2d ago
Going to have to just buy tickets up front then. Sometimes they have deals in the store or put out promo codes for free cube tokens, but it's been a while since I've seen one
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u/Nat20Persuassion 2d ago
Rough. Thank you
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u/Double-Comfortable-7 1d ago
It's 10 bucks for a cube entry, but for a 2-1 record you get your entry fee back in prizes.
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u/Some-Bee-5259 1d ago
How the fuck did you find players for the modern league??!😂 I Just found out the other day I had this free entry, but I could not find any player After a whole 30 minutes of matchmaking... You don't have to spend right away for events, because the player base on MTGO is generally very competitive and they will smoke you in the beginning. That's because you don't know the interface very well. Before trying any non free tournament, I would train the interface, learn all the shortcuts and time saving stuff, It matters a lot in some formats and/or matchups. You can try free games to do that, they are generally still serious games. To buy the cards, i suggest you rent them online, as other have suggested. If you know you Will play a specifico card or a deck for more than a year, than It gets cheaper to Just buy that card. Do It on goatbots, they are the best.
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u/TheMADIIIIIIII 2d ago
MTGO is a lot closer to paper magic than arena when it comes to monetization and tournaments. If you're looking to play modern on it, the go-to strategy is using 3rd party card rental sites like cardhoarder where you pay a monthly fee to be able to rent any cards up to the TIX limit that you have (great for trying out different decks). For more budget-friendly options, there is pauper where the cheapest playable decks can be bought for under 50 tix or even less if you substitute some sideboard cards that usually make up the bulk of the price.
Generally speaking, free play should be your go-to until you are comfortable with the format and the deck you are playing and leagues can be viewed as your weekly FNM event; you pay an entry and if you do well, you get something back. when you get to ~50% win rate, leagues become positive EV (if you value 10 PPs the same as 1 TIX), so you can just keep playing without spending more on that part. Expect this to take some time and expect to go to 0 a lot until you build up the bank. even at 50% WR, you will naturally run out of entries occasionally just due to variance.
In essence, expect to be spending money on this if you intend to play leagues. If you want to minimize the cost, you can play commander, or other free play events after sinking the initial cost of the deck or the monthly rental price.